Solo Quills and Ink-Drops

[Alses]

Timestamp: 21st Day of Autumn, 513 A.V.
Location: The Towers Respite

How full of promise it looked, how pregnant with possibilities its gilt-stamped leather covers! Fresh and new, every page sandwiched between the elegant bindings, it positively called out for the delicate caress of a quill.

Such an innocuous object, then, should not inspire fear or apprehension in its owner, and yet Alses, having just purchased the handsome blank volume, stared at it with no small amount of trepidation as she perched herself comfortably at her desk. Head cradled on a lacework of interlocking fingers, fire-opal glimmers shimmering in the autumnal sunlight, bright eyes contemplated the red leather of the volume, putting off the moment when she'd have to crack it open and get on with the monumental task of writing.

It was a fine, if chilly, autumn day, and a few days earlier Alses had relished that bite in the air, that suggestion of ice crystals on the breeze coming in from the Unforgiving. It had meant she could justify lighting the first fire of Autumn, could load up on beautifully-fragrant fadeong and nokkochi logs and bask in the heat and light from the flames in her grate.

Fire was a constant – or near-constant – companion in Autumn and Winter, crackling merrily in her grate. She'd seen fire in all its states, from weak and wavering to a cheerfully-roaring blaze to a calmed and restful ember-red glow. Her desk, positioned close to the grate for ease of note disposal and more crucially to benefit from the radiating heat, was liberally bathed in brilliant autumnal sunshine, and strewn with pieces of paper, in more chaos than usual. Those notes, on scraps of paper, were her drafts, her notes, trying to make structured and logical sense of the knowledge locked carefully in her brain.

Alses could explain magecraft perfectly well, she'd found, so long as the person she was explaining to already knew all about it. The trick was being accessible – and that was a lot harder than she'd first imagined.

It went against the grain, too, putting the secrets of the craft down on paper, destined for a library where anyone could read it. Then again...it was a library with a stringent entry policy: no-one who hadn't materially contributed to the sum of knowledge within its walls could gain access. New knowledge was hard to come by; it meant diligent research or dangerous ruin exploration, both of which demanded strength of character, intelligence, guile and a whole host of other skills.

Everyone and their friend wouldn't be reading whatever she produced, just people who'd proven their worth to academia. Perhaps one day she would benefit from the knowledge they'd imparted to Bharani, just as they might appreciate what she set down now.

No time like the present, then – but she'd thought that at least three times previously, each time giving up amid a haze of crumpled notes and impenetrable prose that skipped away from the silver thread of her thoughts, tangling with anything and everything as it left her brain, channelled into the quill and wrote a swirling maelstrom of half-finished thoughts and opinions with no structure to tie them together.

Yes, from previous attempts she'd determined that structure was absolutely key to making anything coherent, and that its lack was the reason she'd failed before. Thus, logically, the first order of business would simply be to create a structure, a plan.

It would have other advantages, too – she could adapt it into a table of contents later, to make navigating the primer an easier prospect. There was no sense in flipping through page after page of notes to find a single reference or piece of information – it was inefficient and boring, the scourge of the scholar.

Alses drew in a deep, shuddering breath from the waiting silence all around. The only living, moving thing in the room was her, surrounded by gently-falling motes of dust that flared into brief supernovae as they passed through the bars of light falling through her window. Just her, and the paper.

Waiting.

With all due ceremony, Alses reached to her left and cracked open a fresh pot of rich black ink, preparing to dip her quill – freshly sharpened and cut for the endeavour – into the abyssal liquid.

Plan, Alses wrote in her best hand, the bold strokes and curves emphatic against the creamy whiteness of the paper. A good start, she felt, a faint smile curving up her lips as she consulted the notes in great drifts and stacks all around – legacies of previous failed attempts – to divine her next course of action.

“Syna guide my quill,” she murmured, distracted as she leafed through the pages of dense notation, but no less reverent for that.

Plan

First: What is magecraft? Consider the new student who knows not a thing about the discipline.

Second: What can be done with magecraft? Again, consider the clueless student.

Third: What are the theoretical principles of the craft?

Fourth: What is needed for the craft? Consider structure as well as ingredients and reagents.

Fifth: The process of magesmithing itself.

Sixth: Examples?

Seen like that, Alses had to admit it didn't look like a great deal of work, or indeed something over which she should have devoted so much time – but behind the vacuous, simplistic statements, the broken-down building blocks, there lay the vast and teeming complexity of a demanding discipline of world magic, a science in and of its own right, with specialised equipment and rituals and terminology, with its own limitations and weaknesses and strengths.

With a sigh, Alses straightened up in her chair and reached out with one imperious hand to select the first few pages of her notes, leaning back as her eyes scanned the dense, spiky text – decidedly not her best hand – seeking out the meaning she'd painstakingly laid down.

[Alses]

Her quill trembled, unsure, for a long moment, black ink trickling to the point before Alses steeled herself and began to write, drawing for inspiration on books she'd read, pulling the general format out of the depths of her brain and from frequent consultation with her notes. This would be a final, coherent draft before she wrote it down in full in her book.

A Primer on Magecraft, that was the title she'd eventually settled on. 'Primer', she'd seen, meant a basic guide, and that was the only sort of manual she felt herself even vaguely qualified to write.

It looked very...final...on the page there, all alone in the centre – but that was how books seemed to be done. A page for the title – 'And the author, Alse, mustn't forget that,' she reminded herself, re-inking quill and setting down her elegant, looping signature beneath the lonely title.

It didn't look quite so bad like that.

Then another page for contents – sometimes two or three, depending on length...well, she could leave that until later. First things first, an introduction. She'd decided – after much wrangling and wrestling with the idea – to write what some books called a 'foreword', just to explain her own lack of skill and what the book was to be used for.

So.

How to start, how to start...

Foreword

As Lhavit's only resident lady magesmith currently (Autumn 513 A.V.) it falls to me to create a basic guide or primer to the most exacting, demanding and yet rewarding world magic currently known to Mizahar, in order to ensure that the Diamond of Kalea retains place, pre-eminence and precedence amongst the known magical centres of the post-Valterrian world.

Magecraft is the sovereign skill, the reliable science of bringing greatness out of mediocrity through the fusion of djed and intellect.

That said, it is not without its risks, its trials and tribulations. This Primer is not intended for the untold legions of the ignorant and still less for the imbecilic rushers who charge headlong at magic as though it were something that could be browbeaten into submission. Rather, this is a primer for the serious Magecraft student, and hopefully will serve as a useful reference work for even the experienced Magesmith.

The Magesmith takes an object that would be considered normal and makes it truly remarkable. In many cases, the artifact produced is a logical impossibility by mundane standards, defying many physical conventions: a novice, for instance, could take a dagger and lighten it somewhat – which is, I will admit, not terribly impressive. A master, however, could take a sword and make it the sharpest weapon known to the world. The fabled artifacts of the White Enchantress, Areesa Tallshade, are perfect examples of the pinnacle of the craft, and will be discussed in some detail at the appropriate juncture.

It is important to bear in mind, as a prospective student, that Magecraft is a science, not an arts arcana like Auristics or Hypnotism. If you think you can 'feel' your way through creating an artifact, or that personality has anything to do with the process, I recommend that you stop reading this primer immediately and enroll in a nice course of personal magic instead. I guarantee that it will be safer for you than this most difficult, dangerous and demanding of the arcane sciences.

