Using mystic matter and magic
In this world, there is mystic matter - a substance with supernatural properties on its own that can cause certain supernatural phenomena in the natural world - and characters with attunement can manipulate it to perform all kinds of supernatural feats. One might even call it magic, who would have guessed?
All living things in this world, and everything they create, are inherently intertwined with mystic matter. Without it, there would be no life, there may not even be existence at all. It could be said, then, that in a way, everything that exists is part of the same greater whole, whether anyone or anything is aware of that or not. Theoretically, absolutely anything is possible through the use of mystic matter. However…
Nobody in the world but the gods are aware of that fact, or even a fragment of its true potential. The discovery of mystic matter is very recent, just barely half a century old, and studies still have yet to really figure out the matter itself, so nobody has yet been able to investigate the mystic matter coursing through people in detail.
Why? Because I like mystery, the unexplained, and unanswerable questions. Even though mystic matter follows some rules and serves a specific purpose in this world, I think it’s much more interesting if the people in this world don’t have the same understanding we do. Leaves the door open for more wonder, confusion, and awe.
If you want to write a character with attunement, you need to keep the following things in mind.
Source of power¶
Attunement, as an ability, runs mainly on two things: The user’s imagination, and their ability to think abstractly against common logic and reason. This means that the type of “magic” a user is capable of is dependent in large part on their personality, and if anything, their lack of scientific knowledge. Their ability is a deep part of them, and may say a lot about them.
The reason having less knowledge may be beneficial to a user is because they will have less to think about, and therefore less logic to defy, reducing the cognitive load. On the other hand, extensive knowledge in a field of science could also influence the user’s ability in its own way.
For instance, one person may develop a magnet-like ability if they studied magnets a lot and find themselves incapable of using it on anything that isn’t naturally magnetic, while another person may develop a similar ability that they can use on all metals, magnetic or not, if they grew up uneducated in the middle of nowhere.
It is extremely difficult, but not completely impossible, for a user to teach another their techniques and abilities. The main exception to this rule is for those raised under strict hereditary tradition, like the people of the Inazuma Clan for example, but the incredibly vast majority of people with attunement will learn and develop entirely on their own.
The only other consideration for where this power comes from is that it’s based on the manipulation of mystic matter, a physical substance that exists in the world. This ability doesn’t create new matter, it uses existing mystic matter to reshape into what the user desires, or to perform otherwise impossible tasks.
If you want to overthink it, the main aspects of this usage are quantum fields and antimatter annihilation, and there’s way more antimatter to exploit in this reality due to mystic matter being 50% antimatter, but you should only think about all that if you think it’s fun to overthink, this isn’t real science and it doesn’t follow real rules.
Some areas of the world have higher or lower concentrations of this matter than normal, and that will have an effect on attunement users in those areas. Less proficient users may find themselves completely unable to use their abilities in particularly desolate regions.
An additional important consideration would be whether or not the user also has Alignment. Not all do, and someone without alignment is far less likely to ever discover their attunement, and it will be harder to learn.
Also remember that mystic matter itself is a very recent discovery in the world. If you plan to write anything that takes place before the late 20th century, pretty much everyone in the world will believe it’s magic, witchcraft, divine, or demonic, and that might be taboo in some areas. Even for some time after the discovery, it took a while for the rest of the world to catch up and realize that it’s not magic, and for the taboos to begin fading away, though all the same taboos still linger among many people in rural areas, particularly of older generations.
Finally, it’s important to consider that attunement has historically been a rare enough ability that the world is not built to support it. Nowhere in the world is it an expected ability, nothing requires it, and military development largely ignored it. Some militaries may have experimented with attunement both offensively and defensively, but it never came close to large scale adoption, so almost every battle notably involving it would become a major historical event.
Elements¶
Many proficient users will find themselves developing an affinity for an “element” like fire, water, electricity, and so forth. This is NOT a functional mechanic. Let me repeat that.
This world’s “magic” is NOT elemental AT ALL.
No “element” has an advantage over any other, because it’s an illusion. These affinities are formed entirely within the users’ imaginations and have no inherent function, it’s just what each user finds easiest to understand, or finds most appealing.
Abandon all semblance of elemental magic systems or video game logic in your writing with this ability. I know you can be more creative than that.
Fire is often weak to water in media, but why doesn’t the water evaporate?
Electricity is often weak to earth in media, but why doesn’t the earth burn?
Dark is often weak to light in media, but what does that even mean?
All a user has to do in this world to overcome the idea of an elemental advantage is ask themselves why. The moment a user (OR their opponent if there is one) no longer confidently and absolutely believes they have an advantage or disadvantage, it disappears.
