Just felt like putting this on paper. My highly original, donut steel™, concept for how magic works in my universe.Edit: Some other things I should've added is that there's a small, two second-ish delay between popping a mote a having the energy to do something. And that this sort of magic is limited to basic physics rules. You can't just blow a fireball out of nowhere, for instance. You still need an oxidizer and something to burn. Pretty easy to do in normal circumstances, but can be very limiting if you're in a cave for instance and only have rocks to work with.You can do stupidly powerful feats with this "system," but In general I wrote the rules to avoid as many, "why didn't they just do x," situations as possible.-The use of motes themselves limits how MUCH magic you can do.-The "popping" means it's hard to do discreetly.-The delay stops fights from ending immediately, because anyone can both see and hear you casting and have time to react.-Your magic has an effective range so you can't pull super long distance bullshit. (Usually.) And combatants themselves have to move quite a bit as there are only so many motes in one place and they meander and approach you very slowly.-Crystals are stupidly useful, but a dangerous tradeoff because they could explode in your pocket.-Important places, are always in mote-free exclusion zones, surrounded by mote-repellents. And you're scanned for crystals when you enter, by metal detector-like devices.-Any soldier worth their salt can fly, but you'll quickly run into logistics problems if you try to fly an entire army somewhere, for instance.
I'm sure I've forgotten something but I think the rules are solid enough. Definitely more than enough for the silly porn bullshit I'm using them in.Edit 2: Once a mote is popped, use it or lose it. You can hold on to the magic for maybe a minute before it dissipates.