On The Nature of Magic

Any physicist will tell you that there are, essentially, four basic forces that determine the motion and coherence of the universe. They will also be able to list these four forces: Gravity, Electromagnetic Force, Strong Nuclear Force, and Weak Nuclear Force.
Any physicists are wrong.
These four forces do, of course, determine the motion and coherence of the universe. But they are not alone in this. There is also (at least) a fifth force; in our universe, it’s very rare. It’s less rare in The First and Second Worlds, but its effects are still noticeable generally only as the consistency of the universes. In The Third World, it is so abundant that it makes the universe actually appear less coherent. They call it Magic.
Magi is essentially what most people assume entropy is: Sheer chaotic energy. Entropy, though, is just energy that can no longer be used because it has changed itself. The nature of entropy goes beyond the scope of this work and is, in fact, irrelevant. Magic is a very usable means of energy transference.
Magic could easily be used as the hidden variable in hidden variable theories of quantum physics. Or, so it would seem on the surface; While it can be used to unify gravity with the other three forces as well as explain "quantum weirdness," it is, in fact, incompatible with any traditional concept of determinism. The Einstein of our universe and The First and Second Worlds said that "God does not play dice with the universe." When the Great Wizard Merlin heard of this, he said "Not only do I play dice, they’ve got seventy-three sides and eleven dimensions!" He there upon proceeded to throw a seventy-three sided eleven dimensional die onto a nearby town, creating the worst gambling disaster since the Dead Man’s Hand Epidemic of seventy years prior. The terror of the three dimensional perspective of an eleven dimensional seventy-three sided die is unimaginable; just trust me that at least three brains shut down and detonated themselves before the die had even reached them on any dimensional scale. A number of eleven dimensional observers later were heard to remark that they had only seen a nine dimensional object; Merlin explained to them that all eleven-dimensions had not been spatial, and, in fact, two of them were temporal. This is theorized by many to have been the origin of the Craps River and Snake-Eyes Canyon.
To summarize this anecdote, Merlin is an asshole, and magic is the universal die. The essence of magic knocks subatomic particles about in ways unpredictable by any linear physical or mathematical system. Most non-linear, non-causal systems fail to predict the behavior either. The serious minded Nadir of Alcabraltr-"Serious Stoners" to a number of other races-did come up with a system that predicted the behavior once, but they couldn’t stand the intense acausality of it, and so locked the equations in a mausoleum wherein pi is exactly three.
Generally, what the magic force does is to non-locally and non-physically nudge quarks and their ilk in ways that seem localized. This strange nudge is the deciding factor in the matter of, say, what the spin of a quark is. However, in a relative absence of magic, quarks and electrons decide where they are and which way they’re spinning just fine on their own. When magic is introduced, they begin to act in ways thought impossible to classical-and most quantum-physics. Quarks will spin in directions that suggest a decoherence of all matter when magic effects them; however, all matter does not decohere when magic is in effect.
The quantum particle of magic is a sorceron. It carries a magical "charge" of one Blaine (bl), which is equivalent to 3.64*10^-43 Chrs, or 8.75*10^-137 Merlins. The record for largest amount of magic stored in one person at one point in time is held by Merlin, at 10.73 GigaMerlins. For comparative purposes, the energy released by the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs, combined with that of the Chernobyl meltdown, could be generated by 0.53 Merlins.
The total force generated by any given "magical charge" has an obscenely difficult equation, which would take one hundred of Our World’s top scientists one hundred years to comprehend, leaving all of them mad and mentally disfigured, and so unable to convey the explanation as any more than "Purple Monkey Dishwasher, Cat’s in the Cradle, 23!" This is why no one in the Third World tries to calculate the effect of magic anymore. That, and the fact that wizometers tend to detonate when a tenth of a Merlin passes through them. Many magic researchers met a grizzly end this way before they realized how dumb it is to use detonating equipment. Now the death rate by wizometer is down to one or two foolish apprentices a year.
All of this translates to some pretty damned bizarre macroscopic events. Even mundane castings leave something off balance somewhere. Where, however, is nigh on impossible for anyone to determine. This is part of a contributor to the fact that the other four major forces still haven’t managed to settle themselves down, and geography will not maintain itself.
Nearly every creature born on The Third World has an innate ability to manipulate magical charge. Evolution found it necessary to grant this ability to them in order for them to survive in such an unpredictable world. As life progressed on The Third World, the pineal gland developed a chemical called Dimethyltryptamine, which contains negligible mass and electrical charge, but a magical charge of 73 Chrs per cubic nanometer. Most pineal glands generate only two cubic nanometers a day, which is enough charge to, perhaps, levitate a bowl for a few minutes or convince a plant to grow slightly better, faster, or stronger. A number of them, however, produce more; these people tend to become Wizards, Witches, and other mystics. Merlin had such a massive pineal gland at birth that there was a "magic sink" forming around him. Early in his life, a prominent wizard had to set up a sort of magical siphon, in order to prevent Merlin from detonating. It was extra-dimensional, and technically contained in extensions of Merlin; it is in part thanks to this, and improved magical siphons that he developed, that he became so intensely powerful.
On rare occasions, visitors to The Third World have been found to have large amounts of Dimethyltrptamine being produced by their brains. Somehow, worlds such as The First and Second Worlds inhibit the painful effects of storing up too much magical charge. The chemical is also metabolized more quickly by natives of these worlds, and they aren’t raised knowing how to control it, and so usually have trouble doing so when they are taught how.