These are the last of my notes on my magic system for my Thyre universe. While this gives a good, general view of the current thoughts on how magic works in this world, it doesn’t truly capture all the elements and how I worked them in. For instance, the previous section mentioned Alchemy briefly and how it relied almost one hundred percent on following precise formula to perform. It didn’t, however, explain the ramifications of this detail.

One thing I didn’t want was to have magic to feel separate and disconnect from the rest of the world. I feel there’s often a tendency for fantasy to have its world and the wizards as two distinct classes. Like Harry Potter, those that wield magic only have an impact whenever the author wants something grandiose to occur. But the face of the world is rarely so affected by the existence of magic for it to permeate any other aspect of its society or culture.

It strikes me as odd that in a world where people are capable of turning a man into a newt that the entire fabric of society is pretty indistinguishable from Medieval Europe. Why is it that so rarely rulers are people that mastered the arcane? Would not ambitious individuals learn the magical arts and then turn to conquering with their new found powers? So beholden are we to late Arthurian Legends and Tolkien imaginings that wizards are little more than the mysterious mentor who flutters in and out of the narrative at the author’s convenience but rarely ever leaving a footprint on the world during his trespasses.

For me, that would not do. To circle back to my mention of alchemy, the natural outcome of its elements was that while it took a typical magical background to learn its components one didn’t have to truly be a great practitioner to derive its benefits. This translated into the field of medicine. So much of alchemy is about changing the body that it seemed quite natural that its study and application would eventually create doctors, surgeons and apothecaries. Every single doctor in my world is a classically trained sorcerer. Each of them is capable of some degree of magic. Many who seek education from the marble halls aren’t pursuing some romanticized vision of reshaping the cosmos at the bend of their fingers but simply to learn the alchemical trade so they can help the sick and the needy. And because alchemy isn’t so reliant on the deep, esoteric knowledge of most sorcery, you could have your most daft pupil still learn something helpful and applicable to the rest of the world.

A humorous outcome from this, however, is that many sorcerers often look  disparagingly upon their medicinal kin. It’s a common belief amongst the scholars that doctors are just “failed sorcerers.” However, to the common man, the doctor is the epitome of applicable magick. Few are able to afford a household sorcerer for protection and prestige so most encounter sorcerers when needing attendance for the infirm and sickly. The common man sees the typical scholar as a cloistered recluse out of touch with society and a useless member to the Empire.

In many ways, the modern sorcerer is a tragic figure. So desperate are they to cling to their ancient ways even when those ways fail them. They seek a glory long lost and forgotten all the while under siege by the progress of time and technology. Theirs is a dying world and instead of seeking a true solution to their problem, they just raise their walls and cut themselves further and further off. They are like a small animal, crawling into the dark beneath a porch in order to die alone and out of sight.

Scholar Reading by Rembrandt van Rijn

Notes from Professor Jonas Kaine’s Injunction

Concerning University Curricula

The power of a sorcerer is limited only by his imagination.

This quote by the renown practitioner Malchior the Grey, has been the idealism of the arcane practices for centuries. Throughout history, the tales of powerful sorcerers have been retold. Everyone recalls the power of the ancient Pharoic’s court and their awe-inspiring priests capable of raining locusts and blood down upon their enemies.

Almost every culture has its own sorcerers of lore; the great men capable of harnessing the elements to their whim. Even the dread witches of childhood fables and villains of the legends of old were capable of tremendous feats of arcane channelling.

It may seem oddly disconnecting for the modern practitioner beginning to learn the secrets of the aether. Where are the terrific storms? Why does the earth not groan at the passage of the sorcerer, his will causing even the Lord to shudder in fear?

Partly, legends have exaggerated the abilities of the sorcerers. People, especially the layman in the dark times, did not understand how the magickal truly worked. Their fears and suspicions twisted the reports of their sorcerers into terrifying men who would dare challenge the heavens.

That is not to suggest that the enlightened man is incapable of feats beyond the simple glamours and charms taught to the initiates. Controlling the aetheric winds is a challenging but greatly awarding practice. There is tremendous power to be tapped in the world around us, more than even the Academics and the sceptics care to admit.

