Basic Magic Abilities
These are the abilities that are easiest to learn for wyngrew beginning to learn magic!
Fire Magic
Increase Body Temperature
The ability to increase the temperature within the body, making the skin warm or even hot to touch.
How to learn: Usually wyngrew are taught to practice this during intense workouts, or strenuous activity to pump the heart hard in order to naturally increase body temperature. Then they are taught to concentrate on that feeling and create more heat. This is often the first ability taught to new magic users, as it's generally the easiest. Every wyngro born has used it in their life, as it's used when hatching from their egg!
Usage: Making your body warm to the touch can help warm up a buddy that is feeling a bit cold, or even to help you stay warmer in the winter! Raising one’s body temp is key to more advanced abilities, such as melt materials. Some naughty young wyngrew are even known to use this ability to fake a fever to avoid going to school sometimes!
Limitations: This ability cannot burn so hot as to melt through the ground by one’s feet. Beginner wyngrew also cannot sustain increased body heat for extended amounts of time. (Usually no more than an hour) Too much use of this ability has been known to literally cause fatigue to the point of fainting, or overheating. (Be sure to drink plenty of water when learning this!) Advanced users take advantage of this ability by being able to survive long travels through freezing temperature!
Melt Objects
The ability to melt simple materials with increased body temperature
How to learn: Increased Body Temperature ability is a must for this one to work. Once the wyngro in question can willingly increase their body temperature fairly easily, they work on funneling all that heat into one spot on their body. Being able to transfer that heat onto an object that is easily subjected to melt, like ice or wax is the best way to learn.
Usage: Melting things can be useful for crafts! Classes often have students create custom candles, sculpt ice, or even work with glass. This can also be later useful for melting a latch to get into a door, or even a means of defense. (Great for blacksmith work!)
Limitations: Materials that not easy to melt, such as stone and brick, or even dense wood and heavy metals are not something beginners can usually melt at all. Papers and fabrics, etc. do not melt, and will burn up if a hot touch is applied. The example on the right is not a beginner, he is a dangerous man.
Fire Manipulation
The ability to influence fire that is present. Growing it, suppressing it, making it flow and curve.
How to learn: Young wyngrew usually begin to practice controlling fire by studying flames closely and learning how to build, create, and safety extinguish a fire. If not properly learned through this method, flames easily go out of the gro's control and can be dangerous, especially if the gro is emotional. Start very small, trying to control candlelight and moving a flame from different sources.
Usage: Can be used for cooking, camping, or just showing off while juggling little flames. Wyngrew may combine this ability with conjure fire to shoot small fireballs from their palms, or create fire and manipulate it on the fly. Manipulating fire is one of the core basics of any fire magic, and must be learned slowly and patiently to keep oneself, and others around them safe.
Limitations: Large flames are harder to control, especially when raging. Anything larger than a bonfire would be too difficult to control for even seasoned wyngrew. Distance also has its limits. A beginner wyngro usually cannot control any fire that is further than a few feet from them.
Conjure Fire
The ability to create flames from nothing! Usually concentrating on a certain spot nearby to conjure a flame.
How to learn: Usually working from fire manipulation, Wyngrew will extinguish a flame that was made naturally, and then quickly try to bring it back. (Seemingly out of nowhere) Imagine where a small flame would reside. (Usually this is easiest to imagine in the palm of one’s hand) It’s not about making the flame appear, but imagining it is already there, and how it dances around. With enough focus one can create flames appear floating within their reach, almost as if they are balancing it in the air.
Usage: Conjuring flames, let’s face it, looks pretty badass! Use this to make light out of nowhere in a dark place! (A torch, really) Create fire and combine fire manipulation to continue to control it. Juggle flames, begin to throw fireballs, and so on! The possibilities are endless!
Limitations: Controlling fire that has been conjured is harder to control the longer it remains in the air. Keeping a single conjured flame lit without flicking out for an hour is impressive.
As well as duration, a beginner Wyngro has a limit on how big of a flame they can create. Usually small candle-sized flames to start, and as big as a foot long flame may be achieved, but any larger is difficult to control for a beginner Wyngro, and can more easily become dangerous if not extinguished.
Water Magic
Sense Water
The ability to sense existing water anywhere!
