RoS World-building - 'Science' of Transformation

No one truly knows the origin of life in the Realm of Sapphoria, though those with the proper knowledge can make an educated guess.  Life existed in the world even before the fallen goddess Sapphora came and manipulated the world to her own ends, and the fundamental rules of the world remain unchanged even after her meddling.

The most educated guess scholars have is that the world, in its original state, was simply a lifeless hunk of stone.  Some god or creator, they theorize, came and imbued the world with the mystic energy which permeates all things in the realm, which has been called ‘Ether”.  The power of ether gave rise to all other things, both living and inanimate.  Researchers believe this to be the case because, when you extract all the ether energy from any object, it changes from its original composition to lifeless gray stone.  All things possess this energy in different amounts and densities, with complex living creatures possessing the most.  

When a living thing dies, the ether energy contained within its body slowly begins to seep out, merging with the ambient ether in their surroundings.  Magic exists that restores life to the dead, but only works a short time after death.  Wait too long, and too much of the victim’s ether energy has left her body, making restoration impossible.  The corpse of a deceased, once too much energy has been lost, may resemble the body they held in life, but their special spark that made them who they were, their ‘soul’, so to speak, is no longer present.  As a corpse, the only remaining ether energy is that which makes up their physical self - the blood, flesh and bones - and even that, over time, fades away.  Eventually, given enough time, all corpses, like all other physical things, decompose to dust, once every ounce of ether energy has seeped away from them.  

Some monsters naturally possess the ability to drain the ether energy from their prey; their victims will, after time, lose their original forms, becoming mere stone statues in the likeness of their former self.  Attempts to artificially reproduce the results have led to the same result - to quickly drain the ether from anything is to reduce it to the base state of stone - humans become statues, trees will be petrified, even water, when drained, will become nothing but endless grains of sand.  

It is worth noting that there is great variety in the types of stone that result after draining something of its ether.  To begin with, it is actually incredibly difficult to totally drain any object.  To do so will completely reduce it to dust; without any energy to dictate its shape, an object will simply collapse unto itself into tiny particles.  

Most other stone objects still retain some middling amount of ether energy, which determines the type and structure of the stone they become.  The most base form has been determined to be granite, which results when an object has very low ether, and which is not arranged in any sort of symmetrical or aesthetic manner.  Other types of stone, such as marble, limestone, obsidian, etc, have slightly more ether contained within them, which is also structured in the object in a more orderly way.  

Moving upwards, precious stones such as rubies, emeralds, diamonds, etc, are still very low on ether, but the ether’s structure is incredibly precise and orderly.  It is for this reason that precious stone are often used as magical conduits, since their structures are so precisely shaped that they can be used reliably to direct the paths of ether energy in the formation of magic spells.

Materials such as metals are unique in the opposite way.  While removing ether energy from a subject reduces it to stone, an overabundance of ether turns it to metal.  In metals, the ether is densely packed within the object, making it hard to manipulate or alter (at least through magical means). It is for this reason that mages often wear lightweight metal jewelry on their persons, to cushion the feedback they would receive from their own spells.  Likewise, well-crafted metal armor often confers resistance to magic, though there are a number of methods mages have learned to circumvent these protections.

Inanimate transformation magic makes makes use of this information to forcibly change a subject or object to the material of choice.  For stone transformations, the victim’s natural ether energy is forcibly expelled from their body.  For the novice, this usually results in a gray granite statue, since granite is the least complex of the types of stone.  Accomplished mages have better control over the ether energy that remains in the victims, and can shape it to more complex types of stone such as marble.  Only the most technically proficient mages can create gemstone statues, which are manyfold times more complex than simple granite.

For a time, the ether energy that was expelled from the body of an inanimate transformation victim remains in a cloud, hovering around the petrified form of the victim.  Even if the statue is moved, the ether follows, having a sort of supernatural connection to the physical form it once inhabited.  Recovery magic locates this cloud of expelled energy, guiding it back within the body, which naturally ‘remembers’ it’s old form and assumes it with relative ease.  However, as time passes the cloud of ambient ether energy slowly dissipates.  It is for this reason that transformation victims become unsavable after a certain amount of time passes - the energy that once resided within their body has faded away, making it impossible to recover them.

It is worth noting that at the core of the victim’s statue still remains a tightly clustered bunch of energy, which many theorize is the victim’s ‘soul’.  This cluster never seems to fade from the stone body, even after many years,  The exception being if the statue is destroyed beyond repair, which seems to destroy even this elusive ‘soul’ trapped in the stone.  Many believe that these souls contain all of the victim’s thoughts, memories, and emotions, including their memory of what their body was like before they were transformed.  Some believed interacting with these souls could lead to a method to recover even those transformed for many many years, but as of yet none have ever had any success.  Because of this many retain a vain hope that victims of inanimate transformation are still ‘alive’ in some sense, since unlike a true corpse which loses even its soul, in a statue the soul remains, simply trapped eternally.

In contrast, it is also possible to transform someone into a metallic statue, though the method is different.  One must bombard them with an overwhelming barrage of ether energy, which essentially adheres to their body, overwriting their original structure.  Recovery is also different, since the healer must carefully determine which of the statue’s ether energy is extraneous, and which is part of their original form, and carefully  extract the excess energy.  More than once an overzealous healer has extracted too much energy from a metal statue, reducing it to a stone one instead.  Also, as with stone statues, it becomes more difficult the longer one waits to heal a metal statue, since over time their original energy and the excess energy become harder and harder to tell apart.

With this information, some other strange results of transformation magic become more clear.  For example, scholars once wondered why the clothing of a victim would change to stone along with their body.  The reason is that the clothing is ‘collateral damage’ so to speak, with the ambient ether energy within it drained along with the energy of the person wearing it.  This also explains why petrified clothing has such a tendency to crumble off of the body of the victim.  The ‘soul’ at the center of the person’s statue seems to stubbornly retain the statue’s form, making damaging or destroying it very difficult, at times even impossible.  Conversely, the victim’s clothing has no such soul, which offers the thin, brittle stone clothing no recourse but to break away.

This also explains why some forms of transformation are permanent and incurable, even if recovery magic is applied immediately.  To use the classic example, the powers of a gorgon do not simply transform the victim, they completely consume the ether energy of their targets for themselves.  Without the floating cloud of ether energy that usually remains for a time surrounding the victim, it is impossible to restore them to flesh, no matter how soon a recovery attempt it made.  Some particularly vengeful mages may make use of this fact as well, forcibly dispelling the cloud of energy around the victim to ensure recovery is never possible.

These facts have only been discovered and explored in recent years, and many believe now is the beginning of a renaissance in transformation magic, both in terms of finding new ways to transform things, and hopefully in finding new ways to transform them back.  Truly, for the student of transformation magic, it is a wonderful, exciting time to be alive.