Parenthesis

Parenthesis

This pause was object of serious discussion. There was no deaths involved as far as I know, but the verbal violence reached unusual levels.

In a society where everybody carry weapons, either or deadly spells; where duels are frequent, and may end in death without the survivor endure any punishment; you can expect people to keep a civil and even cordial behavior most the time. That is what happens in human communities on Sharitarn.

Sometimes people will stand out this line, especially people of intellectual inclination debating what to say and how to say it. A fair number of people is involved in this attempt of make my words reach you and each one feels that is their right and obligation to prevent what they see as obvious mistakes. I agree, but only up to some limit.

Point in debate was if I should include an explanation of magical theory to give you some sort of map before enter the facts or let you figure out what is happening by yourself. Some argue that pauses are boring; they scare away most reader. Maybe, but remembering the person I was on Earth to imagine myself in your place I cannot shake from my head the feeling that in your place I would like some basic description of meaningful concepts.

My words arrived where they are supposed to you never saw ostensible magic working, only know it as Mythology and recreational fiction. On the other hand, even if the message was lost and reached a Universe where ostensible magic do exists chances are that it will not function according the same parameters if follows here.

My decision was to take choose a imperfect solution that contemplates both points of view. You have here a brief guideline to understand the next chapters, not an actual map. Those who prefer to feel amazed instead of know what is happening may jump that part. If that is you, stop reading this and go right to the chapter named “Luciola from New Castle”. My history does not need the present chapter to be understood.

The process of learn magic is something I cannot talk about because an oath force me to silence about that. Therefor I will not describe to you Black Centaur Castle from inside. Is enough to say that the Centaur is a public institution administrated by one of the three archmages of Lutianen.

Few people step inside it except for the Mage Castes teaching or studding up there and the students who intend to became Mage Castes.

Mages convicted by serious crimes and those captured in battle are usually convicted to prison inside magical universities. They are prisoners, but enjoy the same status of any other professor, excluded the right of go outside. The Mage Caste Codes demand that treatment as far as the prisoners cooperate, no matter the crime perpetrated. Sigraxes enjoy the same privilege sometimes, but for them it constitutes the exception. More often the sigrax convicted by a crime against his city is punished as any other citizen would be.

Is essential to have as many mages as possible inside the Magical University because there is a magical number of mages necessary for the institution continue. As soon as a place like Black Centaur fall bellow that number, it became instable. The chance of form mages inside it almost disappear while the risks to try escalate to barely a dead sentence for everyone near to the city. A lazy professor counts as much as a dedicated one in that regard.

All mages came from magical universities, which only exist on cities. Most cities do not have one, and never had. Some used to have mages but lost the magical university for fall bellow the necessary number.

I could not leave Black Centaur anytime I wanted, but that has to do with the fact that I am an involuntary immigrant. Having no family and no home on Sharitarn and little understanding about the planet where I was would be too risky for me to leave the protection of this institution.

All cities where involuntary immigrants are somewhat common have to deal with problems related to our improper behaviour. The usual way chosen to minimise that is limit the transit of iis to the limits controlled by the Caste they are trying to join. I could not communicate without magic, and had no magic yet.

At first I was entirely incompetent to defend myself in duel and very likely to offend someone by accident and then need that ability. After the test to become a sigrax I had to invest all my energy in the learning process of basic spells. Not in walk the city.

Most my colleges where from Lutianen, of course. The ones with family in the city would leave every other weekend, those with parents on farms only during national festivities. However, I didn’t made close enough friends to be invited to stay in someone’s home during holydays. That was my fault, but, in my defence, I must say that there was a too large distance separating my core convictions at the time to the moral believes implicitly adopted by my fellow classmates.

Study together demand less mutual acceptance than build bonds of friendship. Is hard, but possible, to do the first when you feel your colleges as monstrous criminals. The second, I was not able to achieve.

Going back to the reason why I am writing this chapter, let me talk more about magic. In my arrival at the Welcome Tower Helicon had to make several tests to determine if I was born with magic potential or not. That was the case because is very hard to detect the potential necessary to learn magic before the process which awakes this potential: this process when happens in a Mage University is called ‘first test’.

Once the potential is awaken, the way to test it became obvious for anyone who knows the basic about magic. All you have to do is place a magical object with a visible spell in the hands of the person: in the hands of someone without awaken potential magical objects do not manifest their Xar, on the other hand those who have the awaken potential cannot avoid the reaction of magical items to it.

They call the people with magic potential awake who failed to became sigraxes ‘alchemists’. The alchemist cannot make spells, but he can use magic thanks to magical objects and mix magical potions.

Most common people see alchemists as potion makers and magical items fixers. They sometimes “make” magical armours and weapons combining magical pieces with mundane ones. In not as good as what sigrax Enchanters do, and don’t last much, but the products of alchemist art can achieve some efficient and original results sometimes.

