#olmanac

[sunderlorn]

The Olmanac - Part 21

    Religions and Philosophies - Part 3     The Small Gods of Vella To say that the Vellans worship a pantheon of many gods would be only a shadow of the truth. Like saying that the ocean contains many drops of rain. Vellans revere a multitude of gods — an impossible, ever-shifting pantheon that forgets and adopts gods as the ocean loses and accepts new waters. Founded by dissidents from the early Methari Accord, Vella was built on freedom of religion, among other values. And as malcontents and those orphaned by their own cultures found their way to Vella, a strange composite was formed: the Vellan identity. To be Vellan is to adopt and adapt, borrowing and stealing and accepting. This shows in their clipped defaced currency, foreign but made Vellan by effort and craft. It shows too in Vellan religion. It is supposed that the Vellan pantheon began as a patchwork of faiths from all the settlers who made their home on that part-barren island on the slate-grey sea. It united spirits of sea and storm, and the ghosts of honoured ancestors, from Uttaran creeds that predated the Accord and landfall on Olm. It combined the dozen-dozen idols and gods of the Shim, and more, and more. And in the rain-drenched storm-lashed crucible of Vella, they combined and recombined, to form new gods, old gods, variations on the two, to suit a new land and a new people. The city of Vella itself is riddled with little temples, streetcorner shrines, and rootless placeless devotees to of these gods, and the names they have carried, and the gods they have become down through the centuries. But most Vellans hold in their heads and hearts more gods than every shrine in the city ever could, even if only as little phrases uttered in hope, or names invoked in cursing, or to swear by in business transactions. True, some Vellan gods have wider reaching names than others. Some may hold more shrines, more priests, more seers and well-sayers than others. But generally speaking, no god has primacy in Vella’s pantheon. No god is held above the others, or believed to hold all that is in their hands. The gods dwell not above and beyond the world, but within it, in every wave on the beach, and every breath of wind. To Vellans inclined toward religion, faith and dogma do not dictate rule over their lives. Rather, their lives and everything in them are suffused with small superstitions: small acts of thanks, small apologies, small courtesies, small curses. Small things for a multitude of small gods. Listing all the gods of Vella would be impossible and almost pointless, for their names and traditions change with the times. (Though some, of course, have tried. The university of Tolomi sits as grave to many unfinished treatises on the small gods.) The following are a small taste of their number. Yra. Goddess of the wood-search, of lumber-cutters and of carven things, protectress of ships and boats built from cedar, and of things kept in barrels. Hersan. God of sugar, sweet things, black rum and molasses and pine pitch and tar. God of satiation and full cups. Nurraw. God of orientation, of the place that is here and of knowing where ‘here’ is. God of the still stars and of inland still waters, and those who wait. Pequent. Goddess of fair prices, of salt and sand, and measures. Goddess of faith in strangers, and of suspicions justified. Lek. God of those who melt down iron, and those who shape it anew. God of nail-makers, of tool-forgers, and of the stockpot simmering at home. Etchimi. Goddess of scavengers, beach-combers, and of those who pick over loss to find what can still be gained. Goddess of those who feel for oysters in the dark hidden wetness of the sand, to find oysters and urchins, and of those who pick for seaweed, mussels, gleaming shells. Goddess of clean bones. Chert. Goddess of finding the way home in the dark. Goddess of knowing without knowing how to explain. Goddess of lucky escapes, and of nameless cats. Deel. God of carrion birds and clean death. God of the silent towers in the bays and on the headlands, that leave sea, sky, and soil, and fire all unsullied by the rot of corpses. The god who picks away meat and turns bones to dust and leaves only memory and names. God of borders and liminal places. Keetal. God of warm rain, morning light, and clear thought. Terl. Goddess of the Wandering Moon, white lies, small ornaments, and small gifts given for the sake of giving. She who presides over love that lasts a night and does not see the morning, and over Tide Marriage: the union of lovers till the next Strangetide Night. Merzalt. That which sees wrong done to those who do wrong by orphans and cripples. Yist. The crow, deity of lookouts, of foresight and forecasts. God of corvid birds, of preparation, and of voyages and gambling. Vitchika. Bloody handed and cloaked in fog, goddess of what is lost. Of misplaced things and the frenzy of mourning. Of the lost self in battle’s rage, and those who lose life and limb in the line of battle. Goddess of obscuring fogs and the kill. Jekkaw. Goddess of savings, of hope for a day yet to come, of hard decisions and suffering for a tomorrow that brings less pain than the past. Goddess of scars and wounds halfway to healing. This list does not come close to a full survey of the gods worshipped in Vella. Outside of Vella, it is also common for a travelling or displaced Vellan to adopt – or at least acquaint themselves with – the gods of the land they tread at the time. It may not quite approach worship: only politeness where politeness is due.