How to learn: Wyngrew usually learn this by hiking in a wooded area and using only smell and hearing to lead them to water. Sensing water takes a lot of patience and time, and can sometimes discourage ambitious wyngrew only focused on manipulating it for a cool effect. There are certain wyngrew that never seem to pick this up-- it seems to depend a lot on the nature of the individual. (and the patience)
Usage: This is an extremely useful survival ability. Obviously, it can be used when venturing outdoors and quenching thirst, but also has uses in pinpointing moisture in object as well. A skilled traveler wouldn't be caught dead without knowing how to dowse. It is often the first water ability teachers will teach their students, in order to present its importance before getting forgotten over flashier abilities.
Limitations: Large lakes and streams are the easiest to detect. Obviously the farther away water is, the harder it is to detect. Masters of this ability can detect the closest water anywhere in the world, but a beginner would probably need to be within at least a mile of a large water source.
Beginners can sense small amounts of water as well, but usually need to at least be within the room to detect it. That's why they usually start out by detecting where a cup of water is in the room after they've been blindfolded.
Condense Water
Sensing water particles in the air and forming them together
How to learn: This ability can be difficult for the impatient. (As most water magic is) Beginners are usually placed in a sauna, or otherwise use to particularly humid day outside to their advantage. Fire magic can also be used to help artificially create thick clouds of steam! Concentrating on the water in the air, they'll use their hands to push the moisture together.
Usage: This is one of the key basics of water magic, simply to make water appear out of thin air. It can be used to dry a room up as a sort of dehumidifier. It's also extremely beneficial for travelers who are not as good at dowsing for natural pools of water. With Condense Water on your resume, you'll never die of thirst!
Limitations: This ability focuses on pulling water from the air that already exists, and so is difficult to use in dryer areas. Beginner wyngrew also have a hard time completely relieving a huge area completely of water. Holding said water for any longer than a few minutes is also challenging, so make sure you have something to disperse it into when it falls!
Water Breath
The ability to control the water from your own mouth.
This can be done by holding water in your mouth for use, using your own saliva, or even regurgitating recently drunk water. The later example is no longer practiced in society for obvious reasons, as it comes with health concerns. This was more of an older technique used to surprise enemies with unexpected stashes of water. It is not something any teacher will tolerate learning. (It’s also pretty gross)
How to learn: Many gros have the easiest time learning this water ability first, as manipulating water in your mouth is somewhat soothing and easy to feel out. Many teachers will default to this for students that are having trouble learning other water abilities. Eventually wyngrew will be able to slosh the water in their mouth without using mouth muscles at all.
Usage: Once they get the hang of moving it freely inside their mouth, they’ll begin what some call “water spitting”. This is basically spitting actual water and manipulating it to travel much farther than normal. From there, they’ll learn to manipulate it as it flies through the air, like making little water homing missiles at friends and such. Usually in the form of small pellets of water, practiced water magicians can learn to spit water so fast that it will break the skin and/or leave bruising.
Sub-types of Water Breath: Such sub-types include: blowing bubbles, shooting thin streams, creating all sorts of shapes and forms from their mouth, and manipulating it as it comes into contact with the air.
Limitations: Most gros cannot easily damage other gros with this ability, aside from potentially suffocating them. Skilled users of this ability can sometimes pierce the skin if concentrated enough.
Water Manipulation
Bending existing bodies of water to move and shift at the user’s will.
How to learn: After learning condense water, manipulating bigger bodies of water is a pretty simple step up. Although this one does take a lot of patience and focus. Teachers usually have students stand waist deep in a stream to practice changing the current. Once the flow of natural moving water can be controlled, it just takes practice being able to pull it into the air and push it along.
Usage: Possibilities are nearly endless! Manipulating water can be used to splash or put out fires, defend against foes by pushing them back with walls of water. If you can imagine moving the water in a certain way, its mind over matter!
Limitations: The limit on how long one can maintain a specific water form usually can’t usually last more than 20 minutes or so without becoming exhausted. Beginners usually cannot lift more water that weighs more than themselves as a general rule. The speed in which this ability moves is also limited. Whipping water to the point of causing damage, for example, is very difficult because of the speed needed to create a whiplash. The more practice they have, the faster they will get.
Wind Magic
The ability to hear clearly over longer distances!
How to learn: This ability requires concentration and clearing the mind, as it introduces wyngrew to awareness of sound waves in the air around them, and how to sense them effectively.
Beginners often practice in a quiet room, with a single source of noise like a ticking clock or someone else talking quietly. As they get better at clearing their mind, they can focus on sounds at increasing distances.
