Choice of Magics is an interactive story from indie game company Choice of Games, written by Kevin Gold, author of Choice of Robots. In a world covered by storms and fallout from ancient magic, where magic is forbidden by the Church, an adventurous youngster from a small town stumbles on a lost magical academy. Inside, they discover ancient books and devices and take their first steps to becoming a magician. Along the way, they will face the threat of Church inquisitors, rebuild or reject the devices of the ancients, advise a queen, and possibly animate a stuffed monkey. But beware: uncontrolled magic use destroyed the world once before, and may do so again.
This game provides examples of:
- After the End: The magic of the ancients is long gone, storms cover the sky and blot out the sun, and random clouds of negation particles float across the world destroying things.
- Antimagical Faction:
- The Church forbids all magic on penalty of imprisonment. Its Saints use divine miracles, which are not magic. About that? Yes they are, and the imprisoned mages are taught about Abraxas, brought into the Church and renamed Saints. The Church is most definitely hypocritical, wanting to control magic for the good of the people.
- The Magisterians are another hypocritical version, restricting magic to the wealthy elite - because too much use of magic can destroy the world, and they know it.
- Ban on Magic: Magic is illegal according to Church law, though their ability to enforce that is pretty limited if the PC refuses to play along.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Sam is one of nicest characters in the game, but push the magical agenda too far while his relationship value is low will cause him to lash out in an unexpected way: he tries to kill you.
- The Church: The Church of Abraxas worships Abraxas, a long-dead mage and immortal specter, though many of its followers consider Abraxas metaphorical and consider love and faith more important than the actual existence of their god. It is divided into two separate traditions: the House of the Sun (which preaches a creed of love and charity) and the House of the Flame (which focuses on the battle against evil). The Church also has Saints, who invoke divine miracles, and Inquisitors, who hunt down mages to capture and imprison them. Overall, it's neither a Saintly Church nor a Corrupt Church; it has good and bad aspects to it, though it's undeniably got a lot of skeletons in its closet and lies about the nature of its Saints.
- The Chosen One: You can believe yourself this. The Magisterians defy that. You're talented, no doubt, but by their standards you're nothing unique; you're just a big fish in a small pond.
- Conflict Killer: If the Eternal Storm goes out of control or the Black Sun destroys the world, the war with Magisteria becomes moot.
- Dark Horse Victory: Saint Twimsby is elected Hierophant if the Hierophant dies, because the electors each get three vetoes and nobody bothers to use a veto on him.
- Dark Is Not Evil: Negation is scary, but it's just a powerful force with no inherent morality to it.
- Dark Secret: You assign yours at the beginning of the game. You may have: caused Tal to lose her eye, accidently caused the death of Tal's father, or reported Tal to Cos for being a shapeshifter.
- Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: In one ending, you can tell Abraxas, also known as God, that he's not needed and should take a good look at his own behavior before he goes around judging others. And he responds by accepting your words and leaving.
- Fantastic Racism: Shapeshifters are widely discriminated against.
- From Nobody to Nightmare: You go from an unemployed peasant in a backwater town to the most powerful wizard in Eirinia. This goes double for Negation: you can destroy the Magisterians with a single spell.
- Good Shepherd: While the Church itself gets a bit shady, there are a couple of standout examples of priests who make the world a better place.
- Sam is the embodiment of what a priest should be: kind, generous and wise, and devout without being a zealot about it. Unlike his companion, Brother Jacob, his response to seeing a good-guy PC is to try to turn them to the Church, rather than trying to Burn the Witch!. If he becomes a Saint, he's one of the best, and can help the PC become a better one.
- Saint Twimsby (or possibly Hierophant Twimsby) is a bit dense sometimes and not particularly brave, but his Simple-Minded Wisdom and unorthodox approach to helping people make him one of the best of the Saints, and he can do as much by bringing a puppy to a suffering patient as a healing miracle. If he becomes Hierophant, he orders every priest to get a pet and recommends that everyone else do so, because it just makes people nicer. This actually seems to work out. He's also significantly more laid-back about magic use than the other possible Hierophants.
- Gray-and-Grey Morality: The Church is a bit excessive in its persecution of mages and hypocritical about their Saints, but they've got good reasons for wanting to keep a lid on things: Magic is dangerous, and you might not be acting entirely morally with your power yourself. Likewise, the Magisterians are a tyrannical plutocracy that restricts magic to the wealthy, oppresses their own people and tries to conquer Eirinia, but again, their system is designed to prevent uncontrolled magic from destroying the world. And while the High Magisterian is a major Jerkass, the other Magisterians are much more reasonable.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: The church keeps a terrifying murder golem to execute mages. If you've seized control of it when the Hierophant and her crew comes down it automatically kills them, his programming activated by their glamors.
