39,327
edits
Ley Line: Difference between revisions
m
update links
m (Mass update links) |
m (update links) |
||
Line 11:
They are often invisible conduits of magical power that flow through the earth and air. Mages can tap into them to gain their powers. Places where multiple lines intersect at nodes attracts wizards like moths to the flame.
Often related to Rule Magic in [[Functional Magic]]. Sometimes they are a form of [[Geometric Magic]]. May function as a necessary [[Magic Prerequisite]] in some settings. A sister trope of [[Place of Power]].
{{examples|Examples }}
Line 24:
== Comic Books ==
* The [[DC Universe]] has Ley Lines as well, though they're rarely mentioned.
** They were the basis for the "Millennium Giants" story arc in the ''[[Superman]]'' comics in the 1990s. Giants (suspiciously similar to Marvel's Celestials) woke up and started walking around Earth causing chaos, until Superman restored the natural balance of the Lines by sacrificing the electric powers that he had gained previously. (The whole thing might have been just an excuse to get him back to normal.)
** Chinese heroine Gloss, of the New Guardians, calls them the Dragon Lines of Power, and draws upon them to create various seismic effects, as well as gaining incredible strength, speed, and flight.
* ''[[The Invisibles]]'' features a brief mention about how Canary Wharf was built to tap into the power of the Southern Dragon Line (which is why they put a pyramid on top of the tower).
* ''[[Hellblazer]]'', in keeping with its [[All Myths Are True|"throw it in" magic system]], features these as a prime part of someone's plan at multiple points.
Line 37:
== Literature ==
* Robert Asprin's ''[[Myth Adventures]]'' series features these as necessary for the casting of any magic whatsoever.
* Found in the ''[[Heralds of Valdemar]]'' novels, complete with [[Place of Power|Nodes]]. They're described as rivers of [[Life Energy]] that bleed off from all living things and "flow" to another plane. Further, it requires certain magical potential to attempt to tap their energy without being overwhelmed or burned out; mages who can do this are called Masters (or Adepts, if they can also handle nodes).
* The conspiracy theory in ''[[Foucault's Pendulum]]'' assumes that {{spoiler|[[The Knights Templar]]}} learned to harness the power of the ley lines.
Line 54:
* Ley lines in the [[Kate Daniels]] books are fast-moving currents of magic. It's impossible to touch them safely, as any living thing will be sheared off at the knees. However, the ley lines will drag anything along with them, so they're used as transportation. "Ley taxis" are cheap wooden platforms stacked up at every ley point, which people use to ride on.
* In [[Neil Gaiman]]'s ''[[American Gods]]'', it's revealed that in America, instead of getting a mystic urge to mark Nodes by building temples or megaliths on them, people get a mysterious urge to build tacky roadside attractions like The World's Largest Ball of Twine.
* Played straight with ''[[The Ship That Won]]''.
* These play an important role in [[Thomas Pynchon]]'s ''Mason & Dixon''--it is, after all, a [[Mind Screw]] about surveyors.
* In ''[[Good Omens]]'', Anathema is investigating the Ley Lines and finds they have been moving. They're forming a spiral around the hometown of the [[Anti Christ]].
Line 69:
* In traditional Australian Aboriginal belief systems, there are "Song Lines", which are roughly equivalent to ley lines. To simplify perhaps a little too much, they are invisible lines which cross a number of natural sites of spiritual significance, which (according to Aboriginal mythology) were formed in the Dream-time when the rainbow serpent travelled across Australia.
* When a newer religion (most notably Christianity, for its tendency to convert natives) entered an area, the place the church would end up being built was usually either on the very site of the old worship, or if they didn't convert, a secondary spot of importance was chosen, usually a mountaintop or the center of a grove of trees, or somewhere else that was considered naturally vigorous, lucky, or both.
** The Muslims do this too, if [http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/The_Temple.html this article is any judge].
* One could possibly make an argument that electric lines are built on a similar system, because there are good and bad places to ground, for the flow of electricity.
