There’s no truly unified theory of magic in Coris, because magic is inherently a rogue element in an otherwise stable reality, and its practices are extremely culturally specific and spiritual in nature. Basically, nobody is thinking about studying magic as a scholarly pursuit until rather late in the game, and even when they start, things are…messy. That said, I'm at privilege to illuminate some of the particulars, what with my god’s eye view as the creator of the setting. To their credit, the scholar mages of Coris’s Age of Enlightenment will figure out a fair deal of this, but they will also be very very wrong about a lot of it, and follow it to conclusions that it can’t really support, because again, magic is a rogue element in reality.
Universal Madness
The universe in which Coris sits is older than ours by a wide margin. Originally, the laws of reality worked as intended, but in its senescence, reality has developed a sort of dementia, forgotten that it is not alive, and that it cannot hear the wishes of those who live atop it. It’s all very confusing for the universe, and it’s doing the best it can to ignore the stimuli of the churning, wonderful, improbable existence of itself, but its will is just not what it used to be, frankly. Sometimes, when one of the infinitesimally small things that lives atop it speaks a command in its language (that of its creator, who left long ago), it can’t help but bend the rules a bit. It’s not intentional disobedience, mind, after all, it’s starting to forget what the rules even are.
When the universe wants to enact change, the easiest way is to open a small pocket of itself to allow access to somewhere else. These planes, as they will be called when they are discovered, are sort of like staging areas of reality, or stores of raw material which were used in its creation. They are almost all infinite, making them good sources of energy to draw from. They’re all totally inhospitable, despite the typical usage of plane in D&D vernacular. The wizards who will try to travel to these planes will all meet gruesome, agonizing ends on account of this fact. They simply don't support life, or at least, not our lives. Each plane has its own properties, lending themselves well to different tasks. Here’s a handful of them.
Stella Invictus
The victorious star, also called the Grey Light by some, or the Old Well in some older traditions. This is an important, fundamental source of magic, one that most traditions rely on. It's pretty boring, as far as they go, it's basically just a universe full of infinite energy. Wizards like this one because it lets them sling fireballs and lightning bolts, which is almost a universal fascination amongst magic users. It's a difficult source to master, for energy does not flow out of the Well gently. Interestingly, it can be harder to get just a drop of the star's power than a whole stream. This is why most apprentice wizards are taught simple light spells early on, it teaches them discipline before they get to disintegration beams, so they know how to actually stop the magic once its served its purpose.
During the industrial revolution some wizards will figure out they can use this dimension to generate infinite power, and it will almost universally go horribly wrong. A bit later down the line some people will develop a more stable means of accessing it, but the generators they need to turn it into a workable industrial power source have a tendency to blow up like Chernobyl times one billion. Working in one also gives you super cancer, which, not incidentally, being a wizard also typically does. Oops!
Division
Known to some as the Edgeless Sharp or Severance or a hundred other names for blades, Division is a plane made up entirely of cutting. The plane is a flat circle, a continuous cutting motion. This one is super easy to access because people really like to kill each other with swords, and so the universe has sort of let the borders between here and there slip since the violence seems pretty normal to it at this point. Accessing Division lets you sever without a blade, which is not always used for violence, surprisingly. It excises tumors, it cleaves spacetime to hasten travel, ends relationships. Mostly though it lets you do shit like this.
Tiamat
Also the name of a god/demon/monster in some mythologies, said to be the mother of dragons and potentially the origin of all life. The plane of Tiamat is one of reptile flesh and poison, an unending, infinite gyre of squirming, scaled tendrils. Tiamat is a font of raw material, to be sculpted as the user sees fit. Invaluable for beast mages, and for armies. In the past, the mystery cult of Tiamat was able to sponsor invasions by sending their wizard-priests alongside their armies. The flesh drawn from Tiamat was consumed by the soldiers, turning the inner circle of the cult into walking pantries. The ability to offer fresh meat of decent quality was also a powerful diplomatic tool that could be used to sway the fealty of a lord's peasantry.
Drawing power from Tiamat is seen as taboo in some parts of the world in part because of these practices. The magic represented a strategic power that the established Athic lords were unable to fully deal with, so mages who attempted to utilize the art were hunted with extreme prejudice. It became a lost art, and the consumption of the flesh was said to be linked to disease, immoral behavior, and demonic possession. Disease was indeed a risk when the summoning was done by an inexperienced user of the craft, but the greatest effect of the flesh's consumption was mutation. Granted, this happened on a slow enough time scale that it was invisible for several generations. In places where the practice managed to stick, genetic drift has led to a greater prevalence of the hornéd folk.
The Depths
An eternal ocean of darkness, thick and impenetrable as ink. The waters of the Sea of Night are drawn upon to form the black mists which make up most temporary magical constructs and illusions. This mist can also obscure, create darkness, soften footsteps, so on and so forth. This plane is also very well known for its inhabitants; there are strange and terrible things within the sunken sea, living lives unburdened by the sun. They can be drawn out too, if one is skilled enough. This is a bad idea for two reasons. One, they owe you no fealty, and two, they die just as quickly in our dimension as we would in theirs. They're very chaotic summons because of this, which can be useful if you're in a broken arrow type situation and you need to create a big, horrible distraction (emphasis on horrible) but if you are attempting to commune with the creatures as some scholar mages foolishly try, 99 times out of 100, you and your frat buddies are going to be found smeared against the wall while the thing from beyond the pale pops and hisses out of existence in a flurry of steaming organs and gouts of colorless flame.
This one is dangerous because it calls out to you. The Deep sings to mages in their sleep, whispers to them, lets its ink black tendrils slip into the subconscious mind, batting about the id like a cat would idly play with string. It's no wonder people think that the life which dwells in their waters is intelligent, with the way the Depths themselves cry out for attention. The things that live within the Deep don't tend to have an interest in us, but the Deep certainly does. More people enter this dimension than the others, certain some apotheosis awaits them, but inevitably they end up drowning, forever adrift in a pitch black sea.
Divinity
Most planes encountered have a sort of...will, to them. They're not entirely sapient or even sentient, if they live they live like jellyfish and amoebas. Some are much smarter. Division and the Depths are thought to be rather cunning. Speaking to them is mostly impossible, but their will is felt by mages who tap into their power. Some try to conceptualize of them as very large, very powerful spirits, who have a metaphysical mass greater than known terrestrial spirits, and this isn't an inappropriate comparison. Spirits, the lesser kinds, such as elementals, demons, and ghosts, are almost like planes in miniature, which exist in close proximity to our own world. They are much more comprehensible than true planes though. They can be placated and befriended, or bound and forced into servitude. Planes cannot. When you access a plane, when you truly tap into its power, you are not in the driver's seat. It steers you.
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