I think he's ready for Vegas.
"I am Order itself. A consciousness generated from the porcessess of many who yearn for stability."
Order Magic is the magic and superpower that manipulates order. Sometimes, they are part of a setting's cosmology involving Order vs. Chaos, though they can appear in other settings. In settings that are more Sci-Fi than Fantasy, this might be explained by something such as a "Reversal of Entropy." Stories where a villain uses this might have them motivated by The Evils of Free Will and attempting to eradicate it. This can include the Balance Between Good and Evil when the balance is the same as order. This might not work on someone who is either Driven to Madness or has Blue-and-Orange Morality.
— Order, Overseer of the Spire of Order, Splatoon 3
These abilities can function in different ways, but they usually involve stabilizing anything, even chaos. One application of these powers can create order by achieving harmony with divergent elements. Another is manipulating structures and patterns from the physical to the metaphysical. Order is often seen as good, but some can use it for evil. When it comes to Order Magic, it can be defined largely by how the setting itself defines order:
- If the order it creates is that desired by the wielder, it could function as a form of Probability Manipulation.
- Order defined as fate could allow someone to become a Seer but could risk falling into You Can't Fight Fate, especially if they are bound to serve this order.
- Order as the natural state of things overlaps with White Magic, often granting the ability to return someone to good health, Restore their Sanity, cure any Curses on them, exorcise any demons possessing them, and, if they're already dead, make sure they rest in peace, and on a broader level can usually cancel out magic or powers that disrupt the natural order, such as Entropy and Chaos Magic, Necromancy, Reality Warping, the summoning of anything that doesn't belong in this world, whatever the work considers Black Magic, or sometimes any other form of magic in general, as well as canceling out damage to reality itself, whether in the form of a Hellgate, Dimensions Colliding or a Temporal Paradox.
- Order as just one part of a healthy balance of order and chaos may be defined as rigid and controlling and may be used for Mind Control or to strip away the chaotic side of people's minds.
- Order as the opposite of Entropy may involve some sort of ability to either pause or reverse the flow of time (either on the whole world or a single object), because entropy always increases as time goes forward.
- And, in Order's least glamorous form of simple organization, it could just arrange things neatly.
In settings where order and chaos are both parts of nature designed to be balanced, order can be defined as static and controlling and may be used for Mind Control or to strip away the chaotic side of people's minds. If magic is defined as being inherently chaotic, it could function as a form of Anti-Magic. Or, in order's least glamorous form of simple organization, it could just sort things. When order is taken to its most negative extreme, it will result in a World of Silence.
Some magic-users often use magic of this kind to clean up messes in everyday life as a Mundane Utility. A God of Order can have this as part of their power set. They can also be the Power Source for order magic as well. Servants of a God of Order are likely to be The Paladin or a White Mage, but can easily veer into Knight Templar territory when Order Is Not Good or if a Corrupt Church has corrupted the actual desires of their god.
Contrast with Entropy and Chaos Magic.
Not to be confused with The Order.
See also Both Order and Chaos are Dangerous and Light 'em Up.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- A Certain Scientific Railgun: Kaizari Uiharu is a low-level ESPer whose power is revealed late in Season 1, that any food or drink she manipulates with her power will stay warm or cold as she desires it. This means that on an extremely localized level, she can halt entropy. Academy City scientists have not seen fit to develop her power any further, since it's later revealed the system is rigged to promote students whose powers are deemed productive or useful.
- Soul Eater: The Madness of Order originates from Death and can be used by the Gods of Death to eliminate human emotions by eclipsing them with the mechanical cycle of life and death. The Madness of Order can also counteract the Madness of Fear. It's also said to jam Magic and Demon Tools.
- Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL: The series' second half focuses Order Versus Chaos while also bringing up the dangers of both extremes. But even before they reached that point, they expressed this power through the Shining Draw. Manipulating not just probability to draw the necessary card, but manipulating reality to both create a new card and recreate an existing card into something else. And the Shining Draw isn’t exclusive to the main characters, either.
