So, we know they’re small, spherical orbs full of power, and presumably come from magical beasts. But like… Where do they come from exactly? Why are they powerful?
Like, are they created in some ritual that Sacrifices a magical beast and harnesses the beast’s life’s power somehow? (Is that blood magic?) Do they occur naturally, growing as an organ inside magical beasts? Would that imply humans have beast cores inside them, since humans are technically magical beasts as well? Are they a renewable resource, or is creating them a lost art and people have just been using up ones from the past?
Another question I’ve been wondering is, why are they so easy to cast with as a power source? I think I remember the books saying that different types of energy are easier to cast with as Sacrifices (eg heat is easier than using light, and light’s easier than using matter). Is this ease related somehow to how they’re created?
I don’t think it’s been mentioned, but generally beast core are created naturally by magical beasts so it should be that, the more powerful the beast the more powerful its core will be.
As for their use it’s a very energy dense source of power that’s very convenient to use, it’s just raw power readily available hence the ease of use.
And for the difference between energy sources I think it’s just a mental block like a lot of things, it’s much easier to conceptualize the energy coming out of a fire you can feel burning compared to using the light for example, and I’m not sure they teach E=mc²
The next entry was about a thaumaturge who lived during the Third Empire—under the reign of the infamous Blood Emperor. The man had attempted to develop a spell that could directly improve one’s Will, under the theory that thaumaturges had a magical “core” that could be stimulated externally. After multiple failures that involved the death of his test subjects, he concluded that there was, in fact, no magical core, and no way to directly improve the Will. He tossed that idea aside and decided to develop a spell that would practice magic for the subject.
Now, that researcher could’ve been wrong in some way… He was certainly wrong in plenty of other ways, but we can also probably conclude that humans have no obvious analogue of a beast core and no easy way to give them one.
Well, this doesn’t exactly say that humans don’t have beast cores … but it does seem quite likely that if the Blood Emperor didnt figure out a way to get them from humans, then it’s unlikely.
Thanks, I forgot about that chapter! I tend to agree, if humans had beast cores just growing inside them like an organ, the Third Empire would’ve probably found them.
I see a few possibilities (though I’m sure there are others):
Only some magical beasts have beast cores, and those cores are just sitting inside them. But then, why do only some beasts have cores? Is there something different about the beasts that do?
No magical beasts have cores just sitting inside them, and instead cores are created through some ritual involving a (potentially non-magical?) beast (as Sacrifice maybe?). But this does seem like blood magic. Also, I’d imagine the Third Empire would’ve attempted the ritual on humans. So maybe it doesn’t work on humans (or other sapient magical beasts) for some reason? Or it does work, but no one’s considered it as a possibility so far in the story?
No magical beasts have cores growing naturally inside them, but beast cores still form through a natural process that hasn’t been duplicated with magic. Maybe under the right conditions dead beasts “fossilize” into beast cores somehow. Though this again seems like it could happen to humans in addition to other magical beasts.
The same as #2, except the ritual for creating cores is forgotten knowledge (maybe pre-Cataclysm?), and beast cores are a finite resource that’s been dwindling ever since.
I’d love to hear other people’s thoughts! Especially if it’s a bit of lore that I’ve forgotten that rules any of these out
Just to speculate on this a bit more, it seems that different species of sapient access magic in different ways. I’m guessing that this is a characteristic of magical beasts in general, and not just the intelligent ones.
As such, beasts with beast cores would be one lineage of magical beasts with one specific way of storing and channeling magic through their bodies, where they can draw upon large amounts of power in short bursts when their lives are threatened, instead of, like humans, mostly having a relatively low thaumic capacity that they can sustain for extended periods.
This would mirror human evolution in our world too, where while most animals evolved to attack or flee in short, fast, bursts, to maximize effectiveness in the brief periods of danger, humans evolved to pursue prey continuously over longer periods and tire them out with our superior endurance.
There’s a serious black market in beast cores, and humans are furless, two-legged magical beasts.
This is interesting, and I do wonder if that’s the case. As far as we know, their shipped in from other parts of the world, places where blood magic is not so reviled. Do we know if they are produced in Lenore?
I literally missed it; there is, in fact, a long discussion of beast cores in the glossary. Without saying how, they are “harvested from dead magical beasts”, come in different colors, and vary in brightness, and they shatter when the energy inside is used up (and can’t be charged).
“The blood of a magical creature was always a good source of power, and humans were, technically, magical creatures …” (Book 1, Ch 14)
Therefore, while people could be disappearing to power a spell, I think they don’t fall into the “magical beasts” category. Probably. Possibly. Maybe.
The key difference between humans and magical beasts is that humans create external magical circles.
Presumably, within a magical beast there is a magical circle, connected to its beast core as a sacrifice, allowing a dragon to breathe fire or what have you. I assume the beast itself recharges this beast core over time. I also assume the beasts only have one spell they can cast since the circle is embedded within their body, though perhaps the circle is so abstract that they basically evolved to free-cast a single spell.
As for the conduit, who knows. Perhaps they’re close enough to an elemental to cast through their own body (or maybe elementals are the only beings that have the cores in the first place), or maybe the beast core is itself the conduit and the sacrifice. I’ve never heard of anyone casting using a beast core as a conduit, presumably they’re similar in construction but if nobody does it chances are it breaks or explodes. It’s highly plausible that the nature of a magical beast can uniquely cast through its beast core without such a side-effect. Maybe because it’s using the spell uniquely tuned to the beast core, maybe because the sacrifice and the conduit are the same thing, or maybe there’s just some other intrinsic property about the beast itself that prevents it shattering its own conduit.
