-- Magic Items

As a general rule, magical items tend to be natural in origin. Natural, in this case, means random - swords left untouched for a few hundred years may, rarely, simply become magical over time, as may otherwise mundane weapons used by great heroes. For unknown reasons, this is more likely to happen the more famous the blade itself or the wielder is. Nigelrath hypothesized that the accumulated knowledge of the masses of an object imbues it with a sort of lesser Wisdom; while the item even more rarely becomes truly intelligent, it still becomes imbued with something resembling a soul, and might even be said to live and evolve - for that is what it means to be magical.

There are, however, ways to create magical items manually. For the most part, the process depends on the rare - and naturally formed - astral fragments, alternatively called astral pearls. These irregularly-shaped pieces of translucent, shadowy material feel cool to the touch and weirdly flexible and soft despite their non-substantial, wispy appearance, but are warmer than their surroundings and about as hard as adamantium. To those with Arcane Sight, these pearls are beacons in a dark world, so bright as to outshine all but the most powerful of True Magic - which can only be cast with these fragments as their power source. This is sensible - from the little that is definitively known about them, they are literal shards of pure, unadulterated magic. Lesser Fragments, "tainted" with the energy of one plane or another (usually called by colour or associated element, ergo Fire Shards or Negative Fragments) exist, and are often used to power ritual spells or highly specialized spells, but are not as useful as astral fragments, for the most part. Creating magical items is a laborious and guarded process - while Cornelia is the most famous, and well-known for not needing astral fragments at all, there are a number of lesser craftsmen, none of which are interested in sharing their knowledge. It is generally accepted, in fact, that no two of them actually use the same process to begin with, a function of the way Binah (one of the Ten Fonts, links between the mundane and the divine and magical, which materialize in the fragments) interacts with the minds of Tellurians.

When it comes to the items created, it is generally the case that while crafted items are stronger than 'natural' counterparts, there are also artefacts far beyond mortal means to create - Cornelia's claim to have forged one of her own notwithstanding. Artefacts are powered by a conduit directly to some sort of outside, but infinite, source of magic - every artefact seems to draw its energy from somewhere different and harness it differently, so it has been so far impossible to ascertain how they operate and how they are differentiated from other magic items. These items appear naturally from mundane or already magical items (or in specific cases, from absolutely nowhere, as is the case with the Blackball), and always have a legend associated with them, both before and after their original appearance. Artefacts are not always - in fact, rarely - purely beneficial, or even beneficial at all. Most carry a strong curse, and they seem to be entirely indestructible, shrugging off immense punishment and simply reforming if somehow destroyed. The one and only example of a man-forged artefact (and then, not necessarily an artefact) is Cornelia's Fragarach, although the circumstances of the Blackball's appearance are vague enough that some have speculated that it was created by the magician who once dwelled in Blind Tower. Natural artifacts include the Loadstone, a cursed stone that increases in weight tenfold every ten days and always reappears in the possession of the last living tellurian to hold it but gives its wielder the strength to carry it, and the Starlight Saber, a blade that melts through enemies like a hellball melts pig lard and destroys its wielder's mind over the course of seven days, reducing him to a stuttering, immobile heap whose language bears eerie resemblance to that of the Gibbering Mouthers.

 -- Ritual Magic

Ritual Magic is an advanced form of magic, but one ironically easy to use. Fundamentally, all arcane magic is ritual in nature (not all divine magic is necessarily ritual, though most of it is). An arcane magus uses numerical, conceptual, or other 'circles' to create his effects. Ritual Magic is that done more slowly and on a larger scale.

While the average man often imagines dozens of mages in a circle, chanting, waving their hands, and boiling living babies alive for ritual magic (mass ritual magic is more often turned to dark purposes than altruistic ones, simply for the reason that most altruistic spells are not helped by the addition of more casters and can easily be done by one or two experienced mages), the truth of the matter is more boring. Ritual Magic constructs large-scale effects deliberately, using a specific binding circle - one similar in nature to the circles used in the high magic spell, Planar Binding - to hold the effects in place. This allows a caster to achieve effects beyond his normal capability in magnitude and complexity, up to a certain point.

In this case, why is ritual casting so unpopular? The reasons are twofold. Firstly, almost all ritual casting requires extremely rare materials to create the Spellbinding Circle in the first place, with many rituals needing many layers to reliably pull off. The Spellbinding Circle is invariably made of ground-up Astral Fragments, which must be scattered perfectly and immediately, lest the magic dissipate and disappear, most likely along with the mage's life savings. Beyond this, all but the most basic rituals require Lesser Fragments as supplementary material, with certain spells requiring even more Astral Fragments. This does not include any other material foci or the opportunity cost and risk of failure involved in this most primitive and powerful of magicks. Because both types of material are very rare, it is almost impossible for a novice magus to even attempt it - he simply lacks the resources required.