The truth of the matter is that invocations are limited. There is just so much energy that man is capable of channelling on his own. However, ancient man made a rather terrific discovery: the process of invoking can be delayed with the correct use of retention wards and actions.

An invocation is like digging a dike beside a rapidly flowing river. The sorcerer creates a channel they wish to redirect some of that energy, but the process is never truly completed until the shoreline is breached. However, the dike itself can last for quite some time – it need not be filled immediately.

Thus, the first rituals were cast by combining certain key invocations and timing their completion at the simultaneous moment. This allowed a sorcerer to produce a single effect far greater than any individual cast. Suddenly, terrific powers were unlocked to the resourceful mind. But with all things, there were limitations. Not all invocations would work together and many would have to be adjusted to ritual use.

However, unlike invocations, it was discovered that universal actions would produce the same results. Assuming the practitioner could isolate themselves from contaminating the ritual, just about any sorcerer could channel the same effect as their peer if they followed the same processes. This was like alchemy but at a greater level.

Even more astounding, multiple sorcerers could combine their might. This could reduce the amount of time it took to prepare a ritual and also opened up even greater and greater effects for the arcane. With precise co-ordination, effects eerily similar to the legends could suddenly be performed.

The danger ran with the inclusion of each practitioner. The more sorcerers involved, the greater the chance of contamination. While the greatest abilities required the most practitioners, the more men channelling also entailed more risk. This is why the most powerful rituals never really developed very far. Only the most experienced could produce the effects with any sort of reliability. And one wrong step could produce the most disastrous results.

Few are aware of the dangers of channelling the arcane. The layman mistakenly assumes that a sorcerer is a master of his art – that the arcane is a well of power which they can siphon freely. This is incredibly misleading. The arcane is highly energetic and reactive. If a sorcerer missteps, the best they can hope for is a harmless atmospheric discharge of the energies often misconstrued as an unimpressive glamour. There are, however, far worst consequences for the sorcerer.

One phenomenon called aetheric flashback is a chief concern amongst those drawing on lots of the arcane. Should a sorcerer incorrectly channel the great deal of energy, they could find that the currents of the aether blow back upon him. This energy burst is most commonly released in a tremendous amount of heat and light. To the untrained, it may look like a sudden conjuration of fire sweeping over the bewildered sorcerer. The least severe can just leave the sorcerer disfigured and burned.

More likely, however, if an aetheric flashback is produced the sorcerer will be consumed by the very unrestrained energy that they have released.

Current knowledge of the aether is sparse, but it is widely believed that the aether is not a passive medium through which energy flows. Many practitioners believe there are natural currents which energy travels willingly through. Learning to navigate these streams can greatly increase a sorcerer’s skill in channelling the arcane.

However, known currents are not eternal. They are more like winds, apt to sudden change in direction one day rendering any attempts to harness them rendered useless.

Aetheric currents are not of typical concern in invocations because of such a short and focused release of energy. However, rituals almost always require the use of these ever changing channels. Many scholars argue that this explains why ancient rituals are not longer effective. There is a common theory that ancient magickal practices have been lost as the great currents that ancient practitioners tapped have all but vanished.

Most rituals can be changed and adapted to the fickle nature of the aether. However, the oldest rituals are nothing but intriguing studies for the modern sorcerer who can only guess what the effects of many of these arts were capable of producing. And the stories of small cabals of sorcerers being lost in terrific explosions warn against foolishly attempting to “brute force” a ritual through a no longer existent stream.

There is one other major concern for rituals that should be mentioned. While every practice of the arcane requires some amount of cost (typically the ingredients required for the invocation), the cost of rituals is far greater than any other practice. While many will scoff at the idea of cost impinging the great study of the arcane – only those that work closely with rituals can truly begin to appreciate the expense. Some rituals turn relatively cheap invocations into a practice requiring almost a princely sum to perform. Coupled with the danger of a misfired ritual which will often destroy all the components, it is no wonder that rituals have mostly fallen out of favour with the common practitioner.