[sunderlorn]

The Olmanac - Part 20

    Religions and Philosophies - Part 2     Shimrene Polytheism Between the fall of the Omorin Empire and the arrival of Uttarans in Olm, came the Shimrene Hierarchies. Built on the bones of two huge Omorin structures, the newly abandoned Shim established the cities of Tolomi and Osomti. Historians speculate that each city stood as the dominant cultural force in East and West respectively, for almost the entirety of The Sunrise Era. Both Tolomi and Osomti established a rigidly caste-based society, which some speculate were based on the power structures of the Omor themselves. As the Hierarchies fell in violent circumstances, little survives of ancient Shimrene culture — only curious artifacts, debatable translations of a few works of literature, damaged artworks, and a good deal of architecture. Tolomi and Osomti themselves are the most enduring part of the Hierarchies’ legacy. But the deities worshipped in both cities have endured also, in one form or another. Shimrene Polytheism then, is less an established faith and more the general term for reverence of the old Shimrene gods. Many also argue that it should apply to the array of pantheons and individual deities that some scholars suggest were derived from or inspired by the gods of Tolomi and Osomti. This is however a contentious subject. Largely, it applies to the pantheons of major gods worshipped mostly in the two Shimrene cities. The gods that the Shim believe freed them from the Omor’s yoke. The name is perhaps misleading, for the followers of these pantheons include not only Shim these days, but Tolomaics and Osomtans of all races. What follows is a sampling of these pantheons. Imaga. A Tolomaic deity of motherhood, fatherhood, the body, and soil. Some of Olm’s gods have two heads, two faces, or many arms, but Imaga has two bodies. They are presented in art and idolatry as a pair of twins, conjoined back to back: one masculine and one feminine, and each working at a potter’s wheel. The masculine side is depicted shaping a female form from the clay, while the feminine shapes a male. As such, Imaga is the hermaphroditic deity of bodily change, and watches over those expecting children, and children expecting or experiencing puberty. They are also associated with those who work clay. Basreddin. An Osomtan god of the sky, winds, and Winters. Though associated with the most dire natural forces pitted against Osomti, the city of towers, Basreddin is considered a benevolent protector among these dangers. It is to Basreddin that one prays before venturing between the towers, or as one hopes for a mild Winter. He is depicted as a male figure suspended in a fanning burst of feathered wings. Ennar. A Tolomaic deity of fire, war, and foresight. They are depicted as a veiled figure with arms extended and holding a round Tolomaic shield, its convex facing upward and filled with flames. Devotees of Ennar are oracles who seek to divine possible futures in their god’s sacred fires. Ennar’s position as a deity of war is therefore as a tactician, rather than a warrior: knowledge and magic used to devastate or defend. Deshkigal. An Osomtan goddess of the stars and of justice. She is depicted as a kneeling woman, weaving a fishing net, each knot studded with a star shape. This net of the night sky represents her watchful gaze and the grasp of justice in which wrongdoers are caught. Even under cover of darkness, it says, nothing escapes Deshkigal. Osomti’s several watchmen’s guilds began as temples to Deshkigal, and many remain so at least in name. Temis. A Tolomaic deity of rain, harvest, and sacrifice. Depicted as an androgynous figure in Tolomaic headdress, Temis holds a bowl close to their chest with one arm, and in the other hand wields a wide-bladed