- The Manga version has an Order variant of the Chaos Utopia Monsters. Replacing the C (for Chaos) with an S (for Shining).
Comic Books
- The 99: Mussawira The Organizer has the power to create order from chaos by manipulating probability.
- Doctor Fate: Both Doctor Fate and the other Lords of Order utilize Order Magic. Order Magic uses symbols, rituals, scrolls, or magic books because using magic comes at a cost. They alter reality but specifically do it in a way that doesn’t harm or permanently damage it.
- Doctor Strange: The Book of the Vishanti contains the greatest, largest, and oldest collection of order/light spells on Earth, if not the entire universe. Written by Earth’s original God of Order, her demigod son, and a Benevolent Abomination or Order who takes the form of a giant Tiger. The spells are primarily defensive, and the book is recognized as the opposite of the Darkhold. This makes sense because the author of the Darkhold is the evil God of Chaos brother of the previously mentioned God of Order.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (IDW): In issue #48, Discord, the Spirit of Chaos and Disharmony, encases himself in a cocoon and undergoes a transformation into Accord, his opposite in every way, personality-wise. Being Discord's opposite, Accord uses his reality-warping powers to bring order. Though the situation quickly turns bad, in Accord's mind, individuality is a kind of Chaos resulting in him trying to forcibly unite all ponies into one Hive Mind.
Literature
- A Certain Magical Index: Imagine Breaker is a mysterious power in Kamijou Touma's right hand that can negate anything supernatural. It's speculated that the Imagine Breaker manifests magicians' collective dreams and desires for the world to become normal.
- Dorothy Must Die: Princess Dorothy controls nearly all the magic in Oz and is a complete Control Freak who can't stand anything not being beautiful, especially in her palace. When Amy infiltrates the Emerald Castle disguised as a maid and sits down to breakfast with the other maids, she notices that all the girls' movements are so perfectly synchronized that they lift their forks, chew, swallow, and blink in unison. She finds herself falling in lockstep with the rest of them by the end of the meal.
Was it magic? I wondered. A spell to make us as orderly as possible? Did Dorothy have some kind of charm working to keep us from eating like slobs or tapping our forks? Or was the clockwork perkiness machine just the maids' way of dealing with the constant fear of living under Dorothy?
- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: Nymphadora Tonks' mother, Andromeda, is good at household cleaning spells and can magically make everything arrange itself neatly inside a trunk. She can even get the socks to fold themselves.
- The Kane Chronicles: magicians use the Divine Word, Ma'at, to cast one of the most powerful spells to bring order in times of chaos.
- Thursday Next: One of the Big Bads of the second volume, Aornis Hades, has the ability to manipulate entropy, resulting in unlikely coincidences happening, such as seven women named Irma Cohen being on a monorail, and one of them having a crossword puzzle that spells out a deadly message to our heroine.
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons & Dragons:
- 3rd Edition: Law, Chaos, Good, and Evil are supernatural forces that spellcasters can wield just like elemental magic. Lawful spells have effects like harming or repelling chaotic or non-lawful creatures, summoning Law-aligned Outsiders like modrons, and replacing dice rolls with static outcomes.
- 5th Edition: The 5th Edition sourcebook Tasha's Cauldron of Everything features the Order Domain cleric subclass, which is dedicated to gods responsible for bringing order to chaos, whether For Great Justice such as Tyr and Erathis or to foster an oppressive and tyrannical rule such as Bane and Asmodeus. An Order Cleric is able to command their ally to use their reaction to make a weapon attack against an enemy, charm nearby enemies who can also drop whatever they're currently holding at the cleric's preference, and curse an enemy that was dealt with their Divine Strike so that they take extra damage after being attacked by the cleric's ally.
- Magic: The Gathering: White and its associated color combinations often have an element of order magic to them.