Of course, to stop believing, they have to believe in the first place, and that kind of game logic isn’t particularly prevalent in this world, so nobody believes to begin with.
So, let me say it a third time just to be extra clear because I hate this trope that much.
There is NO elemental magic in this world. “Elements” can only be purely aesthetic.
Limitations & Possibilities¶
With elements out of the way and remembering that imagination is one of the main sources of power for this ability, it should be very clear that this ability is an opportunity to be super creative. The only limit is from the perspective of balance.
It’s theoretically possible for a person to become more powerful than a god with this ability, but nobody does, and nobody should, because it would destroy the balance of power for the entire world.
The reason the fox spirits are the most proficient users of this ability is entirely because of how long they live and how few they are. Even with a thousand years of practice, they still struggle to even come close to the powers of the incarnations, because the incarnations are the gods. Or at least what’s left of them.
How you limit your character’s proficiency with their attunement is open to just as much creativity as the abilities you give them. Are they too highly educated to be able to get in the mindset? Do they overthink it and fizzle out? Are they simply not creative enough? Maybe they’re neurodivergent and that makes it more (or maybe less!) difficult for them than otherwise.
Now with that in mind, let me bludgeon you yet again with the statement that imagination is one of the main sources of power here. How a character utilizes their attunement doesn’t have to be like magic, or even visible.
It could be used for psychic abilities, like limited foresight or psychometry. It could be used for communication, allowing a character to speak or read other languages at a basic level without studying them, use telepathy, or communicate with animals. It could be used to slow the character’s perception of time to give them faster reaction speeds. It could make them physically stronger without them even knowing why, or slow their aging slightly without them realizing. All living things and the things they create are inherently intertwined with mystic matter, so users of attunement literally have the entire world at their fingertips.
Anything you can imagine, it can be done as long as you can make it believable and maintain some amount of balance.
Now, with all that in mind, there is one universal limitation to consider. The creation of living material is the most difficult thing an attunement user could possibly do, even if it’s as simple as seaweed. Creating more complex things like meat would be nearly impossible for anyone to pull off, even among the oldest fox spirits. Manipulation of living material is easy, but creation of living material will nearly always fail one way or another due to the immense complexity of it. So no steak dinners appearing out of thin air! Maybe an attunement user could keep themselves alive without a food source for a while by materializing some of the base components of nutrition, but it certainly wouldn’t be appetizing. A much more practical, appealing, and possible application of attunement for the creation of food would be supplying personal crops (i.e. small scale, not for mass production) with nutrients to grow food faster, or in places where it normally couldn’t grow at all.
Oh, by the way, stuff like ghosts? Haunted woods? That’s all connected to mystic matter too in this world. It’s exceedingly rare, but paranormal activity in the world can be justified with mystic matter. For instance, a ghost might be the soul of a person with attunement that remained alive after the person was murdered.
Of course, this implies that souls exist - and they do. Everyone has a soul, and it’s made of mystic matter. The world is not aware of this.
Go wild with that one.
Balance¶
And finally, the topic of balance. Attunement as an ability is inherently unbalanced, no matter how weak the character is. Even if all the character can do is move a pencil on a table without touching it, that’s more than the vast majority of people are capable of. Everything this ability can do is a direct advantage in some way.
So what is “balanced” then? Obviously one-on-one matchups against an attunement user will never be balanced, so you have to consider a larger scale. Can the character take on an army, head first? You’ve gone too far, even for incarnations. Can they take on an armed squad of eight people, unarmed? Sure, if you can make it believable. Perhaps a more interesting and believable overpowered scenario, however, would be a character that utilizes supernatural eyesight and telepathy to control a battlefield from the background as a tactician.
You should also bear in mind that this ability is incredibly rare, occurring in less than 1/25,000 humans, 1/3,000 minor spirits, and 1/1,000 major spirits. Even among such small numbers, the majority of these people have weak abilities, or might not have even noticed their abilities themselves. A character with attunement is going to stand out, and the more powerful their ability, the more eyes will be on them… perhaps even drawing the attention of authorities or shadowy organizations. Remember that impact, because it wouldn’t be very believable to have a character with the ability to level a building with their mind that still goes to school every day like a normal kid. At least, not if anybody knows they can do that.
You may have noticed that the word “believable” has been used a lot here. In the end, that’s the most important thing for this ability. It doesn’t have to be realistic, it doesn’t have to be fair, it doesn’t even have to make logical sense, as long as you can write it in a believable way in the context of this world. Make us believe that the character should be capable of what you say they are.
Expect your contributions with this ability to be reviewed on that more than anything else.
Don’t overthink it I guess.