Let's Design a Gothic Magic System 

Oh my goodness, where did all of you lovely people come from???

"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

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.

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!

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!

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

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

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!

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?"

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!

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!

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.

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!!

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.

Hello! This is really fascinating :) I do have some questions!! - gold is really heavy - is there any physical detriment to those deeply imbued with gold? For example, pain from having one leg heavier than the other? - if surface markings indicate talent, and scars sometimes appear with gold, can a scar in the right place produce a new talent? - is the combined magical and scientific science good enough that a person could choose to attach gold to their bones, and if so, would that give them the power of an ornata? What about transplantation? - is there any culture surrounding pyrite? Scams, folk lore, etc. - is there a concept of a philosopher's stone? If so, is there any culture around led? - aqua regia can dissolve gold - is there any culture surrounding it? Do molecules with gold atoms in them carry any magical properties, or is it just pure gold? (Maybe this is for the sci fi future of your world, I'm thinking about inscribing magic on the atomic level...) - how is gold used in art and artistry? Is the gold in instruments? In the fabric of dancers clothes? In paintings, in order to convey fantastical illusions? - is gold used in dentistry still, and if not, what metal is used? Would capping your teeth with gold mean anything for you, magic wise?

This is maybe one of the best unique magic systems ive ever heard of. I like the idea of people becoming mages via grotesque invasive surgery rather than hard study or meditation. I can just imagine, the flesh being pealed back to access the golden bone, only for a Frankenstein figure to carve runes into and annoint with oils and incense

Your art is absolutely stunning! Your style of video reminds me a lot of Monster Garden’s, but both of your styles are so unique! I’m already invested in this world that you’re making, and can’t wait to see more!

nice, I can already see how this system can be really fun to play around with.

HOLY CRAP! I absolutely ADORED this concept!! You've gained a new sub! I am beyond excited for a continuation. This might be a bit of a stretch because of the bone based gold appearances, but I'd absolutely loved to see an Ornata with golden hair. After looking at some of videos and noticing your artstyle, I'm sure it would look absolutely mesmerizing. Just an idea! Good luck in your journey, I will stay here through all of it.

Usually I find magic systems based on luck/genetics unsatisfying, but this is pretty cool. My mind immediately went to gold prosthetics.

I'd be interested to know how the concept of a Philosopher's Stone would develope in this world setting. It would no longer be an alchemist's search for knowledge and riches, but a legit end all catalyst of power. That who controls the Philosopher's Stone controls the magic, so I imagine the search for it or something similar to be a violent and dark path full of blood, tears and betrayals.

What an interesting idea! What I find most interesting is how enchanting interacts with gold. 1. Does a larger gold mass result in more potent or longer lasting magic? 2. Can a single piece of gold hold more than one enchantment, if not, do people born with two separate gold patches get an innate advantage? 3. Can the gold be harvested? I imagine a huge black market centered around mining humans or maybe it’s just cheaper to have a newborn that matures for a few years to be harvested (as sick as that sounds) than it is to wait for someone to heal. 4. Is there a difference in gold quality/purity? Does it affect the power of the enchantment? Is it something that can be inherited? 5. Due to the density of gold, I assume it’d be dangerous for most gold-infused people to become sailors or even be around deep bodies of water. Again, really interesting concept, thanks for the video!

A minute into the video and this already sounds like the coolest thing I've ever heard of

I imagine royal families faking their new borns as Ornatas for improved status. Maybe using gold paint everytime they go out in public. It is a really cool concept you created, congrats!

What I think would be interesting if you do make them physically weaker. Because you know, gold is a weak metal and easily bends, you could make it so they get easier injury’s in the places they do magic with and that makes up for them having magic basically. You don’t have to do it but I think it would be a fun way to balance things out! :)

