That is, there will be no explicit skill -- labeled in block letters and painted in flashing neon -- called magic. Instead, there will be ritual.
Ritual
Ritual is a collective term for the practices associated with a hearthling's spiritual life. By spiritual, in this context, we do not necessarily intend to make a metaphysical statement on the existence of ephemeral personal beings dwelling inside the mortal husks of hearthlings, but instead we use the term in a more general sense, as in "pertaining to the soul" or even as in "psychology". For example:
Greeting a Friend
Once a day, you can warmly greet a friend. This gives you one atom of wyrd.
Night's Blessing
(Night is remade into a very soft kind of darkpurple/midnightblue hue, instead of the pitch. Pitch is remade into darkness, which can still be more or less pitch, but with the hue shift, and, with at least vastly extended sight range, especially with a lightsource (torch, etc.). Caves might be slightly greenish or something. Whatever.)
Night's Blessing can be performed at around 8-9-10-11 p.m., ingame time. It can be performed once per night, and provides 15 atoms of wyrd.
Hymn of The Morning
Every morning you can sing a hymn for a few minutes time. While active, everything you do gives you some small amount of wyrd.
Knock on A door
You can knock on a door, eight times per day. A soft (pleasant sounding) knock is heard inside the cabin. A small graphical effect (reuse opportunity knocks effect) Every time you perform the knock you get one/two times the number of hours since you last knocked atoms of wyrd.
Ponder
You can read a book and ponder it. Doing so provides wyrd.
Lighting of The Pipe
You can smoke a pipe, and gain wyrd.
Welcoming A Guest
Once a day, you can welcome a guest into your house. The ritual gives you wyrd in relation to your charisma factored by your guest's, for example.
Afternoon Tea
Tea, biscuits and sandwiches give wyrd if eaten when the Afternoon Tea ritual is active.
Wish Upon A Star
If you see a shooting star, displayed in the horizon view, you can wish upon it, and get wyrd.
Stare Into The Abyss
In a very dark place, your hearthling can stare into the abyss, and gain wyrd.
Funeral Pyre
A dead hearthling can be given a funeral pyre to ensure his safe delivery to the ancestors. Doing thus saves him an extra five percent stats on reincarnation, or somesuch. (Note to self: Would actually like to make it so that the dead hearthling's wyrd is transferred to the participating hearthlings, but I think human sacrifice could deserve a ritual of it's own).
Timber Song
The timber song expends wyrd while in use. While in use, you can carry logs effortlessly, fell trees, make boards and logs in no time.
Marching
When you march, your minimap is changed to a local map. You move at insane speed, and cannot drown while swimming. Marching expends wyrd. Hopefully, it will be so useful as to serve as a replacement for present travel. I'm talking really, really fast movement. Maybe even an extended sight range sized down for a zoom out effect, if possible. Can obviously not be activated while in combat and similar caveats.
The present "learning skills" are renamed to Lores, and are bought using wyrd.
The types of rituals you can perform will be determined by your personal beliefs. A new personal belief dimension Solitude -- Fellowship, determines the amount of social rituals you will have at your disposal. A solitary hearthling will get more rituals emphasizing this aspect of life, while a hearthling in the fellowship will get more greeting a friend/afternoon tea type rituals.
For example: While you may not want the stamina changes that night PB gives you, there might be a cool ritual in the night spectrum of the PB slider that you do want, so that it doesn't become a no-brainer not to pick these beliefs.
Some rituals will be very specific, such as Walpurgisnacht, the Mid-Winter Solstice, or Yule.
The static boosts from nature/industry also introduces a change where crafting in the negatives of your nature/industry spectra will start costing wyrd. Putting down a building will require some amount of wyrd. The rituals aim to be discrete, small things that you only have to do every know and then. So a starved hearthling might run around knocking on doors, in effect grinding in a very Tove Jansson-kind of way for a while. Like mymmlor or hattifnatts or so.
Little prayers by riverbends and shit. The warmth of the fire.
The amount of rituals you can perform/costs for rituals is somehow balanced by intelligence and psyche.
You feeling the groove, kids?
