A Treatise by Vishus Wee-Zul, Sage King of Khalar
Magic is a Mighty Thing, not to be taken lightly
What is magic? How do mages harness the power of the universe, and bend it to their will? What does all that handwaving that old coot you were apprenticed to as a lad do, anyway?
Throughout the ages, apprentices and archmages alike have pondered these very questions. Much research has been done on the subject, and many scholarly tomes are enshrined in their library tombs, describing accurately how forces are wielded, and energy obtained. But never before has a book been written that was meant (sorry Yendor) to actually be read.
That is what On the Workings of Magic is. It's a book meant to be understood and read by the common spellcaster, to teach him what he needs to know. Too long have we mages been harnessed by unknown dangers, and questioned unknowable facts. Too long have we been told by our teachers that such questions are unaskable, when really our teachers do not know the answer. Too long has the world waited for a book like On the Workings of Magic.
This treatise is meant to be a guide to beginning magi, as well as a reference work of reference works on magic. It is divided into seven rough sections:
Wee-Zul is the sage king of Khalar, and for the past three hundred years has written a wide variety of books on assorted topics, concentrating primarily on history (natural and political) and thaumaturgy.
For fifty years, Wee-Zul was a researcher and instructor at the Khalar Society of Arch-magi, and contributed significantly to the understanding of Thread Special Interaction. He still dabbles in the field in his spare time, but professes sadly that the current researchers in the field have left him behind centuries ago.
First, we kill the Mages. Then, assassinate all those who stand in our way!
Any apprentice who has learned his histories properly could tell you of dozens of times that powerful magic has prevailed where sheer force could not. With magic one can cause people to flee in terror, bring friends back to life, and feed thousands of people, with comparatively little effort.
But what is magic? What natural force could possibly do these things?
Unfortunately, the full, correct, answer to that is neither simple nor even explainable in a book of this scope. It involves a new way of looking at the world, and a significant background in natural history. However, some grasp of these basics is necessary to even begin practicing magic. Thus, a greatly simplified theory will suffice.
The world is made up of space, time, matter and energy. These four elements (along with a few other, more-rare elements rarely spoken of) comprise most of what exists in the world, and interact with one another in intricate ways. In particular, any one of the four elements can be induced to change form into one of the others.
For example, in creating a pocket dimension, one might convert energy into space. To attain this energy, one might suck away the matter (or time!) from some object. Other conversions can be imagined. You've probably performed some basic conversions in your schooling already.
Of particular interest to magi is energy. Energy itself comes in many forms, such as heat, motion (which is movement of matter through space and time!), and others. Any form of energy can be converted into any other form, as well as matter, space, or time, with more or less difficulty, depending on the particular forms desired. The various forms of energy have various properties, and the discussion of the various forms each can be found in would take a treatise of its own.
One of the most malleable and interesting forms of energy is called Mana. It will be described more fully in the next section, but the reason that it is of particular interest to magi is that it responds in predictable ways to human will. By thinking certain combinations of thoughts, one can control the Mana, causing it to move about and change forms. The exact workings of this are unclear, but it seems that emotion creates threads of Mana which can manipulate other threads of Mana. Without this property, magic as we know of it could not exist. Thank Primus for getting at least this one thing right.
Mana, as previously stated, is a form of energy. Most people today visualize Mana as consisting of infinitely long threads, and interactions as threads repelling, attracting, and knotting each other. Threads can, under some rare circumstances, fuse into one another, or split into two threads, but one cannot retrieve either of the ends of a thread, since threads have no ends. Nor can one cut a thread to create ends.
Each thread is of a particular type or species of Mana. Different types have differing properties, and several taxonomies have been proposed for describing them. Most common threads have properties which can be visualized as color, thickness, charge, and potential, although some threads don't have any of these properties, and some only have a few.
Different types of Mana are associated with various things in life. When you start a fire, this draws some forms of Mana towards the fire, repels others, and creates still more. When you drop a rock to the ground, similar things happen. When more significant events occur, more Mana is affected. For example, there is more movement and creation of Mana for a burning city than a candle's flame.
