In an alternate reality, the year is 1536.
In the land of Loradia, a man wakes from a prophetic dream.
Issen gears for another day at work. He had been experiencing such dreams intermittently for as long as he can recall. These dreams often depicted in varied detail of foreign items such as equipment and methodologies for navigating perplexing predicaments; pertaining to work, relationships, morality and physical combat.
Physical combat is what Issen described the complex movements that the two figures had traded in the scenes he had most often experienced in his dreams. They differed from dance but were just as breathtaking. Given the nature of dreams and them often being fleeting, there must be some reason as to why he would remember those movements in particular, so vividly.
The reason why these movements seem so strange would be because Loradia is a land that specialises strictly in magic. Recuperative and combative magic is highly revered, however, the study and practice of magic of all kinds is highly promoted.
Roughly a thousand years prior to the present, ardent Loradian academics made a revolutionary discovery.
Due to the evolutionary nature of our species as humans, channels running parallel to that of blood were found to have been forming.
This prompted academics the world over to pour all the manpower they possibly could into studying its purpose.
Ultimately, these efforts put into research by hundreds of thousands of those dedicated to the cause, which spanned hundreds of years and species being involved (strengthening interspecies relations), finally bore fruit.
Certain Latin invocations appeared to cause a reaction within select humans, with some subjects reporting a near-blinding spark materialising in front of them, accompanied by a burning sensation in their fingertips.
Just 200 years ago, this system which coursed throughout the human body became known as Vitalis, the Latin word for 'Life', for it would become just as crucial as one's own life force for advancement and subsequently, survival.
Practically speaking, Vitalis became interchangeable with life itself.
Various invocations were experimented with, with great success. The more complex the enunciation of the invocation's contents or the more lengthy the invocation, the greater the resulting output.
Countless more invocations proved to be effective and were eventually collated in just as many spellbooks to act as reference for those who possessed the aptitude.
The aptitude was mainly innate. You either had noticeable amounts of Vitalis flowing through your veins alongside blood to further develop, or you didn't have any of those channels in you at all. Given that it is an evolutionary phenomenon, it is bound to awaken at some point in life.
Given that Loradia's way of life now completely revolved around wizardry and related crafts from heavy equipment and machinery like the rest of the world since those 200 years, those who don't possess the aptitude are largely overlooked, relegated to merely supporting those who specialise in wizardry, as magicians rely very little on equipment for they have become self sufficient. These individuals have grown to support each other through their common circumstance.
Issen is one such person. He works at the front-end of an alchemy. He always wondered how Dr. Lande was able to imbue such Vitalis into the elixirs he produced despite having a locked aptitude. The recuperative elixirs he mass produced were remarkably effective, and the combative elixirs produced specially for customers were always met with great satisfaction.
"Well that's because he at least has Vitalis, I guess," Issen thought to himself on his walk to a revered apothecary, Cassia Varr, for his weekly aptitude check-up before work.
"Morning, Dr. Cassia—" "My word, how many times do I have to correct you, Issen? It's Dr. VARR." Dr. Varr rebuked. Issen remained silent. "Well... let's hope your Vitalis reading isn't as incorrigible as you are," she quipped with a touch of guilt.
Her saying that made him all the less hopeful for the result. "I've spent 23 years of my life just fine. I don't see what difference it would make if the outcome was different, I'm quite happy as I am," he thought to himself as he took a seat before the Gauntlet of Awakening, or as Cassia calls it. "He's certainly an outlier," was her thought, as those who came before him had always showed some improvement after their first or second visit. Though there isn't any proven correlation between her gauntlet and improving aptitude for wielding Vitalis, in Issen's case, it's been 5 years.
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