Fire and Life and Magic

Fire and life are linked, in an intrinsic and peculiar way. Fire is life, shimmering and dancing and vibrant and energetic, but ultimately destined to peter out and grow cold. Fire grows and spreads and dies. Life destroys and creates entropy. But the connections grow deeper than that.

The Elemental Plane of Fire is said to be the crucible of souls. When a soul needs to be drawn out of the ether to be breathed again into a new life, it passes through the Plane of Fire to be scorched anew into a Tabula Rasa. Or perhaps Charon, ferrier of the souls, likes to warm himself by the fire before delivering new life into the flesh. Either way, superstitious locals always hold a bonfire before a birth, to avoid miscarriage and strife, and somehow it always seems to work, and it always seems to fail when left undone.

Fire is magic. Magic burns away at a person’s mind, a person’s body, a person’s soul, a person’s fire. It consumes, bit by bit, with each destructive and powerful use, a barely contained chaos. Magic is a background energy, like heat. It is constantly present in some form, as reality itself is incompatible with a void of magic. Magic made manifest into effects or Spells or objects is pulled from this background, these ley lines, fashioned and shaped like molten-hot metal into the cast of conceptual understanding.

Souls are magic. When the Kin die, their souls proceed to afterlives into forms like ghosts, devils, celestials, and petitioners. When those die, they are said to fade into the ley lines, becoming part of the magical background energy of the cosmos. New souls are ripped from this background and purified through fire. New fire is conjured from magic and ends the cycle of life. Life spawns and shapes magic, creating fire.

Golems are creatures between things… they are powered with and by fire, they mimic life, and they are born from and breathe magic. Which are they? Which are they not? Which in them are one and the same?

Magic and fire and life. They are different, and yet they are one.