I was thinking about the magic evolution of the people between the story of AA and the upcoming story of AO(originally WOM). Though this could just be a retcon, is there a biological difference between people in the Seven Seas and the War Seas that make their use and acquisition of magic different?
In Arcane Adventures we only started out with the “Seven Bases”; Lightning, Water, Fire, Wind, Shadow, Earth and Light. Although it never came to be, to learn any other magic such as Metal, Phoenix, Magma, Healing, Ice, Storm, and so on and so forth, we had to mutate a corresponding magic type. But now we can just be born with many of those magics as our first mind and others must be acquired via specific spell drops throughout the War Seas to be able to cast them. What’s with that?
It’s slightly similar to how in World of Magic all of these magics became base magics; as time went on, magic became more advanced and people were born with the ability to have AA mutations as their first minds’ magic. In the war seas, this likely happened at a much quicker rate due to the constant wars taking place across the seas.
Tl;dr - The war seas are just more advanced than the seven seas were.
the lore of the locations:
aa takes place in the 7 seas, which is on the other side of the earth from the war seas. there is also a sea located next to the 7 seas, called the old seas, though this area is pretty much equivalent to the dark seas surrounding the war seas because of the magic pollution from “an unknown event.” (as stated in the full lore doc)
the war seas cluster is where mount olympus used to be located, which used to be a continent. theos and durza clashed here, in which durza throws all his magic energy at theos, misses, and ends up blowing up the entire continent along with 80% of the human race. this blasted land in all directions, creating some islands all over the place. some people ended up in the old sea, some stayed in the war seas.
back then, there were only 7 base magics, and mutation worked the same as it did in aa.
in the 7 seas, there was magic pollution from durza/theos battle, so people could more easily grab magic from the atmosphere. this also caused random weather.
in wom, you can see that some mutations have become base magics. i suspect this happened because of how many people mutated, and with enough generations, many people were born with their parents’ mutations, and they slowly became base magics. the rest of the mutations were ‘locked’ or something, as they have become forgotten and can only be learnt through old scrolls.
in the war seas, i suspect magic evolved faster due to this area being the origin of magic, and because of the extra magic pollution because the theos/durza battle took place here. sea curses were also everywhere, and many people fought to survive the harsh landscape post theos/durza battle. they eventually formed kingdoms, and the population slowly increased, but from the first people (the ones who survived) they probably passed down mutated magics from the pollution, same thing like wom, the stronger magics were lost to time.
tl;dr: war seas had a ton more pollution due to theos vs durza happening here, and a lot more people mutated early on so the progression of magic happened faster.
I think it’s because the War Seas takes place in a place with constant war, so technological development is constant. It could be that people did evolve or maybe became advanced somehow due to the constant warfare, (adaptation basically) hence all the various individual magics present within humans of the War Seas.
doesnt take much for a nation to develop way faster than a completely isolated one
we dont really know much about what happened in the war seas in the past, but visibly they have a considerably easier access to curse and a stonger-ish focus on magic, on top of not being completely destroyed unlike the seven seas, so no wonder it’s more developped than the seven seas magic wise
the wom and AO mfs when they see the people in AA struggling to obtain something as basic as crystal pre-rework (mfs can’t even obtain the D tier magic smh )
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