In the eyes of most cities alchemists are not Mage Caste, and the Mage’s Brotherhood don’t consider them part of our caste any more than those cities do.

Still, for common person in general alchemists are the closer they will ever get to see and touch magic. I must be explicit about that now, once, since I will forget that in the rest of this book: magic is far less common on Sharitarn than my history may lead you to think.

I am a sigrax, a user of magic, and users of magic attract manifestations of it whether they want or not. Besides our attention is attracted by magic related subjects as much as our existence attracts them.

Sigraxes and mages are what the Brotherhood consider Mage Caste. However, only mages are part of the Brotherhood itself, and all mages must be part of it whether they like or not.

Even not being allowed in the ‘vip room’ sigraxes go to the same parties, so to speak. Mages and sigraxes study the same spells, principles, and Ways of magic. Our power work under the same general limitations. Mages are like sigraxes, but astronomically superior.

The last thing I will talk about in this pause was just mentioned: Ways of Magic.

That’s something you would not need to know just to understand the world of Sharitarn as a native do. Most people who are neither mage caste nor alchemists have little to no idea about the Ways. They know that there is healers, illusionists and a couple of other types because those are visible social roles, the followers of those Ways dress in a specific way and have noticeable temperaments easy to recognize even without any magic experience. They know children stories and legends about necromancer transforming themselves and others in undeads and about mind whispers erasing the memory of entire Estate Cities, but in most cases cannot say where the line between fiction and fact is.

Only the castes that must deal frequently with Mage Castes bother to educate their members about the distinctive ‘favours’ of magic users found in the World. Warriors learn as much as possible about the subject, but Builder and Sailor Castes seldom invest time in that.

In your case, I am providing a brief turn on the Ways of Magic because that information will happen to make the things coming next simpler.

When you take Meta-magic and History out what a user of magic learns originated in a Way of magic or another. That origin can be so distant that it is now irrelevant, but it is a positive fact.

Ways are found and lost, created and kept secret, they are a fundamental tool and a weapon of utmost importance. The number of them kept by wild tradition largely exceeds the number of them taught in Magical Universities. On the other hand, most Magical universities can teach two or three Ways while wild nations have only one each. There is complications and detail, too many to address here.

Keeping things as simple as they can be, but not simpler than that: no Mage Caste has more than one magical Way. Some have no magical Way at all, those are the “Generalists”. There is serious practical advantages in follow a Way, over stay generalist; both in endurance and brute power spells. A user of magic can learn the basic spells of all Ways easily than the follower of any Way, but to go deeper is necessary to follow the Way. “True power comes with sacrifice” some old stories used to say on my home planet, that’s true here.

The choice of Way allows no turning back, it change the entire magical body of a sigrax or mage and affects both personality and perspective about the world. It also imposes two important costs.

One is versatility, each Way imposes a cost in energy to make spells of any other, and any of them make harder to learn the spells from other Ways. There is affinities and absolute incompatibilities to be taken in consideration as well. Some Ways are very cheap and others impose almost all Xar a sigrax can deal with leaving no space for learn or perform spells from other Ways: that make illusionist and soothsayers very flexible and limits somatic transmutators and mind carvers to keep a couple of spells from other Ways and use them at large cost. However, there is no Way without cost.

The second limitation is the capacity to develop education skills. Teach magic mostly demands Meta-Magical understanding. To grasp it is a hard and slow process. Became even harder after one enter a magical Way.

Generalists enjoy a flexibility of perception that enables them to learn Meta-Magic with less suffering. One don’t loose what has learned about teach lining whit a Way, just became harder further to evolve as a professor.

Black Centaur teach Divination, Creation and Healing magic. Other universities teach other Ways.

Wild nations usually have only one Way, but there is exceptions.

Let me take a Way to exemplify how it works: Healing Magic.

It deals with cure, fix, living things. Restore physical energy and may expand it in some extent. Don’t really change the individual permanently, except by make a limb grow back in the physical body when that limb already exists in the persons energetic structure.

Is among the very few Ways capable to extend longevity. Sigrax Healers can live hundreds of years if they choose to, and let me not mention how far Healing mages are able to go. Still, all that is a application of the same base: use Xar to make the energetic mold stronger, use it to repair the physical organism.

That does not means healer magic can’t be apply to lifeless objects instead of living ones. By principle spells can be transfer to objects and elixirs, we will find exceptions but not in here.

One can place a “Youth” spell in a necklace, and as long as the person uses it all time and has magic potential awaken the benefits of the invested Xar will endure, the person using this collar will age as fast as the Healer who did the spell would, almost.