The study of rituals is still an important one. It is something that this University should not abandon in its research. While there are many difficulties involved, it is still a valuable tradition to keep alive. For one, it maintains a connection with the practices of the ancient sorcerers. It also gives further insight into the matter which sorcerers tangle with daily. Never is our ignorance of the arcane made so clear than when we attempt to understand the workings of rituals. They bring the importance of procedure and time to the forefront of a practice so wholly focused on the wills of the individuals.

Outlawing rituals would thus be detrimental to all this institute’s principles. Instead, I propose that the study of rituals is strictly limited to those capable of its investigation and who are willing to accept the risks involved.

If we weren’t prepared to take risks, then we would be nothing more than those lowly mechanists digging about in the ground.

My earlier breakdown in a treatise on magick created three classifications for sorcery: the ward, glamour and charm. However, as I pondered the role and use of magick in my world, I felt that having just these three options could be too limiting to my writing. Magic, afterall, is meant to be the strongest fantastical element of my story. These wondrous components are the hallmarks of the fantasy genre. I feel readers read fantasy precisely for the mysterious and mystifying elements and I didn’t want things too actually be dry and boring. I just wanted to give the feel that most people in my world found magic to be boring.

I was, essentially, pursuing that pre-Einstein field of thought. Physicists felt they had covered just about all the field had to offer with Newton’s laws and only the smallest of details remained. We know now that such a perspective couldn’t be further from the truth. But I wanted that sense that magic was on the decline. And without resorting to some sort of mystical explanation that the “magic” of the world was “vanishing” I instead opted to just have the mystery for its people dispelled.

But to make sure I didn’t ultimately leave myself written into a corner, I decided I would leave a small loophole. Thus, invocations and rituals were born. They would be the explanation, the metaphorical hand wave, that I could use whenever my sorcerers did something beyond the expected. What he did may not have been a glamour, ward or charm. It could be an invocation – the catchall for everything that I hadn’t the foresight to have penned down before my system had been completed.

Portrait of a Scholar by Domenico Fetti

Invocations, Rituals and Alchemy: Cornerstones of the Magickal Trade

Excerpts from the lecture by Emmanuel Dupont

No doubt, young initiate, you have perused the nature of the magickal. You have glimpsed upon the vast aether and felt the lines of power that course through it. Undoubtedly, you have received a pseudo-intellectual explanation of the greatest of the natural forces. You think you understand the rudimentary concepts of flavours and shades. You believe that wind is composed of wind energy.

Well, my young initiate, you are wrong.

The use of the arcane is a far more complicated matter than conjuring the soft stirrings of a breeze or creating the tinkling of a bell. You will notice, in your practices, that you require ingredients and foci in order to accomplish even the most mundane of tasks. Sure, you’re aware of the anchors for wards and have seen the sorcerers in the market purchasing an eclectic assortment of bits and bobs. You have the mental image of the mystique gentleman, waving about tails of newts and sprigs of holly in order to cause the very earth to shudder at his whim.

These foolish notions are even encouraged by my colleagues. They are drunk on the power of the arcane. They have tasted the sweet wine of the aether and have become lost in its heady aromas.

Well, young initiate, things are not so easy. If it were, anyone could be a sorcerer. Even the fair maids of the gentler sex would be able to tame the wild forces of chaos and nature. However, things are not so simple, and most of you will never progress beyond the basics.

The arcane is still a mysterious force even to this day. Despite our many journals, theories and practices, we still do not understand exactly how the forces work. Why do cinders and pine needles release such power to cause drowsiness in those who inhale their fumes? Why does willow bark coated in honey allow one to hide themselves beneath a veil of a foreign face?

The simple explanation, as you have heard, is that every thing contains a certain attuned energy. A flame is attuned to fire. Wind is attuned to air. The natural question would be how many types of energy are there and how do you identify them?

And that would be the wrong question.

The most basic concept is that every thing has its own unique energy. Mine is different than yours which is different than your mother’s which is different than the Queen’s. Yet we all have the same basic ‘human’ energy. We will all use our own to create glamours. However, if I hold up a piece of willow bark and admix with my own energy, I will create a different glamour than you will. Don’t believe me, let’s have some volunteers. You sir, with the dazed look. And you, mister, the one who looks like he’s old enough to teach this lecture.