== Tabletop Games ==
* Ley lines are at the heart of ''[[Rifts]]''. In the backstory, the [[World-Wrecking Wave|Great Cataclysm]] was caused when a nuclear war took place on the [[When the Planets Align|Winter Solstice, during a planetary alignment]], feeding vast amounts of power into the ley lines. This overload set off natural disasters across the planet, causing further fatalities and pouring ''more'' energy into the ley lines, until finally the world was left in ruins. In the game's [[After the End|present day]], the ley lines are still empowered, and can be seen from space. They are such a noteworthy source of power that the average magician is known as a Ley Line Walker.
** And where two or more Ley lines converge, they create a Nexus. Nexus points are where the eponymous Rifts appear.
** It is further stated that Ley Lines also extend into open space, which is why planetary alignments can cause increased activity on terrestrial ley lines. The Great Cataclysm on Earth also caused ley lines to erupt on the Moon and Mars, and possibly other planets, as well as causing intense solar flare activity. In the Three Galaxies sub-setting, interstellar ley lines are used extensively by magic-using civilizations (e.g. [[Space Elves]]) to travel through space without the need for conventional technology (although they use a lot of [[Magitek|techno-wizardry)]].
Line 82:
** In the third edition, characters can accesses earth nodes to gain powers. Also certain magical locations give temporary abilities when used right.
* ''[[Vampire: The Requiem]]'' has them, primarily used by the Covenant called Ordo Dracul, and referred by them as "Dragon Lines".
* ''[[Mage: The Awakening]]'' has ley lines as current of supernatural energy which conduct resonance (the overriding concepts of a person place or thing; e.g. a hospital could have a strong resonance of healing or sickness), and their course is influenced by the local landscape. Nodes are where ley lines intersect, and where their resonances mix and intensify. Mages can harness nodes for free energy. Ley lines and nodes tend to influence the resonance of the areas they pass through. [[Place of Power|Hallows]] which occur within nodes tend to be heavily tainted by the resonance, which makes the [[Mana]] less suited for mages.
* ''[[Exalted]]'' has them, though they're called dragon lines because it was the reptilian race known as the [[Dinosaurs Are Dragons|Dragon Kings]] who first mapped them out. In ''Exalted'', it's not so much that their course is determined by the landscape as that the landscape is determined by their course; Essence, as the term implies, literally makes up ''everything''. Geomantic weapons such as the Thousand-Forged Dragons, which can warp, drain, or even destroy a region's dragon lines beyond repair, are thus among the most potent weapons of mass destruction in the setting.
* ''[[The Dark Eye]]'' also has leylines along with other forms of [[Functional Magic]].
Line 90:
== Video Games ==
* ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' has these: Ley nodes are shown in the elven territory, and Karazhan is highly spooky because every single ley line passes through it. The deranged aspect of magic is now trying to redirect them all to his base, where he can toss the magic "safely" into space.
* The ''[[Wild Arms]]'' series seems to alternate between having one or multiple ley lines running through Filgaia. It is mentioned directly in ''[[Wild Arms 1]]'' and ''[[Wild Arms 3]]'', with the first game [[Blind Idiot Translation|mistranslating]] it as "Ray Line" (although this was fixed in the [[Video Game Remake|remake]]).
** Ley points also appear in ''[[Wild Arms 4]]'', ''[[Wild
** In ''[[Wild Arms 2]]'', they're mentioned as part of the plan to trap an [[Eldritch Location]] inside a "Mana Prison". However, they're again mistranslated, this time as "Ralines" and "Raypoints".
* There's an exploration badge in ''[[City of Heroes]]'' that mentions Ley Lines.
Line 102:
* The Crystal Lines in ''[[Final Fantasy XI]]''. They're easy to spot, considering the [[Precursors|Zilart]] essentially encased them in cement.
** There's also the leypoint in Wajaom Woodlands. Players can complete a quest to receive a ring that teleports them to that point that involves them getting ''struck by lightning.''