Usage: This ability serves as a useful introduction to the quiet meditation. It can also be used to communicate over longer distances than normal, useful if you’re trying to find a friend that’s lost in the woods! More awareness of one’s surroundings is helpful when trying to figure out if there’s a fun time over the hill vs. danger!
Limitations: Hearing anything beyond a hundred yards is hard for beginners, even in ideal conditions. The further away they try to focus, the more likely this will fail to pick anything up. Picking out individual voices in a crowd is also difficult, and only gets more difficult as the number of distractions increases. Singling out a single source of sound and not getting overwhelmed by all the other noises around is not easy for beginners!
Enhanced Hearing
Manipulating the wind to get a boost while running, jumping, or flying!
How to learn: Time to get physical! Wyngrew learning this ability must first be able to move on their own. Once they pick up some speed or take a leap, they can use the air under or behind them to give them an extra boost. Run faster, jump higher, and fly like a speeding quill! Learning to push yourself in the right direction can take some practice...until then, prepare for some stumbling and tumbling.
Usage: This would allow a wyngro the assistance they need to cover that last bit of distance, or jump a little higher to reach an extra-tasty fruit just out of reach. It can also inspire competitive wyngrew to have fun racing each other and pushing their speed to the limit! A wind boost for movement can also allow a swift escape from a dangerous situation.
Limitations: This ability only gives a wyngrew an extra push, and how much of a push they can get obviously depends on how skilled they are. Even the most skilled Wyngro can’t run faster than their body is capable of handling, and beginners won't be able to push themselves for more than a few seconds at a time. This ability can also be more physically exhausting than other abilities as well, so take caution and do your stretches!
Enhanced Speed
Creating unnatural wind formations from one’s own body.
How to learn: After learning to use wind to boost their own abilities, the next step is for wyngrew to use those wind gusts on something other than themselves! Teachers can wait for windy days and have beginner students practice moving the already existing gusts around them. Then they can move on to calling small breezes on still days!
Usage: The ability to make your own breeze on a hot day is pretty nice! With practice, a wyngro can help power up a small fire, or move things slightly with a concentrated gust. They could also help along a small sailboat or windmill on a day with no breeze. Pushing an enemy back with a gust of wind can stop it from getting to you, making Wind Gusts a good defensive ability that won't be too harmful towards your attacker.
One powerful use of this ability is called the "Wind Whip", which basically feels like a sharp slap in the face from a distance.
Wind Gusts
Limitations: These are small, short gusts, and not a sustained breeze. Most beginners can’t keep it going for more than a few minutes or so. Once you lose your concentration, the gust will stop. The winds a wyngro can summon get stronger with time and practice, but gale-force winds are something only a true expert could manage. This ability is also harder to use (not to mention potentially more destructive!) indoors, as there is less freedom to move air around!
Change frequency of sound waves, muffle or mute voices, throw your voice further than you normally could!
How to learn: Wyngrew learning this ability should have experience with sensing sound waves first! (It's typical that wyngrew with big ears and better hearing pick this up much faster) This ability takes a lot of concentration and practice at first, making experimental noises and trying to cancel out ambient noises, but as a wyngro gets more used to reading the sounds in the air, they can manipulate them with greater ease.
Usage: A Wyngro with enough practice will have their own built-in megaphone, able to make themselves heard over other loud noises. They can also throw their voice like a ventriloquist, great for playing tricks on friends or distracting an enemy! On the flip side, they can muffle existing sounds to quiet things down. Advanced wind magic users can change the frequency of sounds in the air to break glasses, or shake things apart!
Sound Manipulation
Limitations: Beginners can’t exactly blow out someone’s eardrums. The distance they can throw their voice is limited to locations nearby the user, and never out of visual distance, even for experts. It is also considered especially rude to ‘mute’ another Wyngro once they’re grown up, so be careful who you practice on!
Earth Magic
Feel subtle vibrations and understand what's making them!
How to learn: Learning this skill usually works best when the subject is blindfolded and/or wearing earmuffs. Muffling out those two main senses can make it easier to focus on the vibrations around. This ability takes a lot of concentration to feel movement. A fun game many teachers use is "Puck, Puck, Puckoo!" where everyone sits in a circle blindfolded, and one gro walks around quietly while the blindfolded students chant "Puck, Puck, Puck..." and when the teacher calls, "Puckoo!" the students have to point to where they think the one walking around is!
