#haha look at my boring worldbuilding shit

“Amagician (also referred to as a mageorking) is an individual able to consciously shape and alter the physical and chemical properties of their environment through currently unknown mechanisms. Notably, this manipulation of parameters is confined to a spherical area centered on their person.

This range is popularly referred to as a kill radius due to the exclusive use of the term in both demiurgic and analog warfare, and its relative circumference varies from magician to magician, increasing with age. The kill radius of a magician grows at a rate constant and often unique to the individual, and has been found to increase with a proportion consistent with the Fibonacci integer series in mathematics.

The first magicians were born during 1930, and are thus referred to as the first generation mages. There was no precedence, genetic or otherwise, for their sudden appearance, and the births occurred worldwide at a relative frequency of 1/10,000 across all demographics.

Biologically, magicians appear virtually identical to normal human beings, save for the presence of a tapetum lucidum, typically found in nocturnal vertebrates, behind each retina. As a result, their eyes are highly reflective, and often bear noticeably decreased or vivid pigmentation. Unusually, the presence of this structure does not appear to have a notable effect, detrimental or otherwise, on the vision of the individual. Scientists hypothesize that this is due to the light-refracting properties of the radius surrounding a magician, which as a result is faintly visible to the naked eye.

The subsequent discovery of ‘magic’ prompted vast and sweeping changes to virtually all aspects of international society—from cultural norms to geopolitical borders. Governments felt threatened by the existence of magicians, but also immediately realized their destructive potential.

As a result, existing warfare and combat stratagems had to be massively retailored. Thus, World War II was the last of the so-called ‘complete analog’ wars, fought solely with technology (aside from a few scattered incidents involving child soldiers and the opportunists eager to take advantage of young first generation magicians).

The nature of the kill radius singlehandedly elevates the magician into becoming what is statistically speaking, the deadliest and most effective groundside unit on the modern battlefield. Entire units, if bunched closely together into standard attack formations, can be massacred in seconds if they are caught within the ‘reaping circle’ of a mage.

The kill radius is unaffected by physical boundaries such as walls or doors, making it an ideal choice for espionage and undetectable assassinations. As a result, although records are inconclusive and there was no officially documented body count, historians believe that the 1965-1972 portion of the Cold War marks one of the bloodiest periods of human history, and boasts the largest amount of mage-related deaths.

Magicians are considered to hold an absolute advantage over the environment within their radius. This control is limited only by the skill and precision of the individual. Typical strategy in warfare consists of capturing opposing troops (magician or otherwise) within this area. The magician may then utilize any means at their disposal to neutralize the enemy—typically by igniting the oxygen within the air or otherwise briefly making the space around them inhospitable through chemical means. Skilled combat mages are notorious for their creativity and unpredictability in executions—it is common for them to publicly display the horrifically mangled bodies as deterrence during wartime.

After use, the radius of a magician has been shown to leave a complex fractal ‘fingerprint,’ on whatever surface the magician happened to be standing on.  The residual image changes rapidly depending on the type of force the mage has exerted on their environment (alteration of gravity, manipulation of vectors), but they are not extremely dissimilar between individuals.

As a result, it was theorized that magicians utilize a branching subconscious language, similar to a programming code, to act on their surroundings. The effects of research in the 1950’s led to the invention of schematics: simplified two-dimensional representations of radial fingerprints.

When drawn out on flat surfaces, magicians may utilize them as functional kill radii, and perform the action specified by the schematic even when not in close proximity of the area. Scientists hypothesize that this is because it acts as a sort of conduit or circuit for the magician’s energy in the absence of a real radius.

Schematics provide mages with invaluable shortcuts for tasks that require surgical precision, such as most medical situations. To heal a wound, a magician must instigate rapid cell division in the affected area, a process that can result in the formation of deadly tumors if not done with complete concentration. To avoid that possibility, a schematic of a successful procedure may be used instead.

Less sophisticated schematics are also often used in combat in lieu of conventional explosives, able to be drawn under a bridge or truck and detonated when the magician is safely far away.

Most countries have adopted the Mauss-Crowley system of classification, which ranks magicians within a series of twelve tiers. The tier of a magician is decided mainly by their level of precision, or ability to interact with matter on increasingly specific levels. A tier 11 magician, for example, would be able to operate on the atomic level, while the theoretical tier 12 could manipulate events on a subatomic scale.

The twelfth tier may also be designated to mages that demonstrate intimacy with previously unprecedented aspects of reality—the infamous Edward Montblanc, for instance, was awarded the rank in 1953 for being able to interface with the time-space continuum.

Due to their relative rarity and low population, most militaries assign only one or two mages per essential squadron of human soldiers. Units that are composed completely of magicians are referred to as chapters, and are typically pulled for black ops, espionage, or other high-risk operations.

Magicians in the military are typically paid extremely generous salaries, but roughly two-thirds of it is withheld by the government until they reach retirement age (35). The likelihood of a combat mage to survive past the age of 25 is about 33.5%.”

Lafayette Hajjar is 32.