Whilst simple in its conception, in the practice of Magecraft to any great degree we must consider, as far as is humanly possible, all risk factors involved and devise as many mitigating procedures as we can, lest we overlook something vital in our crafting and so risk catastrophe. Magecraft is an unforgiving science, and those who are new to its intricacies are particularly vulnerable to missteps as their inexperience leads them to make fundamental errors. Magesmiths work with some of the most powerful incarnations of djed on the planet, which means that those who make mistakes almost never live long after having made them.

This guide is no substitute for a flesh-and-blood tutor; it is always best to start a career in Magecraft as an apprentice in a superior's laboratory. The primer is simply a helpful guide and reference work, and cannot replace experience in instruction.

This primer has been compiled from my own experiences as a practising magesmith. As such, I cannot claim it to be exhaustive, but every technique and piece of advice has been rigorously tested in the crucible of the laboratory and should be useful to aspiring magesmiths of all shades.

In this guide, I aim to outline the theoretical basis of Magecraft, the practical principles of its execution in the laboratory, the general method of artifact creation, the tools and resources required for its practice, a brief history of the discipline and finally a selection of common and legendary artifact examples, to serve as inspiration and guide for magesmiths of all levels, from the lowliest of apprentices to those at the greatest heights of their mastery.

Alses
Magesmith and Instructor at the Dusk Tower

Well, it would do as a start, anyway. Alses frowned, dissatisfied, at the dense prose. It sounded rather more than usual like she'd swallowed a lexicon – which was saying something. The prose was fussy and convoluted, the sentence structure archaic and muddled, the overall flow...well, best not to think of it, really.

Alses reassured herself with the thought that this was only the draft; she'd not set it down into absolute final form in the book she'd purchased for that very purpose just yet. She could work on it later; the foreword was perhaps the least important part of the guide, after all, just her trying to cover herself by saying she wasn't any great and powerful magesmith, merely one who'd been careful and adept enough at the craft to not blast herself into oblivion.

Which was perhaps the definition of an eventually-successful magesmith, true, but for now, as one who was still working her way up to the lofty, gold-slathered pinnacles of the craft, she'd cover herself. No sense in getting careless – in anything.

[Alses]

Resolute, now, and setting aside the dense, impenetrable foreword, Alses turned her attention towards the first chapter of the Primer proper, where she'd decided to outline the theoretical underpinnings of Magecraft, from its fundamental purpose to Falkenhayn's fields of endeavour to djed quality and its relation to value and Strinbeck's Principle.

It meant modifying her plan already, but her reasoning for this was twofold; firstly, anyone just idly browsing and without any real desire to learn would skim the first chapter and quickly put it down as being too involved and difficult, and second – more importantly - theory had to underpin practice or the whole edifice would fall apart. A lack of understanding of the very basic building blocks and principles on which magecraft was built could only result in explosions, implosions and general expensive destruction of landscape and life down the line.

Chapter One: The Theoretical Principles of Magecraft

This chapter deals with the theory underpinning the science of Magecraft as it is understood today and how this knowledge is put into practice by most formally-trained magesmiths. A solid understanding of the principles of Magecraft and their application is, unsurprisingly, essential to the craft.

The whole edifice of Magecraft rests on two basic, fundamental principles of magic:

1. Everything in existence has djed, in some capacity or other.

2. This djed is integrally connected with every facet of that existence, and defines that object or creature in a way that identifies and sets it apart from everything else.

Since djed is both the result and definition of every item, it is a logical deduction that anything which affects the djed of an item and permanently changes it will also alter the item in some manner. This is basis of the entirety of Magecraft, the very wellspring of the discipline around which all else is based.

Falkenhayn's Fields of Endeavour

The manipulation of djed in inanimate objects is carried out through the use of specialized tools, achieving by proxy with ambient (ie 'world') djed what a personal magician does with their own djed reserves in order to achieve an effect. The djed of an item is - with time, resources and patience - almost infinitely malleable, and this was codified before the Valterrian by the magesmith Falkenhayn into five overarching attributes, or 'fields', of endeavour. These are the key areas which are altered in the course of Magecraft. As such, even the newest apprentice should be aware of these fields, lest they make a very poor – and probably dead – magesmith.

They are as follows:

1. Structural – Concerning the physical properties of the item, everything from weight to durability to sharpness. Manipulation here can make a warhammer as light as a feather or a wooden shield as hard as diamond.

2. Behavioural – Clearly defined actions that can be performed either autonomously, within reasonable physical capabilities, or controlled through the use of the following field:

3. Intellectual – Imparting various degrees of intelligence to the item, most commonly responses to stimuli like sounds or touch, which can be used in conjunction with either magic or behavioural triggers to cause a wider range of responses safely.

4. Arcane – This is a self-explanatory field; the ability of an item to harness arcane skill transferred by someone schooled in the same discipline, who must be present in order for the transference to work properly. The magesmith may be the imparting mage also, but this adds an extra layer of difficulty into the process.

5. Divine – Another self-explanatory field, which can only be granted by the gods themselves. If any of you students reading this can get a gnosis mark on your artifacts then be sure to let me know how you did it.

Reagent Theory

Zopper's Law states that 'Non-living objects, under normal circumstances, do not possess the ability to recreate their expendable djed, unlike living creatures.'

A moment's logical consideration brings up a question:

'Since Magecraft doesn't use personal djed, and since non-living items don't recreate lost djed, where do we get the extra djed we need to turn an item into an artifact?'

The answer, practically speaking, is very simple. Magesmiths use djed from other, external sources to bolster the djed of the prospective artifact. These 'external sources' are the ingredients and reagents even the rawest apprentices are familiar with, if not exactly confident of their use.

By drawing off djed from the ingredients and reagents through the use of specialised tools (covered in the 'Implements' section of this primer), shaping it into the desired form through the use of further implements and pressing it into the djed matrix of the target item, the magesmith can alter the prospective artifact as he or she wishes, rewriting what is already there and, in many cases, adding entirely new facets to its makeup.

Naturally, in accordance with Zopper's Law, the reagents used in the process do not recharge their djed. During the process of creation, it is most commonly observed that the reagents decompose and in many cases simply cease to be, every erg of djed that defined their existence drained and repurposed by the will of the magesmith. If there is any djed left in a reagent at the end of the creative process, as sometimes occurs in even the most demanding processes, then it is in a base unstable form that is completely unsuitable for further use in Magecraft – or indeed for any other use, save perhaps as a paperweight.

Strinbeck's Principle of Equality

Many students down the years have listened and understood this point in the lesson, but then follow a logical – but unfortunately erroneous - train of thought that leads them to a false conclusion that could prove disastrous:

'If all we are doing is adding djed to an item, why then do we require any of the rarer and more expensive catalytic reagents at all?’

Simply put, the answer is this: 'Not all djed is equal.'

This is known as Strinbeck's Principle, after the magesmith who first documented the use of powerful reagents to create exponentially more mighty artifacts. It may seem odd that this is the case, since djed is the most basic code for all things, but it is an empirically-researched truism that there are levels of strength and purity even in the fundamental energy of the world.

Alses took her quill from the page with a sigh of relief, working her aching, cramped hand with a beatific smile on her face even as the feather – hard to obtain in Lhavit, given the starry city's love-affair with the calligrapher's brush – clattered onto the desk from her nerveless fingers.

