The third of the branches, Motion essentia grants control over kinetic energy.
Capabilities
Motion drucraft allows its wielder to convert essentia into kinetic energy, and back again. To a tyro, this seems to happen out of nowhere; only a drucrafter can sense that the energy is being converted, rather than being created or destroyed.
Motion drucraft can be conducted on a macro-scale or on a micro-scale. Macro-scale Motion drucraft focuses on moving or stopping larger objects (‘larger’ in this sense meaning anything that can be seen by the human eye), while micro-scale Motion drucraft instead works to speed up or slow down the rate of motion of microscopic particles within an area, causing a change in temperature. Although both come down to altering kinetic energy, they behave rather differently in practice. Macro-scale Motion drucraft is sometimes referred to as telekinesis or attraction/repulsion, while the micro-scale equivalent has been called pyromancy/pyrokinesis or cryomancy/cryokinesis.
The kinetic energy created by a Motion sigl can be channelled outward into an object, or inwards into the wielder’s body. The latter is far more hazardous, and as such inward-directed Motion sigls are less popular.
Since absolutely every kind of human activity involves some kind of movement, Motion essentia is commonly considered the most broadly useful of all the branches.
Strengths and Weaknesses
The main advantage of Motion essentia is, as mentioned, how omnipresent it is. There aren’t many activities that don’t involve moving around, so Motion specialists rarely have difficulty finding applications for their branch. It’s obviously highly applicable to travel, and is generally considered the most directly useful branch for combat – human beings have been using kinetic energy as a weapon since before recorded history, or for that matter the invention of language. The amount of energy that can be produced with Motion sigls is fairly large compared to the other branches, allowing even relatively weak Motion sigls to be effective in a fight.
The main drawback to Motion drucraft is its range. Just as with all other branches, Motion effects are produced at the sigl itself. This isn’t so much of a problem with Light effects (since the radiation, once created, can be beamed straight outwards) and it’s generally not a huge drawback for Matter ones either (since if you’re crafting or repairing something you’re probably holding it in your hands anyway). However, if you’re dumping large amounts of kinetic energy into a target, there are some obvious drawbacks to holding the object in question. Motion shapers have learnt to work around this to some degree by creating sigls that project their effects over an area, but since the sigl’s essentia has to spread to cover the area in question, such a field always has a sharply limited range.
Motion drucraft has one other drawback; it’s not the best at being subtle. While micro-scale Motion drucraft can be done fairly invisibly, larger-scale applications tend to be crude and highly obvious. As such, Motion drucraft tends to be viewed as something of a blunt instrument.
Associations
Motion essentia is associated with travel, invention, action, agency, and change. Its associated celestial body is Mercury.
Distribution
The USA is the strongest country for Motion essentia by quite a ways: they have the strongest individual Motion Wells and produce the most Motion sigls by volume. Russia comes in second, closely followed by South Korea. Singapore, Mongolia, Brazil, and the UK all have good Motion resources as well.