Manaesia (Mah-nae-si-ah)

Summary

A magical complication between the natural body and mana. Manaesia results when a body is saturated in mana concentrations greater than it has the ability to process or avoid taking in. Similar to water filling a bladder, the mana saturates the body until critical failure occurs. How this failure progresses differs dramatically: the type of person, the type of mana, the environment around them, and so on. Mild manaesia over many decades can result in slight imbalances, such as unstable stamina and mental acuity. More serious manaesia begins manifesting physiological changes, like parts of the body becoming unnaturally hot, or solidifying into rock.   To envision the difference between manaesia and magical attacks, consider the following. If one is constantly sitting at an angle, their spine will put pressure unnaturally on one side. Eventually, over the years the gel-discs between verberate and the bone will begin to warp from this imbalance. By the time chronic pain and physical damage results, the imbalance is at an advanced stage. Manaesia is the mana-equivalent of this, and so the body must be 'imbalanced' for prolong periods of time. Being exposed to extremely short bursts of intense mana, like magical attacks, will be more of a problem because it is an attack. That is, getting burned alive by fire magic is a bigger issue than the body being slightly imbalanced.   Across Veltrona and the universe at large, mana is omnipresent, all life has evolved, created, or manifested alongside it. This is equivalent to complex life, such as people, having bodies capable of enduring gravity's constant influence. While gravity is dictated chiefly by mass, mana is much more volatile, and can be influenced by countless factors. Life has just as many mechanisms for handling these fluctations, and so there is often not much of an issue. However, life is not perfect.   To frame it in another context, manaesia is why beings with extreme mana, like dragons, have issues being around other species. If they do not control their mana, the resulting manaesia will start to cause everyone else problems. Similarly, those gifted with unusually high mana concentrations would induce the same issues within their own species. Because of this, all sorts of primitive biases came about, and a gift of high mana was seen as a curse for everyone else. Such individuals became ostracized usually, but other societies found early ways of handling the excess mana. It could be said, as a result of manaesia, many early forming civilizations adopted ritualistic mannerisms surrounding mana handling. For example, cultivating plants with high mana absorption behavior in a living space would negate excess mana while similarly providing for the plant and its harvest.   In a round about way, this helped to engender study into mana and magic. Thus, while the physical reality around manaesia remains the same, people have long since adapted to handling this fundamental issue. It is not unlike discovering how to regularly purify water for direct consumption, rather than processing it into mild alcohol. Incidentally, this makes beings with different levels of mana somewhat interesting in cohabitation. It became a form of ancient cultural exchange, as those who could live with 'higher mana species' may have migrated over to them. So it would be one person's curse was another's blessing, and the world ever went on.   It is note worthy that of all kinds of mana that exists, pure mana does not induce manaesia. No matter how much one is exposed to pure mana, their body will find natural harmony with it. However, if they are extremely saturated by pure mana that then becomes aspected for some reason, the usual problems will result. In the worst cases they will go from 'okay' to violently exploding from all the pure mana suddenly aspecting.