Come here. I have a simple glamour for you to perform. Take this bell and rattle and create a glamour that will make the rattle ring with the clarity of the church clocktower. The rest of you, observe carefully the notes produced.

You see? Your drowsy pupil made a sound almost like a simple country church bell. One, I would dare say, sounds like it were cracked deeply down its side. And this excellent gentleman has produced a sound so clear I dare hazard it would put the great church of Thyre to shame.

And yet, neither of them have performed a different glamour. Each has focused the sound of the bell through the rattle. So what causes these differences? Is it the obvious difference in age, handsomeness, intelligence, diligence, height, weight or even hair colour? Perhaps the very diet differences between these two gentlemen has caused the energies to be different. It can not be the bell and rattle, for they were the same between.

You see, invocations are a complex practice. One that starts with you: the practitioner. You must be acutely aware of the power of your admixture. It is a quantifiable fact that there will be some of you that are just naturally more adapt at the use of the arcane. Some of you will find that your energy only produces the slightest of glamours.

Invariably, you lowly initiates will take this as a sign of superiority. Obviously, those with the weakest energies, the softest of wills must surely be closer to the mundane. They must be just one step away from those completely incapable of practising any magick whatsoever.

And, once again, your prejudice would betray your ignorance.

Some of the greatest sorcerers were those with the weakest personal wills. That is for the simple conclusion that they are able to dilute their essences the easiest. It is a fact that the greatest wills in this class will struggle to produce anything that is not a glamour. And, while the powers of glamours are certainly impressive, your wills will greatly reduce your ability to invoke charms and wards. Consequently, you will also be the least desirable for participation in rituals.

Naturally, it is not raw power that is important but the cunning and wit of one’s mind that is fundamental for the channelling of the arcane. Those with weak wills can focus their invocations through other humans and other objects. They are better able to grasp the concept of using multiple admixtures and proxy foci. They are keen to the supplemental rituals, especially those requiring multiple practitioners to suppress their own wills in the collaborations.

Of course, some of you will argue and rail against my words. I welcome the challenge of your rebelliousness. Some of the greatest sorcerers are those of Teutanic descent, a people that have consistently shown remarkable forces of will. In fact, my greatest and most controversial pupil was of this barbaric ancestry.

And that is, in my mind, because those of strong wills have greater command of the energies that they do channel. While weaker willed practitioners will be very adept at multiple implements and foci, stronger willed practitioners that overcome their own flaws can get the most out of single ingredients than any other.

But enough of that. You came here to learn the basics of invocations.

Invocations create the bulk of magicks you will channel. They are your daily conjurations and enchantments. They are the skills you will call upon to defend yourself in confrontations. They are the spells you will use to conduct your research.

An invocation is little more than the simple release and channel of the energy from one or more simple ingredients. While they appear to be the simplest of skills in theory, they are also the hardest to create. They require an intimate knowledge of the ingredients and how they react with the self. For this reason, sorcerers naturally find a collection of invocations that they prefer. These are the most familiar invocations. For example, one of my familiars is a refraction glamour – a complex invocation to most but allows me to cause any one item to appear to vanish. Behold the rattle from the earlier demonstration. I want you to watch it carefully.

You see, it has vanished completely from sight. It appears as if I am not even holding it but observe – the slightest flick of my wrist and you can still hear it as clear as day. And before you ask, no I will not teach you this glamour. Why, you may ask, to which I have my own question. What were my components? What were my admixtures?

You didn’t see them, did you. What’s that? No, they were not hidden within the rattle, but that thinking will take you far. Very far indeed.

Observe – you see, I have had this stone beneath my tongue this entire time. The second component I use is the brass of my jacket button. That’s it, just these two simple components. Seems quite  rudimentary  but this is a familiar of mine. It will take most of you at least three more components to create the exact same invocation. Some of you will require even more. And even a couple of you will be unable to perform this without the execution of a secondary ward.

You see, despite all our research and study, the practice of magick is still an intensely personal affair. You can not just read a library of books and understand how to channel the arcane. It requires constant, daily practice. It requires intense study. It requires a persistence and strength of character that not all possess.