What she'd written was good, solid knowledge, dredged up from the depths of her mind and spun out from practical exercise in the craft, too – but she was only just getting into the meat of the theory, the reasons and principles behind ingredients and reagents and the subtle – and not-so-subtle – differences between the two. And as for the gradations in ingredients themselves...

She took a deep breath, and stretched luxuriously, delighting in taking a break from the taxing business of writing. This was perhaps enough for today; she had other things to be getting on with, after all.

[Alses]

It had been some time since last she wrote, and the pile of papers atop her still-pristine tome mocked her subtly from their corner of the desk, reminding her of her obligations to Bharani and Shara both. Disappointing the lupine librarian wasn’t an option – the woman had been of considerable aid (to put it mildly) when it came to the investigation of Arture, and she held the keys – almost literally – to Alses’ further academic advancement in the city. Alses had seen what her animal form’s bulk and teeth could do, too.

Besides, Shara was nice.

With a sigh, Alses dragged the sheaf of papers and her book over, inking a quill with a practiced flourish and her eyes quickly scanning the pages previous, to establish exactly where she’d left off, and therefore what should come next.

‘So we were writing about Falkenhayn and Strinbeck,’ she mused quietly, turning the page with a whisper of silk, eyes dancing across the elegant cursive script that hurt her hands to produce in any real quantity, but was, at least, easily legible.

A long sigh escaped her lips as she contemplated what came next – a piece she always had difficulty with. Writing about the facilities and tool requirements of magecraft was easy; she’d already written that part out, and had no problems incorporating it into the wider book, but djed classification? Boring, dry, and perhaps more intuitive than most of the rest of the discipline, at least when it came to the suborders of djed, it was her least favourite part of all of magecraft, the bit which kept her up at nights wrestling with different configurations and quantities until, at the last, she had something that would work.

It might not always have been pretty, or elegant – those were things she could work on, with practice and expertise - but whatever her other faults and failings in selecting ingredients, her choices worked, which was more than could be said of some others’.

But how to put the process – which was really nothing more than a dash of intuition and hope tempered by a few basic principles – down on paper?

‘Welll…’ she thought dubiously, sucking absently on the end of her quill, ‘I suppose I could define the overclasses, at least. They’re not too difficult.’

It was a way forward, if nothing else. A deep breath, a slow exhalation, filling Alses’ nostrils with all the myriad scents of home as she calmed and centred herself, ready to set her thoughts down for posterity.

Djed Classification

Magesmiths classify djed very broadly into three main categories, as follows:

1.) Base Djed – Almost entirely an artificial construct, this refers mainly to the energy of a half-spent reagent or ingredient, whose djed matrix has been distorted and stressed by the extraction procedures beyond all utility. This djed is often, by virtue of the draining of most of its components, utterly unremarkable and unusable for all intents and purposes. The fine gray dust or greasy smear left after an ingredient or reagent is used up exhibits base djed.

2.) Low-order Djed – This is by far the most numerous category of djed with which a magesmith works. It encompasses all material ingredients – with the exception of metagold and infinitite – which are of a mundane origin and from Mizahar itself. The djed is stable and malleable, but possesses no truly remarkable qualities of stabilisation or internal reinforcement.

3.) High-order Djed – Rare and a privilege to work with, reagents expressing high-order djed allow the skilled magesmith to work miracles and almost completely disregard physical laws. Items containing high-order djed that can be extracted are those with origins offworld (making Summoners highly-prized by many magesmiths) or those that originate from Relic or Fragment monsters.

These are the most basic overarching classes of djed with which a magesmith works. They have many subdivisions, depending on the different texts and opinions consulted, and nowhere is this more evident that with the metaclass ‘Low-Order Djed’.

With regards to this, I have found that a general guide as to the djedic quality of a mundane ingredient can be gleaned from its outward appearance. The more desirable an item appears – such as gemstones, rare woods, precious metals and the like – the higher the quality of djed contained within the mundane structure. This does, unfortunately, also make the item much more sought-after by even non-wizards, and consequently more expensive and harder to obtain, especially for a magesmith just starting in the craft.

High-order djed – and the items that express it – is sufficiently rare and important to the higher reaches of the craft to merit a separate section.

High-Order Reagent Theory

High-order reagents are the most sought-after ingredients in magecrafting. This is due to the high-order djed present in their matrices, which can be extracted by the magesmith and used to bolster a putative artifact far beyond what can be achieved through the use of low-order djed alone.

The reasons behind why high-order reagents can allow the achievement of dreams and impossibilities when more common ingredients cannot are complex and poorly-understood, and there are two main schools of thought on this contentious issue. In the interest of completeness and impartiality, I shall give equal weight to both before presenting my own interpretation.

The 'Inherency' school of thought consider it is primarily the purity of the djed contained within the catalytic items that grants them their impressive properties. They argue that the refined and ultra-concentrated nature of the djed allows for greater stresses and demands to be placed before splitting and damage of djed patterns in an artifact occurs.

The 'Stabilist' school, meanwhile, argue it is the alien nature of the djed present in a high-order reagent that is the cause. They hold that the utterly alien nature of high-order djed exerts harmonic pressure against the standard, or ‘low-order’ djed of Mizahar and in so doing affords the strengthening of djed matrices against disruption. Stability is, after all, a very important factor in the creation of an artifact, as forcing a lot of djed into a single field in an item requires resiliency to be built in to avoid a break or fracture in the djed conduits. Breaks can be disastrous, and often with painful consequences, both for the artifact and the attending magesmith.

On a personal note, I believe the fundamental reason to fall somewhere between these two camps. In-deed, I consider it to depend very much upon the provenance of the high-order reagent. Stabilists have argued (at least, historically) persuasively in the case of swords and armour from killed Diverse (bar-baric residents of another world) being used as catalytics, but are silent on the subject of metagold and infinitite, both of which originate on Mizahar itself, whilst Inherists are vociferous on those two and recalcitrant on the consideration of off-world catalytics.

Regardless, the important fact is that high-order reagents work and allow for far greater masterpieces to be created than would otherwise be possible.

Alses set her quill down with a sigh and gently massaged the aching pad of her thumb and the cramping muscles of her fingers, noting ruefully the splotches of black ink that had somehow man-aged to speckle her fire-opal skin.

She felt…relieved, that was the word, for having turned the corner on djed classification. Now, alt-hough she wasn’t entirely happy with the way her explanation had turned out, she at least had a starting point that could be worked on, refined and reviewed until it was as clear as she could make it. It also left her free to scribe on quickly, fleshing out the later chapters of her primer instead of being continually niggled by the unfinished gap in the middle of it. Leaving things undone, skipping over them in haste to get to somewhere else, was anathema to her ordered soul.

[Alses]

She’d settled into a routine after a time, and it one that was working well so far. Her days – well, evenings, at least, were quite ordered, now, and in an odd sort of way that was pleasing. She’d return to the Towers Respite with the sun full and red in the sky and go and sit in one of the many pavilions that littered the Respite’s gardens, gazing out across the city and into the Misty Peaks, drinking in the heady, dying light of the sun, red wine and fiery brandy on her skin that delighted and intoxicated, soothed and calmed and centred providing a last burst of strength to the Synaborn before the long darkness, the emptiness of a forced chaining to an imperfect form, came down with the night.

