The following is an excerpt from a recent edition of an introductory magic text for tourists by Esbiav Oiawrn of Bewrbe, and serves as an introduction to magic in the Codoj empire.
"We in the Codoj are from a life-force quantum zone (Q-zone), where all living things naturally radiate magic. When a cell in our Q-zone dies, what is left over is a small bit of mana which disperses much like a gas, and then slowly returns to the Void from whence it came. Since everything in the zone is made of cells, everything radiates mana. However, the cells that make up inanimate matter are mostly dormant and don't die nearly as often as the cells found in living things. The net effect is that inanimate matter doesn't produce enough mana to do anything useful with. Luckily, since the cells in living things die quite often, living things give off enough mana to perform useful tasks. More to the point, the larger an organism is, the more mana it generates.
In order to use mana to create a magical effect it must first be converted to essence by a living being. Converting mana to essence is a biological process, one that apparently can be performed by every living thing. Learning the trick of it if your species cannot perform it instinctively is quite difficult, but once mastered the conversion can be performed at will. Collecting mana is easy: simply standing in the presence of an organism or organisms that are generating mana is enough. You can even use mana that your own body has produced, although that's usually not enough to do very much.
Essence can be converted to light (actually just another form of essence), and some of the simplest spells do this: causing one's eyes to glow in order to frighten a friend (or enemy), or causing one's fist to glow like a torch to light the way. Some slightly more difficult spells manipulate light, creating mirror and lens like effects. The mirrors and lenses created in this manner have no substance, and are better compared to fields which bend or reflect light. Magnifying glasses, telescopes, microscopes, binoculars, and many more applications are widespread in the Codoj. A much trickier type of spell can manipulate cells, the fundamental building blocks of everything in the Dominions' zone. These spells are usually applied to the caster's own body, because extending the effects to other things is even more difficult. These types of spells can speed healing, sharpen senses or reflexes, remove poisons from the blood or tissues, and any number of other subtle or potent enhancements.
In the Codoj, the use of magic is seen as a skill like any other, and better than two thirds of the population has mastered the basics, but really skilled magic users are rare. Those few able to manipulate cells other than their own for the purposes of healing or enhancement are given the utmost respect. Abusers of this ability are shunned."
The complete introductory magic text by Esbiav Oiawrn of Bewrbe can be obtained at any Codoj embassy.
As a magic user in the Codoj home zone grows in skill, he/she/it learns a series of skills. These skills, from easiest to hardest, are:
The ability to change local light levels is the level that an average child might get to on its own in the Codoj. The ability to change external light direction is usually only attained by people who study magic intensively. Ashrylosab, those who can change external cells, are gifted individuals, and there may be as few as a dozen of them in the Codoj at any one time. Many Ashrylosab become healers, working with a few assistants who have learned to sense injuries.
Light sails are the main method of propulsion for ship-states (smaller craft often use other forms of propulsion). They have been used for centuries in the Codoj, and have evolved into multi-purpose devices. Their primary function is, of course, to catch light. The actual sail is made of a mesh of living plant material, quite similar to the stuff used to make space suits, capable of photosynthesizing to maintain itself and repair small rips. The sail is augmented by what is, effectively, giant lenses which focuses even more light on the sail. These lenses are created and maintained with magic, powered by the vast biomass of the ship-state. These lenses help to keep the size of the actual sail manageable, and to allow the sail to propel its ship-state against the solar wind more efficiently. Originally, lenses of this size could only be maintained for a short time by large groups of skilled magic users working together. Now they are maintained by pirorpeh trees, a species that has had its natural ability to focus light on its own leaves amplified by the genetic tinkering of ancient Ashrylosabs. Pirorpeh trees are enormous things, growing over 100m tall, and often do double duty as structural supports, and as the home of an ecology of tree-living organisms.
In addition to providing propulsion, the light sail also acts as a light sensor. This is a recent development, made possible by the development of optical computers after Omnet waverunners first arrived in the Codoj zone. The sail and its lenses can be thought of as the surface of a giant telescope, and with sufficient processing images of distant objects can be extracted from the light falling on its surface. This system has led to a renaissance of inter-ship-state communications, since they can now perceive signals at a much greater distance. The science of astronomy has also been improved (although that had already reached a fairly advanced state).
Finally, the light sail also acts to catch any matter it passes through. This is not to say that it could impede a human-sized animal, such a being would rip right through the sail with no difficulty (except for the wrath of those tasked with repairing the resulting tear). But the sail absorbs any particles of matter that come into contact with it. Some of this is used to maintain the sail itself, and any excess is gathered into a node which can be harvested. This ability helps to reduce the amount of matter lost from the ship-state through leakage.
It has already been mentioned that computers in the Codoj are optical (and hence magical, since light in the Codoj is a form of essence). Their 'circuits' are actually streams of light, bouncing about through various lenses, mirrors, and prisms maintained by magic. They are still bulky, too big and delicate to move, but have attained resonable computational speed. They are also, incidentally, beautiful to look at. A few computer specialists have even taken it upon themselves to design computers that are as much works of art, sculptures in light, as they are functional devices. Even the ones that weren't designed with aesthetics in mind at all, like the large versions used to calibrate the device at the center of a ship-state which allows it to cross a quantum wall, are mesmerizing, with beams of light constantly changing color and moving in complex patterns.
Magic is also used to pipe light from the outer regions of the ship-states into their interiors. Those pirorpeh trees that aren't tasked to focus light on the sails are used to focus light into giant 'light-pipes', basically just empty passages leading deep into the ship-state. This system makes large-scale agriculture possible in the deep interior of the largest ship-states, which would otherwise be dark and dead at their cores. The light focused into these passages is, like the light focused onto the sails, bright, but not harmful.
Many Codoj organisms have natural magical abilities. Pirorpeh trees and olrawan are good examples. These abilities don't give sentients who have them any advantage when learning magic, the abilities are instinctual and quite specialized. A species which can, for example, naturally change external light direction, still won't be able to use the abilities that normally must be learned before a magic user can do that, and must learn them in the normal sequence.