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Magic
When your character arrives in this world, they will be assigned a type of magical power to aid in their fight against the shadows (or whatever other shenanigans they get up to). They will not be able to choose their power - but you, their player, certainly get a say.
Characters can learn to use their powers in any manner of creative ways, and practise makes perfect. Characters who practise their powers a lot will likely find new ways to apply their specific ability to the world around them, and may find their magic gets stronger as it is used more. This is a natural process, in much the same way as we'd exercise our bodies or learn a language in real life. You will not be asked to keep track of complicated stats or levels - just to use your discretion and try not to godmode at everybody. We trust you to keep things fun and fair.
As a bonus note, powers that can control certain things will not be able to affect player characters in the same way, i.e. fire magic will not affect fire demons, technokinetics will not be able to alter or manipulate robot characters, etc..
Currently existing powers are listed below, with explanations - and some suggestions for expanding on the basics. Your character gets one of these. Choose wisely!
BASIC MAGIC
These types of magic are the main schools of magic in this game. Your character doesn't have to be special for you to pick one of these, and you get free reign in choosing which suits them best. If you have any questions about magic, leave them as a comment either here or on the FAQ post.
Fire
Pyrokinesis is perhaps a staple of magical settings. Your character can summon and control fire. Generally this will progress from lighting your fingertip like a match and summoning palm-sized fireballs all the way up to creating walls of flame and trapping a target in a heat vortex. With some clever logic and reasoning, your character may be able to manipulate heat levels in a target to some degree - whether superheating a metal sword, or drawing some of the heat from someone's fever (they'll never be able to freeze something, but every little helps). Your character may eventually be able to do much more than just these things - it's all a matter of thinking outside the box and getting in a lot of practice.
Your character doesn't need to be near a heat source in order to use their fire magic - though sometimes it's strategically helpful. Usually, fire will be drawn from your character's magical energy, which is just another way of saying it's magic and you ain't gotta explain sh*t. Your character can still get tired out, however, as with any other strenuous activity.
Water
The power to control water in all its forms is often overlooked, but its usefulness knows few bounds. Your character can summon clean water at will - at first mostly just useful for getting a drink in the middle of the night, but soon powerful enough to fling at enemies or float in a sphere around someone's head to deprive them of air. With a little cleverness, your character may be able to form water weapons formed strongly enough to cut, or draw the moisture out of objects, or summon a tidalwave to sweep the street clean.
Your character can summon water at any time, though it may become apparent that it's mostly being magically summoned from the river. Luckily, this will never dry up no matter how much your character siphons from it. Your character will not be able to manipulate the 'blessed' water at the top of Lux Spire, however.
Air
Air magic can allow your character to levitate things with a carefully-controlled updraft, or draw the air from a room - or someone's lungs. Like anything else, air particles can cause friction, and a sharp enough lash of biting wind to the face can hurt just as much as a blade if your character's talents are honed carefully. Your character may learn to compact air particles together to create a cushion for falling objects or make an invisible wall of wind. Vibrations in the air can mimic noises, too, or dampen sound. Summoned air can prevent drowning, and creating a vacuum can put out fires.
Given that air is almost everywhere, those with air magic will rarely find themselves at a loss - but it's often tempting to bite off more than one can chew, since it's difficult to gauge how strenuous a task is when the air involved is invisible.
Earth
Users of earth magic can learn to control most minerals. This is a pretty wide statement, and one of the reasons an earth user is not to be trifled with so easily. While at first pelting someone with dust clouds seems a little bit mediocre, enough practise can lead your character to being able to cause localised quakes powerful enough to shake titans to their knees, or have the ground open up and swallow a foe. Metals aren't impervious to earth magic, either, and the ability to form your own weapons and armour without the use of a forge can prove invaluable.
Earth magic tends to rip the ground and buildings apart in particularly savage fights (or just unfortunate accidents), and sometimes other characters will have something to say about the streets being a mess. Manipulating heavy materials like stone and steel may tire your character out quickly without a lot of practice.
