“I think for now it would be better if we didn’t meet face to face,” said Amaryllis, keeping her voice hard. “A gold mage by his nature cannot be disarmed.”
Gold magic grants its practitioner tactile telekinesis whose power is based on the quantity of gold they have marked, while their ability to manipulate that telekinesis is based largely on innate mental attributes and learned skill. This power comes at a drawback, as a gold mage is expected to keep adding more gold to their vault, and the failure to do so will result in a loss of ability to use said magic permanently.
The magic is not taught in any athenaeum, because the induction process is too simple and widespread to be controlled by a single institution (one simply needs to perform a twenty-minute long ritual, the specifics of which are not particularly difficult to track down, over a pound of gold to start their vault) and the magic itself too volatile to be studied in a controlled setting.
Abilities[]
Tactile telekinesis[]
The iconic gold mage ability, it allows projection of kinetic energy at a range of a few millimeters from the mage's skin, its force proportional to the amount of gold in their vault. This grants tremendous defensive ability (albeit only from kinetic attacks - a gold mage can't be harmed by a firearm or a nonmagical sword, but is still susceptible to poison) as well as offensive potential - even a small metal bead can become a bullet when in contact with their skin.
Gold sense[]
A gold mage becomes instinctively aware of how much gold there is in their vault at all times and can feel the precise location of all unwarded gold in vicinity.
Call of the gold[]
More of a curse than ability, described sometimes as a voice and other times as a feeling, the call of the gold will demand certain tasks of the gold mage, which primarily include securing their gold, attaining more gold, and marking attained gold. It is unclear whether the call of the gold represents a psychosis that universally afflicts gold mages, or an entity (or entities) associated with gold magic.
As a result, the general lifecycle of a gold mage starts with an initial collection of gold, securing that gold, then ruthlessly gathering more and more gold until the requests/demands of the call of the gold become too great. At that point, the gold mage will cease to be a gold mage, usually at an inopportune time for them, and will be forever unable to access the magic, even if they somehow collect the gold that was previously required. The longest known duration for a gold mage was eighteen years, aided in part by her location away from many sources of gold.
Gold Magic in the Game Layer[]
Gold magic's primary stat is likely mental, as most of the other magics are, and the skill is claimed to depend on the user's mental attributes.
It's currently unknown what gold magic's virtues are, as Juniper decided against being induced in gold magic for now.
Known Practitioners[]
- Isaac Aumann
- Unnamed gold mage in Li'o