triangular dagger. They represent the time, effort, suffering, or lives that must be sacrificed for the good of all — whether in the slaughter of animals for meat, the loss of lives in war, the backbreaking labour of agriculture, the pain of childbirth, or the harsh rains that fall rarely on Tolomi both feeding the city and stinging the skin or flooding its lower reaches. Unlike the other gods of the Tolomaic pantheon, Temis’ shrines and temples are to be found in the desert outside the city. Yathay. An Osomtan warrior god of history, wisdom, and combat. Depicted as a nude male figure, holding a spear, Yathay’s whole body is tattooed with script, numbers, and pictographs, up to the feather-crested helmet he wears to obscure his face. Yathay's name is a palindrome in Osomtomorin script: a warning that history, like his name, will repeat itself doubling back or forth, if it is not learnt from. Yathay, therefore, represents and wears the history of the world’s conflict, and guides those who would use knowledge of the past to build a better future. Narahim. A Tolomaic deity of mending and joining, sundering, healing, trust and betrayal. Narahim is depicted as a four-armed figure in rags and jewellery. One pair of arms knots complex weblike patterns into a cradle of yarn while the other pair unmakes them. They are considered the god of friendships and agreements – sex and shared confidence and secrets: unions of the body and the mind – but also of such joinings when they are betrayed or must be broken for safety and sanity. They are a deity of lovers and of the jilted, and those who trusted and those who were betrayed. They bless sexual and non-sexual relationships. But it is also to Narahim you turn when you would curse a traitor. Vetil. An Osomtan goddess of crafts, practice, and activity. Vetil is an eyeless goddess, and so she does not sleep — or so the reasoning goes. Instead she is constantly at work, as a master craftsperson in all things. She inspires artists and guides shipwrights. She works alongside sculptors and architects, tailors, dyers, bookbinders, chefs, and carpenters alike. As such, Vetil has no-one appearance beyond her eyeless face, but a craftsperson will worship her pictured engaged in the same craft they favour. Hess. A deity mysteriously shared between both Tolomi and Osomti, even before any contact was made between the two cities. In both cultures it is forbidden and impossible to depict Hess, and this deity has different connotations in each city. However, the unifying feature of Hess is as a god of death and the dead. In Tolomi, Hess is a deity of Tolomi’s subterranean underworld, but also of trade, and the mineral wealth to be found beneath the earth. Tolomi’s dead are traditionally cremated then placed in urns among networks of caverns and tunnels under the ground, with riches and trade goods to go with their shade into the underworld. It is believed that these goods will be used to bargain into the trading hierarchy of the rich underworld. It is also believed that these offerings by the living placate Hess, who prevents the shades from rising up into the world of the living. Capricious as death and the currents of trade and fortune, Tolomaics pray to Hesh for their ancestors’ well-being, and for mercantile success. In Osomti, Hess is also a deity of trade along the safe coastal waters around Olm. But much more so, Hess represents the unknown, and the emptiness of the open ocean beyond the horizon, and the way its empty uncertainty mirrors that of death itself. Hess is not personified as are the other Osomtan gods. Rather, Hess is a concept: the peace of the void where the dead belong, after their family have burnt their remains, and scattered them from Osomti’s furthest column and out to sea.

[sunderlorn]