Telekinesis
One of the most difficult powers to master, telekinesis may start with conveniently opening doors without having to touch the handle, but may progress through lifting small objects and pushing others around; getting good at telekinesis can result in being strong enough to lift oneself from the ground and throw others around with one's mind.
Telekinetic magic can't summon anything (unless your character lifts something from far away and concentrates on carrying it all the way to them); what you have nearby is what you get to work with. Characters can push enemies away and catch falling allies, but they can't make something from nothing, and it will take a lot of practice to get good at this one.
Teleportation
Teleportation magic, in this setting, is a little bit finicky. Right from day one, your character may be perfectly able to teleport themselves to any place within the city boundaries just by thinking it. And they probably will, repeatedly, whenever they lose concentration or get particularly emotional. It will take a little practise to learn proper control, and it will take more practise to learn to teleport others - first by touching them, then at will. Teleporting someone multiple times very quickly can disorient them so much they will be unable to focus enough to use their powers, and teleporting someone miles into the air or deep into the dark subway system can be a viable punishment for those who cause trouble for these magic users.
Teleportation is very useful, and getting good at teleportation magic will make your character virtually untouchable - but characters should be wary they don't accidentally teleport themselves or their friends somewhere grim.
Shielding
Shield magic can create solid magical constructs - small ones, at first, like a doorstop or a little personal umbrella roof from the rain, but its true purpose becomes apparent when characters learn to create bubble shields around themselves and others, which get more solid and impenetrable the stronger their magic gets. Since this magic is unaffiliated with any element, it works on almost any element - fire, water, and nearly everything else will have great difficulty producing enough force to break through shield magic. It's difficult to teleport past shield magic, but not impossible, and mostly depends on how powerful and practised each magic user is.
Well-practised shield magic can make the user impervious to almost all forms of attack, but without others to protect, life behind a magical barrier can get pretty lonely. It's well in a shield user's interests to learn to make allies so that their skills can be put to good use.
Healing
Restoration magic is incredibly versatile. While at first it might be best for healers to practice only on minor scuffs and bruises, one's prowess in healing magic can very quickly become the maker or breaker of a battle. The faint, whitish-pink glow given off by healing magic may not be very impressive, but the results speak for themselves when a healer prevents their ally from dying.
Healing magic will only work on other sentient beings. It won't work on plants (unless they're an autonomous plant creature), and it won't work on machinery (unless it's a robot that thinks for itself). It will, however, work on more than just the body - and trying to 'heal' a shadow may produce some interesting results - namely, screeching and writhing.
Technokinesis
Tech magic is perhaps one of the more strangely-developing types of magic in Freesia City. While at first it can enable hacking simple computers with one's mind, and summoning a few watts of electricity to zap people unawares, tech magic can evolve in any number of ways. A character can learn to communicate telepathically with remote computer systems to access a mental database anywhere. They can learn to control wiring and circuitry to constrict and electrocute their enemies. They can reprogram a computer just by concentrating on it, to make it serve a different purpose or improve its efficiency. The possibilities, it seems, are almost endless.
The downside is, a tech magic user caught without their tech is almost defenseless. A technokinetic will never master electricity by itself, but they can administer a powerful zap by pulling up the city power lines. Shields can separate a technokinetic from their tech and render them almost harmless, but they can still try to have nearby technology incapacitate the shield user so they can escape. Earth users may, however, be able to mess with their tech if they're sufficiently good at controlling metal...
Florakinesis
Perhaps the polar opposite of technokinesis, flora magic's strength lies in the tenacity of nature. Florakinetics may at first find they can make flowers bloom by speaking kindly to them, and cause plants to grow faster in their presence. With some experimentation, they will soon find trees bending to their will, and that they can germinate seeds long-buried beneath the concrete of the city so that they burst from the ground and ensnare their foes. They can even create new strains of plants to have different effects with thorns or pollen.