So what are the advantages of Ritual Magic, you might ask? Besides the very important theoretical benefits of Ritual Magic, an unskilled, but knowledgeable, magus can often cast spells far beyond his normal means. Furthermore, there are many powerful spells almost entirely relegated to the realm of Ritual-dom. Astral Projection, cast normally, is a function of True Magic, a spell of the 9th circle. In Ritual Magic, it is an entirely basic spell that can be cast in under an hour which requires nothing but two Astral Fragment and a basic understanding of energy termination. One Fragment is used to draw a single circle, and one is to be ingested at the end of spell construction to invoke the spell.

Given are two examples of Ritual Magic - one basic, one advanced.

Reanimation, Lesser (Ritual) | Necromancy-Type, Ritual Class I
Cost:1 Astral Fragment, 2 Negative Fragments, 8 stones with a triangle of any shape drawn upon them, 10 preserved corpses (they must be preserved within twelve hours of death).
Effects: 10 Soulless created
Notes: This ritual works best during the night and may fail during the day. Before use, prepare ways to repel the undead created.
Procedure: Draw a simple circle with an inscribed square. For best results, point one of the corners towards the exact direction the sun will rise the next day. Place a single corpse in the centre facing the ground and another on top of it - these corpses can face any direction but their heads cover the exact centre of the circle. At this point place both Negative Fragments in the mouths of the centre corpses. Place the remaining eight corpses around the circle, heads facing out (feet facing the centre two corpses); place the stones within their mouths. Construct a simple negative energy pillar, and shatter the astral fragment when the pillar reaches the coterminous of the Negative Plane (roughly 6 hours of channelling required, varies based on conditions). At this point, you should have 10 Soulless formed from the dead bodies. They will not be under your control so take cautionary measures.

Master Enslave | Thaumaturgy-Type, Ritual Class VIII (9 Circles)
Cost: 8 Astral Fragments, the soul of your target (in a soul gem), dust from a destroyed Astral Fragment
Effects: The target's soul is irrevocably assimilated into your own. It acts according to your will and loses the ability to make judgements of its own volition. The body resumes hosting the soul of the target. Death effects and similar soul-targeting effects used upon the target have no effect on your own soul and do not free the soul from its enslavement.
Notes: There is no known way to reverse the effects of this ritual, except possibly via Astral Grail. Use with caution. Note that Master Enslave cannot be used on an entity containing part of your own soul or an entity that shares your True Name.
Procedure: Master Enslave does not have a complicated procedure, for what it does. It requires nine simple circles, followed by eight Astral Fragments placed (respectively) at the target's shoulders, heart, lungs, solar plexus, stomach, and liver. The soul gem is placed inside the scrotum (if male), womb (if female), or similarly at the most reproductively potent area if used on an unusual species. The crown of the head is covered with dust from an Astral Fragment. The spell is invoked by channelling your own soul through the fragment's dust - this ritual is unique in that the dust of the fragment does not need to contain magical energy and simply acts as a conduit. After this is done, simply remove your own soul from the body and return it to your own, and the ritual is complete. The empty soul gem can be removed from the target's body if so desired. This is one of the fastest rituals in existence, taking only about ten minutes to complete.

 -- True Naming

True Naming is probably the oldest form of magecraft. In fact, it is also a form of magic proper - True Names cannot be assigned, for they are an inherent property of existing. Something without a true name doesn't exist, and things that exist need true names. True Names are the concept of that creature, and theoretically, communicate the concept perfectly and without ambiguity. They are, in essence, the summit of Wisdom as pertains to that creature. True Names are difficult to learn - they cannot be written by mortal, or even divine, means, and they cannot be fully pronounced without invoking the person in question - with one exception. Every being, mortal or divine, can speak their own True Name.

Though True Naming is old and holds immense importance in magical metaphysics, it is an unfortunately common misconception among novice mages that True Naming is powerful. In theory, using the True Name of a creature to target them for a spell would increase accuracy and power. This is true but has two problems. Firstly, learning someone else's True Name is itself incredibly difficult, and often impossible. Not everyone knows their own True Name, and even if they knew, it would be wise of them not to share that information. Therefore, the only reliable True Name that can be invoked is one's own. The second problem is more serious. True Names, and by extension Truespeech, cannot be used to modify most spells. Certain spells, such as spells with the Binding, Curse, and Blessing circle headers, can be directly modified (none of these spells, it should be clear, can be applied to one's own person) but all others must use a different spell designed to be used with, and only with, a specific target's True Name. What's worse is that for the most part these spells are far, far more complicated than the versions that do not use Truespeech, and so it's generally inefficient, or even impossible, to use True Naming for normal magic.