The Olmanac - Part 19

        Religions and Philosophies - Part 1         The Temples of the Masked God This faith is a comparatively young one, reactionary against Olm’s fractious pantheon. It is of Uttaran origin, and like the Uttarans themselves it was late in coming to Olm. The faith of the Masked God however is not the one that the Uttarans brought with them from lost Uttaris. It arose from their time in Olm, a direct symptom perhaps of their adjustment to a new land and way of life. The basic tenets of the Masked God’s faith are simple. Their God is unknowable, nameless, and completely beyond mortal comprehension, direct physical representation, or action in this world. This God is not the world’s cause but is the cause of life within it — the life Its devotees believe to be an indelible gift. The Masked God is neither good nor evil, for these are mortal concepts. Rather It simply is, inscrutably, and should be respected as are the sun, the stars, the sea. The Masked God cannot be known directly, and yet some infinitesimal impression of Its nature can be grasped through the reflections It leaves in the lives of Its creatures. These small revelations are referred to as the Masks. The first three of these Masks are the only official ones: a series of mortal prophets, each arriving after the other, and preaching a particular doctrine in the form of a sermon. The Masks are believed to have carried a single life-force across three incarnations. First among the Masks was Astor, a first-generation Uttaran man who came to realise the truth of the Masked God late in his life. In his sermon he preached not only of the Masked God Itself, but of Its indelible gift: the gift of life which death cannot end but only pass on. He preached reincarnation of all animal life, from flies and worms to Uttaran, and Shim, and Jerdigar; the beasts of the ocean and of the air, and the last lone true dragons that died out in his time. He preached that respect for the Masked God’s gift dictates respect for the precious life one carries. One should carry it well and leave it pure, so as to pass on as little dross into its next incarnation as possible. And so Astor’s vision of purity was to be found an ascetic lifestyle, a vegetarian diet for he deemed the eating of all flesh to be cannibalism of a kind, and forsaking all other gods, for they are shadows of the Masked God and purity demands one must look past them. The second Mask, Shahn, was a Shim woman: a soldier in the later wars between the Uttarans and the Shimrene Hierarchy of Tolomi. She was raised believing Astor to have been a foreigner, a savage, and a heretic, and yet a long period of illness and convalescence after being wounded in battle brought revelations to her and she too found her own truth of the Masked God, and continued to preach her own sermon, as Astor had before her. She preached the separation of sentient life from animal life, and the exclusion of animals from the cycle of reincarnation. Most notably however she preached the abominable nature of any magic or artificial means by which a soul can be made to linger outside the cycle, as a ghost or spirit or other such echo, and she demonised any magical power that drew from necromantic sources. In life she led an ever-growing crusade against echoes and those who would use them, releasing them back into the cycle through any means necessary. She was killed in the Jerdigar sacking of Tolomi. Yarid was a Jerdigar shol and the third and final Mask. As a warrior who laid down her arms she left motherhood and the Holdings entirely to meditate on the truth of the Masked God and Its previous two prophets. She arrived at a new conclusion. The way, she said, to purity of life and of the indelible soul is through contemplation and absolution of the past, and of one’s own sins against purity, and the impurities carried on in one’s soul from previous incarnations. Through confession and penitent meditation, absolution of the soul can be found. Officially speaking, the Temple of the Masked God is a unified faith acknowledging each of the three sermons by the three Masks. A faith united not in worship of the Masked God, but in respectful thanks for Its gift of indelible life. The true temple of the Masked God, they say, is not a place at all, but the life that works within a believer, and in that believer’s dutiful efforts to keep that life pure until it is ready to be passed on once more. However, there are obvious contradictions in the three sermons, and in truth the faithful of the Masked God tend to cherry pick from among them, adhering mostly to the doctrine and denomination of a particular Mask. Whether ascetic Astori, or militant Shahni, or liberal Yaridans. A fourth denomination, however, also bears mentioning, though it is largely viewed as heretical by the other three branches of the faith. The Astori Omodox is a cultish split-off from Astori teaching. They believe that if all gods are, as the first Mask states, shadows of the Masked God, then studying and worshipping any and each of them is the only way to praise the Masked God Itself. They disregard the more common focus on purity of the soul in favour of honouring the one true God through the endless pantheon of Olm. Any deity is a reflection of God for them – a Mask in itself, able to teach a shadow of the truth. They even include the three Masks themselves among the gods they revere. The faith is most common in Eastern Olm, particularly within the Methari Accord. Generally, Yaridan leanings are the norm, popular for their doctrine of absolution through confession…which today tends to translate to purchasing of forgiveness from one’s local temple, as is common in the Accord: home to the only established and centralised chain of Mask temples in Olm. The Accord’s established temples are amalgamated under their own symbol: a circle struck through with three vertical lines; one from edge to edge in the circle’s center, and another to its left and to its right, beginning and ending outside the circle. Throughout the rest of Olm, individual believers will tend to identify themselves as Yaridans, Shahni, or Astori, rather than faithful of the Masked God. It is only in the Accord that it is treated as a religion, complete with trappings and ritual, and the three masks-within-masks that the priesthood wear. Most everywhere else it is a philosophy and a lifestyle, practiced as the practitioner pleases.

