How does magic work in my world? Like this:
Excerpt from Opening Day Lecture in THAU 131 by Flaude Thierry, DT, Pa!a Xu University:
Before class, a middle aged man who appears to have a nervous tic walks around the perimeter of the room, muttering to himself and occasionally giggling. He checks each door and window to make sure it is securely closed or shuttered, approaching cautiously from the side as if he fears an attack by ambush. Finally he takes the stage. He looks at the stool on the stage in disgust, takes it away and returns with another that is apparently identical. Satisfied, he turns to the class.
Welcome to Thaumatology 131. Before we go any further, I want to make sure you are all aware of just what you have signed up for. Approximately one in fifty of you will end your days as a babbling idiot, a crazy person, drooling and soiling yourselves while chained to a wall. Perhaps if you’re lucky, you may be hunted down and killed by your friends, to get rid of the danger you pose to everyone around you. If you aren’t prepared to accept that risk, go see the cashier and get your money back. Go do something boring and safe with your life, like dentistry for dragons.
He pauses for a good part of a minute, examining faces carefully.
Still here? Very well then, you can’t say you weren’t warned. Let’s begin.
Magic is inherent in the shape of space and time. It is built into the very fabric of the universe. It is impossible to prove this absolutely other than by the obvious method of “It exists, therefore it must exist,” for reasons that will become apparent. But there are many things that suggest the presence of magic to the inquiring researcher. Among them is the fact that the math and the theory that works fine in the middle of the probability curve, where we and everything we’re likely to encounter all exist, breaks down at both the smaller and the larger extremes of that curve. Yes, there is a minimum and maximum amount that can be measured, both in space and in time, both in matter and in energy. And that’s not a limitation of our ability, that’s a limit built into reality. The most fundamental rule of this reality we live in is that all things progress towards greater and greater chaos, slowly but inexorably. And yet every single thing in our reality, without exception, is an orderly progression in defiance of that fundamental rule.
There are lots of little things, that can be found in every aspect of the universe around us, and each of them gently whispers that reality simply cannot be made to make sense unless one assumes that the space, the time, the matter, the energy, and the obvious, easily discoverable rules by which they operate and interact, are not the only things in play.
Which brings us to our first problem, and why I warned you about madness.
The obvious rules by which our world works give us wheels and gears and ramps and pulleys, all the machines that make modern life so easy. That world is, in a very real sense, your enemy. You see, the road to success in such a world depends on knowing that the world is what it is, that it doesn’t care what you think, that you have to learn to deal with it. No matter how drunkenly confident you are that the frayed rope you’re using will hold the load you’ve placed on it, the rope doesn’t care about your opinion, and if you overload it, it will break and the falling load will kill you.
That’s the world you live in, and please trust that I am not criticizing that approach to life. But that’s not the world I live in, nor any other professor in this university, or any other successful magic user of any sort, anywhere.
For us, reality is exactly, precisely what we demand it to be, nothing more nor less. That sounds wonderful, but if you are sloppy in your demands, your reality will turn and bite you. Worse, if you fail to be utterly unflinching in the demands you place on your reality, it will dissolve into something that is exactly as bad as the worst you can imagine.
Magic can make your dreams come true. Sounds nice, doesn’t it? Now remember some of your dreams, the ones that woke you up screaming and crying when you were a child. Now you begin to get a bare glimpse of the dangers involved.
And you, my poor souls, in order to succeed in this craft you have so foolishly chosen, have to stand at the boundary between the two worlds.
There are several ways to tap the power inherent in the world around you. But what is universal and constant is that you have to be mad to do it. That’s not just a figure of speech. Psychosis is defined as an inability to distinguish between what is real and what is not. And yet no matter whence you draw your power, no matter what tools you use to shape it, one thing is constant: In order for it to work, you have to be absolutely, utterly certain that reality is what you demand it to be, not what your environment shows you. Moreover, the thought and emotion patterns required to shape the spell are likely to be quite different from the thought and emotion pattern that gives you such utter certainty. That ability to make reality bow to your demands has to be such an integral part of you that you don’t have to devote any attention to it, any more than you have to think about whether the sun will rise in the morning, or whether something you drop will fall downwards instead of upwards. And as if that isn’t enough, when you achieve that state and your spell works, now you have to be able to stop being that person and go back to being someone who believes what he sees in order for the spell to stop. In short, you have to go back and forth at will between a world governed by “reality doesn’t care what I believe” and a world governed by “what I believe doesn’t care about reality.”
In order to make a spell work, you have to be provably insane in a precise, measurable fashion, on demand… and then while in that state, be able to unravel it all and go back to being a sane person. And you’ll have to do this every time you cast anything, even the most minor of cantrips. And to make a career of it, you’ll have to do this several times a day, every day, for all of your life.
For those who have fully grasped the implications of what I’ve said, we will now take a short break so you can use the privies.
