Kaleidomancy

Legend

“In the ages of celestial leaks, where everyone harvested shards like fruits from trees, the feel and taste of the mana sea gained a new flavour.”

“As a peel, their shine tells of inside wellness.”

—Skjald Sejrik

 

Description

Kaleidomancy is the discipline of shard purity evaluation, the art of reading the internal structure, colour dominance, and residual orientation of mana crystals. It is not like Synesthemancy, a science of numbers but a craft of perception, where the practitioner, the Kaleidomancer, must learn to listen with their eyes and interpret the silent reflective language of the shard.

Kaleidomancers, like Synesthemancers, reveal a shards content, but unlike Purimancers, they do not alter the shard—they understand it. They do not shape its future—they uncover and define its purity and weaknesses. The few things that lack making it whole again, a true-colour swirl of the mana sea. Uncovering a shard’s internal state, it can be truly understood, so its reflections won’t mislead about residual pollution. This way a shard’s lackings can be defined, and the best match for future use or merging can be determined.

This knowledge of its internal swirl is important, as some would easily be merged, while others would be best used as crafting, enhancing, and mana manipulation ingredients, or as fuel for astral travel or sacrifices to their gods. The possible uses are many, and the Kaleidomancers’ work is essential for the best use of a resource that has seen a decrease in availability.

“To see a shard is not to know it. To know it is to see what it hides.”

—Skjald Vinotis

 

History

Dark Ages

The art of Kaleidomancy is believed to have emerged during the Second Swirl, when the first divines ripped wider some tiny leaks and entered the astral. The streams of Mana Sea that lashed out in swirling tongues and crystallised or tainted as they stretched – became the spark. Some of the touched, tainted, and changed became the second Stoicheians. Originally mere elemental forces made from the random First Swirls that also had birthed those now entering the astral, these second tainted evolved as rapidly as those entering the astral.

Now, suddenly instilled with sentient behaviour and mobility by the swirling lashes, they stared in wonder as the fluid swirls slowed, hardened, and then crystallised. In a tempo equalling the growth of their own perception, as if the swirls mentally transferred their conscience. This experience of the mana sea filling their minds actually became the core of how they later taught untainted mentalism manipulation to the N-Erectus and Archaic humans. But their curiosity towards the crystallising mana and the shards breaking off was the origin of Kaleidomancy.

The astral turned many times; ages passed; none know exactly how long. Stoicheian taught their knowledge about shards, in their well-hidden void gardens, to Drakk Alfar and Kobolds. Making these two races the foremost in shard analysis for several millennia. Stoicheians also drew maps of all the known leak locations, and they came to understand the turn of the astral wheel, a separate wisdom they only taught to the Ljost Alfar. Because that knowledge could manipulate time itself, and only the Ljost Alfars was deemed fit to know.

In their underground fungal-lit dwellings where light was always the same, Drakk Alfar and Kobolds learnt to truly “see” shards. These early practitioners used Stoicheian-made crystal lenses, echo stones, and spirit lamps to interpret shard purity, long before the invention of the Purity Kaleidoscope. It’s no wonder, though, that kaleidoscopes were invented and the horrible spirit lamps shunned, as those trapped inside helplessly saw the astral wheel turn and their worlds fade, while they stayed frozen. We can thank the Archaic hero Lalmanti Hac for doing to a Stoicheian what they did to others. Finally opening their minds and abandoning the lamps.

“A shard’s unflickering glow is so truly an inside show.”

—Skjald Ulrich

 

First Age

There are legendary tales from when the world was reformed about kaleidoscopes and their enhancing glyphs, so they were invented in the Dark Ages. But the new interference with how shards were shaped required some major changes in how they were analysed. The Drakk Alfar, somewhat hindered by grief over the loss of their ‘wind stallions’, were surpassed by the Kobold. And it was Kobolds who delivered the landslides in regard to shard evaluation, tool development, and formalising the discipline, naming it Kaleidomancy and establishing the first academies dedicated solely to shard analysis.

“Truth lies in the surface and shines.”

—Skjald El Mary

 

Elthuun and the Weeping of the Mana Sea

Before the world was shaped, before the void gardens became a surface crusted over the dreaming astral—a vast, parallel existing, unformed swell of mana, emotion, and echo. And studying that sea, drifting aside it like a fleck of bone in a storm, was Elthuun. He was a Kobold, just a flicker of perception, pale-eyed and unblinking, drifting in the void where gardens had not yet bloomed.