[sunderlorn]

The Olmanac - Part 18

        Religions and Philosophies - Introduction In matters of faith Olm is far from unified. It is home not to a few central faiths, but rather to a dizzying and disparate pantheon of deities. Gods of small things honoured at harvest-time by a single township. Families of squabbling gods, each with their own time-worn purviews. Philosophies that have spread and now hold sway over great swathes of Olm, and religions whose borders have shifted with the times. And beyond all of that there are many who hold with no formal or informal faith, except in what they see, know, touch — and in many cases what they can study. The Collegiate of Tolomi teach, for example, that what others take as proof of their gods’ action in the world – the prayers that bring luck and the names that bring curses and the rituals that make good on hopes for a fine harvest – are not by necessity proofs at all, but only ancient and potent hedge-magic. Forces inherent in the working of the world need not point beyond it. But one person’s reason is another’s utter madness. There are almost no natural arguments can sway a heart set on faith. Be it as it may that there are no ways to verify any faith or the existence of any deity – only phenomena attributed to those deities, and questions as to which caused the other – there remain no proofs against them either. Religions and philosophies have clashed in the past over disagreements, or matters of evangelism. Indeed it is likely they’ll do so again. But the consensus among most of Olm’s people is that, strange as another person’s beliefs or lack thereof may seem, it’s a matter of belief. Their belief. That’s why it’s called a faith.

[sunderlorn]

The Olmanac - Part 17

        The Soul and its Echoes Throughout Olm, faiths and philosophies call the spark that burns in living things by all manner of different names. The Amadi of the Plains – at least those who still keep their old ways – call it an Akal, which means simply ‘Name’. The Jerdigar in their Holdings call it Tushrad, or ‘Colour’. The faithful of the Masked God call it Isara in the Lay Omorin of the first Mask’s sermon — to them it means ‘what lasts’. And there are others still among scholars of acumenical magic who admit to knowing nothing of this thing that most simply call a soul, but that it is what spans the gap between life and mere matter. Perhaps, they say, it is what first spanned that gap, agitating the unliving stuff of the world into motion, growth, and eventually life. Whatever that might be. For all its names, the soul, the spark, the mystery of breath and growth, is ineffable, impossible to define, or to verify. It has no testament but life itself. What it becomes when life ends, however, is sometimes more concrete. Something is released upon the death of any living thing: an echo of all they were. It begins intangible, invisible, scentless and soundless, to all but those who have the means to sense it. And in most cases it is lost, dissipating into the world, or out of it — whether to be reborn in a new body as a new form of life as some believe, or to find an eventual nothingness that is either torment or release from it, depending on who you ask. In other cases, however, it lingers.The means and the reason vary from deliberate use of magic to something stranger and more abstract: an intensity in the echo that will not let it slip away. Slowly the echo coalesces, becoming something in itself by binding to the physical world. This is called an anchor: usually a place, or an item. With time these echoes grow and change to become the ghosts and spirits of Olm. Echoes that do not move on will never be truly physical, but with time they can become ever-increasing collections of phenomena. An aura of anguish around a knife used in a particularly cruel murder. A stone or bone fetish that holds fractured memories or a small voice-like noise, if one only knows how to listen. The flickering hazy figure of a lost child, seen sometimes among the marshes or the trees, waiting for its mother to return. A strange uncontrollable verdance on the site where a huge old tree was once cut down. The phenomena of these lingering echoes grow with time as the echo gains power, changing to suit its anchors and borrowing from them. These things become less like what they were in life, and alter into something more. A site that has seen one skirmish too many has a shifting wordless and savage intelligence that prevents any from moving or treating the bodies it hoards. One echo trapped too long in a barrow beneath a hill invests itself throughout every dessicated corpse within and every torch or brazier that refuses to light for love of darkness and rest. A tree grew again where once an older tree stood, unnaturally fast, and those who dream beneath it hear its stories. An ossuary filled with generations of a family’s bones, bound up with magic, becomes a receptacle of memories that gives advice to those who know the ways to ask and the means to hear. A child-ghost grows stronger with every other life lost nearby, and becomes a chorus of voices and skittering shapes, luring, waiting. These echoes have powers of their own. Those who use magic to borrow or share that power are known generally as necromancers. Those who control these echoes, binding and commanding them to act, or to invest matter with motion once more, or consuming them to power new spellwork, alchemy, or enchantments — whether by bargain or by force. Throughout Olm there are many who look down on this practice as profane. The very same folk may, however, hold some actions that are technically necromantic as sacred and essential to their culture. There are others who condemn necromancy for the same reasons they might slavery: it treats what they believe is a life – a sentience – as an instrument or an object to be used. One of the fiercest and oldest debates in acumenical scholarship rages for that very reason. Is the echo the plant or animal that died? Or is it something new — a substance or energy given off, and so informed, by the loss of something’s life, and memories and character in the moment of death, like smoke is given off by burning?