Sense Vibrations
Usage: Obviously the benefits of this ability shine in predicting movements and detecting the world around you. Hear someone coming into the room before they get to the door, or detect a strange animal wandering nearby. Advanced users can time the vibrations so well, that they can predict an attack before it happens! They can sense to the way the foe's feet are positioned, or even detect heartbeats nearby.
Limitations: Beginners are limited by distance and subtleness in the movement they feel. There also seems to be a delay in information received when first learning. Vibrations are detected, but it takes the brain a few seconds to process exactly what the source is, so narrowing down specifics is difficult.
Increase the growth of seeds and buds, and get things sprouting fast!
How to learn: Usually observing plants and how they grow is a great start. The user of this ability learns faster if having previously observed botany of some sort. Knowing how a seed looks and which way it grows helps push it along. Young wyngrew have an easier time speeding up the growth process when they are touching or holding a seed directly
Usage: The Sprouting Seeds ability is amazing for growing crops or starting a restaurant business if you want to use all your own produce! Many farmers specialize in this ability. Some wandering wyngrew carry seeds with them often to create a quick meal from edible plants to decrease storage space in their pockets!
Limitations: This ability is limited to the beginning stages of a plant. Growing past the initial sprouting of a seed takes much more in-depth knowledge. (See Intermediate: Manipulate Plant Growth)
Beginners usually cannot sprout a seed on their first attempt, or it will sprout in an incorrect way that will cause the plant to die. (So make sure to have plenty of 'test seeds'!)
It usually takes a couple of hours to get a seed to sprout right in front of your eyes, and it also takes a lot of concentration and energy to do it.
Seed Growth
Earth Manipulation
Bending finer elements of earth, such as small rocks, or even the surface of the ground!
How to learn: Levitating ground elements takes a lot of willpower! Concentration merged with sheer determination is the way to go about moving minerals! Beginners usually learn by dumping a handful of sand or dry dirt on a flat surface and staring at it until it bends to their will. Sand is the easiest to start with. Rocks take more work because of its denseness and weight. Although wet soil is lighter, it can also be rather challenging to move. The more 'alive' and fertile the ground is, the more resistance it brings to bend.
Usage: Used to garden without dirtying your paws, fling multiple rocks as a means of defense, or even help with construction projects! Earth Manipulation has a ton of varied uses, especially for farmers!
Magicians of this element do well to learn about the different kinds of minerals in the ground before attempting to move it.
Although it takes a lot of practice to move earth with the same force of using physical strength, the possibilities are endless with Earth Manipulation!
Limitations: Users cannot pull earth elements from nowhere, and are usually only capable of these feats when outdoors. Advanced users can pull large chunks from the ground and even move boulders!
Beginners may move small rocks only, as well as softer materials such as sand and dirt. Gravel is possible, but very difficult. Stone is impossible for beginners, as well as wood. The more complex and dense the material it is, the more difficult it is to move! Remember that newbies have a limitation of how far they can move materials, and how fast they can move them. Many earth magicians give up on this ability, as moving earth with your own hands is much easier.
Learning how to rapidly increase the benefits of medicinal herbs and healer plants to cure light wounds.
How to learn: In order to understand how to heal with plants, one must first understand the properties of plants that have natural healing properties. Learning this ability relies a lot on the study of herbs and remedies in general, and is a great start to learning how to be a practical doctor.
Students usually have an injured subject to work on, or are pricked by a sharp object and tested to heal themselves. Special plants must be picked, as not all have healing properties. Many heal in different ways as well, so reading up on things is extremely important.
The stems and leaves of the Sarrarik wildflower, for instance, are easy to come by and do a great job at closing scraps, working double-time as an anti-biotic, so this is a great starter to use!
Usage: Cure light wounds, such as scrapes, cuts, bruises and burns! While Earth Healing is less 'exciting' than light magic, it's extremely useful. While Light Healing helps for closing fresh wounds caused by weapons, Earth Healing helps cure infections, soothe pain, and even relieve headaches! Many Wyngrew prefer this method over Light Healing, calling it more natural and safe.
Earth Healing
Limitations: Beginners are usually only able to focus on small wounds only. This ability cannot make a plant do something it wouldn’t normally be able to help with over time, such as regrow limbs or remove existing scars. Healing with plants is great for non-life-threatening injuries that take a lot of time to recover from, but injuries from weapons for example, are best left to professional Light Healers.