While florakinesis is a beautiful (and potentially deadly) power to have, florakinetics' closeness to nature can be a double-edged sword when they wake up in the morning to find their room became the garden of Eden while they slept. Even if a florakinetic isn't keen on their powers, the plants of the city are certainly keen on them. Nature, it seems, wants to be a part of this battle just as much as anybody else, and this particular type of magic can sometimes have a life of its own. Flora magic seems to want to be used, and florakinetics separated from their plants may find they're oddly homesick for them even if they were reluctant to use their powers in the first place.
SPECIAL MAGIC
In order to choose one of these two types of magic (light or dark), you'll have to make a strong case in your character application. Alternatively, your character may seek out or be given one of these types of magic to replace their regular type later in the game - but they're rare, so it's not advisable to make rigid plans for them.
Light
Light users are also the only ones who can move freely in shadowed zones without any adverse effects - provided, of course, they concentrate. It's also very difficult for the shadows to force a light user into making a deal. However, if they do manage, it seems as though ex-light users make for extra-powerful shadow users...
It's very rare for characters to enter the city with light magic, but not impossible - if you really believe nothing else would suit your character as much, you're completely welcome to make a case for it in your application. It's also possible that your character may be 'blessed' by Lux, the deity of this setting, and be given light powers to replace their usual ones - though we as mods will always contact you to ask first! You may also contact a mod (or comment here) to request this yourself, though you should present us with good IC reasons for it and be prepared to be turned down if it's not a good time in the plot.
Dark
This is probably because dark magic corrupts the mind (and, in some cases, the body), slowly turning them into a pawn of the Nox. Once a character makes a shadow deal, everything will seem as expected for a day or two, maybe longer if they're strong-willed, but sooner or later the whispering will begin to follow them around - a whispering that no one else can hear, and a whispering that pushes them to become aggressive and unreasonable until they begin picking fights with those they considered friends. Dark magic always causes characters to lose sight of themselves in favour of wanton destruction - the only question is how long it will take before they begin to yield. We encourage you to use your own discretion, and remember - shadow deals are not permanent, and neither is death, so making a shadow deal doesn't mean the end!
Dark magic is pretty straightforward. Characters can summon shadow the same as if it were a physical substance - it can be used in any number of creative ways, and most of these ways are increasingly eldritch and spooky. Black tendrils can ensnare a character, make a room dark, a shadowy pool can be opened up beneath someone's feet so they sink into the floor, it can be launched at enemies like black acid... It can also be used for phasing through solid objects, if the user has become very in tune with the shadows. It cannot be used to phase through shield magic, but weaker shields can be broken.
Characters wielding dark magic cannot be healed by those with healing magic - at least not in the usual way. Healers will have to get creative to figure out how to 'heal' a shadow infection. Doing so is temporary, and will become less and less effective as the 'infection' progresses.
Characters will never be first brought into the city with dark magic - Lux simply can't give it (and wouldn't, anyway). This means you will not be able to app a character to have dark magic right from the get-go. However, it's not difficult to simply have them stroll into dark territory and make a deal, and you as a player get to have a lot of say in how long the deal lasts. Plotting with other members is encouraged. You may also contact a moderator to request that your character make a deal whenever you're ready.
In order to make a shadow deal, please read this post and follow the guidelines accordingly. It's very unlikely you'll be rejected - weird evil shadow conflicts are, after all, the spice of life.
EXPERIMENTATION
The types of magic listed above are, to put it simply, starting points. We wholeheartedly encourage players to be as creative as they like with the actual application of those powers - within some degree of reason. Basically, if you can justify it, and your character is getting sufficiently good at their magic, we'll probably allow it.
Another way to use magic is by combining it with other magic types. Teamwork can yield some interesting results - don't be afraid to have your characters experiment with how their magic matches up.