- Several cards that are Mono-White are known for having Prison effects (known as "Stax" in fan parlance) that are typically symmetrical in nature, shutting down abilities or forcing players to pay some form of 'tax' in the form of mana, permanents, or other resources. For instance, Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
, makes non-creature spells cast by all players cost 1 more, while Cataclysmic Gearhulk forces each player to choose one of each permanent type among Creature, Enchantment, Artifact and Planeswalker and sacrifice the rest.
- On Ravnica, White and Blue are associated with the Azorius Senate, the primary legislative body on the plane, while White and Red are associated with the Boros Legion, who are somewhere between City Guards and a Badass Army, and are responsible for actually arresting lawbreakers. The Orzhov Syndicate is a mixture of The Mafia and a Corrupt Church, and keeps order by way of magical extortion, and is even capable of collecting debt from ghosts posthumously. The Selesnya Conclave is led by a trio of dryads collectively known as "Trostani," who have to be in accord with everything they do.
- The allied-colored 'shards' that include white are also subject to this. Naya/Caberetti (Green, White, and Red) often represents a sense of shared community among those in its colors, which mechanically means a lot of creatures are hitting the battlefield. Bant/Brokers (Green, White, Blue) are focused on law and order and community, with the former faction being made up of paladins and knights on a classical fantasy plane and the latter being a corrupt law firm that appears to be upholding order but is constantly finding loopholes in their own contracts (hallmarked by Blue, the color of intelligence). Esper/Obscura (Black, Blue, White) lack the emotion of Red and the sense of community brought by Green; Esper is portrayed as a shard made up mostly of artifact creatures who have given up their humanity, while the Obscura are portrayed as heartless wizards who have a gift of prophecy, and horde those visions of the future away for study.
- Azor, the founder of the Azorius Senate, is also the progenitor of a branch of magic known as Hieromancy, or Law Magic, which is practiced extensively by the Azorius. As you might expect, it revolves around fulfilling the letter of the law, capturing and punishing lawbreakers, aiding in court processes by identifying the guilty party, and meting out Geases. Azor ironically ends up on the receiving end of the Guildpact, the greatest example of Hieromancy in the multiverse, when its current living representative decides that his Knight Templar ways must be stopped.
- Several cards that are Mono-White are known for having Prison effects (known as "Stax" in fan parlance) that are typically symmetrical in nature, shutting down abilities or forcing players to pay some form of 'tax' in the form of mana, permanents, or other resources. For instance, Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
- Pathfinder:
- Drawing directly from Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition, Law is a supernatural force that is invoked by some magic. These spells have effects like summoning Law-aligned Outsiders and harming Chaotic creatures.
- Clerics of Law-aligned deities can receive the Law Domain, which grants access to a list of Lawful and law-themed spells and allows them to replace a d20 roll with a static result of 11.
- Warhammer 40,000: It’s this reason why the forces of Chaos refer to the Emperor of Mankind as "The Anathema". The Emperor is the Order to their Chaos. The Ruinous Powers brings chaos, insanity, mutation and promises nothing but a painful Hell to its followers. While the Emperor brings order, stability, promotes the natural human form, and has actually created a Heaven inside The Warp. Characters in-universe speculate that if the Emperor truly ascends to godhood, then he’d become a God of Order.
Video Games
- BlazBlue: When there is a threat to the world, Power of Order is manifested to counter against it, seemingly by the literal World itself as a form of protection. How exactly it manifests and how it’s used varies on both the individual and the threat.
- Jin Kisaragi and Hakumen are the most notable individuals with the Power of Order. Their Power of Order weaponizes Heroic Willpower, allowing them to directly combat the threat head-on. Even if the threat is above them in power, they can will themselves to close the gap in strength. It also gives them Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory, the ability to No-Sell Reality Warping, and negate existence erasure. They can "stabilize" their, or another individual's existence from fading out of reality.
