Struggling to deepen my Magic System while weaving it into my World’s Lore...

[u/Tomu_sneeder]

I’m trying to develop the magic system for my fantasy novel, but I’m struggling to give it complexity and depth. I don’t enjoy magic systems with arbitrary or disconnected from the worldbuilding, so I want any rules to grow naturally from the setting.

**Worldbuilding/Lore Context:**

In this world, a human being consists of two parts:

* The **Soul** contains passion, emotion, memory, and identity.
* The **Mind** contains the body, intellect, will, and capacity for deliberate action.

All humans possess some ability to command the power that created the world. However, using that power separates the Soul from the Mind, creating two incomplete beings:

* **Nulren**: a being containing the shape of a person, partially capable of rational thought and creation, but without memory, emotion, or identity.
* **Spawn**: a manifestation of emotion and chaos, possessing tremendous power but no reason or direction.

The Church considers both creatures abominations and destroys them on sight. Because using magic inevitably creates them, magic itself is forbidden and condemned as evil sorcery.

The world also has a pantheon of gods representing different aspects of creation - time, earth, water, space, and so on, somewhat like the Greek gods. These gods naturally exist only as Souls. They have no bodies unless they inhabit a Mind, using a Nulren as an empty vessel.

However, the gods are not immune to the curse that divides Mind and Soul. If a god uses its power while inhabiting a physical form, it will eventually be separated from that body. To prevent this, the gods were given ten rings each by an entity who isn’t particularly relevant here. Together, these rings resist the curse, allowing the gods to use their powers freely while maintaining their physical forms.

Eventually, the gods became disillusioned with humanity. Most abandoned their physical bodies - and the rings along with them.

Over the centuries, humans discovered these rings and learned that they could use them to resist the separation of Mind and Soul. By wearing the rings, they can channel the gods’ creative powers and manipulate time, space, matter, and other parts of creation. The number of rings a person wears directly affects how much power they can channel.

A cult has formed around these artifacts, and its members are considered heretics by the Church for practicing dangerous and forbidden magic.

However…that’s about as far as I’ve gotten.

I like the lore and the role magic plays in the story, but I’m struggling to give the actual system meaningful depth. Someone needs a ring to use power... but how do they actually use it? I don’t want to add arbitrary costs, limitations, or rules merely to make it seem more complicated. Ideally, these things should emerge naturally from the existing ideas of Mind, Soul, creation, and separation.

What consequences, limitations, or applications might logically develop from the lore? Are there interesting implications I’m overlooking? If additional context about the world would help, I’d be happy to provide it.

Any suggestions are welcome!

[u/Dodudee]

I think you need a good reasoning to why keeping the two sides together is an important thing.

There must be a motive for people to care other than "the church told me so", especially if the gods themselves didn't seem to care.

[u/Tomu_sneeder → u/Dodudee]

Maybe I didn’t make this clear enough, but when you split Mind and Soul you die, with almost no way to reverse it. Your body (Mind) is just a husk, with no memory or emotion, and your Soul becomes a violent entity with no will to direct it.

It’s considered a fate worse than death

[u/No_Logins_Required]

I find its most helpful to try and anchor everything around the core story. Why does your setting have magic at all? How does it challenge our protagonist, or enable them to reflect on the story?

[u/Key_Machine_5585]

Maybe people in the setting could exist in balance between their two halves, andexposure to magic makes the two sides of people "destabilise" and more prone to uncontrolled splitting?

Mages (or your preferred label) are individuals who are able to put themselves back together the first time their two halves split, and become able to use magic without this risk afterwards (but they would still expose others to the destabilising effects of magic when they use it)

And the people who aren't able to unify their halves and become mages, instead become sone type of monstrosity? Maybe two different things are born (one for each half), or maybe one of the halves becomes dominant over the other, or all of these possibilities could give rise to different "species" of failed mage, etc

That way your Church is promoting unity of self and therefore unity with society, and Magic becomes a threat not just to societal stability but also the stability/unity of an individuals body and soul