Burnt on Glyphs

[Nikodemus]

(eg. mortar and pestle, some leaves and hey presto a potion!) cannot be magical.

Nice example of herbology and knowledge how to use them.

Only one problem in this. It depends what potion you are talking about. If it is a potion of healing, which cure you in unnatural way, then there is magic in it. There is something unnatural in it, because till this day no one invented such a thing and see how much is known about biology and chemistry at present day. I wrote about this fact in previous post and hoped someone will take it to heart.
In the cherbology and alchemy you are thinking about is nothing unnatural, but then don't expect unnatural things. Only something what sounds unnatural to in game peasant. Also don't mess into this peasant believs about alchemy, which describe unnatural things, but in fact are only fairy tales.

There are things which are rarely hardly explanable to us, players (people who live at present time) and sounding like magic to common peasants in game. There are also things which are really magic in game and unexplanable to us as players (people living at present times, with vast knowledge). The only explanation is in fact magic, which has its story and rules inside game, made up things, which don't exist in real.

[bilbous]

Well there is nothing saying that there cannot be herbs and stuff with seemingly miraculous healing powers in the planeshift world, they might seem to be magic but it isn't necessarily so.
When I was talking about herbology and alchemy I was thinking about such earthly lore as birthstones and mystical properties said to be held by various minerals and plants. When I was talking about effects from the symbol that is embodied in a particular glyph -- not the glyph itself mind you -- such as you might find in nature, in a birthmark, a water stain or woodgrain and was thinking that it might render the bearer, the person with the birthmark, the wall with the stain or the wood with the grain something like 1-5% resistance or susceptibility to magic cast by the glyph whose shape appears upon it depending on the color or material.  If that is what you understood me to suggest I am sorry to go on about it but the replies all seemed to miss the mark. I don't really mind my ideas being shot down as long as it appears that they were understood and rebutted for what they were. I, personally, never tried to suggest that casting spells with such markings should be the case.

[ThomPhoenix]

if it is a potion of healing, which cure you in unnatural way, then there is magic in it.

From our perspective, yes. From a fantasy world's perspective, no.

I don't really mind my ideas being shot down as long as it appears that they were understood and rebutted for what they were. I, personally, never tried to suggest that casting spells with such markings should be the case.

I do understand it now. If characters can be born with some character-creation dependent birthmark is up to the devs of course. I'm not sure if I like the idea myself. Why would such a symbol give a slight resistance? Why would it exist in the first place? And I'm opposed to the idea of water stains giving magical resistance. It needs to be worked out more.

[bilbous]

The whole idea sort of goes back to "what good would glyphs(symbols not Glyphs -- magical) do if carved/painted on a mages staff?" If my idea were to be adopted it would allow for a mage to boost some spell casting abilities by representing the Glyphs on his staff. Just to be clear the mage would be unable to cast spells without actually possessing the proper Glyph, the representations on the staff would not be sufficient.  Some kind of resriction would have to be worked out so that a mage could not simply stick all the symbols on his staff but only if the system were to be formally studied for use. It seems a little premature at the moment.
Another seed from which the idea grew was the statement from the settings that glyphs can occur anywhere including an animals fur. It seemed to me that such a marking would not be an actual Glyph but merely be a representation with some marginal effect. The idea was to make some kind of sense of this.

I would like to offer this thought, perhaps these naturally occuring glyphs are clues to the location of real Glyphs so that the stain that appeared on the wall may have been caused by the Glyph on the shelf inside the building, the mark on the fur may have been because the animal's birthplace was above where a Glyph was buried, the tree which produced the wood with the grain could have had a Glyph at its heart.

Thus you could tattoo that energy glyph on your forehead but if the artist chose the wrong herbal or alchemical extracts because they had insufficient knowledge of the properties of their materiels you would wind up with an unwanted susceptibility to energy spells.
The idea is really that Talad bound his power into shapes that had intrinsic properties and magnified those properties a billion-fold to a state where they have the power they have. The idea that shapes have some power of their own is traditional lore on Earth and could be built into PS lore. Of course it doesn't have to be included but I think it would be good to have some sort of glue to hold magic together and to tie it in with herbal and alchemical lore. That is just me though.

[dying_inside]

A real wizard would carve it into their skin! With a rusty nail no less!

Apart from this, I get the idea that the Glyphs are talad made, he imbues powers into a lump of rock, and shoves a sigil on it. Fair enough. Gotta give it a power and then know what that power is. Seeing as he can do that ,your a mortal being, and its not just the sigils and symbols that supply the power in the first place. How about embeding the actual glyphs into your flesh?

*cackles insanely*