** Leylines are arguably the underlying concept of Draw Points in ''[[Final Fantasy VIII]]'', which are depicted as fissures in the ground that stream with magical energy, not unlike a natural gasline.
* [[Ley Line|Ley Lines]] are somewhat important in ''[[Warhammer Fantasy]]'': For starters, the High Elves use them to keep their island home afloat, and disturbing the stones that mark them tends to have really bad consequences (a stray Goblin warlord and his shaman almost sunk the continent, which considering its status as a [[Cosmic Keystone]] would have been a Bad Thing.) The Slann also use them to communicate with each other, unfortunately for them they had to move their continent around a bit, which meant that their cities in Lustria and the Southlands are no longer aligned, which means they cannot communicate. This leads to redundancy at times, such as hitting the Cathayan fleet with two hurricanes.
* The eponymous railway of ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks|The Legend of Zelda Spirit Tracks]]'' are not only rails for the royal trains, they also act as the [[Ley Line|Ley Lines]] that channel the energy of the Spirits and keep Malladus imprissoned within the Tower of Spirits.
* The ritual known as the Holy Grail (from ''[[Fate/stay night]]'') works by using a giant mana circle to collect mana from the two foci of leylines under Fuyuki, and then using this mana to summon Heroic Spirits. In the ending of ''[[Fate/Zero]]'', {{spoiler|Kiritsugu uses explosives to damage part of the leyline so the circle will eventually be obliterated by an earthquake before the Fifth Holy Grail War can occur. [[Foregone Conclusion|Too bad the Fourth didn't end normally...]]}}
* While not explicitly used in ''[[Super Robot Wars Z]]'', but [[Significant Anagram|Asakim]] [[Original Generation|Dowin's]] [[Humongous Mecha]] Shurouga can execute its strongest attack "Ley Buster", which turns into a [[Ramming Always Works|crash attack]] generated by a circle of seemingly magical energy. The above picture is even given a [[Shout-Out]] as part of the "[[Sphere of Destruction|Spheroid of Destruction]]".
** Which is in turn a reference to [[Significant Anagram|Masaki]] [[Super Robot Wars 2|Andoh's]] "[[Genius Bonus|Akashic Buster]]" attack, named for [[Akashic Records|a similar concept]]. This trope combined with the characters' similarities are the only things keeping fans from calling the attack "[[Spell My Name with an "S"|Ray Buster]]".
* ''[[Heroes of Might and Magic]]'' 4 has those. Sacred Groves are created at the crossings of those. Conveniently, there can be always at least one such crossing in each Preserve, seeing as a grove can theoretically be built in any of such cities when it isn't forbidden by map settings. The groves boost a hero's maximum mana count permanently by 3. Additionally, Gauldoth [[Body Horror|the Half-Dead's]] campaign (the necropolis faction one) involves opening a portal to another realm, where Gauldoth's master Kalibarr is being held prisoner. That is done by destroying the Angel's Blade at a giant nexus point of the same kind of lines, which is described in words as a place where many rainbow-coloured lines meet, visible to a practitioner of Nature magic like Gauldoth. On the map, it looks like many other evil-styled Quest Gates, though.
* ''[[Dungeons of Dredmor]]'' has an ability tree in which you specialize in the usage of ley lines, who increases mana and mana regeneration
Line 114:
== Webcomics ==
* The [[Sins]] once used the term to define the spot where they built the temples to draw energy from. Rhett quips that this makes the embodiment of evil hippies.
* Ley lines, and nexuses where they cross, are mentioned early in ''[[8-Bit Theater
* In ''[[Tales of the Questor]]'', Ley Lines are discussed quite often when talking about their system of magic, known as 'lux.'
* While it hasn't influenced the plot, one annotation on ''[[Irregular Webcomic]]'' pointed out that moving vast numbers of ancient artifacts to the world's museums would turn them into immensely powerful nodes.
| |||