Most of you will struggle to ever perform anything beyond the simplest of invocations and may never develop any familiars. However, the study of the arcane is not a worthless pursuit to you. You see, even the dullest of minds can still capitalize on the qualities of components. All of you can practice alchemy.

Alchemy is almost a form of a ritual, you see. It has precise ingredients in specific measurements. It creates arcane effects but it completely removes the human element from the process. It is the channelling by recipe. All those books you see in the studies of the most successful sorcerers are likely to be alchemical books. You needn’t a familiarity to brew. You need just to be able to follow precise instructions.

It appears we have run out of time, however. Tomorrow, we will address the specifics of rituals and then I shall introduce you to the fundamentals of rituals.

So when I miss a day of posting, it’s a terrible event and I have to post the next day. When Derek does it, he gets to write it off as “thesis prep.” Seem fair? I don’t think so either. I’ll be sure to drop a box during his move next week to protest this inequality in our posting expectations. That’ll show him! I may even jangle some hangers!

In the meanwhile, I’ll continue posting about the development of my magic system for my first novel. I actually did a short  excerpt as some notes to myself between drafts. My original intention had been to post that but I got a tad long winded during Part 1. So here’s the first bit.

Scholar at the Table by Wauters Emile Charles

A Treatise on Magick

by Scholar Henrik Wulfgang

It is a fact that the primeval energy of the cosmos flows through all things. Within each object, each natural item beats the softest drum of the universe’s heart. The vibrations from these essences can be felt through the natural aether that buoys all objects. A trained mind can perceive these vibrations, can sense their differing frequencies and react with them.

This is the core principle of magick. It requires the carefully trained and honed senses of the practitioner to navigate the aether and its cacophony of noise to pinpoint the source of certain frequencies. A trained practitioner recognizes the very same frequencies that they, themselves, project and learn to focus and manipulate their own projections in order to funnel the natural energies through the aether to produce the desired results. In this manner, a practitioner could funnel the heat energy of a flame into a focused concentration around the reactive energy of another object to create a spontaneous combustion.

However, it requires more than just mere concentration of one’s own energy to manipulate the aether. Due to man’s natural own peculiarities in their own projections, they cause certain repeatable contaminations to different sources which either interfere with their channelling or mutate it into a wholly different form through a process known as transmutation.

It is this mixing of different energies that gave rise to the classification of different magicks and to the development of the glamours in particular. It seems that man’s higher cognitive functioning often transforms even the basest and wildest energies into a subtle perceptual form. It is the belief of this scholar that human energy contains within it a certain higher quintessence that has a profound energizing effect upon most energies. This excites the energy frequencies, causing them to work on a higher level output. While this would create a diffusion of concentrated power, this scholar feels it is a more pure and divine creation that turns even the rawest energy form into something more sophisticated.

Human channelled energies can thusly be a vivid representation of their primal forms but to be elevated to such a level that they no longer possess the entropic qualities of their previous sources. Simply put, human transformed energy is insubstantial. It is more cerebral. It works on a perceptive level while being channelled harmlessly on a physical sense. A human practitioner can turn the raw fiery essence of heat into a blinding conflagration to the senses but leave the actual natural world unaffected by the energies. It turns highly reactive substances and makes them inert. It makes even the most languid of energies fluid and flowing.

These are what the laymen call illusions. Because these energies lack a lasting impact, they are under the impression that the energy never truly existed in the first place. This is incorrect. Energy always exists within the aether, it is just the manipulation of that energy that creates the different effects. Essentially, man can move the energies about the aether of their own accord regardless of the natural frictions inherent in the rest of the essences.

Because of man’s natural affinity to the production of glamours, these techniques are typically the first taught to the initiates. While it takes a tremendous amount of skill and at least some creativity to form these glamours into the most remarkable forms witnessed, the basic glamours are quite easy for beginning initiates to grasp. One need only to step into the classroom to hear the phantom sounds of the beginner effortlessly ringing about the hall to understand our own natural affinities.

