Understanding Magic (optional)

Magic is very particular in the world of the bug-people. Instead of tomes and staves containing intricate sets of runes and words, magic is stored in tablets that contain stored magical effects and a representative pictogram. As bugs aren’t literate, the purpose of these pictograms is to represent the spell in question rather than spell out the inner workings of a spell, and only someone who understands a spell will be able to understand use a tablet containing the spell in question. Different mage specializations, then, come not from any sort of inherent difference in the source of kinds of magic, but instead comes from teaching of certain groupings of spells that are easy to understand together – two fire spells are easier to learn than a lightning spell.

This is because each spell represents a very particular set of effects – a Fire spell always creates the same kind of gout of fire, and though a better caster might be able to make it bigger, it always has the same shape, temperature, and burns in the same way, whereas a Singe spell creates a different kind of magical burn that does long-term damage but destroys less of its target. This makes magic extremely difficult to create, as the sets of effects and details that work together in a spell must be precisely found instead of thought up and put together. Still, at least once a spell is *found*, anyone who knows it and has the corresponding tablet can use it with ease so long as their magical talent is sufficient.