Headcanons on Max, Magic, and the Constant

[deludeddaybreak]

I have extensive headcanons about Them, the Constant, the "peripheral realms" and their gateways, and how magic works, and I might post that later. Some of this stuff doesn't quite line up anymore with the introduction of recent lore, but I'll still share HCs that I'm especially fond of. For now, here's one that came about as the result of a road trip:

After the fateful train accident that changed the course of William Carter's life, he managed to stumble his way to civilization. The town he happened upon was a small train stop town called Maxwell, in New Mexico. He stayed there for a time as he began to uncover the secrets of the Codex Umbra, and it's there that he began to cultivate his new persona, taking the name of the town where his new life started.

For reference, Maxwell (the town) is situated on the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe railways, and was founded in 1879. It's tiny, less than half a square mile in area. Hardly a blip on the map- and thus a perfect place for one meek man to disappear to at the turn of the century.

[CaptainChaotica]

Now I've got that song about the Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe! in my head.  Heh.

...although, if this is gonna be a (anything) "i guess" story, it needs to be a lot more casual, snarky and sweary.  (Maybe not that last one around here.)  And have cute little jingles playing every now and then.  : P   Like:  "In the beginning, there was this dude named Maxwell.  Well okay it wasn't actually the beginning and his name wasn't Maxwell yet.  But that's not important right now.  Anyway, Maxwell-but-not-Maxwell was a stage magician but he kinda sucked at it.  Until one day..."

(singing)  "weird magical booook thiiiiinnng" (cartoon picture of the Codex Umbra)

"...he came across this weird magical book thing called the Codex Umbra.  And it allowed him to do a lot of really crazy (beep).  Like crazy _dangerous_ (beep) too, I mean, like it could summon actual shadow monsters and (beep).  Anyway one day he might've caused some earthquake or something, I dunno (cartoon of "San Francisco, 1906" on a really simple map of the U.S.A. and then a cartoon BOOM! over it) and ended up in this weird world.  Oh also his assistant somehow got there too.  (shot of Charlie falling through a void)

...etc.  As you can see, I suck at trying to copy someone else's comedy style.  : P

But no seriously, yours sounds pretty legit to me so far.  Although maybe you should remove the "I guess" from the title or people are gonna think it's mean to be funny instead of serious.  (shrug)

(EDIT:  For anyone out there who might possibly not know what I'm going on about...

history of the world, I guess

If you haven't seen it before buckle up and enjoy, 'cos it is a thing of beauty.  But I wasn't kidding about the swearing.  Wear headphones if watching where your parents might hear, kids! ;))

...Notorious

[The 2C3D]

This is much deeper than my headcanon that Maxwell still needs glasses like William did, but refuses to wear any

[FantineAz]

whoa(☆ﾟ∀ﾟ)

[deludeddaybreak]

Another couple of Maxwell headcanons:

As a boy, Maxwell suffered from heart arhythmia and asthma. His smoking habit actually stems from the fact that a particular blend for cigarettes were used prior to the advent of modern vasodilators.

Max's two show rabbits were named Billy and Bobby.

Max wants to be forgiven for what he's done to everyone, and he genuinely is sorry for most of it, but he also doesn't believe he deserves to be forgiven, so he keeps up the facade of not having changed at all. That being said, even though he's deliberately making the others not trust him, he complains at them when they don't trust him.

Max can still perform magic tricks other than his shadow puppets, but those spells require a ton of time, resources, and energy. Not to mention, he's usually banned from performing creepy rituals in camp.

Maxwell has had trouble sleeping since his first brush with Them. At first, it was because the knowledge and the whispers kept him awake. Now, after being usurped after ruling for who knows how long, he can't sleep well because "it's too quiet."

[deludeddaybreak]

Okay, so this is more stuff I just came up with off the cuff, but as a Maxwell RPer I kinda needed a basis for how magic works in a setting that is exceptionally vague about it. So, here goes. Be warned, I do wax poetic a little bit because I'm half writing this from Max's perspective.

Magic is an energy, but it's also a substance, a dimension, and a consciousness. In its most primordial form, when it first came to be, the Constant was naught but magic, although that has not been the case since very, very ancient times. Now, from this swirling primal void emerged a consciousness, the mind of magic itself. Like Maxwell's mind, only much moreso, this mind was able to split itself into pieces- countless multitudes, tailored to fill specific roles. These multitudes born from the mind of magic itself are known in many worlds by many names, but some simply opt to refer to the creeping shadows as Them.