- To Celica A. Mercury, the Power of Order manifests as a sort of White Magic. It grants her Perfect Health, decelerating aging, a once-in-a-million talent in Healing Magic, and, more importantly to the world at large, the power to negate Seither. This is important because the Black Beast is entirely made out of Seither. Meaning her very presence makes it significantly weaker.
- Interestingly the Power of Order doesn’t just manifest in individuals but even in objects. In a certain location on the planet, there’s a large collection of blue crystals that negates seither just like Celica. This becomes important as it was used as a trap to finally destroy the Black Beast.
- Dragon Age: The Templar Order is renowned and feared for their ability to negate and cancel magic, but it isn’t until Inquisition that we learn how and why they can do that. Solas clarifies that mages draw on the power from The Fade to warp reality and perform their magic. Templars, and Seekers of Truth, reinforce reality to prevent and negate it. Cassandra is noticeably surprised at the description. Cole (kind of) tells The Inquisitor that the Templars reach and connect to something old, ancient, and big. Their bodies have been changed and are now incomplete; that they need to feel complete and that the lyrium helps connect to said ancient thing. Seeing as how lyrium is actually Titan blood, and Dwarves are known to be resistant to make thanks to their connection to The Stone, it’s more than likely that Cole was referring to the Titans. Meaning that Templars are drawing a connection to the physical world itself to cancel magic.
- Dishonored: The Abbey of the Everyman has created a music box that acts as Anti-Magic for Corvo's supernatural abilities; a note Corvo finds claims that the sounds that it generates are 'mathematically pure', and thus are capable of cancelling out the Outsider's abilities, which are seen as Chaos Magic among the Abbey.
- Elden Ring: The "Golden Order" is a religion dedicated to the worship of the Erdtree and the Elden Ring itself; after the Shattering, a few different branches of it are practiced, as is indicated by a variety of schools of incantation; Golden Order Incantations focus on a combination of Turn Undead and White Magic, while Dragon Cults use lightning spells.
- In Final Fantasy XIV, Umbral energies are associated with stasis, tranquility, and order. But while such powers are thought to be associated with Darkness for much of the story, Shadowbringers reveals that this is actually Light's domain and Hydaelyn's principal ability. It's this power over order that allowed her to sunder the world into the Source and its thirteen reflections, as well as give form to the formless when the Warrior invokes the last remnants of her power to bring Emet-Selch and Hythlodaeus back to life for the finale of Endwalker.
- In Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance and Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, the Heron Laguz are powered by order and the Goddess Ashera, and use their Galdrar primarily to calm and heal others, as well as to keep Yune, the God of Chaos, from escaping her imprisonment in the Fire Emblem. Ironically, when she finally is freed at the end of Radiant Dawn's second to last act, she turns out to be kinder than her sister Ashera, as while Ashera had isolated herself at the top of a mighty tower, the songs sung to Yune to keep her asleep also meant that she never felt lonely.
- Hearthstone: The "Order in the Court" spell sorts your deck by cost so that the most expensive cards are at the top and the cheapest cards are at the bottom.
- Persona 5: Yaldabaoth, God of Control ,is the true Big Bad of the original game, believes in The Evils of Free Will, and wants humanity to live in a complacent, authoritarian state of existence.
- Splatoon 3: The DLC Side Order features the aptly named Order, a rouge program, as the villain. Its desire is to achieve complete order by the means of "grayscaling," which means removing everything it deems disorderly and making a stable world where there's no need for change.
Webcomics
- Gunnerkrigg Court: Andrew "Smitty" Smith's powers are, essentially, a manipulation of probability and coincidence that causes things to become orderly. He first demonstrates this by throwing a deck of cards over his shoulder, and having the deck land in order by both suit and value without any outside intervention. It later becomes an important part of his girlfriend George Parley's powerset, as her psychic teleportation is out of control unless she's in Smitty's proximity — early on, she actually kept randomly teleporting to his location because she had such a massive crush on him.