Oooh, shiny! What a novel and intriguing concept! The random chance that a person is born with golden bones would be fascinating to really wrap one's head around. I wonder how many Ornata throughout history have been born to heads of state, influential and wealthy families and such. You'd think such children would figure heavily into a life of celebrity - The Golden King, or some such, makes for a fantastically striking moniker in a world where gold is magical. If any ruler in history has an Ornata child that would be a massive deal as to how magic and Ornata would be seen by the cultures around them I imagine being an Ornata would obviously be a mixed blessing deal for the people born with gold parts. Gold weighs more than flesh - if you didn't have symmetrical patches of gold, it would cause balance issues, which could lead to chronic pain without correction or assistance. Plus there's the possibility that golden skin would make be less elastic, which could lead to tearing injuries. I imagine a person who heals from such a wound would then look like the gold just *burst* from their skin. For more casual names and nicknames, I like the idea of "Troves" being a common, vaguely derogatory term. Fast, a bit awkward, and bluntly dehumanizing. I mean, it's straight calling a person "treasure". That's just pretty horrific in its implications. Also I wonder. You could probably whip up a few ways for the function of gold in magic - I mean, there's some quality that has to make gold special, yeah? My first thought on that has to do with the fact hold doesn't corrode easily. Or at all iirc. it can also carry an electric charge, which means gold is useful for stuff like space travel and long term uninterrupted projects. Perhaps gold has a similar "stable" interaction with the arcane? Idk. Also, the talk of gold and alchemy makes me wonder about the Philosopher's Stone. Iirc you can use it to transmute objects into gold? What if it could do that in Gold And Bone?

As a casual writer, I wanted to just thank you for sharing a bit of your work and your soul like this. What an incredibly interesting system and world around it.

In the gothic fantasy / western setting I have been working on, I use the rule of "Rare and Powerful." One of the problems with most magic systems is that magic ends up feeling mundane due to how common and weak it is. It's designed to feel like a weapon to be balanced instead of what it is, magic. So in my setting magic is rare, as in one in ten million has the potential to manifest one spell in their entire life kind of rare. So like any legendary weapon in a setting, I can afford to make all the spells in my setting truly magical without concerning myself with game balance. As at the end of the day the goal is to make the magic feel like magic, a power so great and mysterious the people who use it can build or tear down kingdoms. Since a mage might only manifest the ability to cast a single spell in their life, it also allows me to use magic as a character defining feature instead of merely a tool. Which means the magic spells can be as thematic or narrative shaping as the plot needs. This is possible because unlike other game systems, health does not scale in my system. So even if a player has the most powerful magic in the game, every character is designed as a glass cannon where dodging / blocking is more vital than trying to tank damage; HP walls do not exist in the setting.

Gold being an innately magical metal is an idea I've toyed with in my own settings, but having some people just be born imbued with gold is a fantastic idea! I hope this continues to grow, I'd love to see where you go with it.

This magic system is brimming with a lot of potential, I love it! It feels grounded and way more manageable from a story-writing perspective, while also being wonderfully unique. Also your art is so good!! Really glad i got this video recommended.

Oh man that video ended quicker than I expected, I was left wanting more! Your voice is so nice to listen to and the worldbuilding is well-thought out. Looking forward to more!

Ayo you can’t just throw such wonderful artwork and cool world design and ideas that quickly with no warning! You almost killed me ahah, I’m so into this concept right now and i really appreciate your art style. New subscriber incoming ahah Keep up the amazing work :)

I love people that have a creative process of literally creating everything about their story. For me is just "write write write write write oh my god I don't know how that works" and find myself with writer's block, ready to spent another whole year looking for inspiration.

I absolutely adore this concept, it has so much room for interesting advancments. I've always thought that alchemists were a cool concept that unfortunately never really got explored farther than "haha funny potion man", so giving them an ACTUAL reason to exist and be the main scientific profession is great to see. Edit: I am now realizing that the alchemist comment might be poorly worded and need some elaboration. Of course there are a lot of media that portray alchemists well, but most of the time it feels like a mix of wizards and fantasy scientists, but this really feels like a wholly unique take on it!

This is one of the coolest pieces of world building I've ever heard.

You should make people who´s skeleton was made ENTIRELY out of gold. They would (of course) be extremely rare cases.

I have no idea why this was recommended to me, but I read so much fantasy and DM homebrew games constantly. I love seeing ideas like this. Asking all of the snowballing questions that follow about how this would affect a world is so much fun, and fun to let others explores. Subscribed, can't wait to see more of your videos.

What a lovely surprise, I too am currently working on a flintlock fantasy literary series inspired by works from Bryan McClellan and Joe Abercromby. It is such a breath of fresh air to see other creators touching on the other, less travelled avenues of fantasy genres and share their journey. I believe yourself, The Monstergarden, and Treelancer are the future of modern fantasy and I hold immeasurable hope for your success.