As something not entirely unlike a force of nature, magic is not especially willful despite having a consciousness. It will flow and act in ways inherent to it, as a bolt of lightning strikes the ground, but They on Their own cannot form complex spells or weave new creations from Their own substance. To do so requires the inventiveness, the vision, and the desires of creatures possessing some semblance of free will. In one way or another, throughout the ages, the knowledge of magic trickled through the cracks between worlds, like a whisper of a suggestion, and from that knowledge a reckless few sought to know more. Through various methods the would-be magicians of multiple worlds "opened the door" and let magic through. Like an inventor wires a circuit to guide the flow of electricity, magicians shaped magic to power their own visions into reality.

The beings called Them are not truly evil. They are no more evil than electricity, or fire, or a rising flood. They are therefore, perhaps, more terrifying than anything willfully evil. They are a force, utterly beholden to Their own rules and unable to stray from them. Morality, affluence, and compassion mean nothing to Them, other than as a facet of mortal life to observe and study. In Their being, They work to fulfill two purposes- the amassment of all knowledge, and extension of magic's use and reach throughout realities. They cannot lie directly, only by omission. They cannot break contracts. They will always offer what They see as a fair deal to those who use Their power.

A magician closely bound to Them begins to inheret some of Their nature. Most notably, they become unable to speak direct falsehoods, and they become able to break their minds into pieces with ease. Not to mention, a great bond with Them means greater power in general- and much, much greater risks. As mentioned before, They do not take more than what They have given, at least according to Their perception. The more magic a magician uses, the more the magician is using Their essence. Thus, They might belong utterly to the magician, but the magician in turn utterly belongs to Them. One day or another, They inevitably collect on that debt.

Sometimes the subject of Their contract is one person, desiring to use magic to fulfill a heartfelt wish. Sometimes it's a group of individuals. Sometimes, an entire society. The Thulian ancients relied so heavily upon the miraculous power of nightmare fuel (magic's raw substantive form) that their entire civilization was pulled "through the door" into the Constant, their great city locked in a perpetual cycle of revisiting its last day, the day that They poured through the widening cracks in the world to swallow an entire people whole.

Once a place or a people are consumed by the Constant, they are unraveled into the void, slumbering as drifting dust in the lightless nothingness, until, perchance, someone is able to give the Constant form. The king has the power to create marvelous things from the void, but they also possess the power to restore that which has been unraveled, albeit in a limited or artificial form. Much of the Constant's structure is pieced together from bits and pieces of fallen worlds and misplaced things. Nothing that enters the Constant is ever truly lost. Life and death are the monarch's plaything. However, some things are doomed to never be truly restored.

(To be continued when I'm less tired)

[deludeddaybreak]

A few minor things related to that:

Charlie was taken along with Maxwell because she was his employee, which They view as a binding contract. Charlie was bound to Max by contract, therefore she was taken when he was.

In game, if the Codex Umbra is burned into ashes, it reappears in Maxwell's inventory upon reloading the game. This is actually reflective of the Codex's nature, with how it is able to find its way from one owner to another. If reduced to ashes or similarly destroyed, the Codex can travel as dust on the wind, and will be called to whoever is nearby that would be desperate/foolish enough to use it. The copy that Maxwell carries in the Constant is not the earthly copy, but rather one manifested from the substance of the Constant upon his arriving there. This is why some disappearances related to Them involved a disaster of some sort- it allows the earthly copy of the Codex to be destroyed and find a new owner as soon as possible.

The form of magic Maxwell uses is magic in its rawest form, meaning it's at its most powerful, and also its most dangerous. An intricately woven spell bound by a book's worth of conditions, or a "diluted" form of magic (magic tied to an aspect or element) is much safer, but also much more limited in its purpose.

There are more dynamic aspects of magic (such as nature and healing), but the six primary elements of magic are hot (red), cold (blue), matter (green), energy (orange), madness/power (purple), and light/countermagic (yellow). The "moon's" pull affects the tides of magic as well, causing low tide (the tide of transformation and sight) and high tide (the tide of shadows and secrets). During low tide, hidden things become possible to locate or divine, and things with dualistic natures reveal their other selves. During high tide, the Constant's substance wears thin into the void, and raw shadow leaks through into certain things.