- I Did What I Had to Do: The Church does preach ethical behavior, but it also has a doctrine allowing for "the teleological suspension of the ethical" if the cause is important enough. Abraxas' statue urges its listeners to avoid killing and deceiving unless absolutely necessary, and warns that if it becomes too common, ambitious Churchmen will use the doctrine for their own personal ambition.
- Immortality Inducer: The Hierophant's miter gives immunity to rot and aging.
- Interface Spoiler: Lampshaded in the beginning, when it asks you about your preferred pronouns and nouns.
Why the royal titles? No reason....
- It Only Works Once: Megali Mageia claims a wizard will have a single opportunity to cast a spell beyond all spells. Once you've used it you can never cast something that powerful again. This means you can usually only get one ending route, though in some of the latter cases, you don't make a great work.
- Lost Technology: The Megali Mageia is a book of magic that was cutting-edge even for the Ancients, allowing you to rapidly develop abilities unknown in modern Eirinia, even to existing practitioners.
- Magic A Is Magic A: Five disciplines of it.
- Negation channels the power of the invisible Black Sun beneath the ground to throw around destructive forces that leave clouds of lung-burning particles. It can also be used as an energy source, similar to Automation, at the risk of destabilizing the Black Sun. Consumption of negative particles can also counteract the effects of rot, and vice versa.
- Automation controls devices using the Eternal Storm's electricity, though this risks making the Storm worse. It's the most common power source for Magitek.
- Glamor allows the user to supernaturally enhance their charisma to the level of mind control. It carries a price in terms of internal rot and an early death. There are ways around this, and rot can also counter Negation burn.
- Divination allows the user to scry on far-off places. Its downside is that if you scry on someone else, they know you're doing it and can scry back to an extent, and you can share thoughts.
- Vivomancy is the magic of life, including healing, transformations and creating new lifeforms. It's a whimsical and humorous power, sometimes causes rot in the user, and often has unpredictable effects.
- Magitek: The discipline of Automation uses electricity from the Eternal Storm to empower machines, at the risk of making the storms worse. Negation can also power devices through the Black Sun, though this carries its own risks.
- The Magic Comes Back: You can revolutionize society using the magic of the ancients, leaving people to quickly begin learning it themselves. Depending on the ending you might have to get rid of it again.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Magic itself unquestionably exists in this setting. However, during a certain branch in Chapter 8 where you are dying of rot due to continuous use of glamor magic, the ambiguity of everything going on is played with and directly addressed in varying degrees depending on the outcome. In the beginning, you are warned by the one nursing you that your stage of rot will induce hallucinations and that you shouldn't do anything rash. But eventually, as you're lying in your sickbed, you start hearing from a voice claiming to be Abraxas and essentially compelling you to do something highly dangerous for the sake of changing the world. Should you place absolute faith in the voice, choose to clear the skies of the Eternal Storm, and die doing so, the ambiguity is left hanging and in the forefront as Sam - if he lives - preaches about your divine inspiration with the belief that you truly did speak with Abraxas, while Cos and a friend theorize that you were just very good at magic while having gone insane from rot. On the other hand, should you survive in some manner and have a good relationship with the Church, the Hierophant will pass down her miter, which completely stops and immunizes the wearer from rot for as long as they still have it, saving your life. It's only after this item comes into your possession when the ambiguity is completely subverted by having Abraxas appear to you in his true form as a specter of the man that once lived, and rot can no longer be used to disprove whether or not he actually spoke to you.
- Messianic Archetype:
- In the Glamour ending, Abraxas seems to speak to you while you're dying of the rot, calling on you to use your power to do a great work of magic. If you do, you sacrifice yourself to either clear the Eternal Storm, or to build bonds of empathy between the peoples of Eirinia and Magisteria and secure everlasting peace. It's unclear at that point whether it was really Abraxas or just the rot talking.
- If you're captured in Magisteria and go to the Divination climax, there's an option to cast a similar spell of love and peace. You can do it if your heart is pure and your magic strong, but if you're not able to do it, then Sam might be able to sacrifice himself, making the spell succeed before disappearing into light.
- Mythology Gag: Naming your dragon "Pickle," and the electric pickle trick, are references to Choice of Robots by the same writer.
- No Immortal Inertia: The hierophant miter suppresses the effects of rot as long as its current wielder received it willingly. If you accept it from the previous hierophant she instantly turns to dust as the rot catches up, though she does Go Out with a Smile.
- Not-So-Phony Psychic: Seer Marie if you teach her magic.