[sunderlorn]

The Olmanac - Part XVII

            Magic         Part III - Hedge Magic The rest of the world’s well-known hedge magic gains its power from tradition, ritual, and often intense involvement in a particular culture’s heritage. Whether through the religions at the core of their society, or through the stories they tell their children to keep them obedient and safe. Mostly it consists of rituals, and a few shorter spells, each deliberate, inflexible in their methods and their effects, each with ties to one specific culture in Olm. It works because it has worked for so long. Compared to acumenical magic, however, it does not require understanding – or even necessarily personal belief – but only rigid adherence to the requirements of the spell or ritual. This is why the Tolomaic colleges of magic do not shun hedge magecraft, but rather see it as a way towards a greater understanding of magic in general — not only can one work backwards as with acumenical magic, understanding the tapestry and attempting to find ways to wield this understanding, but by studying hedge magic you can work forwards: learn the impetus that always produces a particular effect, and perhaps you can learn something of the mysterious ‘why’ behind it all. Something of magic itself. In any case, anyone can learn a hedge spell or ritual. Whether they can cast it at any given time, however, is another matter. One of brimstone perhaps, or blood, or chalk, or the right god’s name in the right place, at the right time. It can work outside the acumenical laws of magic, because it exists among countless laws of its own. But not all hedge magic is so particular in its requirements. Arguably the most widespread spellwork used in Olm, cantrips are the broad base of hedge magic: quick and easy spells usable by anyone with a little patience to learn. Generally they do small things in small ways, with only a little variation across place and culture, and tradition. Rather than consisting of lengthy and dogmatic rituals, these small spells each have a catch — a price that must be paid, or a drawback that is impossible to escape. A sting in the tail for the taste of power they bring.

[sunderlorn]

The Olmanac - Part XVI

            Magic         Part II - Acumenical Magic The science to unite all sciences. The unending pursuit of comprehension. Mastery through understanding. These are the words used by students of acumenical magic, if only a few among many. But for something so grand, the approach and the attitude is a simple one: seek to understand what you wish to alter and, through knowledge of previous theories and experimentation of your own, alter it as precisely and efficiently as you can. In practice however, acumenical magic is a life’s pursuit and its mastery is the work of several lifetimes. But with the wonders such magic can craft in the world, it is not uncommon for ageing acumenical mages to seek out ways of extending their lives and studies beyond their race’s average. It is only slightly less common for them to succeed. Acumenical magic’s power is in its versatility. Its most vocal proponents boast that, through its study, almost any miracle may be worked in time. The ‘almost’, however, is important, for it holds one of the most fundamental truths of acumenical magic. There are laws it cannot break.

