MEMBRANE: A WHOLE NEW WORLD

INTRODUCTION

Broadly, magic in Membrane allows you to project a field that grows slowly from the point of origin. Objects with mass (with certain exceptions) can be conjured in this field. If taken out of the field, they exist for a time proportional to the time they spent inside the field.

The problem with Membrane magic as it may appear in-thread is that it is both dangerous and insufficiently studied. There are two current practitioners, and both of them have contradictory, often incorrect, theories about what the rules are and how magic works. 

PROJECTION

According to both Mary and Elliot, fields are initially projected through a meditation process that requires all of (1) meditation on awareness of one’s surroundings, (2) simultaneous lucid dreaming, such that the subject becomes consciously aware of the transition between the dreaming state and the waking state (3) from within an existing field.

However, they disagree about how fields are best maintained. Mary maintains hers through regular periods of awareness-meditation that last 2 hours or more, per day. Her field rests at between 7 and 8 centimeters from the surface of the skin, projected in every direction (including into the ground), and travels with her. If they dispel for any reason, they can go right back to where they were after a meditation session.

Elliot, on the other hand, believes that he can make a relatively static field by sleeping in the same spot every night, for 8 hours minimum, and repeating the entire initial projection process to expand it -- several centimeters per instance. 

CONJURING OBJECTS

You can conjure anything that has mass in the field, and it exists outside the field for a period of time proportional to the time spent inside the field, such that an hour spent inside the membrane translates to a second outside the membrane. I'm disallowing creating objects in motion, electric energy, thermal energy, or antimatter, but you can create mass-objects with radiation if you can insulate them from your body well enough. And you can create gasoline and keep it in your field long enough for it to burn -- and the energy stays around even when the byproducts disappear.

Problems arise if you leave your space after having created food or done self-modifications, because while the energy stays around if you leave your space, mass doesn't. Mass disappearance past a low threshold (having eaten a conjured food once this past week) always results in death. If someone is fed real food for long enough, the mass disappearance can be made smaller, but there's always a risk of something important going away.

CONFLICTING FIELDS

When fields conflict, they slide up against one another. You can encroach upon someone else’s by meditating. Battles are decided by who is more able to focus on awareness.

COMMUNICABILITY

Fields, including their communicability, can travel to different worlds.

NATIVE CHARACTERS:

Magic originated with a character named ELLIOT ROSS. Elliot is trying to project his field over the entire world to create post-scarcity, starting from a small community on a small (fictional) private island just off Maine. He is also not telling people about the drawbacks to eating his conjured food, because he thinks it will scare people and they won’t want to come live there (he’s very possessive about the people he has in his space). He currently wants to expand his field as quickly as possible. He hasn’t figured out immortality yet and is working on self-modifying in that direction. He also sells energy to various local countries.

MARY RIVERS has meditation magic. She also has a tulpa -- a separate person who also inhabits her head -- named HEIDI. Together they can share the mental energy required to maintain the meditation field, as well as project it twice as far as it goes normally if they’re both meditating at the same time. Mary objects strongly to Elliot’s post-scarcity plan for several reasons, not least because he's using her sister SUSAN, who is on the island, as leverage. More relevantly, he has a tendency to embrace new systems and technology without investigating how the systems work -- fine for technology, when he has other people to do that thinking for him, but not for the magic system, which he originated. 

She is currently trying to figure out a way to save all the people who are currently in Elliot's space; failing that she is trying to find a way to make him immortal so the people who are in his space don't kick it as soon as he does.

Let me know if/in what context you're interested in meeting (or helping) Mary (or Elliot)!