Mornings were nice, they bubbled and danced like Riverfall champagne, but an autumn sunset…that had a magic all of its own, with the bloodred light lancing through trees mere scribbles against the great crimson orb of the sinking sun, the clouds in a powder-blue sky turned flames by the fierce swansong glow, the way the radiance overwhelmed even the glow of the skyglass towers to paint all of Lhavit in all the colours of violence and sorrow.

After she’d watched the sun die, after the Change had swamped her glorious form in corpse-white ugliness, she slipped inside the Respite as unobtrusively as possible and claimed one of the private baths, submerging herself in near-boiling – and occasionally, slightly sulphurous – water, teasing out all the stresses and strains of the day and evaporating them off in wisps and whorls of steam until every part of her was deliciously warm and utterly relaxed.

After an evening bath – for which she praised whatever artifice gave Lhavit such an abundance of hot water, swaddled in towels that covered up her deathly-pale flesh as much as possible, she retired to her rooms, set a blazing fire, and began to write, applying her mind solely to the task in hand to avoid damaging introspection.

Lhavit was glowing like the largest gem imaginable when Alses sat down with a contented sigh, flourished her quill and began to scribe in earnest.

Use of High-Order Djed

Imagine the djed matrix of an item as a set of branching chains, each chain representing one of Falkenhayn's fields of endeavour. In the process of creating an artifact, the magesmith alters those chains, adding in more metal, more links, perhaps even replacing it with a stronger alloy, resulting in a reinforced, altered chain. This is, however, a deviation not found under natural processes and so puts a great deal of strain on the djed 'chains' and so the item itself. Indeed, the greater part of a magesmith's skill is in maintaining the djed matrix of an item through the stresses and damage of artifact creation, and lack of control at this stage is the most common reason for failed artifacts.

Let us now consider, as an example, that the goal is to imbue an item with magic and then to tell it when and when not to use said magic. Breaking this example down into its component parts:

-One step in the magical field to give it the ability of magic, some small stress on the magic chain.

-One step in behaviour to inform the use of the magic, some small stress on the behaviour chain.

-One step in intelligence to tell it when to use the behaviour, some small stress on the intelligence chain.

This artefact will have a Magecraft Coefficient (the commonly-accepted measure of an artifact, showing how far from the mundane original it has been enhanced) of three, which would imply the need for a high-order reagent to stabilise it. However, this is not true for this particular artifact. This is because, as the force is spread out across the different chains, so is the stress and thus all that is required are simple low-order source reagents for each change. It is only when significant stress is placed on one or more of the chains, when there is a great change in any one of Falkenhayn’s fields of endeavour, that high-order djed is needed for stabilisation and reinforcement. It is important to note at this point that one high-order djed reagent is required for each great change.

Consider a magesmith granted a commission for a sword by one of the great and good of the city. For the sake of argument, the Night Lord Aysel himself - long may he reign. Naturally, the magesmith wishes to produce a sword worthy of such an august personage, an artifact to be a constant honour and aid to its recipient, to be in all ways as legendary as the Ethaefal himself. In order to do so, therefore, the magesmith will want to first make it nigh-impossible to scratch or shatter, which would require:

-Four or five steps in the structural field to make it nigh-impossible to scratch or shatter.

That is pushing a lot of external djed into the structural field, radically altering this singular property, with the expected side-effects – severe stress on the djed of this particular facet of the artifact.

If the magesmith wants to make sure that the item's structural chain remains stable, then high-order djed is needed to reinforce and stabilize it so that it does not weaken, warp and then snap. Otherwise, attempting to reinforce that singular segment with only low-order reinforcement, only using more and more low-order djed, results in weaknesses as the expansions cannot support themselves, ultimately worsening the problem. The result of this should be obvious – failure either catastrophic or subtle, but failure nonetheless.

Optional Reagents

Optional reagents are those ingredients which imbue some measure of similarity or link to themselves into an artifact. They are not required by any means, and nor do they stress an artifact’s djed matrix and contribute to its MC level, but they are still extremely useful and can provide a wide variety of effects if the magesmith is willing to take the time to use them.

Some of the commonest examples of optional reagents are blood, ichor or other vital fluids or body parts. This is because the magesmith is able to extract and use the djed signature from these items, allowing for a variety of interesting and useful effects.

For example:

-Blood from a certain creature can be used in order to make the artifact extremely effective against said creature. For example, using whale blood in the creation of a harpoon can make the weapon absolutely deadly to whales.

However, this can also be turned on its head, to make an artifact powerless against a certain type of creature or race.

Much of the eventual effect depends on the magesmith’s intent as djed is imparted through every facet of the process by the action of hammer on object, directing the djed flows specifically with a purpose to either enhance or confound effectiveness versus the blood and its origin.

The most common use of an optional reagent is personalisation, however. This procedure relies on the uniqueness of the djed signature of an individual; by using blood from the prospective artifact’s owner, a link dependent on this signature can be established between owner and item. In lesser artifacts, this is not particularly impressive - they simply become difficult to use effectively for the unauthorised - but greater artifacts with behaviours and powers of their own can cause much greater damage to an illicit wielder.

To a degree, this can be replicated through a highly developed intelligence imbued into the artifact. However, Magecrafted minds are still capable of being deceived, whereas an individual’s djed signature, as contained in their blood, is unique and many orders of magnitude more difficult to mimic.

A more complex extension of this is the bloodline binding. It was discovered that the djed signatures of closely-related individuals have many common factors in their makeup. Thus, if blood from several related donors is used in the creation of an artifact, and the magesmith takes proper care to preserve common djed factors, an artifact can be created that will only function for the recipient and his or her heirs and successors of the blood.

[Alses]

Another night, with the spangled light of Lhavit pouring in through the windows, an earthbound collection of miniature suns in all the colours of the rainbow, trying to make up for the gaping lack in her soul when the true sun didn’t blaze overhead. Cool blue and silver predominated, though, the heralds of night and twilight, even in the phosphorescent blaze of the plants, from the calias-rich soil and rock they burrowed into.

Almost everything in the starry city glowed, one way or another; the nights were rarely dark, but it was the lack of the sun overhead, sucking at her soul, and her distaste for her mortal chain that kept Alses inside, hidden and secretive.

Even so, the glow was quite mesmerising, a shifting panoply of light that crowned the five peaks and doubtless made life hell for the academics and sky-watchers in the Observatory, its bulk dark against the blue-blazing shine of Sartu Peak, a buffer for the telescopes to let them cut through the obscuring glow and see Zintila’s stars, the glory of the cosmos, fair and clear.

Alses tore herself away from the view outside her windows with a slightly forlorn sigh. It was just so easy to get lost in the majesty of the vault of the heavens, the subtle, joyous delight of the turning of the universe on it axis.

But.

Time to write. Quill, ink, paper…elegant skating motions ensued as, scaled brow furrowed in faint thought, Alses began to transcribe the words in her head and the notes close at hand into a final form.

Chapter Two: The Trappings of Magecraft

Implements and Work-Space

This section is where I will detail in full the tools used in Magecraft. I shall include a specimen list of laboratory equipment, as well as examples of standard and high-order reagents that should be kept in stock by any magesmith worth his or her salt.

First, let us consider the laboratory space as a whole. To execute Magecraft effectively and safely, at a minimum the room should be equipped with the following:

One Pedestal or Stand – The main function of a pedestal is to act as a stable and secure focal point for the magesmith. This is most often a simple, smooth block of stone with a broad, flat top to allow for easy manipulation of the artifact.

