Noble Arcana

It is not known why some people are born with mana and others are not. There does not seem to be a genetic or geographic connection to it. This is the case with not only humans, but with elves and dwarves as well. Some believe it to be divine, but just as many think it is random. Whatever the case, even among those born with mana there are large differences in their reserves, skills, and capabilities.

Basic Spells and Foundational Magics

Solomon paused his reading to take a small sip of tea. When he’d first arrived back at the manor it had been difficult to resist sprinting inside to start reviewing the book he’d found. The secrets of the Union and of magic were so closely guarded that the idea he had one of their books available to him to freely read was intoxicating. Still, he forced himself to take a short walk through the manor to check on the staff, praising them for the work they’d done where appropriate, then he took some time completing his review of the mayor’s cooked books and begin drafting a letter to the guild of law regarding everything he’d discovered so far. He had money, servants, and land, but he didn’t have the guard under his control. He’d need outside help to change things.

Once that was done he’d locked his room door and finally began reading Basic Spells and Foundational Magics. The opening of the book was primarily an introduction to what mana was, what mages were, and a bit of the Union’s history. A lot of it was information he already knew. He knew that the Union was founded after a number of dangerous magical catastrophes such as the necromancer rebellion, the burning of Tyber, and the disappearance of Swent. It was decided that within the Empire of Drakthiss magic needed to be controlled and so the Union was created to bring things to heel. Over time the Union had grown in power and now it was considered a cornerstone of the empire, with its own autonomous city, Arcthiss.

One thing that particularly stood out to him was the list of banned magics.

An Incomplete List of Forbidden and Restricted Magics:

Necromancy

Soulamancy

Binding magic

Blood magic

Volk Magic

Curses

Fleshshaping

Teleportation/Portal magic

Luck/Fate magic

Chronomancy

Copy/Cloning magic

In addition to those listed, certain subcategories of allowed magics are also forbidden or restricted. These include Transmutational Alchemy, Life alchemy, Summoning of Daemons, and Mind Magic used to affect others.

He had known that necromancy was forbidden, as were curses and blood magic. There were too many historical texts mentioning them for that not to be common knowledge. Most of the others though he hadn’t even heard of. Chronomancy? There was magic that could let one control time? That was beyond the scope of anything he’d ever heard before. Normally when people spoke of mages they spoke of flight, shooting fire from their hands, or enchanting items. He wondered how the Union kept the other magics a secret? This was an introductory text and included the list. Did they have that tight of control over their members that this information hadn’t leaked?

He reread the list again. It was obvious why certain types of magic were banned. Transmutational Alchemy the changing of one type of object into another could topple the Drakthiss economy, as could copy magic. Binding magic would be as useful as it was dangerous, and mind magic seemed particularly nefarious. Blood magic and necromancy he already knew the dangers of given the war of succession one had caused and the rebellion brought on by the other. He could see the reason all of these were disallowed or restricted. In spite of that he found himself imagining how many problems he could solve with them.

Stolen novel; please report.

He took another sip of his tea, finding it to be ice cold, and sighed. He’d had Barnabus and Bart searching for the source of the drafts, but so far they’d had no luck. He hadn’t been the only one experiencing them either. He went ahead and downed the rest of his tea, drawing his coat tighter as he continued reading.

It was either very deep night or early morning when he finally stopped. The book was thick and the text small, but he’d read nearly half of it straight through. A lot would require him going back and re-reading in detail, particularly the spells themselves, but much of it clicked in his mind fairly easily, particularly the basic descriptions of mana and its cultivation. It was a power source that existed both within and without.

Your body could only contain and expend so much mana at a time, and the rest existed outside of you, being pulled in as room was made by its expenditure, though there was a slight delay for this to happen. After it was completely expelled, it would slowly restore over time. Recovery could be sped up by maintaining physical health and through meditation. The amount of mana a person had naturally grew over time, and if they regularly practiced expelling the mana from themselves through spellwork then they grew more able to hold their mana within their bodies allowing them to cast larger spells. Some people were born with tremendous mana pools, but couldn’t access them well, and others were born able to hold all of their mana within themselves at once, but quickly ran out of reserves when spellcasting. With time and training these weaknesses could be reduced, but only those with a certain level of natural talent could cast spells at the highest levels. The book was very careful to state that any mana made a person special and all of them would have a valuable place within the Union. There were artificial ways to allow one to cast spells beyond their own pools such as storing mana in manarite stones, but they were only mentioned briefly, not described in detail.

The spells themselves that were included were all laid out in extreme detail, some even including variations that could be made to produce different results. One was simply a spark that a person could create to light a fire. It had both a verbal and somatic component that, if altered, could change the color of the sparks, focus them in a more specific direction, or adjust the heat of them. He guessed there were probably even more variations than the ones listed, but given that this was a beginner text it didn’t need to go into such detail.

Aside from Spark, he also read through descriptions of Gust, Light, and Disc. They blew air, created a mote of light, and summoned a small floating disk that could sustain small amounts of weight respectively. Very simple, but useful spells. Alongside their descriptions were brief exercises a student was meant to practice with them such as using Gust to turn the page of a book or Disc to hold up a cup filled with water.

Aside from those he found a spell for mental fortification, a piece of mind magic meant for internal use that protected one’s self from outside intrusion. He was fantasizing about what it would feel like to actually cast those spells as he closed the book and locked it away in the drawer. His mind went back to the god chained beneath the library and the ritual that could let him do just that.

He shook his head. The temptation was tremendous, but he refused to give in until he was certain. He would review the entire book he had, the ritual, and decode his uncle’s journals before he took the risk. It was all too easy, too convenient, and his instincts told him not to trust it. There was an alphabet of arcane runes used in rituals and a description of their purposes in the book and he’d already recognized several of them from the ritual circle around the god as well as its chains. He would start by trying to interpret those as well as comparing them to the ones listed on the original spell parchment and look for discrepancies.

It was possible he was being overly cautious, but it would be foolish to dismiss the evidence of some kind of struggle near the site of the ritual as well the mystery of his uncle’s passing and what happened to his servants as not indicative of things not being as they seem. Besides which, he had the time to figure things out. If the god had stayed chained within the hidden chamber for as many years as his Uncle had been dead then they should hold long enough for him to do his research.

He shivered with the chill and moved over to his fireplace, stoking the fire a bit before he changed out of his clothes and crawled into bed. His eyes were dry and scratchy, and his neck sore from craning over the tome. He had his mysterious meeting with Third Watchman Vantus the next morning. If he’d been a bit wiser he would’ve taken to bed sooner, but there was too much to do for that. It wasn’t as if he’d never stayed up reading with something important to do the following day in the past.