Mana can effect things other than Mana. Individual threads typically cannot, but when threads are combined in certain ways, other forms of energy, matter, space, and time are affected. For example, it is possible, using only three threads of Mana of specific types, to create a glowing sphere. Using several hundred, it is possible to create a huge ball of flame. The techniques for creating particular effects with Mana are called spells, and must be carefully researched. If the threads of Mana are not precisely controlled, and the various matter conduits and source objects (typically referred to as material components) are not in place, the spell can fail, sometimes with disastrous effects!
Over the years, a large number of researchers into the field of Thread Special Interactions have proposed an equally large number of thread taxonomies, in an attempt to simplify understanding of an inherently complex topic.
The great mage Yendor (of Yendor's Sunny Sundeck fame) devised the following scheme. It must be noted that in Yendor's time, the number of known threads was severely limited, so Yendor's scheme has primarily historical interest.
In Yendor's scheme, there are four primary categories of threads:
Yendor's scheme has been mostly discredited by modern research. However, Yendor was the first to attempt to classify thread speci into any form of taxonomy at all, and much of Yendor's writings on taxonomies are the basis for many of the taxonomies in wide use today.
Al-Rassan actually built an engine to classify threads into categories, and didn't understand extremely well what the machine was doing. Nevertheless, Al-Rassan's classification scheme has fairly deep meaning, most of which is too technical for the scope of this book. Essentially, speci close to one another in Al-Rassan's rating system tend to have very similar behavioral properties.
The Classification proposed by Al-Rassan is a number from zero to one thousand assigned to the thread. The value of this number has the following rough assignments:
This is one of the reasons why the color of threads is significant.
Elnido vultus is a thread species found through air and space. Iron, as well as most strong materials, draw Elnido vultus near to themselves, and under very extreme conditions (heat, cold, etc), can create vultus threads.
Motion through space create its sister-species of thread, Elnido valior, which is tightly linked to Elnido vultus in many ways.
Color: Black, with veins of red.
Thickness: As thick as a solid oaken staff (similar variance).
Potential: Raise an apple from the earth.
Charge: 3mil
Arros tellus is a thread species found primarily around stone and earth, although they are also created, and are common about, creatures covered with much fur, especially equine beasts.
Vast quantities of earth create a stronger version of this thread as well: Arros tallus (q.v.).
Color: Black, with veins of Green, Yellow, and Blue
Thickness: Spider-webby.
Potential: None.
Charge: 0mil
Arros tallus is a thread found amidst vast quantities of earth and extremely dense stone. Visitors to the elemental plane of earth have reported record numbers of Arros tallus.
Arros tallus is an intractible thread: most spells using this thread are difficult to learn, master, and control.
Color: Black, with veins of Green, Brown, and Violet
Thickness: Highly variable: from the thickness of a spider web to about as big around as a man's wrist.
Potential: Variable. If coaxed appropriately, can level mountains. But as often, it will have no effect whatsoever.
Charge: 40mil
Arros Ignius is a thread species found nearly exclusively near air and heat. There are no other known sources for it.
Color: None.
Thickness: As thick as a man's arm.
Potential: Raise a sword from the earth.
Charge: 1mil
Elnido umidus is a thread species found near quantities of (especially moving) water. Fish seem to create new threads as well, as do fruit trees and diamond.
Color: Red, with veins of black.
Thickness: As thick as high-quality silk rope.
Potential: Raise a house from the earth.
Charge: 1mil
Elrido mundus is a thread species associated with logic and determinism. It is one of the three threads which are the primary controller-types, and is controlled through logical, plodding, and controlled thoughts.
Color: Translucent Purple.
Thickness: Big around as your wrist.
Potential: Cannot positively influence the world, but negative influences: is capable of destroying a small pebble.
Charge: 3mil
Elrido fax is a thread species associated with strong, primitive emotions, such as fear, hatred, and lust. Very powerful effects can be created by combining threads of this sort with Elrido mundus, but it is very difficult to control both emotions at once without going insane.
Elrido fax is one of the three threads which are the primary controller-types, and is controlled by the same sort of emotions as it is associated with.
Color: Vivid Pink, with Translucent Yellow discolorations.
Thickness: none.
Potential: Can raise a tun of ale from the earth.