One Charged Water Trough – Once an artifact has been modified to the magesmith’s satisfaction, it needs to be ‘finished’ or ‘sealed’. This process occurs over several days in the charged-water trough. There are a variety of methods for imbuing water with sealing properties, from Glyphing runes to herbal preparations, and this will be detailed in Chapter Three. The best laboratories have several of these in different sizes, for efficiency - sealing a dagger in a trough that can take a full suit of armour is not an effective use of materials or time.

One Water Trough / Barrel-Tilt Arrangement – Even the very best of magesmiths have accidents upon occasion, especially if engaged in experimental procedures. A tilting-barrel arrangement next to the work area will allow for quick dousing in the event of the magesmith losing control, erasing the Glyphing runes passively feeding djed from reagents to artifact and helping to reduce the severity of wayward djed.

One Blackboard –A blackboard is always useful for drawing reference diagrams, theories and memory aids, for warning non-magesmiths of a delicate project in progress, or for noting down assignment criteria. The best laboratories have several, because of their usefulness.

One Workbench or Tool-Rack – One would hope this was self-explanatory. A simple workbench or tool-rack holds the implements of the craft when they're not being used so the absent-minded magesmith doesn’t drop them in the fountain, leave them in their other jacket or otherwise mislay the expensive mainstays of the craft. This is particularly the case when considering apprentices.

Sufficient Space – This cannot be stressed enough. Magecraft is a space-intensive discipline, especially when paired with Glyphing, which is all-but essential for safe and efficient procedures. Sufficient space allows for well-sized Glyphing circles and reduces the risk of smudged runes thanks to a careless foot. Plenty of space also makes for a pleasant working environment, necessary for the long periods of concentration required.

These are the absolute basics any magecrafting lab should have. However, there are several extremely useful - though optional - additions found in many laboratories. For example:

Glyphing Wards - Difficult to create, expensive to paint, engrave, cast or otherwise make, these wards are a permanent laboratory-wide feature in the domains of almost every high-level magesmith. When a project collapses, it releases a flood of toxic, undirected djed which can overwhelm more temporary isolation glyphs, with unpredictable effects. Powerful wards in the laboratory can capture, channel and store this djed until it can be dealt with in a safe, controlled manner, minimizing the risk to life, limb and infrastructure.

Lecturer’s Prisms - Magecrafted artifacts in and of themselves, these large circular lenses are imbued with auristics, and allow an audience to follow the magecrafting procedure. They are most commonly found, unsurprisingly, in the labs of instructing magesmiths. My own set are heavily reinforced, since there is usually at least one apprentice stampede a year, and they are invariably knocked over in the mad rush for the staircases.

Implements

Thus far, we have only touched upon the laboratory itself. A moment’s thought, providing logic has not deserted the student, will show that, just as our mundane counterparts cannot work without tools, nor can we.

Over the course of their lifetime (may it be a long one), every magesmith develops their own personal repertoire of tools that they prefer to use. Some even invent entirely new implements, to fit their style exactly. To date, however, few of these specialised items have become standard amongst the crafting community, and so I shall list only the most common, generic implements.

Hammers

The hammer is the instrument of a magesmith’s will. In some ways, this is the most complex of the general tools at your disposal. The complex enchantments imbued into the hammer extract the djed from reagents, store it in the head and then press it forcibly into the artifact: three separate, complex operations. Indeed, the hammers are the bulk of the tool-centred outlay for the aspiring magesmith, and indeed their production is a fine source of revenue for skilled practitioners of the art.

Gold hammer – The purity of the djed in the gold that forms the head of this hammer is the fundamental reason behind this hammer being the most powerful of the common tools. This purity, and hence stability, allows for large-scale transfer and alteration of djed in targets without compromising the djedic identity and structure of the tool itself - a rare property indeed. Permanent voids are built into the makeup of the hammerhead as it is crafted by the attending magesmith in order to allow for the storage of reagent djed, and further enchantment allows its direction, under the auspices of the magesmith.

Silver hammer – Favoured for delicate work, light touches and gentle changes, the silver hammer sings where gold roars. It is less able to transfer large amounts of djed in one go, in part due to the baser nature of its composition but also due to the fact that, traditionally, it is smaller than the gold hammer. It is therefore easier to wield with greater precision, and as djed fluxes from its use are far lesser than otherwise, it is more suited for delicate, detailed work, where large-scale disruption or alteration of djed flow would be detrimental to the forming artefact.

Copper hammer – This hammer is, perhaps unsurprisingly, the favourite of novices, in that the interactions of its djed and the enchantments impressed into the copper are particularly efficient and optimised for breaking open djed matrices to allow alteration or the dispersion of djed. This latter property makes the copper hammer most useful for undoing mistakes and when negatively modifying an attribute, such as weight. It is, however, not very powerful, as compared to the other principal hammers, and may need to be teamed with one of the others to have the desired effect.

It is possible to combine the functions of several hammers into one, through the use of alloys such as electrum or hepatizon, achieving a middle ground between the two. These are, however, rare tools and very expensive.

Restraints

Whilst hammers execute the magesmith’s will, the restraints localise and direct it most precisely, in order that no djed is wasted or directed to an untoward destination. There is a sympathetic interaction between restraints and hammers in professionally-produced sets of tools as they are created - purposely so - from the same blocks of metal and wood, providing a stronger bond than otherwise. The most magically-active areas are the grasping claws which secure the item to be magecrafted, able to handle and direct large quantities of djed as directed at them by the hammer strikes and focus them exclusively into the artifact at hand, preventing wastage and corruption of the djed of the world and, most crucially, that of the reagents, mundane ingredients and the magesmith herself.

Restraints, naturally, come in a variety of sizes, dependent upon the dimensions of the artifact being worked upon; clamps and vices for enchanting suits of armour would not be suitable for delicate jewellery-work, for example, and vice-versa. Most restraints are heavily over-engineered to deal with djed fluxes far in excess of what might be expected under standard use; nonetheless, the research magesmith may find themselves crafting specialised versions of these tools to work on truly ambitious projects.

Tongs are the smallest class of restraint, and are used extensively on small artifacts, such as rings, necklaces, bracelets, daggers and other, similarly-sized items.

Vices are used to securely clamp and direct djed into medium-sized objects; swords, gauntlets, shields and so forth. They vie with tongs for the most commonly-used restraint, at least amongst the magesmiths of the Royal Academy.

Clamps are far and away the largest restraints, capable of handling massive djed fluxes and large objects such as entire suits of armour and pieces of furniture or statues. They are also expressly designed with synergy in mind; several clamps can work together to allow for the magecrafting of truly vast artifacts.

Sights

All the knowledge and tools in the world are useless without the ability to see the djed being directed, and thus this last category of tools was developed in conjunction with the masters of the discipline of auristics, to allow for a widening of access to those without the Sight of the aurist. These tools - commonly called Sights - come in two major forms - lenses and prisms. Of the two, lenses are by far the most common, and prisms (or mirrors, as they are often called) have already been touched upon.

Lenses are invariably magecrafted artifacts in their own right, a collaboration between a skilled magesmith and a powerful aurist that allows someone not trained in the subtle art of Auristics, one of the more worthwhile disciplines of personal magic, to follow the flows of djed as they are changed - an incalculable boon and a synergy that has brought new and improved methods of work to a demanding discipline.

