Question 1! Can animals be wizards? Question 2! If so, which species? (My own list of potential candidates: Great apes, elephants, cetaceans (esp. Delphinidae, particularly orcas), parrots, corvids, octopi.)
(For those of you just tuning in, Seattle Bites is an original Novel I’m writing about vampires and other monsters living in a slightly-to-the-left version of the modern world. It’s a Queer Romance, Comedic swashbuckler so far, and you can read more and see a lot of inspo posts in my #seattle bites tag)
So About Magic in the SB-verse:
Anyone/anything with sufficient mental capacity to observe natural phenomena and learn about them, and the physical aptitude to manipulate the world around them can use magic. This includes all the species you listed, plus pigs, raccons, dogs, ‘lower’ primates, beavers and one particularly outstanding cow named “Miss Daisy, Vile Lich of the Damned” from just outside of Edmonton, Alberta.
It’s a real Pain In The Ass to work with.
Magic’s like everything else, there’s no getting something for nothing with it- It takes just as much energy to do something with Magic as it does by more conventional means. Energy that you have to artificially supply- channeled lightning, a water mill, blood sacrifice, etc- or that comes directly out of your body. You COULD spend weeks learning how to enchant needles to knit socks for you and take the minor calorie drain as you’re off doing something else... OR you could just learn to knit and take it with you. You COULD make a yearly virgin sacrifice to ask for reliable rains for crops without flooding... OR you could build a dam/resivoir.
It’s also poorly understood (at least by humans but we’ll get to that in a minute) except for a few weird academics that you don’t really want to talk to anyway, and unlike a lot of other forces of nature there isn’t a lot of technology that runs off it to warrant it’s widespread use and study. Much like electricity prior to the industrial revolution, for instance.
The real advantages to using Magic are as follows:
1. It does do SOME things we don’t have technology for (yet). Like talking to animals and messing with spacetime, if you’re feeling particulalry full of Hubris.2. Becuase it’s poolry understood, it’s largely unprosecutable. So if you need to be particularly sneaky about doing something not totally legal, magic might be harder to trace than Conventional means.3. If Conventional Means are inacessible to you, Magic might be less effort overall.
HENCE, most magic is used:1. To Do Really Dumb Shit 2. For Crimes.3. By Nonhuman* Persons.
1. Sometimes you gotta do something for which technology and Conventional Means has come up short, like incinerating an entire house in under 40 seconds, and “The Magic of Blowing Everythin Up Tae Fuck” is a well-distributed and much-loved Scottish Grimoire. However, sometimes technology doesn’t exist for a REASON, Trevor. This is also why anyone who goes around calling themselves a Wizard is generally met with an extremely suspicious side-eye if not outright public scorn. Your friends set a few rivers on fire and you get a reputation by extention.
2. Sometimes the massive energy drain for a large-scale spell is worth it. You COULD try bribing several thousand government officals to keep thier noses out of the lives of the Crypt Community, with all the cash, falibility of human nature and suspicious conspiracy theorists that brings... OR you could use the lightning spires on top of every skyscraper in Crypt-occupied cities to make a magical shielding device for every member of the community willing to get a rune cut into them.
3. When you’re totally aquatic, have no hands and are rougly the size of a bus, most human technology is pretty much useless to you. Hence, Orca Whlaes are some of the most skilled practitioners of Magic in the world. The use it mostly to combat enviornmental destruction, and are too annoyed with humans to share any secrets. J2 is an adept enough witch that even the dragon in Mt. Rainier leaves Seattle alone out of respect for her.
*the term “Nonhuman” in Crypt Culture approximately means “Not approximately shaped like a stick figure.” and is mostly used to complain about living in a world that was designed for land-dwelling bipeds with opposable tumbs but those that don’t have those features.**
**there’s A LOT of complaining and discourse in the Crypt Community, even about the name “Crypt Community”
***Nobody likes Trevor though. That’s not even an asterisk. It’s like the one thing they all agree on.