Charge: 2mil
Elrido amplexus is a thread species associated with the calm, tide-like emotions, such as greed, love, loss, sorrow, frustration, and joy.
Elrido amplexus is one of the three threads which are the primary controller-types, and is controlled by the same sort of emotions as it is associated with.
Color: The energy potential of this species of thread varies in ebbs and flows: the color does as well. The stronger the potential, the more garishly purple the color becomes.
Thickness: Think: harp strings
Potential: Varies, in ebbs and flows. At its weakest, it is nearly powerless. At its most powerful, it might lift a small hill.
Charge: 12mil
Elnido ibidem is associated with things having 'location'. This is difficult to think about, but things that are in some place, and are going to be there a long time, immobile, cause the creation of many threads of Elnido ibidem. Very transient things absorb these threads. If an object's location is undecided, Elnido ibidem threads form at some percentage reality less than one. (Most threads have a reality percentage of exactly 1, unless otherwise noted).
Color: Strobing Yellow/Black.
Thickness: As big around as a good beer tankard.
Potential: Could perhaps move a harp string about on the floor.
Charge: 2mil
Elnido sexangulus is assocated with things which have shape, as well as things which have vertical velocity, where vertical is with respect to some other surface. Things which have more shape create and attract more sexangulus than those things with less.
Actions may have shape as well, as can energy, space and time, but these are more difficult to describe without becoming too technical, and the author refers the reader to one of the fine reference tomes of thread species listed in the reference.
Color: Spiral twists of Mauve, with Teal Flecks.
Thickness: As thick as a knife blade is thin.
Potential: Enough potential to shift large statues.
Charge: -1.5mil
Arros evagor is associated with conflict and strife, a battling of energies against one another. A stone in a river creates some evagor, while powerful magic stopping an avalanche creates much of the War Thread. Actual war creates a fair bit of Arros evagor as well, but mostly from the battling of the psychic wills of the commanders of the two armies. The effect is so that the actual battle causes the threads, though, if it helps to think of it that way.
There are creatures, objects, actions, energies, spaces, and times which are in conflict by their very existence. Governments, economies (including money, oddly enough), support beams and similar structures, and downspouts are examples of some of these. These objects/etc. provide focal points for the Species of War, almost lenses. Some can amplify the potential, and some can decrease it. All affect it, though.
Color: Almost a Chaselight Effect, Technicolor Rainbows Spinning across the Surface of the Thread.
Thickness: Big around as a stick.
Potential: Can vary from tiny, non-existent, to powerful, like Big Bull.
Charge: 2mil
Elnido cena is associated with consumption of one thing by another. The ocean lapping at a shore or the wind whipping at the mountains create some, while a burning fire creates more, and a sphere of annihilation creates even more. (In fact, a sphere of annihilation is created using Elnido cena, and its very nature is tightly coupled with the thread).
Very stupid creatures, such as sharks, which live only to eat are constant companions with Consumption threads, while more intelligent creatures have less of a tie.
Color: Brown
Thickness: none - it is merely Brown.
Potential: none - it is merely Brown.
Charge: none - it is merely Brown.
The following is a list of tomes that it would behoove any beginning mage to read, at least once.
A Treatise on Magic, by Yendor - dated, but still a useful text for those interested in the history of the subject.
Magic in Practice, by Vishus Wee-Zul - one of the better books on practical spellcasting.
The Ancient Art of Magic, by El-Riccan - another book on practical spellcasting. Slightly more technical than Magic in Practice.
Basic Magickal Theory, by Vishus Wee-Zul - a good beginning book on the interactions of threads. After reading this book, the student should be able to predict the effects of simple interactions (enough knowledge to invoke most cantrips).
Taxonomies and Thread Special Interaction, by Vishus Wee-Zul - a treatise upon which most of modern Thread Special Interaction is based.
The Crafting of Spells, by Diamonda Del - Diamonda is always a wonderful writer. This book describes the basics of spell research, and is the only book of its kind. The book is written by example, and throughout the text, Diamonda describes the research of a new spell: Diamonda's Frilly Flier, which is a useful spell in its own right.
Modern Special Interactions, by Cyclops - probably the definitive text on Thread Special Interaction in existence. Very technical, but an excellent read, nonetheless.
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