[Alses]

A faint smile graced the bleached whiteness of Alses’ face, lips a pink so pale as to almost blend into her skin quirked upwards as her quill danced elegantly. The words were pouring forth easily tonight, spilling from her notes and her leaping brain to jot themselves down with clarity and grace.

For once.

Chapter Three: Formal Process

The process of turning a mundane object into something extraordinary is often long and arduous, but even the greatest artifacts, and magesmiths, for that matter, have to start somewhere. The creative process begins by first having an appropriate workplace set up, as detailed in Chapter Two: somewhere to magecraft the item, preferably a pedestal of some kind, along with tools, reagents and some space in which to work are all fundamental in the process.

The absence of an adequate workplace and instruments will mean a shortchange somewhere in the process that may affect the end result. If you are a novice, or otherwise without resources, seek out a superior’s lab to work in. Do not try to rough it on the streets or seek to create a makeshift lab, for I can absolutely guarantee that you will fail miserably.

Once the setup is complete, it is highly recommended that the prospective magesmith inscribe glyphs all throughout the workplace, most commonly barriers and filters, to ensure that the djed being transferred does not adversely affect the station or, in many cases, the magesmith herself. Unpurposed djed lacks direction and, left alone, can settle in whatever and whoever is around, manifesting in various ways from the slightly unusual to the catastrophically deadly.

Ideally speaking, the magesmith should assemble their source reagents in separate barrier containment glyphs with switches leading up to the pedestal, likewise glyphed with a barrier to keep the admitted djed on top contained whilst it is worked more precisely, with the artifact held in place by the tongs and its djed fused with the hammer. Any high-order reagents should be in a separate, differently glyphed barriers so that their energy is not muddled in with standard djed.

The actual alteration stage of the process begins with a single swing of the magesmith's hammer, a specialised tool developed over centuries by proponents and practitioners of the craft working with the finest blacksmiths and metallurgists. First, the djed of the item is discohered through precise strikes at stress points easily visible at the confluences of major djed flows in the item itself, usually using a combination of copper and either silver or gold hammers, to open up the otherwise stable and settled djed conduits, rendering them capable of accepting modification in the form of more, and purposed, djed.

Subsequent to this, each directed and focused swing of the hammer the magesmith drains reagent djed through the focal point of the tool and presses it into the target item, each strike pulling more djed from source to destination.

A magesmith's tongs (or vice, or clamp, for larger items) functions as a directional focus for the djed cargo of the magesmith's hammer, allowing it to be focused exclusively on the item in question, whilst the hammer serves the purpose of extracting and fusing the extra djed. The term 'fusing' in magecraft refers to the forcible impression of djed into the target item in order to allow its strengthening into an artifact.

However, this part of the process only covers transferring the djed - actually allowing it to take shape and purpose requires the will of the Magesmith. The five generally-agreed fields of improvement for an item are more rigid interpretations of a way an item's djed internally flows to grant it its properties and attributes – strength, flexibility, appearance and so on. When the magesmith adds in more djed that is not part of the system, there is a need to create new djed currents and flows in these fields to accommodate the extra energy, which in turn, depending on which field the channels are created in, determines what effect the new djed has on the item.

Thus, with each swing of the hammer the magesmith is actually changing what that item really is, breaking through new channels within the item's djed flow patterns and letting the djed from the reagents alter the fundamental nature of that item.

It is important to note the dangers associated with Magecraft during its crafting process as well. The alteration of an item's existence is always a delicate science, and if sufficient precautions are not taken then safety is severely compromised; without sufficient barriers and glyphic baffles to keep the djed from the reagents contained, it wanders and latches onto anything that will take it, with predictably disastrous results for the environs and, potentially, the magesmith herself. Further, overexposure of the putative artefact to djed can result in an explosion as the artifact’s structure tries – and fails – to contain the new djed coursing inside of it.

These steps may take several days or even seasons to accomplish, depending on the number of magesmiths attending the work and on how powerful the artifact required is.

Alses smiled to herself at that, thinking of the times she’d worked with others, how much easier everything had seemed when she had a colleague in which to confide and consult, how time flew when there was someone else to talk with other than her own listening self, how much more work could be done in the same period when two hammers chimed so sweetly together.

Ah, what a wonderful feeling, two minds in synchrony to achieve a coordinated effect, a synergy that the artifact reflected in its production. Altogether too rare an occurrence, in Alses’ opinion – but then, to her sure and certain knowledge there were only two resident magesmiths in all of Lhavit, and of those she was far and away the more settled and established.

Ah well. No point in dwelling on such things; there was work to be done! Maybe her little essay might encourage more to take up the difficult, demanding art. ‘But not too many!’ her mind added, hurriedly – serious competition wouldn’t be good for her.

Pen to paper, and write.

At the start of every period of work, the magesmith should attend to the work previously completed, assessing the state of the djed conduits and whether any corrective strikes need to be given; the latency periods when the attending crafter is sleeping or allowing the artifact to passively absorb djed from the isolated, purified surroundings – necessary to strengthen new djed conduits, or ones that have been excessively manipulated – are the prime time for errors and unwanted spikes to occur, and these should be smoothed out before new work is layered on top of them.

When the artifact has been fully modified to specifications, the final step is to carefully remove the item from its restraints, to lift it from the pedestal or work surface and finally transfer it for ‘finishing’ or ‘cooling off’ in a special trough or jar of charged water – a specialised preparation almost unique to every magesmith. There must always be enough charged water to completely immerse the item, and the putative artifact is left for several days before being removed, dried and presented to the client.

‘Charged’ water is simply water that has undergone some form of change – either via glyphic runes engraved into the walls of the container, or through herbal preparations – to exaggerate its djed-dampening and containing properties. This altered water forces the still-unstable djed in the new artifact to settle and bind more strongly to the item, stabilising and habituating the djed conduits into a final configuration, ensuring that the artifact will last forever, its effects just as strong a century after its creation as they are on the day it is finished.

[Alses]

Cracking her back, a fusillade of vertebral protestations at her posture, hunched over the writing table, Alses rolled her neck and closed her eyes, guiltily enjoying the healing, calming darkness her closed lids brought.

This writing lark was far harder than she’d initially imagined – as the large pile of rejected papers in her bin bore out – and it was tiring too. Her hand kept cramping, and to preserve the all-important legibility of her writing – vital for her primer, the master copy from which any others would be taken – she kept having to take breaks, even when her mind raced and danced ahead until her poor, abused fingers itched with the urge to take up the quill once more.

The cruelty of it all was that as soon as she gave into the temptation, the cramps came back with a punishing vengeance, inflicting pain and illegibility in very short order.

Despite herself, Alses sighed and picked up her quill once more, preparing to sacrifice more to the altar of Qualaya.

Chapter Four: Progression in Magecraft

Gaining greater skill in magecraft is simply a matter of intelligent and successful practice, refining the core concepts and the magesmith’s understanding of the arcane processes that drive the craft. Habituation is key, the elegance of practice and the effortless knowledge of the following steps combining together, along with a breadth of knowledge gained through experimentation, trial and error to allow the magesmith to recover from unexpected deviations or other problems that might arise during the crafting.

Below, I have provided some examples of more common artifacts that a competent magesmith might be able to craft:

MC1 Artifacts

-Rainbow Mirror

A common extravagance of the wealthy, a Rainbow Mirror is simply a reflective surface (usually, although not always, an ornate, free-standing silver-backed mirror) that has been enchanted with the passive effect of auristics, producing a brilliant lightshow in the mirror around any reflected object.