Someone go get Wizards of the Coast here now, this needs to be made into an official 5e D&D race asap! Amazing work beautiful Ideas, keep it up!

A few people have stated different concepts they imagine in the world. Personally I’m imagining a university or school that has the capacity to teach these ‘mages’ to their full abilities and in this school there are many unique people who have for example both hands gold or feet gold and each persons magic varies atleast a little bit. I imagine ornates who have become strong with gold protect other children as in the cruel world weak people are farmed. Also hero’s that have succeeded in becoming strong in countries. I’d love to see extremely rare cases of ornatas unlocking the ability to spread their gold creating a power system between powerful beings and people who have just unlocked it. I love the concept and love the idea of it getting explored in a story or comic book/manga. I think the side should flip aswell so you don’t have to just get lucky. Some people are just rich and stacked and powerful and ancient relics can grant power or possible make peoples bones gold. For example maybe there’s a main character who as a child always wished he was an ornata, stumbles accross an ancient relic that does something never seen before, for example his/her hair turns gold or both hands up to his forearms or both feet, so it makes a situation in which he isn’t very powerful because no one understands his abilities and he has to slowly build on them and combine them together to get strong allowing the story to slowly progress. Maybe in he has saviours as people often see his hands and try and steal him and but he has to hide the fact it was a relic that gave him his power (maybe he has to use it every night because the gold wears off) and he attends this school based upon strength where everyone’s goal is to become a hero for their country or claim an extremely strong titles. As the character develops they have to face off against stronger students or “prodigies”. And the students of this school are also often drafted for missions as payment for attending.

this would make a incredibly compelling dnd setting/system when your further along, plus having a book with diagrams and such using the art youve done here would be amazing

As soon as you mentioned that the gold grows on the skeleton naturally, I instantly started thinking about if this is purely a human discovery/ connection, or if it applies to other vertebrates as well? Since you mentioned people have had many debates and different points of view on what this is meant to be, how is meant to be used and potentially enchanted, I started thinking of potentially "enchanted" or "holy" animals. Does this affect animals as well? Can animals also become/ be considered an "Ornata"? Amazing project, defiintely worth following. Can´t wait to see more of your already wonderful work :D

That is a really lovely and unique magic system. Love it!

this sound so cool also i fell in love with the character at 4:50 pls keep this going

You’re definitely gonna blow up. Really interesting concepts and designs

Loving the recent surge in worldbuilding and concept art channels! Subscribed instantly!

I must say - this concept is basically awesome and worth entire setting built around it. Also i feel MonsterGarden vibes, and that's entire another type of great.

2:28 THANK YOU. Someone actually THOUGHT about their currency and understands it’s fundamentals

This is now by far my favorite magic system in any fantasy world.

This is the coolest world building I've seen in awhile. You kept it simple but the twist allows for whole new classes of interactions. My only criticism is gold is boring but it meshes so well with alchemy you had to use it. 9/10

In my DnD games gold is the physical form of magic, which is why you need to use gold when enchanting. I realize it's very homebrew-y, but I like it. Kinda neat how this idea is similar.

I have a thing for magic systems that have a biological, down to earth element. It makes everything that much more immersive

I absolutely adore this as a magic system, it instantly starts to ask a lot of really interesting questions in my head. Like 'Can people artifically infuse themselves with gold?' 'Are there other materials that could have other effects when grown on bone?' 'How are Ornata treated differently from others?' LOVE IT

You definitely need a team of writes to flesh this out. I think the addition of this idea into the storytelling realm where people could sit down and play it as characters would be FASCINATING. You wouldn't even need to sell physical copies if you didn't want to, there are places like DriveThru RPG where e-copies of the game could be distributed.

this is so freaking awesome. i used to come up with ideas like this all the time, with hopes to flesh out more intricate concepts and ideas and lore behind them, and it’s so cool to see someone actually doing it. i never really wrote them down or drew anything, but this has totally inspired me.

Man, "Ornata" is such a good name for this. Like. Wow that had my jaw dropping. It just works. I've actually got a *slightly* similar system based around gold that I call The Coin, and it was really neat seeing the different ways you took the concept of gold.

