Let's Design a Gothic Magic System

Oh my goodness, where did all of you lovely people come from??? <3 Thank you so much for all of your kind words and support! The art community on Youtube is honestly so amazing, and I hope to do more fun things with you all! x

"Ornata" being both a latin-sounding version of the word "ornate" while also breaking down into "or-nata" or "gold-born" is an INSANELY good trick of writing

As someone who regularly consumes 40min+ content, the fact that you conveyed such a cool, unique, developed, intricate, mesmerizing, and truly profound magic system with world implications social structures and other fertile soil for expansion and consistent tone and history in... UNDER 10 MINUTES?? Masterful. Enjoy your subscriber bump. You deserve it

Now THIS is a worldbuilding project. I absolutely love how you made an effort to make the logic internally consistent - "why was the true nature of ornata discovered late? beacause they bury their dead!" "people made of gold will be killed for the gold itself, so they have to hide!" "if gold itself is enchantable, golden people are enchented with the same method!" I absolutely love this huge wave of worlbuilding YTers that have hit the scene since Monstergarden. A whole new community is forming!

I absolutely dig this concept! I'm imagining an Ornata with a gold skull and spine being obsessed with becoming "perfect", and so starting a cult and recruiting Alchemists, surgeons, and back alley thugs to "collect" and disassemble the additional parts he needs to have a completely golden skeleton, slowly ship of theseusing themself into a living frankenstine's monster.

This channel is so underrated, the magic system sounds incredibly unique and the concept of people being able to get enchanted like objects would be very interesting to explore even further. Would love to see more videos on the magic system for sure

I love how artists seemingly ruin their great drawings when they start adding details and then it turns out amazing

The societies and cultures are fascinating to think of. One could see the Ornata rule as Priest-Kings, and another could harvest them like rare mushrooms, creating a society where everyone is on the lookout for hidden Ornatas to harvest. Another could have them as cloistered national treasures, pampered yet restricted in freedom. It's a fascinating concept. Subscribed!

Imagine someone with a ribcage made out gold but just around their heart. They have a heart of gold, and find that after being enchanted they can do no wrong. They go insane by their lack of free will and kill themselves, unknowingly feeding starving wolf pups with their corpse in the process

This is truly amazing. The human body already has some trace amounts of gold in it (0.2 mg, I think), so it would be cool to see some of the more sinister alchemists roaming battlefields with some magical device to suck the gold out of corpses.

This was beyond fascinating, having such a wild power system be deeply explained alongside beautiful illustrations felt magical. It feels like im reading a fictional book without actually reading it; definitely gonna have to keep coming back cause this is truly amazing!

Perschlaps someone with a (partially) golden spine could be capable of inducing fear, as compared to them, everyone might as well be spineless. Very creative and concise concept, thank you for sharing it with us!

Golden Fibrodysplasia sounds truly horrifying, like something out of Dark Souls universe, with it being inspired by Gothic aesthetic as well. This is good stuff!

I would like to formally thank the algorhitm for showing me this. Your art is excellent, and this magic system sounds intriguing! Can't wait to hear more!

This is such a unique and interesting idea for a magic system, holy canoli. When you were discribing some people harvisting gold from the bodies of the dead, I imagined a scene that eould be so cool for worldbuilding: A person enters a small pawn shop in order to sell goods from a pouch they have. They look around to make sure no one is watching, before spilling the contesnts of the pouch onto the counter, glimmering with a golden light. The shopkeeper's eyes widen as they begin ro examine the gold, noticing it to be pure. They examine every rough cut in great detail before picking up one and realizing what the seller has just done. A lone golden finger bone sits among the ahattered pieces, sanded down as to look less bone-like. The shopkeep eyes the seller, who stares back at them with an understanding grim disgust. The shopkeep rhinks for a moment about reporting them, but the reward is far less than what the gold could give. The shopkeep slides the bone beneath the pile of gold before responding, "How much do you want for it?"

This probably doesn't mean much to you, but I have an extremely high standard for world building and story telling. I do not like the cliche or laziness, I loathe things that are unimaginative. But this is genuinely one of the very few things I actually enjoy to a great degree. How well thought out it is, how inspired it is, it's genuinely fantastic. I've met very few people who can come up with unique world building. I'm in absolute awe.

Just had a little idea for this magic system : Sulfur, Sulfur is the only element that can damage gold. With this property, it could be interesting to give it an anti-magic capability (even to the possibility of being a neutralizing element for the gold touched people) or an element that can "reset" an enchantment

As someone who reads primarily fantasy, i already adore the concept you have put out here. Already my mind is going wild with all the possibilities for stories and character arcs. Can't wait to see this develop!! Your art style is just breathtaking in its somehow efficient simplicity!! Definitely going to be following your work closely.

The illustrations are gorgeous!!! I also love because of how gold is needed for the magic to flow, its also mimicking how gold is used in computer wiring. So the idea of using gold as basically magic circuitry opens up the avenus to also have people use it in ingenious ways to emulate tech we might have today!!

If this is part of a series, I'm gonna binge it. This gets my imagination up and running in such a fun way.