Authority



This page deals with the concept of authority.

Basic definition:
“Authority” is this world’s Magic economy, Chi, Aura, HP, chakra, Oversoul, whatever you want to call it. It takes the form of a free-flowing, immaterial, intangible fluid that pours out from within you, that naturally gets less concentrated the farther it is away from you and is related to your mental and emotional state. Most ordinary people cannot see it, but to those who are sensitive to it, they will see it pour out in tendrils over objects.

What does it do? Well let’s start out with the basics. There is “authority” in everyone. You can think of it as the “will”. Generally, “authority” is used to assert dominance between people. For example, if I can control my “authority” to the extent where I can pour it into another person and completely crush all essence of their “authority”, then I have complete control over that person’s life. As terrifying as that may sound, there are a few reasons why this won’t happen often:
 * 1) At the core of a person is where the authority is most concentrated.
 * 2) Controlling your “authority” outside of yourself is difficult. The amount you can naturally use, and the corresponding population gradient is given below.
 * 3) You can only maintain control over that person’s life as long as you manage to keep the “authority” within the person. Since “authority” is related to distance, you cannot control them from afar very easily.

The Twist
However, there’s more: “authority” also has a nice twist. For each person who can manipulate the authority to outside of their body may also be able to have “authority” over things.



What do I mean by things? For example, someone can have “authority” over fire. This means that the person’s “authority”, when it “touches” fire (since its immaterial, it doesn’t really touch) the fire obeys and acts upon mental commands and such.

Of course, there’s one more aspect about “authority” I should mention. “Authority” cancels “authority”. This means that even if I do not have an “authority” over fire, but you do, if I can spread a high enough concentration of “authority” out into the fire that you’re currently controlling, I can replace your “authority” with mine (after a clash of wills ofc), and if I succeed, the fire will act as if it is not under your influence. However, since I have no “authority” over fire of my own, I will be unable to control it, only able to free it.

Expression of Authority and Level of Authority
There are two tables presented, one showing level, or "amount" of authority, the other showing how much of it is usable. These numbers are more representative of the entire population.

The first table shows the percentage of people with each type of authority. The amount of authority each person has is fixed from birth, and thus, these numbers are generally the same from generation to generation.

The second table is the more interesting one: amount of usable authority, as in the amount of authority usable OUTSIDE of the body. For many, they are stuck at 0-10%, and thus cannot do much. However, depending on the psychological states, the amount expressable can be forcibly increased, and thus, amount usable can jump. This changes the stats a bit. If emotions run high, or through serious training, the amount expressable can increase.

For example, just because you have level 1 authority doesn't mean that you'll be able to defeat a level 5 authority, especially if they can use 50-70% of their authority and you can only use 0-10%. However, in a battle between two people who can use 95-100% of their authority, the level of authority does matter. But even at that point, it depends on what your authority is over, and how you are offensively and defensively. Notice that there are several things that don't make sense. For example quality 0 authority and >100% release. Those are capable by Divines, and will be explained on the Divines page.

Also, the  <0% are also in the realm of Phantoms, and will be explained on that page.

Different Categories
There are overlaps. Conceptual Rule users can just make a rule for the space around them to have no gravity. And so, bluffing is very important.

Also, each of these categories obviously have variations. For example, in making pocket dimensions, the size of them is important. Or elemental control can imply being able to turn yourself into an element, or controlling it outside of you.

Side-Effects
One major side-effect is that of aging. From the moment you use authority, your body begins to age at 20% of its normal rate, so most authority users can live up to 500 years; however in a hazardous world of constant strife, most barely live to be 100. The drawback is that you release an energy signature visible to other authority users, meaning that you are easily an open target.

Another side-effect is that when you die, if you die with a high amount of authority concentrated around you, in a highly emotional state, your authority maybe absorbed by nature along with your body, causing you to be a type I phantom. Thus, even when you kill an enemy, they may not have won yet. This makes battlefields even more dangerous. However, this sort of thing happens rarely; the threshold authority level needs to be equal to that of a quality 3 authority user releasing 100% of his/her authority.

Divines
There is one final class of beings: Divines. These guys have the authority over "authority", meaning that they can freely access all possible authorities within their category, as well as combine them, and being able to use one special, non-copy-able ability. Each of the non-bolded boxes are considered "categories".