Those are such fun concepts to think about! I'm already excited to see more of your worldbuilding! Also I can't believe you have so few subscribers, a chanel with this quality of presentation and art really deserve more attention

My fiance just showed me this and oh my god??? This such a fantastic magic system that I can't wait to see more of! Not to mention your amazing artistic skills, the anatomy work alone is breathtaking! And the way you render the gold??? Stunning, you can really tell how important it is just through the art. So excited to see more!

I love magic systems like this, where magic quite literally changes the people who use it. They're easily identified, for all the good & ill it earns them. Monstergarden has a similar concept, but instead of having a specific material that can retain mana, itsuse warps the people that use it, both because of how magic interacts with the body and the mage committing to rather extreme surgeries to implement apparatuses to ease the process of expending & receiving mana. I think where this system shines over that one though is in its capacity for copycats. Monstergarden's system means there's precious few who could properly fake looking like someone who can express magic, but this isn't the case with your system. Indeed, with just a touch of gold & some adhesive, someone could quite easily pretend to be a lot more dangerous than they actually are, feigning their status as Ornata for fame & fear

This is super cool! the idea of golden bones reminds me of Catacomb saints. where sometimes the bodies and bones of Christian saints where exhumed and covered in gold and ornamentation. A lot of them are very evocative and eye catching in both a majestic and macabre way.

I absolutely adore the concept! Mind if I chime in a few ideas of my own? In a world where gold was this precious, no one would wear it of use it for currency, but they'd use the next best thing! I'm guessing most jewels would be make of a bronze or brass alloy with a color that's really similar to gold, giving the noblefolk the chance to smuggle one or two actually enchanted, golden ornaments (a ring or an earring) hidden among the rest of the jewels, but ready to be used for defensice or offensive purposes. Since you've chosen gold for this project, you better be aware that's one of the more biocompatible metals out there. People would ABSOLUTELY graft gold onto their bodies for the chance to become artificial Ornata. For example, missing eyes could be replaced with golden eyes, enchanted to replace part of the vision, missing fingers or hands could be replaced with golden counterparts for additional funcionality and so on. Bear in mind that nowadays we use actual golden threads for plastic surgery, and these people would do too. Maybe a few, desperate enough would ingest enchanted golden beads for a temporary power boost, knowing the fact that's possible they'll loost said bead soon. Or maybe they can't, or it's lethal because of the process the alchemist use to enchant gold, and actually achieving synthetic Ornata is a myth some countris are actually trying to develop to win wars. I don't think I've got more kdea for this at the moment. It'd be cool if the process to enchant Ornata was like the process to make a witcher in The Witcher, and I think the Ornata should be written with two ts, Ornatta. Good luck!

A fantastic idea with beautiful execution, thank you for sharing this with us.

Gosh! All i crave is an hour long video of your narrating, concepts and drawing. Amazing content.

This is brilliant and feels so unique. I find magic systems which rely on some unseen "energy" to be a little drab, but I love the idea that one particular element is the means to magic. Then creating this ontological mystery with the origins of the ornata makes for a fascinating lore, and invites characters from all backgrounds to speculate on these peculiar humans. I love to see creative minds conjuring something truly novel and special. I will be looking forward to future videos, you've earned my sub!

The whole idea of ornata being seen as godly is kind of funny because in Greek mythology, the color of the gods is gold. I also love your art style It’s very inspiring :]

Bro called dibs on the coolest magic system ever devised

The enchanted skeletons bit kind of reminds me of cybernetic implants you might find in a scifi setting, but magical. Really neat idea.

This is blowing up really well for you Congratulations I saw this video earlier today and you were around 400 subs and now you're at 800 That's impressive

This is genuinely one of the most creative concepts I've heard in a while, which can lead to such great world building and storytelling. My mind has been firing away with ideas of what you can do with it. You have done a fantastic job and I can't wait to see how you expand on this concept and world.

I think that a cool addition could be people with gold prosthetics to be able to also cast magic.. Or does it have to be an "organic gold" wich appears on you on its own when you're born?

This concept is so cool, i love the tie between a material like gold and an "essence" like magic. And the fact that its intrinsic to some of the people, meaning in their actual bones, is honestly such a poetic idea. I am always biased towards gothic themes, but other than that, its also the way that you talked about how you wanted to use the concept that really made this video and the basics of the story itself interesting.