There is no action that does not have a reaction. Magic is the harmony of all cause and effect.

The tapestry is finite. Magic affects energy and matter but cannot create nor destroy either one. It can only cause them to change shape or state. Magic cannot come from nothing or reduce something to the same.

Balance will always return. Magic acts beyond our action. Just as magic can be used to alter the world, magic will always undo itself. No effect of spell, alchemy, or enchantment lasts forever.

The last law reveals another important truth about acumenical magic. Its use is a system of proportionate exchange. Part of the reason that no mage’s magical effect can last indefinitely is because to do so would require infinite fuel for an infinite result. The remainder of the reason is more mysterious. Magic wants to restore its own balance. What is done through magic, magic works to undo. Acumenical magic works through spells. By casting a spell, the mage provides what is commonly called a ‘spur’ to the world: an amount of fuel in the form of time, effort, matter, and energy, that is then translated into the potency of the effect. Technically, anything could provide a spell’s spur, but unless the spur is fitted well to the effect and the affected it will be inefficient and much or all of the spur’s fuel will be lost. Acumenical mages craft efficient spurs through knowledge and through sympathy. Knowledge of the effect and the affected – through biology, physics, chemistry, and so on – help to make a spell precise, meaning that as little of the spur as possible goes where it is not wanted. Sympathy is more mysterious. It is the umbrella name for what students of acumenical arcana believe magic itself consists of: an infinite and hidden number of connections, varying in strength, between all things. Its basic principle, however, is that like affects like, and so the more a spur has in common with the effect and the affected, the more efficient the spell will be. Sympathy determines the apparatus of a spell, in terms of incantations, gestures, diagrams, materials, and so on. Together, these things are referred to as ‘foci’ and make up the most obvious and iconic component of any spell. The better the foci, and often the more are involved, the more efficient the spur. For not all foci are created equal, particularly not for a given task. As such, acumenical spellworkers are known for having pockets and pouches full of oddments, and a good grasp on esoterica beyond the sciences: linguistics, geometry, nursery rhymes, symbolism, and more. Most powerful and hardest to come by among these strange selections of foci is the language of the Old Omorin empire, for the names they gave to things seem to have a dreadful and potent truth. In the remainder of foci there is a point where acumenical and hedge magic meet, for many powerful and useful foci are taken from hedge magical traditions — whether the arcanist using them will admit it or not.

[sunderlorn]

The Olmanac - Part XV

            Magic         Part I - Two Paths: An Overview Ask scholars and shaman alike, they will tell you what magic is. Their answer will be the same and it will be simple, at least in most cases. Magic is what is beyond us all. It is everything that is not a thing in itself, but rather it is the connections between them, and the unity these connections form: the world’s invisible web, or the hidden weft and warp behind the world’s tapestry. And when these connections are tugged, they urge the world to change. That is what it means to work magic. On all other things there are differences of opinion, and differences of practice. Some work through a firm footing in the empirical. The way, the say, to understand magic is through understanding the world itself. Only then can you alter it. Others maintain that magic is also beyond our understanding: a series of incomprehensible secrets to hold in the mind, as means of asking mysterious favours from your gods, or else from the world at large. The first is known as acumenical magic. The latter goes by many names – as many as there are traditions of secrets, passed down through cultures and priesthoods and village witches over the ages – but those outside these traditions call all such magic by one name: hedge magic. Together these means of magic making act in the world, changing it, are known as spellwork. Magic use in its rawest form, spellwork put simply is committing actions that create a magical effect or alteration in the world. Alchemy is the practice of suspending one’s spellwork in a medium – usually alcohol, wax, fat, salt, or solution – until it is triggered, and the medium destroyed. Alchemy is responsible for the creation of finite-use magical items such as scrolls, candles, tattoos, tinctures and potions. Finally, enchantment is the practice of casting spellwork upon a metallic medium and using that medium to contain and prolong the effect. For reasons only speculated upon, copper, silver, and gold are – in ascending order – the most successful media.