By Chad Imbrogno
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MAGIC IN THE OMEGA WORLD By Chad Imbrogno |
PART I: Magic, the Unknown Science
Humanity has always tried to come up with explanations for the things that it can't understand. The sun was a chariot driven by the Sun God, the stars were pieces of ice floating in the sky, etc...
Now, with the advent of science, humans know that the sun is a large ball of burning gas and that the stars are more of the same, but far away. There are still things that aren't understood, though.
Vampires, werewolves, and witches still exist and still capture the mystical imagination of humans. As it turns out, many of these things turn out to have scientific explanations also. It is just that most people don't know them or don't want to know them.
The bridge that leads across from the known world of science to the unknown world of the supernatural lies in the area of psychic power, often itself regarded as supernatural. But with the understanding of Omegas at hand, the world of the psycic becomes one of science and sheds a whole new light on the world of magic. We shall examine each application case by case.
PART II: Untapped Omega Potential
The actual ability to use psychic powers lies in an unused part of the human brain yet undiscovered. When an Omega is triggered,this portion of the brain is activated and the Omega gains limited control over its psychic potential, depending upon how it viewed itself before.
There are ways, though, of temporarily activating this portion of the brain through meditation and sometimes (not encouraged here, though) the use of drugs. This is known as ritual and is the key to all formal magic in the world.
The ancient Greek oracle at Delphi and Magi of Persia were examples of this. In their cases, the oracle or Magi would begin ritual chants to "exercise" the unused part of the brain, with the aid of either bay leaves or poppy. They would then find themselves able to read minds or just the general thoughts of the people and come up with prophetic insights.
Being an Omega will always top someone using a ritual, as the Omega need only think and his power will act. A mage must go through lengthy rituals to work his powers.
Possibly the only advantage of ritual magic over being an Omega is that a well versed mage can use a far wider variety of effects while the Omega is limited to its own abilities. Hence, many mages of ancient times could compete somewhat with the sorcerers, who were usually Omegas.
PART III: Spirits and Ghosts
Many of the New Ones were taken as gods in the past, but there were also many gods who weren't Omegas. The type that primarily fit this are the original Sumerian gods who had developed almost a thousand years before the New Ones arrived.
Where did these gods come from? The truth is that they weren't gods as we often think of them but spirits. Unlike their New One counterparts, these gods didn't have a physical form unless they exerted a large amount of energy to temporarily form one.
These spirits were actually vast pools of psychic energy that had developed its own intelligence. These pools were formed by the combined mental offerings of people worshipping concepts that didn't have a physical form.
So in ancient Sumer, war was given the name and persona of Nergal and prayed to. These mental offerings formed the "body" of the entity and the actual nature of the prayers formed the intelligence, based off of the worshipers expectations. These spirit-gods were actually the creations of those that had worshipped them.
Eventually, worship was pulled away from these spirit-gods by the New Ones, who were physical and present and held great power. Further more, what spirit-gods were left found their worship decline even more when the New Ones left. Many of them withered away and ceased to exist, some went mad, and a few barely survived.
There are still spirits left today. Some are remnants of older religions like the Sumerians, some are new spirits formed by new ideas like Christmas (the secular version), and some are just little bubbles of energy created by mystics in order to have a power source to tap.
It is possible for a non-triggered human to call one of these spirits by name. If the proper ritual is acted out while calling, the spirit may be controlled by the human. This can be a powerful source for someone in need of power. Often a spirit has more psychic power available to it than most Omegas. Using that much often drains the spirit to near lifelessness, but in an emergency it may be deemed as necessary. Books such as the Necronomicon and Grimorium are all about how to call these spirits.
Finally, sometimes a human will create a spirit after dying. These ghosts are simply weak spirits with only one thought embedded in it's consiousness, often it's last thought. So a man who is murdered and had time to despair greatly may activate his unused part of the brain in his death throwes and leave a psychic imprint that replays his murder over and over again.
Sometimes these ghost take on more of the person's intellect and act and behave exactly as the person did in life. This is usually only possible with people who posess powerful minds.
The power level of a ghost varies greatly. Some are very powerful and can alter the environment around them like a Omega. Some are simply visual apparitions that can't even talk. What causes these differences is unknown.
PART IV: Miscellanea
Many other supernatural event are psychic related also. As an example, the Bermuda Triangle is a great area of psychic disturbance that causes shorts in both electronic equipment and human minds. It was caused by a great war between warring factions of New Ones that left many dead. The dying New Ones left powerful and disturbing psychic imprints in that area.
On a final note, not all supernatural things are explainable through science. There are still ghosts that aren't psychic imprints, etc... Also many religions that weren't based on New One or spirit-gods remain a mystery. Feel free to have weird things that exist outside the scientific realm.
The above explanations are meant to bring a connection between the realm of science and a majority of the world of magic. Often things get confusing when a world that has two different systems of power (like DC) has them come together. Questions arise like, "Who would win between the Spectre and Superman?" Superman is the supreme hero in the DC universe and meant to be top dog, but the Spectre is the Wrath of God. How do you deal with that? It's two incompatible systems of power.
With this outline, we can now easily say that Eric from Tempest is on par with a powerful Sumerian spirit-god and that Anne Benson from Legacy could read the mind of a ghost or average spirit.
