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What exactly is the arcane?
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Post by
xenoblad
I'm having issues imagining what exactly the arcane is.
I know it's blue and it can hit things realy hard, but what exactly is it?
Is the arcane just the vacums of space and tangible time?
A buddy of mine thinks the arcane in azeroth is akin to atoms in the real world meaning he thinks that the arcane are more of a form of particle matter which make up all other matter. So you basically have the ability to sever particles of your enemies when you blast them with an Arcane blast or something like that.
I think the arcane is more of a proccess for manipulating the density and volume of spaces, and slowing or speeding up time in specific spaces. I say this because arcane attacks don't usually have any chemical based effects on the target based on lore and the spell animations. They seem to just phyically smack the living crap out of the target rather than leave it sizziling like a lazor would.
What do you think the arcane is and how it is used in arcane attacks?
Do you think it's a tangible peice of matter or is it completely energy based or is it just a name for a process of manipulation?
It doesn't have to be tied down to one aspect if you can argue for it being part of a number of factors.
Post by
Nathanyal
Just went and looked
this
up real quick. It might explain some things for you.
It seems to me that the arcane is all things magical in the world. All spells seem to be derived from the arcane, but the only true arcane spells are those cast by Arcane mages.
Arcane may also be seen as the invisible force that holds things together, mainly magical things. It also seems to deal with the forth dimension, time. With spells such as
Slow
and
Time Warp
Arcane mages can manipulate the flow of time. Along with their teleports and portals, they can make a rip in time and space and appear in another city. They can also create food out of thin air. As well as change the appearance of their enemy with
Polymorph
.
Post by
138583
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
xavierpjg
In response to nathanval:
Small problem with your theory, all mages have the ability to manipulate time and polymorph and create food. Have you ever seen that movie " The Sorcerer's Aprentice"? I think Nicolas Cage best decribed most of the power the mages have. Fire and ice, and possibly time, could be done from the speeding up and slowing down of molecules. This was done by a type of psycic power. (i know i spelled that wrong) Powers like polymorph and Conjuring (Food, Ritual of refreshment) could be linked back to alchemy.
Arcane would simply be the elemental powers of the mage that you cannot see. Or from wow lore it sounds as if it calls upon life/spirit energy and is also a combination of the other four elements. Which would most likely explain why it would hit so hard. It would pretty much be just using the energy of all elements and life. The universal "spark".
Post by
Nathanyal
What made me think of that was when I filtered the mage spells, it listed those are arcane spells. Since a mage can be one of the 3 it would seem natural for them to do basic things such as polymorph or conjuring. I wasn't saying just an Arcane mage can cast those spells, just that those spells are listed as being in the Arcane school.
Its like you don't have to be a Fire or Frost mage to use Frostbolt or Fireball, but if you want to use a more complex spell such as Deep Freeze or Combustion you need to train more in that school. It seems that the speeding up of time would be easier, seeing as all mages can use TW, but the slowing down of time is more complex, since Slow isn't learned until farther down the Arcane tree.
Yes I have seen the movie and I enjoyed it quite well. But you didn't see the apprentice do any of the more complex spells that Cage's character was capable of doing and if he tried it there was almost disastrous results, such as making all the mops and brooms help clean up his shop. Also him doing that, putting "life" into an inanimate object, seems like arcane magic.
Post by
xavierpjg
Yeah that was a good movie lol. Ok the way i read it, it seemed u were saying only arc could do those things. Your right about the apprentice. I was simply speaking of the the way he explained how the powers work. I believe you are correct about the putting life into things being arcane. Could also border line necromancy which would make necromancy a type of arcane too. lol this is gonna be a very philosphical thread. :)
Yeah farther training will always be needed for more complex magics. The thing that ponders me is with fire, their "master" spell is combustion. With frost its Deep Freeze. Both are "super attacks" Arcane kind of pails in comparison to those. You'd think they would have like an Arcane SuperNova or something. The Mastery does make sense once you read the lore of arcane though. Seeing how Arcane deals with life/spirit energy, (mana?) the more you have to put forth into your spells the more powerful they are. Hence the %+ to damage with more unused mana in your pool.
Post by
138583
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Post by
StrangerWifCandy
Don't they always generalize magic as the arcane? Coming from that viewpoint we could say that arcane is something like the bonding energy throughout the universe, which somewhat lines up with the idea of fire and frost schools being a subset of the entirety of the "arcane arts". Let's pretend that instead of the manipulation of the arcane, or magic, we call it the manipulation of the amount of energy within a system. If we define that as the arcane, it follows that fire spells in particular fall in the boat of increasing the energy of a system (things like kinetic energy, enthalpy, etc.) whereas frost spells are about the nuances of removing energy from a system.
In this sense, when you train in different schools, you're merely learning different useful ways to apply the manipulation of the arcane (or energy, in my physical analogy here). This means that arcane spells themselves would just be the manipulation of energy in a manner that doesn't change the state of a set of matter to plasma, or chilling it. There's a lot of discrepancies with that idea for those of you who are familiar with physics, but eh, it's one way to imagine it.
Post by
xenoblad
Don't they always generalize magic as the arcane? Coming from that viewpoint we could say that arcane is something like the bonding energy throughout the universe, which somewhat lines up with the idea of fire and frost schools being a subset of the entirety of the "arcane arts". Let's pretend that instead of the manipulation of the arcane, or magic, we call it the manipulation of the amount of energy within a system. If we define that as the arcane, it follows that fire spells in particular fall in the boat of increasing the energy of a system (things like kinetic energy, enthalpy, etc.) whereas frost spells are about the nuances of removing energy from a system.
