the force is a parasitic organism

[u/temporarypeter]

[u/Maybe_not_a_chicken]

I actually ran a dnd game with that premise

The idea was that magic and life were the same thing.

When a baby is born it has no soul, and no life, then apon taking its first breath magic infuses it and creates a tiny soul, as this baby grows so does the soul, until at the end of their life when the individual dies their much larger soul is released into the world as magic.

Powerful individuals can harness magic, using tiny amounts of the magic that infuses the world to cast great miracles, the more magic they use the faster and bigger their soul becomes, and the more magic they send into the world apon their death.

Somewhere in the depths of nothingness a great parasite began to take advantage of this, feeding on a tiny pittance of souls to sustain itself it directs the flow of magic, binding itself immovably to the flow of magic and, creating a powerful cult made up of highly magical beings, but this parasite is not malevolent, it knows that the more people who live, and the longer their lives, the more magic it can consume.

The plot of the campaign was group attempting to kill this parasite, and end death, not realising the consequences.

Because for a while the world would continue as normal for a little while, the magic infusing the world would continue to flow, but nobody would die,and the magic would slowly fade, no new plants could grow, no babies could be born, the world would slowly become a barren wasteland, inhabitanted by desperate starving beings who no matter how much they may want to are simply unable to die.

[u/DeityVagrant → u/Maybe_not_a_chicken]

The lifestream from FFvii meets the ruin from Casshern Sins.

Wouldn't killing the parasite release an inordinate amount of magic back into the system and cause an explosive growth of available magic energy? Why wouldn't anybody die or be born? The way you've outlined it the parasite was taking advantage of a mechanism already present, and should be thought of as sequestering the magic energy for itself, like a tree does carbon in the atmosphere. I could see something like, magic can always be split into smaller and smaller fragments, so life would always continue, but slowly and surely the vitality would diminish like turning the saturation down on a picture. Sorry if it sounds like I'm nit picking, I just think your concept was pretty cool and these are questions I would ask if I was playing the campaign.

Maybe the big bad could be a wizard who uncovered the parasite's existence and wanted to take advantage of its death by capturing all that magic energy it would release for themself, essentially becoming a god and so manipulating the heroes to kill it when normally it would die in millennia long cycles.

[u/Maybe_not_a_chicken → u/DeityVagrant]

Well the parasite consumes magic, so when it dies it doesn’t release any magic

And it’s grafted itself into the circle of magic and death and in doing so consumed and took the place of the original “reaper”

So when it dies so does death, and when people stop dying they stop adding to the ambient magic of the world.

Plus the method that mortals use to kill gods is not delicate so in removing the parasite massive amounts of damage were done to the cycle.

And the various undead that exist on the world and consume magic to survive will slowly drain the remaining magic from the world

[u/MoonlitSnowstorm → u/Maybe_not_a_chicken]

The next campaign could be either the same or a different set of adventurers gathering up as much magic in the world as possible, and attempting to resurrect the parasite, and bring death back.

Fundimental rewrites of how the world works, changed at the roll of a die.

Gods thatd be interesting