Then the divines, the Stoicheian amongst them, ancient and immense, began their work. With hands of gravity and breath of silence, hauling of the Void Gardens together—massive constructs of astral elements, raw materials, fauna, and flora, each one a seed of reality. They did not speak. They did not sing. But the mana sea did. And Elthuun heard it. Not with ears, but with the marrow of his being.

The mana sea sang in grief, in longing, in anticipation. Each garden dragged into place dulled the sea’s voice, overlaying it with form, with surface, with silence. He watched the gardens anchor themselves, forming the first topographies—mountains of memory, rivers of regret, skies stitched from the sighs of unborn stars. And he wept, not for the loss, but for the beauty of the dulling. The way raw emotion became terrain. The way sorrow became soil.

“The world is a wound,” Elthuun whispered, “and the crust is its scab.”

—Skjald Valgrif

 

When the last garden settled, Elthuun’s eyes turned milky white. Not blind—but attuned. He could see the swirl beneath the surface, the mana tides still pulsing, still echoing, though muffled. He plucked a shard of unformed Wickeryadii garden floating by—a fragment that had refused to settle. Through it, he saw the world’s emotional undercurrent. Rage beneath volcanoes. Joy beneath meadows. Terror beneath the sea. From it he fashioned a lens. Thus, did kaleidomancy saw the birth of another tool—not as a distinct discipline, but as a layer or additional echo. A way to remember what the world had covered. A way to listen to the mana sea’s dulled song.

Elthuun wandered the newborn world, planting shards where the echo was strongest. He taught no one. He wrote nothing. But the shards remembered, fused with the underlying energies they grew-into earthnodes. Thus, Elthuun created the worlds leyline grid and laid the foundation for astral travel. And when first found, the discoverers heard whispers. Not of Elthuun’s voice, but of the mana sea’s. Of the Becoming. Of the gardens that were hauled, and the silence that followed.

““To see is to mourn,” the shards say. “To listen is to love.””

—Skjald Yell'a'Beard

 

Much happened during this period; the Stoicheian couple, Sun and Moon, delivered new light sources to study under. Alfars of both kinds began helping Kobolds to improve both kaleidoscopes and kaleidomancy, taking shard evaluation, matching, and merging to a grander level, almost matching the new divines—and discovering a hidden language.

Some say it was this reach for ultimate mastery that caused some of the Alfars to be caught in a disastrous energetic burst. As they attempted to reveal the shard of stillness, the multicoloured shard they used did not fuse with the other eight but consumed them. The following burst took hold and consumed all shards present or in nearby shard satchels.

As the swirling colour-storm faded, all the Alfars were gone, and instead stood odd beings, spirit-emptied carcasses of their former selves, craving to fill their hollowed shells with aura energies. The vampires were born – or so they say.

“Striving for perfection comes at a cost, and the slightest flaw may cost dearly.” 

—Skjald Kazumix

 

Second Age

The 1st cataclysm somehow changed how shards crystallise and thus how their residues reflect. Thus Kaleidomancers began to talk about 1st and 2nd generation shards. A debate that quickly evolved and required redefinition, as the shards of the Dark Ages should be considered 1st-generation shards. It took years, but eventually an agreement was reached. So now another layer was added to shard classification. Not only purity and shape, but also generation was included. Not as such needed, but nonetheless it was taken under the academy’s wings.

Up through the second age, as surviving shards from both the dark ages and first age, 1st and 2nd generation, were unearthed, the understanding of the differences grew. Although subtle, it was easily spotted when first learnt. So it became widespread knowledge.

“Votes cast across the world and void, with newnamers toyed.”

—Skjald Sigurd

 

Third Age

The appearance of the Wanderers and their bullheaded god did at first seem to have no influence at all. But as it roamed and slayed vampires, very bright- and sharp-eyed individuals noticed something extremely interesting. Slain vampire energies not fully absorbed resulted in shards dropping that were similar to those of the 1st generation. Although actually created in the time of the 3rd generation, it was as if vampire energies were in a frozen time vacuum.

When Allele Diploid heard this, their agents swarmed every place The Bullheaded God had been spotted to see if any odd shards floated on the markets.

“Odd backward aura swirls from before rotation and tilts. The most precious of celestial spills”

—Skjald El Mary

 

Fourth Age

Some say it was because the Vular managed to locate the Shard of Stillness and present it to the Bullheaded God. That Mt Ljostari blew up and consumed the entire realm, creating the odd Mt Vula realm—Ljostari gardens grand spire as it was prior to our world’s creation. I won’t argue against that, as it sounds possible. But the disaster and the Deep Blue Tsunami made the shard leak change ever so little, but enough for labelling the new ones 4th generation.

“A generation of twisted hues are the Arisen and their rainbow drops.”

—Skjald Sigurd