This is an awesome system I'm super interested to see the golden bones get explored further, like how gold is far denser than calcium and much more malleable (unless the magic is doing a lot of the heavy lifting), so ornata with an affected femur might need a cane or crutch to walk

I'm really happy to see that kind of worldbuilding video getting more and more popular. And this magic system idea have a lot of potential, curious to see where it will go !

I love that the name „Gold & Bone“ sounds almost like „goldend bone“ And I just recently saw a picture of a skull with bone cancer and it disturbed me deeply, and I think u captured that energy well and also made it something cool.

The first thing I thought when I saw the illustrations was "Man, their lives must be hard", because depending on how much bone the gold takes over, their bodies must be in incredible pain. If it is just a coating or gilded, then yeah, they would be incredibly lucky, maybe somehow they synthesize gold from a mutation or something on the surface of the bone, and with trauma it expands outwards, kinda like a golden version of platelets. But if it slowly takes over the bone mass, or entirely substitutes it... I imagine their case would be similar to someone with osteoporosis? as gold is incredibly heavy and soft, and I guess it would still have those properties even in a "mineral/salt" -like composition like calcium bones does (as even though our bones are made of calcium, a metal, they are constructed/behave closer to what mineral/salt is, if I remember ir right). Of course it can be said that due to the whatever magical energy that composes the world, it interacts with the gold and do away with the downsides of having it. But this also creates an interesting oportunity, of havin situations in which there is no such energy and the gold becomes "inert", creating this incredibly dangerous situation by just existing. Another interesting situation that could potentially arise from it is more of a "social" one. Maybe gold is still heavier than the calcium bones even with magic, this will lead people to walk differently, have unique muscle mass distribution, a different preference for temperatures in certain body parts (like if they have golden bones in their hands, they are more prone to having pains due to cold, of course naturally magic could help with that, but considering that it already uses a certain ammoung of energy to compensate the standard downsides, this extra one increases this consuption to counter this new offset that isn't a frequent, differently from someone who was raised in cold climates, instead will have constantly sweaty hands in warm enviroments)

This channel is criminally underrated, and I am saying this with every ounce of sincerity in my being!

Wow! So, this is obviously pretty subjective, but I’ve always felt that a strong indicator for a compelling fantasy world is that it immediately sparks other people’s imaginations... and ohhh man, this has got my brain lightning up like a Christmas tree!! Just for example-and maybe this fits the themes or rules that you had in mind, and maybe it doesn’t-the very first thing that instantly popped into my mind is a villainous character who has multiple gold teeth: someone who’s visibly been augmenting themselves with ornata-like abilities by deliberately replacing some of their own (presumably healthy!) teeth with enchanted gold. This one is such an obvious idea that it almost feels like low-hanging fruit, but I think that’s part of what makes it believable; in this world, it almost sounds _likely._ If anything, I think the fun narrative conceit here would be that there’s only one person out there doing this! In our real world, I believe that we were already using gold for dental prosthesis at around this technology level, but I can only imagine that it was VERY painful. One would have to be exceptionally twisted and power-hungry and driven to voluntarily invite such a procedure upon themselves. We’re getting a lot of storytelling juice from this packed in for free: some gut sense of perversion or exploitation of “the natural order,” the injustice of seeing unvirtuous or unmeritous people gain power that they haven’t earned and don’t deserve, especially if they’re using it to make the world a worse place for others, etc. (I hate to dissect how we leverage these primal discomforts in fiction toooo much, because a lot of them can eventually descend into extremely unsavoury reactionary politics if you dig too deep. Hahaha.) Note that this character idea can easily be scaled to be more or less dark, depending on the desired tone of the story you’re telling, by simply addressing how they’ve been acquiring this gold, or where they’ve been getting this gold from… or who. Anyway! I reeeally really like how this magic/world concept includes a virtually automatic built-in aesthetic that nearly forces us to conjure up striking imagery in our own minds, and how how it inherently introduces some light body horror and some extremely unethical body commodification to go along with it. I feel like it’s just absolutely begging to have stories told around it.