Useless for the deeper mysteries of the discipline, of course, but nonetheless a beautiful project to undertake, as it introduces the novice magesmith to the difficult art of imparting magic to an object, and further results in a piece of desirable artwork that many wealthier merchants and citizens would be proud and pleased to own - an important consideration for the beginning magesmith, given the costs involved in the creation of even the simplest of artifacts.

The MC-consuming step is as follows:

1 step in Falkenhayn’s Magic field, to grant the mirror the passive power of auristics.

MC2 Artifacts

-Magic Staff

Once very common amongst the arcane classes of Suva and Alahea, even the most basic of magic staffs is today a rare and highly prized artifact. Created by winding tight coils of D-wire around an organic core - usually wood, although ivory has been known - and coating the resultant item with djed-conductive mineral powders, a magic staff allows the wielder - after an appropriate period of adjustment - to use the staff as a conduit and store of magic, allowing spells to be saved up and unleashed in rapid succession. They are usually strengthened, made more durable, as breaking an attuned staff results in a concomitant loss of power to the mage for some time afterwards.

The MC-consuming steps are as follows:

1 step in Falkenhayn’s Structural field, to strengthen the valuable artifact and make it less prone to breaking.

1 step in Falkenhayn’s Magic field, to allow the staff to receive and store extrinsic djed.

MC3 Artifacts:

-Eternal Lights

Eternal Lights come in many forms, and are usually the result of a magesmith amplifying, causing, or otherwise modifying the light-emitting properties of an item, either through reagent-mediated addition or modulation, or by the simple expedient of enhancing the djed conduits involved in light production.

Eternal Lights are prized for their elegance and economy; after the initial investment, the lights will burn forever, without need of fuel and without producing noxious smoke or fumes. D-wire connections are very common with this type of artifact, to direct the light all through a building. They were particularly common in pre-Valterrian Alahea and are only just beginning to re-emerge.

The MC-consuming steps are as follows:

2 steps in Falkenhayn’s field of Behaviour: -Continual Luminance; -Brightness

1 step in Intelligence, to control the light.

MC4 Artifacts

-Pathfinders

Pathfinders are a wide and diverse type of artifact, usually designed as precursors to locate greater artifacts that are too well-hidden to be found any other way. During their crafting, fragments of the artifacts or, indeed, people and places, that the Pathfinder is to lead to are incorporated as reagents, conferring a connection that is then carefully strengthened - often along with the structure of the Pathfinder item - before an intelligence is then interwoven with every strand and thread, in order to mediate the artifact and act as an interface between it and the wielder.

The MC-consuming steps are as follows:

2 steps in Falkenhayn’s Behaviour field; -Establishing pathfinding connections; -Establishing a medium of expression, to guide the wielder

2 steps in Falkenhayn’s Intelligence field; -Interpreting pathfinding connections for the wielder; -Assessing worth

There are, of course, almost infinite numbers of artifacts that can be created, elegant fusions of arcane and mundane into one object, along with items strengthened or changed out of all recognition by concerted application of world magic’s power, but the above are some of the most commonly-known types, for their utility or simple beauty.

They all provide interesting challenges to the practicing magesmith, testing the understanding of underlying principles and their practical application, a springboard from which further artifacts can be crafted and skills improved, to perhaps one day rival the magesmiths of Old Alahea and Suva.

None of the above artifacts require exotic or hard-to-find reagents, hence their inclusion in this primer; they are therefore ideal for a beginning magesmith to practice, and still have considerable utility, if applied intelligently. Simple enhancements of an artifact’s physical properties also have their place, of course, but the listed artifacts all require some thought and planning to integrate disparate fields of endeavour into a sweetly-chiming artifact.

Alses started to suck her quill pensively, and then stopped herself with some effort. She’d been trying to break herself of the habit for a while now, but it still stubbornly remained, lurking in the depths of her subconscious and ready to spring out when most of her conscious brain was occupied, wrestling with a particularly knotty problem.
‘Should we include reagent lists for those examples?’ Alses wondered idly, contemplating the words slowly drying on the page. ‘Maybe a ‘Suggested Reagents’ section?’

Well, it couldn’t hurt.

Her quill danced back up the page – this was just a rough, after all; she’d copy it all out more neatly when all had been arranged and laid out to her own satisfaction – to add in her recommendations – an aura diamond for the Rainbow Mirror, since its natural tendencies towards a similar effect, and the unparalleled shine it brought when worked well, were powerful, a collection of lesser gemstones, all diametrically-opposed to one another, and petrified wood for the Magic Staff, evergloam and powdered calias for Everlasting Lights and lodestone, skyglass and a whole host of lesser gems for the Pathfinder and much else besides.

All of it poured forth from her quill in a smooth, easy ribbon of ink, filling pages upon pages of her draft. The Primer was bulking up nicely, it seemed.

[Alses]

Alses was on the home straight now, writing down the final words of her treatise – well, the main body of her treatise, anyway. She had a few appendices – mostly lists of reagents – she wanted to include, but that was the task of but a few moments, requiring barely any thought as opposed to the much more tricky business of writing a cohesive book.

Quill to ink, drain off excess, quill to paper and…write. Her tongue crept to the corner of her mouth as she focused furiously on her writing, an unconscious habit she didn’t seem able to break.

Chapter Five: The History of Magecraft

An in-depth discussion on the history of magecraft is well beyond the purview of this introductory primer, however an appreciation of the work of master magesmiths who have gone before and pushed the boundaries of the discipline – Falkenhayn, in the youth of the empires, Strinbeck, Jadigu and, the best-known of them all: Areesa Tallshade, the White Enchantress of Alahea’s heyday – gives the student a sense both of the history and sacrifices that have been made in the name of magecraft.

Further, the deeds and lives of these luminary magesmiths can serve as an inspiration, especially in terms of the artifacts and advances they are so honoured for.

The beginnings of magecraft as a discipline are, alas, lost to the mists of history, possibly having been utilised before the gift of writing came to the human race through the grace of Qualaya. As such, there are only fragmentary legends and snippets of oral traditions left to go on, and nothing can be stated with any certainty.

It is generally held, however, that magecraft was originally a gift to mortals from a nameless god or gods, who have now vanished from the sphere of Mizahar for some reason. Speculation on the ultimate fate of the generous gift-giver or givers is fruitless at best, but the fact remains that across all surviving legends and stories, magecraft is maintained as a divine gift to mortals that nearly split the heavens with disagreements on whether such a powerful discipline should have been handed down to mortals so freely.

Human nature being what it is, many of the original magecraft artifacts were weapons of one flavour or another. Development of the craft was slow, and beset with many setbacks; magesmiths, due to the unparalleled destructive potential of their creations and thus the sheer power they bestowed, were and indeed still are a secretive group, jealously hoarding techniques and artifacts for their own gain. Indeed, Areesa Tallshade, the White Enchantress of Old Alahea, is a prime example of the self-interested magesmith.

Alses paused at this, sucking at her quill in consternation. How much did she actually know about the archetypal magesmith? Her six greatest creations, of course, that was a given for any magesmith of any talent and skill, but her life?

‘She was nobility,’ Alses remembered, after several chimes of intense cogitation. ‘Although something went wrong and she lost it all. And…she made things too powerful to be destroyed.

