Bard

Reality is alive. The universe is not a person, not a being with perspectives and desires that mortal creatures can truly understand, but it is alive. It is aware.

And it is listening.

Normally, mortal beings and the universe find each other mutually incomprehensible, but there is one very notable exception. The Sea People, the fathomlessly ancient first civilization to arise on Nephele, managed by great effort to decipher the language of creation itself- a way of speaking to reality in a way that it would actually comprehend. Learning to successfully speak the language of reality is an extremely demanding discipline, as much as any form of effort magic. It takes many years of skilled study and intense work. Also, if you fuck it up, it will kill you.

If you succeed, then you are a bard of the oldest kind, the last of the deep magic. You can talk to the universe and ask it to intercede on your behalf. And if you are very persuasive and very, very lucky, it may agree to do so. In theory, a bard can accomplish anything if they can talk reality into going along with it. In practice, the word "if" is key there. The universe does not have your viewpoint, let alone your priorities, and is indeed a deeply alien existence compared to any mortal being. Needless to say, persuading something you don't truly understand that also doesn't understand you to act on your behalf can be... difficult.

Generally, bardic magic is easiest when your argument fits into the natural shape of the universe - persuading dry, flammable materials to burn, or plants to grow. The more of a departure from the standard laws of physics, the less likely the universe is to listen to you. It may also hear your argument and be persuaded to take action in a completely different manner from the suggestion you were making. This new course of action may involve your head exploding.

Life is like that sometimes.

Still, a fully-trained and well-spoken bard is among the most versatile of magic users known to Nephele. Or, at least, they were. The knowledge of creation's language was lost with the extinction of the Sea People, and has not been successfully rediscovered by any modern species. And though necromancy has since raised a bard of the primordial sea into undeath, Admiral Lankhet's attempts to teach others the magic of her people have been almost universally unsuccessful. For unknown reasons, a discipline that was extremely difficult to learn in the time of the Sea People has become virtually impossible to learn in the modern day, even when directly instructed by a full-fledged bard. Of the many, many subjects the King of Eyes ordered to learn bardic magic from the Admiral, the vast majority failed to ever produce even a single word, simply unable to speak the language of reality at all. As for the ones that did, all but three of them managed to learn exactly enough in the language to say the exact wrong thing, and die. Messily.

Not one of them lasted longer than ten seconds.

The three nominal successes of the project, the Ashen Sisters, did not technically master the art of bardic magic as the Sea People understood it. Instead of the spoken language of reality as practiced by the Sea People, the skill seems to have mutated in them into a written form. They can write requests to the universe which - like the ancient bards - may or may not be answered, depending on how well they can argue their case. All attempts from the Ashen Sisters to teach either their strange new bard magic or the original form in which Lankhet instructed them have failed fatally. Current theories suggest something about the fundamental nature of the universe may have altered between the Sea People's age and now, rendering the language unspeakable. As of the time of this writing, there are four bards in the whole of Nephele. It is unlikely that there will ever be any more.