I love the concept of the gold seeping out into the skin as a form of marking. As a chemist, one thing this made me think of was colloidal gold, essentially a suspension of nano-fine gold particles. Colloidal gold looks very different to the traditional shiny stuff, and has a wine-red to bluish purple tint depending on the size of the particles. Colloidal silver has been promoted as a cure-all by various "alternative medicine" groups but results in a condition called argyria, which turns the skin blue. I don't know how it could be worked in, possibly as an early childhood marker of being an Ornata being a red or purple birthmark before the gold has had sufficient chance to migrate outwards. I'm not the best at worldbuilding myself but I hope you see this and it gives you a fun thing to think about (if you haven't considered this already!)

The way we use gold in our electronics to do things otherwise impossible is very fitting

Always love the nonhereditary magic systems. Feels better. I think this project......has good bones. ;oD

Interesting, and I kinda want to see it done with other materials. I wonder how practical having gold as bones would be in certain parts. Gold is really dense and heavy, so some parts of the body would be weighed down a lot, or perhaps the gold is as dense as bone, rendering it actually very fragile, more so then bone. Bone marrow producing blood or storing fat would also be voided due to gold, but otherwise ignoring practical realities (it is magic), it’d be interesting. I also wonder if there was ever a King Midas here, he’d probably be the most powerful guy around.

i love this, all of this, as someone who loves world-building and writing this is amazing it brings me intense joy

I have been scouring RU-vid for inventive magic systems and watched countless videos for ideas, but yours is the best i have seen. So simple am idea, and yet can immediately lead to conflict and a path to resolution. Very cool.

My goodness, this magic system is so well thought out! I can't wait to learn more about this world and it's cultures.

Wow writFinch! A so simple, unique and grant idea! Love your art and the quality of your video. It's golden :) (The worldbuilding youtube community is great. FourCrows, Itvoadan, Worldbuilding Notes) Where my mind goes: -the golden boar. A boar (just like in the legends) out of gold. -the nature of enchantment. Other ways to unlock the power behind the gold. -> a falling star -> gems that posses enchants. (Unlocking true magic in opposition to artificial/artificer magic) False Gold dissease. People born with Pyrit in their bones. Hunted without magical ability. Midas touch. A magical creature that dies when touched but turns part of your skeleton to gold. Like a fairy. The golden city: a hidden place for gold born people to not get hunted or pressured to become magicians. -Golden Bullets. :) have a lovely day!

In our world Gold is crucial because it's such a good conductor of electricity, in this world it's valuable as a conductor of magic. It'll be interesting to see how gold-borne magic influences this society the way electricity did ours in the 19th century.

Over a year ago I made a Point and Click adventure game about an Apprentice who accidentally turns his Master into a worm. There was plans to do a spin-off game about an Alchemist and the games would be set in the same universe. So we imbued all of the arcane objects with gold, and we were going to have gold be a conduit for magic as well! Very cool!

I have an extreme soft spot for character designs with patches of precious materials so this is right up my alley! Excited to see more!

This is very intresting i haven't seen a magic system like that yet and i just can imagine myself laying in bed thinking about all the possible ways to use this powers system. Oh and I loved the vid! hope to see more!

I've never once delved into this stuff but man you really know how to captivate somebody. It's beyond interesting and seems really fun!

Fascinating idea! And lovely art as well. One twist that seems to be overlooked, I think it's less likely that Ornata would be killed to be harvested, so much as harvested while alive, so their bodies can continue to heal with more gold. Could make for some very grim characters.

So happy for you! Looks like this video is blowing up! And I'm not surprised, this is a really unique concept that I could see getting a lot of attention!

I adore this! I've always found myself more interested in magic systems than any of the fantasy folks around me, so finding a video that actually fully focus on one (and with such lovely art) really made my day.

This was such a nice introduction to the magic system in your world! I really love the concept of gold being an innate thing that people in this are born with at least to some degree, it feels unique; because we don't really think of gold in such a way usually. All these world-building projects I've been seeing just make me wanna do my own, especially in terms of magic systems and how they can be explored. Keep up the good work! It was really nice to watch :D

Wow the most random recommendation but as soon as I clicked on the video I couldn't click off. Really cool art, concepts, and presentation.

I love the language you use when storytelling, as well as the beautiful, precise art.