All living things in Azuyan, with just a few notable exceptions, are made up of 3 things: A Body, a Soul, and a Spirit.
The body is the gooey meatsack chassis of the physical realm that most are familiar with. It interacts with physical objects. The spirit is like an energy body that interacts with the energy of the world. The soul is the unique structure which ties the two together and is grown throughout a being's lifetime. It is what makes a pony, person, or creature more than just an organic machine. It is, essentially, what makes them unique.
The Spirit is aligned with one of the 10 magical elements of Azuyan. In fact, ponies and other sentient lifeforms have at least a primary elemental alignment and may take a secondary elemental alignment. They possess this alignment whether they have magic abilities or not. This is because the nature of their spirit works well with that element. Just as some physical bodies are better at jumping and some at running, some spirits are better at interacting with fire and some with water.
Everything in Azuyan has a spiritual (ie magical) aspect, even the rocks. Much of what is observed in the physical world is often the results of exchanges in the spiritual one.
Every element in the Azuyan Fanplay Epic system is balanced with other elements. Each element is cancelled out by another element and also cancels an element in turn. Ponies and sentients on Azuyan can train specific skills related to the alignment/s they possess, and this is called Magic. Many powers are available to budding RPers when making characters including the option to customize your own. It is possible that someone else using an elemental power on you could negate your own abilities, weaken them or weaken their effectiveness on a person - everything has its opposite.
The Energy elements typically have no commonly observed physical aspect in the world. Unlike the physical elements of Flame, Ocean, etc, these elements are connected more specifically with metaphysical concepts like life, death, abundance, emptyness. They are true elements tied to the spiritual connection all ponies and creatures have with magic, but are often more difficult to understand.
Spirit magic deals with the energy that makes up oneself and others. It has generally 2 aspects: The inward-focused and the outward-focused.
Inward-focused spirit magic focuses on mind over body. The spirit user alters their own energy and thus attempts to alter their body in this manner. Changing the color of the body, shapechanging, and certain enhanced physical aspects like increased strength or agility, are the result of inward-focused spirit magic.
The outward-focused spirit magic focuses on the energy of others. It involves reading minds, predicting future outcomes based on the current state of the person, inserting thoughts into the other person's head, protecting one's own spirit from the thoughts of others, controlling the minds of others, and separating spirit from soul and body - destroying a person's connection to the spiritual side of Azuyan for a time.
An immensely high level Spirit power is the ability to teleport, by moving one's spirit and thus rapidly moving one's body along with it. This is rare and hard to master
Many Spirit users go mad long before they ever master their abilities: they often can find it hard to separate what is their own thoughts and what are the thouhgts of others, they often see things that others do not, and they are easy prey for some dangerous creatures that exist in Azuyan.
Soul magic is aligned with the particular type of energy that makes up the souls of living things. The most common use of soul magic is necromancy, the reanimation of the dead. The soul user uses the same connection to a corpse that the original soul had, and fills the corpse with their spirit energy. As long as the necromancer can periodically 'refill' the corpse, the zombie is capable of living somewhat autonomously (if stupidly, as everything that made it intelligent left with the soul). The necromancer can control the zombie directly for complex tasks or give hordes of them general directions.
Some soul users can interact with the souls of the recently deceased, and using their innate knowledge of soul magic many soul users together can combine their abilities and perform a complete ressurection. By the same token and with similar difficulty, souls can be moved from one body to another, or separated from body and spirit without damage to either.
Soul users find it much easier to cast in darkness rather than daylight. Zombies are more likely to fall apart faster if kept in open, lit areas - light seems to affect this element strongly.
Sun involves purification and light. A sun user is typically overflowing with energy and use this to manipulate light and the energy in their bodies or those of others. Sun users can cleanse regions of molds and sickness, feed the body with energy to force it to heal faster, create visible displays of light, tangible concentrations of light, and lazer-like beams of light.
Sun users feel like they get energy from the sun, moon, and (if in space) the stars. They feel invigorated in the daylight and often lose energy at night or when underground. They tend to be extroverted in personality, though this is not a rule so much as a trend.
The physical elements are commonly observed in the natural world of Azuyan. Changes in the physical side of Azuyan with these elements closely affect the spiritual side, and vice versa. They are easy to understand conceptually, and always have a physical side effect when cast. Physical magic typically is not used directly on the self or others but is cast at the world around the user to obtain the desired affect.