There is are, for the most part, four exceptions to this rule. The first is that Ritual Magic can almost always be invoked using a True Name - in fact, most rituals are designed to require it. The second is if someone willingly gives you their True Name, and you, in turn, give them your own - in this situation, both of you may pronounce the True Name learned as if it were your own. Third, there are spells, mostly relegated to the province of ritual such as Divine Name, which forces a second, effective True Name onto the recipient - in this case, if you use the given name as the foundation of your spells, you may affect an arbitrary number of objects with your empowered spells. Lastly, spells of the Power Word series do not require a True Name but implicitly invoke one by applying the True Name of a process upon the target (i.e. Power Word: Kill applies the True Name Modifier of "Dead" to anyone it targets, killing them instantly - or technically forcing them to hold the Dead property - but without causing any other harm).

As a side note, one of the more esoteric ways to distinguish between a Tellurian being and a Divine being is to count the number of syllables in their True Name. A Tellurian invariably has a one-syllable True Name, while Divine beings invariably have longer ones.

 -- True Magic

True Magic is the pinnacle of magic. But where is this pinnacle? To True Magicians, the answer is different than for High Magicians and all others.

All magic is fundamentally constructed and is essentially a machine to manipulate reality. In this sense there is no real difference between a man using an (invisible, untouchable) pole to shove a pot over and a novice magus using Mage Hand, a standard and relatively common spell, to accomplish the same thing. The Circle classification of magic pioneered by Kancolhaut and expanded by Madrizei does not necessarily measure power but rather measures the complexity of the machine, and is a composite measure of the (quite literal) circles used to scribe the spell. Cornelia's signature NEVCAGO recording and casting method involves, essentially, scribing these circles directly, instead of descriptively and with an intermediary between the magical system and reality.

This is not true of a certain class of True Magic. The spell Wish or Wishing Circle marks what was often considered the upper bound of true magic and the greatest spell of the 9th Circle, but in truth perhaps it surpasses circles altogether. Unlike other spells of similar power (Time Stop for instance, or Meteorfall, or Blackblot), Wish has an extraordinarily simple construction consisting only of the wish to be granted pronounced in a special language whose grammar is derived from Runic and vocabulary from Supernal. It does not use a construction to interfere with reality but simply imposes a new reality on the old. There are other spells being investigated and researched by True Magicians - Crown of Brilliance, a planned evolution of Crown of Faith, is advanced in preparatory construction but similar to Wish requires only will to activate. Astral Grail, the greatest of the True Magics, is a more complete form of Wish, and is similarly simple to construct, if not successfully cast.

It is perhaps the case that this type of magic is the only sort which deserves the name True Magic.

 -- Signature Magic

Signature Magic. This is a word that, for the uninitiated, represents the moment a magus comes into his own, where he stops being a mere apprentice and begins to walk the path of magecraft proper. A magus with signature magic finds it much easier to find employment and would-be apprentices who have recently discovered their gifts flock to him.

In reality, signature magic is not as impressive as it may seem. All magic, at one point or another, was signature magic, although some of the most popular have changed in construction since their original conception - Kancolhaut's Magic Seeing, for example, has been simplified from High Magic to barely qualifying as Low Magecraft, to the benefit of sleuths and apprentices everywhere, while Torvath's Explosion has been condensed, simplified, and made more effective to the point many High Magi don't even realize Fireball is derived from Torvath's signature magic, which turned the tide of many a battle in its own day.

Signature magic does have a few advantages. To begin with, much of a mage's repitoire will necessarily be original, even if inspired by other magic - magi are a notoriously jealous lot and those who would share their life's work with others, even for charge, are few and far between. What's more, a mage of any reasonable skill has a very good chance of, in a duel, recognizing the spell being weaved, which may allow him to counterspell (that is, weave the same spell in reverse and undoing enough of the spell being cast that it fails to materialize) or at least adjust his tactics to match. Signature magic, on the other hand, is much harder to decipher, and even a signature low magecraft would require a high magician of middling skill to recognize. Some mages enjoy naming their signature magic after themselves, as a way to boast about their own prowess (and to advertise their names). Others just name it normally, but it eventually becomes known as X's Spell anyway.

Lastly, some signature magics are extraordinarily powerful or efficient owing to the user's unique insight or grasp of a certain formula. These forms of magecraft are often immortalized, even if their efficiency or power is later improved. Torvath's Firebolt, now usually known as merely Flaming Bolt or Obsidian Shard, is an example - the first spell invented by the prolific pyromage Torvath is learned and used even today for its usefulness and reasonable power and simplicity. Below is one example of magic from each circle, 0th through 9th, an extra aberrant from 9th, and two which would qualify for True Magic.