BONE MAGIC
/CORE DOMAIN
Bone magic concerns memory, identity, structure, continuity, form, law, record, boundary, and the forces that allow people and institutions to remain recognizable through time.
Bone is not merely skeletal magic.
It does not automatically involve corpses, graves, spirits, or necromancy.
Physical bone may be used symbolically or materially in some traditions, but the school’s true concern is structure and continuity.
Every exact effect must be governed by an established spell.
/MEMORY
Bone magic may preserve, stabilize, examine, protect, organize, or interact with memory when an established spell permits it.
Memory is not a perfect recording.
A Bone spell may reveal what a person recalls, not necessarily what objectively happened.
Trauma, misunderstanding, deception, magical interference, and ordinary forgetting still matter.
Bone magic cannot manufacture complete truth from incomplete memory.
It cannot recreate experiences that left no recoverable trace.
/IDENTITY
Bone magic may strengthen continuity of self, protect a name, resist unwanted alteration, recognize established identity, or preserve a person’s connection to their own history.
It does not freeze personality permanently.
People remain capable of growth and change.
Bone magic cannot declare who a person morally is.
It cannot prove loyalty, guilt, virtue, love, gender, faith, or destiny merely by examining identity.
/STRUCTURE
Bone magic may reinforce buildings, objects, bodies, records, wards, boundaries, or organized systems through an established spell.
Reinforcement does not make something indestructible.
A weakened wall still requires repair.
A stabilized injury still requires care.
A protected archive may still burn if the spell does not prevent fire.
Bone works with form and continuity, not unlimited durability.
/LAW
Bone is associated with law because law creates structures intended to endure beyond individual decisions.
Bone magic may support oaths, records, seals, identification, evidence, boundaries, or formal authority where established.
Magic does not make a law just.
A cruel decree can be structurally valid.
A forged document may imitate form without possessing legitimate authority.
Bone magic should not automatically enforce every written command.
/RECORDS
Archives, contracts, family histories, maps, court judgments, and names may be protected or examined through Bone practices.
Magical records remain vulnerable to interpretation, tampering, damaged context, and misuse.
A magically preserved document may accurately retain false information written by its author.
Preservation proves continuity of the record, not truth of its claims.
/BOUNDARIES
Bone magic may define, reinforce, or recognize boundaries.
A boundary may be physical, legal, ceremonial, personal, or magical.
A boundary is not automatically a prison.
Consent and authority matter.
A personal ward may protect privacy.
A civic boundary may regulate access.
An abusive ruler may misuse the same principles to restrict movement.
The school does not determine the morality of its use.
/BODIES
Bone magic may stabilize physical form or support healing where an exact spell permits.
It cannot casually reconstruct an entire body from nothing.
It cannot guarantee painless recovery.
It cannot restore a dead person merely because their bones remain.
Permanent injury, disability, scar tissue, and loss remain possible.
/TRAINING
Bone training emphasizes concentration, recordkeeping, repetition, precision, symbolic structure, memory discipline, law, language, geometry, craft, and careful observation.
Methods vary by class and profession.
Judges, archivists, architects, physicians, artisans, soldiers, and household ritualists may understand different applications.
Knowing legal theory does not automatically grant Bone spells.
Casting ability does not automatically make someone a competent judge or historian.
/COSTS
Bone magic may cause mental fatigue, headaches, rigidity, disorientation, intrusive memory, difficulty separating one record from another, temporary loss of flexibility, or bodily strain.
The exact cost belongs to the spell.
Long duration, complex structures, conflicting memories, damaged records, or resistant targets should increase difficulty.
/FAILURE
A failed Bone effect may preserve the wrong detail, reinforce a flaw, create excessive rigidity, blur memories, misidentify a boundary, bind an incomplete record, or prevent necessary change.
Failure should relate to structure, memory, identity, or continuity.
Do not make every failure create undead creatures or generic corruption.
/RESISTANCE
People may resist intrusion into memory or identity.
Wards, conflicting records, damaged structures, deception, trauma, and other magic may interfere.
A sealed memory is not automatically proof of guilt.
A person’s uncertainty cannot be overcome merely by casting harder.
/BONE AND OTHER SCHOOLS
Bone preserves what Breath changes.
Bone defines the structure through which Blood connections are recognized.
Bone may record a Heart covenant without creating devotion.
Bone may protect against Hollow severance without fully restoring what has been erased.
Visible overlap does not erase the distinct method of each school.
/FORBIDDEN USES
Bone magic does not provide perfect lie detection.
It does not create objective historical truth.
It does not allow routine resurrection.
It does not turn every skeleton into a servant.
It does not permanently freeze personality.
It does not make law morally correct.
It does not grant unlimited access to another person’s memories.
It does not prove ancestry without an exact spell designed for that purpose.
/GENERATION RULES
Use exact established spells for specific effects.
Distinguish preserved memory from objective fact.
Distinguish legal structure from justice.
Allow structures to fail when their foundations are damaged.
Preserve privacy, resistance, and uncertainty.
Do not reduce Bone to death imagery.
/FINAL RULE
Bone magic gives form to continuity.
It should help Valeune preserve memory, identity, law, and structure while recognizing that preservation can protect, imprison, clarify, distort, stabilize, or prevent necessary change.