This scholar believes the reason for this affinity is due, in part, to man’s highly developed social sense. Few animals appear to possess the natural tendency to perceive and interact with high order social structures and these complex relationships are wholly unfeasible in lower based life. Quite often, the status and rank of a member is determined by almost imperceptible cues and indicators and, as such, our minds are primed to attentiveness for these subtle elements. It is in manipulating this natural propensity that a practitioner can trigger the most subtle of man’s perceptions and play into his natural biases.

While glamours may be the most common, they are certainly not the only skill to be taught. The second classification of magick arose  through the manipulation and experimentation of various other substances.

Wards are based on the unmoving energies of rocks and earth. While man has a very transient energy, earth does not. It is this immovability, this unyielding force that gave rise to the development of the wards. These are, perhaps, the sorcerer’s most famous abilities. These are static, focused fields that require a physical sourced anchor. The first wards were protective, creating fields that would alert the practitioner to any outside influence that disturbed its natural order.

However, through the careful application of transmutation, wards could be created to produce just about anything. Most remarkable are the anti-magick wards. These incredibly powerful fields dampen and restrict the flow of aether through their area. Most will weaken the abilities of a sorcerer within, reducing the amount of energy they can channel from all sources. The most powerful, however, can reduce the movement of energy so much that a sorcerer can find that he is just unable to channel enough energy to produce any magickal effect at all!

As with all magicks, the advancement of the knowledge on wards came through the creative use of their energies. Some sorcerers were able to create small, inverted fields that rippled within the aether at such a frequency that they could be tracked far further than one could naturally. Other fields flow through the natural energies of their areas that they can accurately reproduce any changes within, allowing a sorcerer to sense all activity within its area.

The final field of magickal inquiry is in the charm classification. The most recent magickal discovery, through the application of advanced channelling techniques, many prominent scholars have demonstrated that the natural energies of items can be increased or decreased if properly admixed with similar or opposing energies. Thus, a sorcerer could physically turn a small flame into a roaring blaze or turn the strike of a thunderbolt into the most harmless of jolts. These charms are, perhaps, the most misunderstood by the layman’s mind.

To the uninitiated, charms can give the impression that the sorcerer is conjuring or creating new energies seemingly from nowhere. As previously state, this is impossible within the aether. To create a flame from nothing, that object must first have a very reactive energetic source. Then, the practised sorcerer could fill that source with even greater reactive energy that causes that source to ignite, reaching its potential energetic state.

The practical application of these techniques, however, are rarely so obvious. A charm can make just about anything better: a charmed sword is sharper, a charmed sweetroll is sweeter and a charmed door is stronger. Likewise, one could induce a state of weakness into substances by interposing contrary energies. The trained sorcerer could cause a new sword to become rusted and brittle, the tastiest cake to turn dry and bland or make even the sturdiest wall crumble at the slightest touch.

However, in order for any charms to reach such effectiveness, the sorcerer must have an intimate knowledge of the properties of its target and their spell’s ingredients. They must know the exact type of energy produced by sandstone compared to marble in order to properly enhance or detract from it. Otherwise, they will find they have burned through their ingredients and produced nothing or worst, cause an aetheric flareback from the unused energies. Furthermore, a sorcerer must be careful to not naturally contaminate the spell with their own innate energy else they will produce a rather useless glamour effect which will do nothing but reveal the amateur abilities of the practitioner.

These three techniques – glamours, wards and charms – form the foundation of modern magickal study. They are well established principles from which all other research is based. The proposed existence of other techniques or forms of energy are wholly hearsay lacking any applicable empirical evidence. Most are based on the exaggerated accounts of historical abilities captured by past historians working with an incomplete knowledge of magickal practice and theory.

To understand further the magickal practices and how a sorcerer can use these principles in a practical setting, I would like to draw the curious reader to my next paper on the components of Ritual and Invocation.

Heroic Landscape with Rainbow by Joseph Anton Koch (1815)

So, I wrote a fantasy novel.

