The **Aether** is the undiscovered force behind all magic in the universe of //Carve//. It is a morass of Eldritch life invisible to the eye and, in fact, to all human methods of detection thus far.

The words used to describe it are all misleading in some form. Calling the mass 'alive', for example, suggests an ability of the Aether to replicate in some fashion, which it does not do. It does, however, //consume//, specifically being the driving force behind entropic decay in our universe.

It can make sense to view the Aether as an undivided whole, or as millions of tiny independent creatures, depending on what view better describes a given phenomenon.

While the Aether has a preference of matter over vacuum and is thus more readily available where matter exists, it is largely indifferent to the //nature// of the matter. The most notable exception in the setting is the [[:magic:tincture]] used for sorcery, especially when combined with carbon molecules. This can be visualised either as //interest// or as a //magnetic attraction// - the analogy of either is imperfect, but they usually suffice to understand the Aether's interactions.

The fleshrunes created by scribing runes with a tincture [[:magic:pen]] are a means to both attract the Aether's attention and to guide it into specific patterns. In a sense, fleshrunes are the quickest, least deadly way of ‘communicating’ with the Aether, and you may freely consider these like instructions to a computer, if the computer was an unspeakable Eldritch god that sometimes instead decided to reach out and vaporise you instead, because you accidentally spelt out an insult.((To clarify, this is a flippant summary, the Aether doesn’t get offended. But it may for any one reason, in a manner of speaking, decide it’s not in the mood for instructions. It’s an extremely rare event for spellcasting that is done by the book, but sorcerers are definitely playing with fire even if they’re doing everything optimally.)) The Aether can and will eat you alive – quite literally – if ‘provoked’. The chance that you’re provoking the Aether rises with spell tier and with each failure.

Even when the Aether cooperates, the results can be hazardous. Should you do ask the Aether to change you in some beneficial way, don’t expect that to work out //entirely// as you expect. You’re asking for a swarm of invisible monsters to enter your body and change things. Expect to go a little insane (or rather, a little //alien// – your ability to function and reason about things will probably not suffer).