In this sense, when you train in different schools, you're merely learning different useful ways to apply the manipulation of the arcane (or energy, in my physical analogy here). This means that arcane spells themselves would just be the manipulation of energy in a manner that doesn't change the state of a set of matter to plasma, or chilling it. There's a lot of discrepancies with that idea for those of you who are familiar with physics, but eh, it's one way to imagine it.
umm...umm.... I feel a bit slow now.
So you're saying that arcane is the manipulation of energy which isn't increasing it or decreaing but using that energy to convert the matter into plasma?
Umm... does plasma burn things? Or is getting hit by plasma like being hit by a weird feeling but hard cannonball?
Post by
268186
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Post by
618970
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Post by
227045
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Post by
StrangerWifCandy
Plasma is a state of matter (the most prevalent form of matter in the universe even, you know stars and stuff) where electrons are extremely excited in a gaseous form, you know, fire. A regular gas is invisible because the electrons of each atom/molecule aren't shifting quantum, but when excited (read: energy added through any means) the velocity of the atoms/molecules reach a point where electrons can escape and change rapidly--and when electrons drop a level, they emit a photon (literally a light particle). This is what fire is, on combustion the atoms from the fuel source, generally some carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen are all in a state of plasma, emitting photons. If you hold a ceramic glass inside a candle flame, you see black soot collect on its surface--carbon. Why is this? It's because the cool glass changes the carbon from plasma back to solid.
Anyways, I digress, the plasma definition isn't the point here, it's that thinking of magic as the manipulation of energy is a deceptively intuitive way to interpret the entire idea. Let's take, for example, the spell
Fireball
. Using some energy (mana) you synthesize an amount of combustible hydrocarbons (need to strip away correct amounts of electrons and form the required amount of bonds), initiate ignition (via addition of energy until matter enters plasma state), and then launching it at some poor target (addition of kinetic energy to the entire system). Think of your mana pool as a pool of potential energy, which is magical in the sense that you get to use it to 'convert' into a force as you wish. This way a certain amount of work, or mana, would be required to make a fireball retain its shape, another amount to push it, and another amount to create the conditions for fire. For a frostbolt, you'd have to do work--spend mana--to evacuate the energy within the condensed matter that you want to launch, let's say water, so that it changes from a vapor/gas state of matter into a solid ready to be tossed at a warrior.
Now, to tie this into the original discussion, arcane spells themselves are just manipulations of energy in a manner that doesn't focus entirely on the state of matter, but rather directly applying it for various means. Arcane Blast would be something like punching a guy from really far away--perhaps using mana to accelerate a mass of the immediately surrounding atmosphere to collide with the target (except if that were really the case, we'd be able to AB targets regardless of LoS yeaboi!), arcane explosion would be something like accelerating matter nearby away from yourself, etc. etc.
Unfortunately, this leaves quite the hole as to how spell resistances work, and the closer we get to physics the free manipulation of energy makes you effectively an existence we define as 'God'.
Post by
StrangerWifCandy
I think it's worthy to note however, that the probable accepted artistic definition of the 'arcane' is just an all pervasive "energy" (energy in the sense of magical mumbo-jumbo energy, not the potential to do work like in physics) which mages use mana to manipulate and turn into fire or ice, or neither--pure arcane. If it's like that, it's a form of pseudo-energy and the vehicle of matter which the arcane 'element' resides naturally is something that can't be fully explained logically (because it's fictional).
In retrospect, via Occam's razor, this is probably the more correct definition.
Post by
227045
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Post by
xenoblad
AH my head!
What did I make here!
I appreciate the responses, but this is making me feel like a dunce.
Post by
StrangerWifCandy
StrangerWifCandy we are in an agreement, or so I think. I was saying that arcane is not plasma, as it does not burn the target after impacting them. I agree that the manipulation of the molecules does require energy (mana).
Matter does not have to be in a plasma state to burn something or someone. Bullets leave smoldering holes but aren't plasma, and sticking your hand inside a vat of boiling water burns you, yet it's still liquid/vapor. I know what you're trying to say though, I was just saying that if the arcane arts were truly about manipulating energy freely, it makes perfect sense that fire spells and frost spells are a subdivision of the entire set of arcane arts (read: specific application in matter state-manipulation).
I was trying to say it was not kenetic energy and potential energy. Just like you said in a more scientific way.I think you're confused, if arcane really was a -thing- then it of course it wouldn't be kinetic or potential energy--energy isn't really a -thing-. We use energy as an idea of how much work it takes to make something happen. I was just entertaining the idea that entirety of the arcane arts revolve around the manipulation of various properties in a system to do something we find more useful, like conjuring strudels. Much like the manipulation of various thermodynamic properties that engineers do all the time when designing power generating turbines at a facility, except with magic you don't need ridiculous amounts of machinery.
Off Topid: What does "Who want that and I walk!" mean? Is it a problem with translation into English from Japanese Slang?
It's slang, it means "Who the hell do you think I am?" -- It's a quote from one of my favorite anime. I've been told that it's typed terribly though and I believe it.
AH my head!
What did I make here!
I appreciate the responses, but this is making me feel like a dunce.
You're not obligated to feel anything; knowing a little bit of physics doesn't make you better or worse than anyone. Everyone has their own hobbies and none are any better than the rest. One of mine happens to be physics--is this supposed to make me better than my peers who enjoy things like piano, math, or painting? I'm not entirely convinced this is the case. /rant
Post by
Lenience
Arcane is pretty lightly-blue-purple colored magic.
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