I feel one of the hallmarks of fantasy writing is the magic. People love stories of wizards, witches, sorcerers and what have you. King Arthur had his Merlin and Morgana. Shakespeare had his Weird Sisters. In a sense, magic is the easiest way to express the core of the genre. It gives a sense of wonder, excitement and intrigue that lets the imagination free from the expectations and rules of the mundane. It inherently is mysterious. The reader never truly understands how magic works. Partly because the characters themselves don’t know. It’s magical.

However, being who I am, this wouldn’t do when creating my fantasy world. First, I was setting my fiction in a much later time period that general fantasy. My societies have had their Enlightenments. They’ve already gone through their age of superstition where the unknown was an omnipresent entity and their lives were guided by elements and forces beyond their keen. They have studied. They have learned. They have begun to categorize the life around them and tease apart the elements of their world. Of course, they’re mostly on the breaking point of this revolution of thought but to give that sense of no longer leaving the explanations for daily life in the hands of mysterious otherworldly beings there needed to be some theories for why magic existed.

So I had to create a system.

But where do you begin?

I knew that my story was going to have a greater emphasis on steampunk. I also wanted the world to be somewhat familiar to our own. Furthermore, I have a personal bias against high fantasy and all three of these elements naturally led me to a low magic impact. There weren’t going to be giant stomping suits of magitek kicking around. Steam and electricity were the wonders of the age, not doddering old men waving their hands. I felt I wanted magic to be less this awe-inspiring, grandiose affair and something that had become almost forgotten. Sure, you would have some elements worked into everyday life but for the most part the average citizen didn’t feel the weight of spells. I didn’t want my narrative being hijacked by some mad sorcerer with the aims to ruin the world and the ability to reign hellfire from the skies.

But I didn’t want magic to feel isolated either. Merlini is almost cut off from the rest of Avalon and the knights with his studies and his abilities. The world isn’t shaped by those great wizards of legend. They were there as just mystics who dispensed helpful advice or a timely incantation despite the apparent ability to turn into anything they wanted or to shake the foundations of reality itself (depending on who’s telling the story of course). I did like the idea of a faded glory, however. That there were sorcerers who looked back on those legends fondly believing them to accurate tellings of the day. For them myth and legend were the stored records of an age long past where magic controlled the fates of nations and people looked upon those wielders with respect and awe.

Instead of seeing them as conning charlatans just looking to weasel a little more money from you.

I’ll confess, in our age of skepticism, this is hardly a unique point of view. But I felt it would add that element tension towards change that I wanted to capture with my story. The institute of magic was something that was old tradition. They were used to prominence but in the wave of technological advancement they were being slowly brushed aside. Here were men who had once felt they had all of creation in their palm and now few would give them the time of day.

And to insure this, I had to have limits on magic. I had to come up with the reasons for the fall of mysticism. Arthur C. Clarke famously stated that “An reasonably advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. ” I took that idea and ran with it. Not only could technology produce what magic could, but it could do it better. A gun can kill a person with the pull of a trigger. A spell could kill a person but it would require you to sit and mumble and wave your hands and possibly sacrifice a goat while you’re at it. Given the two options, any reasonable person would take the gun over magic.

So my magic had to be unwieldy. It had to be inconvenient. It demanded sacrifice and it produced often results that in this day and age were unsatisfactory. Before the explosion of inventions from the industrial revolution, magic would have been really swell when there were no alternatives to produce the results. But once everyone could light their houses by just installing some gas piping, people are going to wonder if keeping a sorcerer on staff and constantly paying for his supplies is really worth it.

Stodgy old Newton. He probably didn’t even like apples.

But even with this fall of magic, I still liked its existence. The rules and limitations of the practice would be seemingly well understand by my societies. But just like physics felt like there was nothing else to learn after Newton’s Laws, I wanted to leave room for the current understanding to be wrong and there to be something more. Magic is, after all, a systematic way of explaining the workings of our universe. And even in our day and age with quantum theories we still struggle to come up with an all encompassing scientific theory that explains all phenomena. In the end I didn’t need a system that would accurately explain how magic worked. I needed a system that adequately explained the magic that could work at that time.

I had my feel for my system but none of the particulars. I hadn’t quite yet worked out the particulars or how it all fit in the big picture. That would take extra work and tweaking. And to find out what I made, you’ll have to wait for a later post.