A Few Questions on White, Black, and Red Magic

I'm mainly posting this thread because unlike the WHM and BLM teachers, RDM doesn't really have anyone to ask "What is red magic?" to.

So...what is red magic? From what I gathered, it's the combination of white and black magic (duh) through using one's own aether. But...both white and black magic draw from the aether of their surroundings as I understand it.

So how can an art that combines two separate arts that use the land as their source...use their own aether as a source? Isn't this inherently dangerous, like in the CNJ questline?

If I'm incorrect about white or black magic, or red magic, I'd love to be corrected here. I'm just really curious about the workings of these schools of magic!

Okay... Magic use... The first thing to start with is that Conjurers and Thaumaturges are not the same thing as White Mages and Black Mages and none of those disciplines use aether in the same way as each other. Let's ignore Arcanists (and Summoners and Scholars) for the moment as the way they use aether is even more different (they shape aether using math/geometry and as far as I can tell, and most of the aether they shape is their own).

What all four of those disciplines do have in common is that they "borrow" aether from the surroundings. However, White Mages "borrow" much more aether then Conjurers do. So much so that after the 6th Umbral Calamity, the Elementals forbid anyone from using White Magic again except the Padjali (or whoever could awaken the White Mage soul stone). Conjurers do "borrow" aether from their surroundings, but that is considered to be a good thing. The Lvl 1 - 30 Conjurer quests are all about what happens when Conjurers don't "borrow" aether; they can end up using so much aether healing something, that it ends up killing them. Also, a lot of what we know about both Conjury and White Magic is through the lens of Gridania's dealing with the Elementals, and they certainly have a bias to take into account. The first Conjury quest even admits that they are safe-guarding the art from being misused, so who knows what someone could really do with it if they wanted to.

Black Mages run into a different problem. Their aether usage is very difficult to control to the point where they often overextend their own limits and can't regulate their aether successfully (which ends up killing them). In order to do that, they need the Gem of Shattoto (Black Mage soul stone). Their aether usage also tends to attract things like Voidsent, which is another big problem with using lots of aether. Thaumaturgy doesn't use spells that use as much aether as Black Magic spells do, so they are much, much safer (for the practitioner) to use. In a nutshell, neither Conjury or Thaumaturgy use as much aether as White and Black Magic do and therefore, it's okay to draw on ambient aether. It's almost like both disciplines are gimped on purpose so that most users will be relatively safe when using them, and part of that safety is making sure they don't overuse their own aether.

Finally, there's Arcanisim. Arcanisim turns the entire thing on it's head and never says anything about getting aether from anywhere. Instead, it's all about using math and geoemetry to shape aether into the effect you want it to have. And the Lvl. 70 Summoner quest reveals that the Allagans were into this big time. One of them figured out how to program a computer to do all the calculations for certain spells and the computer had more fine-tuned aether control then even you, the WoL, do.

The reason why I mention Arcanisim is that Red Mage isn't the only magic dicipline that primarily uses their own aether stores. However, from what I got in the Red Mage class quests, it is probably one of the first magic disciplines designed from the ground up to limit the amount of aether that can be used at once. As far as I can tell, this is also why Red Magery is the only magic discipline to have a physical finisher; it makes up for them not having crazy powerful magic spells.

The Rapier and Magic Crystal you use for RDM are conductors for your aether use, thus why you use your most powerful attacks via melee as well as why your enhanced melee attacks are magic attacks instead of physical attacks. You could also say that because of the unique way RDM's use aether their spells use less MP because they are also weaker, with Dualcasting helping to make up for this. Obsidian already pointed out how the BLM soulstone helps keep BLM from killing themselves from using too much aether and the RDM's use of their weapons as conductors is basically like that but probably not quite as effective since you are slightly weaker, though with better MP costs.

NOT having something to help you focus the aether in your body will get you killed. Whether its Shattoto's soul stone, specially made weapons, the Elemantals or even maths, something is helping you channel the aether instead of you just doing it all on your own.

For a little more info on BLM and RDM, some Mhaci BLM used bound Voidsent to increase their power even further, though this ended up turning them crazy due to them literally starving for mana due to it. Mana vampires basically, which is also why we saw some people claiming that RDM were vampires when SB came out due to the reveal that the practice was briefly used when RDM was still being created.

Thank you both for your responses!

It's fascinating how different magical disciplines approach aether usage, both within and without. It just makes me wanna delve deeper and learn more about the subjects. You both mention the physical finisher and how the aether charges the sword to deal more damage, but then I wonder where does verflare/verholy come from, since they're both top-tier Black and White Magical spells.

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Originally Posted by Dualgunner

Thank you both for your responses!

It's fascinating how different magical disciplines approach aether usage, both within and without. It just makes me wanna delve deeper and learn more about the subjects. You both mention the physical finisher and how the aether charges the sword to deal more damage, but then I wonder where does verflare/verholy come from, since they're both top-tier Black and White Magical spells.

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Well a big thing about Red Magic is keeping yourself in balance between the two disiplines. VerHoly and VerFlare give the most of their respective side and thus are the most dangerous spells to use. Getting unbalanced to one side or the other is probably much more serious lore wise compared to how it is mechanically honestly, but neither of our spell finishers send us too much over the edge. Given that RDMs only use it after discharging a lot of aether out of their body they probably use the high amount of aether that is now in the surrounding area to help them cast VerHoly/Flare without going too much to its respective side. Atleast thats how I see it, as far as I remember there is no "explanation" for it beyond being a powerful spell that we were ready to learn at 68/70.

Red Mages were born from Machi and Amdapori mages that survived the flood. There was some work done by both before the flood to try and increase the amount of survivors. After the flood the gen pop saw both Blms and Whms as bad people so in order to not get dead by angry mobs but still practice magic they had to make up a whole new system and thus Red Magic was born. So if by that logic alone you have wielders who know flare and holy create something where the same person can use both.