Areesa Tallshade, the White Enchantress

Born to a noble family in Alahea, Areesa Tallshade at first would have been an unlikely candidate to become one of the greatest magesmiths the world has ever known, great enough that her deeds and her artifacts survived even the cataclysm of the Valterrian.

Her carefree life as a titled member of society – provided with wealth due to inheritance and property – came to an abrupt end as the semi-perennial war against the rival nation, Suva, began to go poorly for Alahea. Lands and property were seized en-masse from the less powerful, less loyal nobles of the kingdom in order to finance desperate gambles to stop Suva’s advance, leaving the Tallshade family with nothing but their name.

It is speculated that Areesa Tallshade first entered the study of magecraft as a way to restore her family’s fortunes, but soon found a passion and unrivalled skill for the discipline, able to grasp even its most difficult concepts with consummate ease, a fact that soon brought her to the attention of the instructors of the Royal Academy of Magic.

Her skill and passion for magecraft only grew throughout her life. Never particularly loyal to nations, in part perhaps due to her family’s treatment at Alahea’s hands, she traded with Suva and Alahea to finance ever greater projects, and the zenith of her career came when she produced the six artifacts, in quick succession, that she is most commonly associated with today:

1.) The Book of Roth – A hungry book, one that is said to absorb knowledge from other books, it undoubtedly stores the contents of entire pre-Valterrian libraries within its endless pages.

2.) The Djed Eye – The Djed Eye is said to act as a powerful store and focus for djed, expanding the usable djed of its wielder.


3.) The Najim Pearl – Apparently acting as an ersatz soul, this artifact freed the wielder from the chain of having only one Familiar.

4.) The Zariath – A sword said to be capable of cutting quick the skein of immortal life from gods and Alvina both and yet being harmless to mortals.


5.) The Kingmaker – A sceptre intended for the Good Emperor, Kovinus, but never used, it is rumoured to enhance the leadership qualities of its wielder.

6.) The Anvil of Souls – Areesa’s crowning glory, the Anvil is said to free its users from the cycle of reincarnation and is the only known example of a gnosis mark from Lhex.

Despite these glittering achievements, any one of which would be the life’s work of a magesmith today, towards the end of her life she became obsessed with the destruction of her own creations, and the annihilation of powerful magic – an obsession that took her life and those of her closest aides some time before the Valterrian struck and cast down both Suva and Alahea.

Her most famous artifacts have never yet been found, but the sheer skill and power that was poured into their crafting makes it almost a certainty that they all still exist somewhere in Mizahar, hidden well by the White Enchantress and further by the chaos and destruction of the Valterrian. It is rumoured that Areesa left some form of guide for the worthy, and many an adventurer has spent their lives looking for this fabled pathfinder, without success.

Despite this lack of success, many still search for Areesa’s artifacts, some of the most powerful creations ever made by mortal hands. Finding even one would set an adventurer for life, and potentially reinvigorate whole disciplines of magic.

Alses leaned back in her chair, supremely satisfied that at last the hard work was done. All that remained were a few lists and the laborious process of copying it out – along with a bit of rearrangement - and then she could hand everything over in good conscience to Shara.

And the doors of the Bharani Library would be forever open to her.

All of them. All those books. All that information!

A glance outside the window revealed darkness and Lhavit glowing like the greatest gem imaginable in the endless night, but she was near the end of her task! Anticipation and adrenaline gave her energy as she pulled the book, the beautiful, pristine, blank book towards herself, dipped her quill yet again in her inkwell, and began to inscribe in her best formal hand.


A


Needless to say, even burning the midnight oil Alses wasn’t able to finish her mammoth task in half a night – she was barely a quarter of a way through her writing when bone-deep tiredness forced her to sleep. Even then, her rest was fitful and disrupted; she woke several times to add another sentence or two, dreams filled with the book-lined halls of the Bharani Library, her mind unable to settle from its excited spin and give her an uninterrupted night’s rest.

Her duties at the Dusk Tower that day she conducted in an absent-minded, sleepy haze, almost monosyllabic in her explanations, lectures and replies rather than her far more usual polysyllabic enthusiasm for magic in general. Her brain was far away, her students noticed this, and if they took advantage of their teacher’s unusual distraction a little, well, who was to blame them?

Not Alses; just this once she couldn’t care less, couldn’t wait to get home and finally have it done, her contribution to the store of knowledge at the Library, her ticket to its manifold wonders.

Quill, inks, infinite care – everything had to be perfect. Mistakes would only be copied and compounded, and Alses wasn’t about to have the deaths or injuries of aspiring magesmiths on her hands thanks to a simple error on her part.

She was impatient – so impatient – to just be done with it, but copying it out was a laborious and demanding process, not something she could rush. Several more days of ink-spotted hands, vacant expression and lackadaisical demeanour resulted, inattention and a marked lack of concern as her head was in the clouds, dreaming of literary endeavours, tasting the end in sight.

Thus it was that with considerable pride and mounting nervousness that Alses mounted the steps into the familiar mote-shot expanse of the antechamber of the Bharani Library. The floor underfoot was intricate and beautiful – a circle of buttery marble with gilt-edged 'rays' emanating from it – the sun of knowledge, illuminating the world, surely - but it rang in the cathedral-hush under her footsteps, and she frowned.

'That must be annoying for readers,' Alses thought, briefly, but her attention was mostly taken by the barricade of heavy mahogany desks, each one topped with slightly worn sage-green leather and edged with brass railings. Behind each was a Seeker, the owners and guardians of the Library, robed in white and clutching quills that skated elegantly across the pages they were working on, always copying, writing, transcribing from piles of books and scrolls, turning haphazard chicken-scratch into beautiful, readable fonts, the information handsomely-bound and presented for the ignorant to drink in.

Well. Always provided the ignorant weren't too ignorant. That was why she was here, really – to prove her knowledge, at least in one specialist area, and so gain access to one of the most complete and fastest-growing (thanks to the diligent efforts of the Seekers) collections in all of Mizahar.

She chose the least busy-looking of the Seekers and made her way over to his desk, clearing her throat politely as she approached. As he looked up, she nervously presented her book, her precious manuscript, and said: “Your pardon, sir. I have a submission for the Bharani Library. Shara’s expecting it.”

END

[Elysium]

Alses

Experience
Planning +3
Writing +5
Magecraft +5

Lore
Writing: Starting an Outline
Writing: The Foreword
Writing: Maintaining Concentration
Magecraft: Falkenhayn's Fields of Endeavor
Magecraft: Reagent Theory
Magecraft: Lopper's Law
Magecraft: Strinbeck's Principle of Equality
Magecraft: Djed Classification
Magecraft: High-Order Reagent Theory
Magecraft: Use of High Order Djed
Magecraft: Optional Reagents
Magecraft: Necessary Tools
Magecraft: The Process of Magecraft
Areesa Tallshade, the White Enchantress of Alahea
Artifacts: The Book of Roth, The Djed Eye, The Najim Pearl, The Zariath, The Kingmaker and The Anvil of Souls

Awards and Penalties
Alses has earned herself one Primer of Magecraft and by extension, all the doors of the Bharani Library are now open to her.

Notes
THIS IS AMAZING. AH. MAY. ZING. Did I mention that it's truly amazing? Did I? This is going straight into the lore. I'm serious. You win life. Oh and congrats for being the first person to EVER make a contribution to the Bharani Library. Someone has earned themselves a Trailblazer medal.