Made by a healer mage, assuming it is a good job, the Youth collar should exist for several decades. Possibly even a few centuries. The person who makes powerful objects like but which last for Eons is not a Healer, there is a Magical Way specific for it.

Still, any of us can learn how to transfer simple spells to short-lived objects, and any of us can learn how to mix some basic magic potions.

Healer magic also was used in the past to make swords that heal all wounds they make. Seems stupid but serves as a great tool to teach sword skills: the person holding the weapon must be an alchemist or sigrax of course, a mage would also do of course but mages seldom manifest interest for weapons. Mage’s powers are better suited by magical jewelry. Some healing-swords have more than dozen millions of years and still work as well if they had been finished last Monday.

Healers don’t have particular problems in learn most other Ways.

Being an ancient and traditional Way healer magic originated several other Ways. Is more natural for a Healer to deal with the spells of such schools, they let him less tired. Necromancy is the first and most wildly know Way originated from Healing Magic, it has walked a fair distance since it’s origin but is still more familiar to Healers than (for instance) Divination. Pestilence and Breeding Magic are other two Ways originated from Healer Magic. The first came from past Eras of History, but still is far more recent than Necromancy. The other was developed about 5.000 years ago, what in terms of Sharitarn History is very recent.

Healers can learn necromantic spells, and breeding spells with less effort than they learn spells from other schools. That when and if they find someone to teach them.

Most necromantic spells are very old. They are hard to find on this side of the Continent but on South West Cost almost every sigrax knows one or two. On the other hand there is very few places where a generalist sigrax can go to buy his entrance in the Way of necromancy.

Unlike Necromancy Pestilence and Breeding are Wild Ways, meaning that they are not practiced by civilized Mage Castes. No mage university teach them, only initiatic lineages; and those don’t welcome outsiders very often. The wild sigrax will choose a pupil among the children of his tribe, and if he can’t find one with potential he hill let the knowledge die.

The Breeding magic imposes another difficulty top of the ones already mentioned. It is a Wild Way developed by non-humans. The people who made it lives on a city named Aquibar, in the extreme North of Main Continent. They have a tense relationship with humans, always had.

They do make commerce with humans, despite the tension. Some of their living products can be found here on Lutianen, the most common being the numus. Numus are a popular pet, a sort of lapdog. Sometimes used as guard, they are too small to pose physical treat to humans but can make a disproportional scandal when crying.

Numus have the general shape of bulldogs with a big macaw’s beak replacing the mouth. Every single detail of them was designed by the sigraxes to make perfect pets. That gives me a opportunity to end this paragraph with a last essential point. Numus are a composition of species (I have no idea how many) incompatible with each other, without magic would be impossible to have reproduction between them and the Breeding Way allows that. However, long before the Breeding Way was developed was already possible to reproduce any two species using magic.

I am telling you about the numus to call attention to the fact that magical Ways can overlap; they sometimes achieve similar results. Sticking to our example a Healer can use Xar to help reproduction, making it possible when shouldn’t be, reaching a point where is possible to achieve hydrides crossing barely any two animals. Divination spells will guide that effort. An expert in the procedure can even, up to some extend, influence the characteristics of the future pup.

That demands specific knowledge, two Ways, and mages. Or in the lack of mages sigraxes with a large number of animals from each specie, time, and a decent number of tries for each generation. To hope for success even the mages will need some experience in this field. Breeder sigraxes do all that using only their Magical Way in same time or less, using less animals.

In the end results are the same. Unions very hard to imagine between talking and/or non talking species are not news on Sharitarn. They happened for millions of years. Breeding spells just make them faster, and reduces de cost. On the other hand, Breeders only use their Way for that. I imagine they may extend the field of utility, as other Ways do, but them they will have the same sort of problems Healers have breeding distant species without breeding spells.

Pestilence is a wild Way know for some human tribes, it is impossible to learn despite the huge affinity with healer magic that makes easy for pestilent learn healing spells. Pestilence is the rare case of magic Way without spells, except the two or three spells that came with the Way itself: pestilent sigraxes absorb diseases to weaponize them, sometimes healing the sick person in the process.

I took Healing Magic as an example just to give you an idea of what is involved in the choice for a magic Way. This explanation could be made using any other Way.

The first element in your choice of Way is what exists on the city where you live. The more rational thing to do is choose something that is available in the institution where you already are. That does not work for everybody, you understand. With the right contacts, favours, and money, is possible to get a place in the magic university of some other State City. A student of Mimbao will never get a place in Micula or vice-versa, because those cities are historical enemies, but any of them could have a chance of travel to Lutianen in order to enter the creation Way.

Now that you know more about magic than most common free men of planet Sharitarn, is time to close the parenthesis.

NOTES FROM THE TRAVELLER BOOK ONE: found in the manuscripts of Archmage Altair, at his studio on Urshawa. Not included in the last version of his work.