- One-Man Industrial Revolution: You can become this, reshaping Eirinia into a Magitek powerhouse through the use of magic.
- Parental Marriage Veto: If you're romancing Vance/Vera, their father challenges you to a duel when he learns about it. In some outcomes, he confesses that his goal is to make sure that you're serious enough about his child to stand up for your relationship.
- Path of Inspiration: The Church of Abraxas frequently uses disguised magic despite their vehement denouncements of it executions of uncooperative wizards, and was founded by a wizard-turned-negative energy specter rather than a god. In their defense, they are trying to avoid a repeat of the ancient's destruction of the world.
- Perpetual Storm: The Eternal Storm covers the world and provides lightning with which to power Automation magic. It also provides lightning where it's not wanted, necessitating the use of copper trees to protect towns. In one ending branch, your use of magic intensifies the storm and brings about The Great Flood. You can clear the skies in certain endings.
- Power at a Price: All schools of magic have some drawback to them as listed under Magic A Is Magic A.
- Precious Puppies: Saint Twimsby is known for bringing a puppy along to his healings, because sometimes, all the magic in the world isn't as powerful as a cute puppy.
- The Reveal: A lot of the white text on this page is because of a big bomb that drops around the middle of the game: The Church's Saints secretly use magic.
- Scissors Cuts Rock: Get your Negation stat high enough and even powerful wards won't stop your attacks.
- Simple-Minded Wisdom: Twimsby is a rather simple animal lover and healing Saint. He also knows that bringing a puppy to a dying patient can be as powerful as the best vivomancy, and uniquely among the Church hierarchy, is okay with magic use so long as it's used to make nice things.
- Sinister Surveillance: You can create a system of crystal balls that allow for policing Akriton through Divination. It's mentioned that this leads to a feeling of lost freedom, and people feel more afraid in the panopticon society.
- Story Branching: There's a couple of places where the story branches radically.
- Branch one depends on whether you join the Church. If you don't, you'll go back to Akriton as a mage (this is the default path), do mage stuff and eventually be recruited as Thecla's Court Mage. If you do, there's a different chapter where you serve as a Saint and try to avoid falling too deep into heresy, before being made the Queen's Blessed Advisor.
- The second sub-branch is whether or not you go to Magisteria, either to make peace or as a captive. If you're captured, that gives you a separate chapter and ending route from the main line, while making peace just skips over the war.
- In the main branch, near the end of the climactic chapter, you can be faced with one of five sub-branches related to how much magic you've been using and whether or not you can use it to make a great work of any discipline of magic, or none, except for Divination, which is worked in the branch where you get captured.
- Sturdy and Steady Turtles: Tortoises are portrayed as talking...and...moving...very...slowly.
- Super Registration Act:
- Unofficially, the Church recruits mages as Saints, teaching them to use magic for the good of the people. They don't let on about the part where the Church is using magic, of course.
- The Magisterian Empire restricts magic to the wealthy elite and government agents, because they know that uncontrolled magic can destroy the world. If you explain the Saints system to them, they'll approve of the control mechanism despite their own atheism.
- Superweapon Surprise: The Magisterians think of Eirinia as a backwater, magicless state that should be easily conquered. Which it is at the start of the game - but the PC can lead a crash modernization program that equips Eirinia with airships or dragons, and when the war starts, choose to employ massed negation wands and alchemical Super Soldiers to fight back against the Empire. Just because Eirinia doesn't make widespread use of magic doesn't mean that they can't.
- Teacher/Student Romance: Vance/Vera, the wizard you find imprisoned by the church and can make your apprentice, shows an obvious interest in you if you maintain a good relationship with them. Whether or not you reciprocate those feelings is up to you. It's not a good idea if you want V to actually learn magic.
- Tomboy and Girly Girl: The dynamic if you encourage Tal to romance Thecla.
- Tough Leader Façade: Thecla is the tough-but-fair leader her people need, but she also finds her life to be a Gilded Cage.
- Underground City: In the Automation route, if you neither fix the Storm nor escape above the clouds, the people of Eirinia retreat into underground caves. In one variation, you escape underground with a magical battery that can safely power any technological device the Eirinians need; otherwise, they are forced to live a hardscrabble life by hunting, fishing and scavenging.
- Vow of Celibacy: Saints are expected to be celibate, though this is more of a suggestion than a hard rule and nobody will begrudge an otherwise-good Saint their paramour.
- World in the Sky: Happens in one ending. It's the logical conclusion of Automation. If you empower the Eternal Storm too much, the world beneath the clouds becomes uninhabitable. So move Eirinia above the clouds in a nation of airships and continue to draw on the Storm.
