Mana Stability and Spell Memory

What Stability Means

Stable mana keeps the shape imposed upon it. A Psychic can enchant a weapon and maintain the effect by reserving a spell slot. Low-level red mana disperses or changes too easily for the same technique; a Cerberan sorcerer normally needs gold to stabilize a lasting enchantment.

Stability does not make a spell permanent or immune to interruption. It changes how well the effect survives after casting and, for blue mana, raises the damage threshold that interrupts the spell. Individual spells state their duration, concentration, and slot reservation. High-level red sorcery can achieve greater stability through mastery.

Gold controls and stores human mana. It binds potions, supports permanent enchantments, and lets red magic remain in objects rather than bleeding away. The crafting procedure belongs to Enchanting Magic Items; its economic consequences belong to Gold, Mana, and the Price of Power.

Gold has no effect on blue mana. It cannot stabilize a Psychic spell, replace a reserved slot, make a Psychic enchantment independent of its creator, or turn a Psychic summon permanent. Blue mana lasts through its own stability and through the Psychic who continues to maintain it.

Red Spell Memory

Magic leaves traces. Red mana particles absorb fragments of the places they cross: images, sounds, and emotions. A spell leaves a denser trace than ordinary presence. Divination can gather and read these particles when its formula provides a way to do so.

Spell memory is not the memory of the creature who shed the mana. A rich trace may preserve an illusion in great detail; a weak one may offer only a face, a cry, or the fear that filled the room.

Blue Spell Memory

Blue mana leaves a narrower and cleaner record. It preserves the shape of the Psychic act—what kind of power was used, where it was directed, and the intention carried through it—while retaining little unrelated sound or scenery. This makes a blue trace precise, but not a complete recording of the surrounding scene.

Reading and Hiding an Aura

Detect Magic reveals whether magic is active, whether its mana is red or blue, and which school shaped it. At greater mastery it can expose the spell, signature, order, age, and approximate caster level of effects it recognizes.

Magic Aura can hide these properties or replace them with a false aura. Detecting a color therefore reveals the nature of the trace, not an infallible history of everything that created it.