Avishraa Reloaded

The art of enchantment relies on drawing magical energies from the surrounding environment into a physical object in such a way as to make it usable by a sapient being. Although it is believed that there are, throughout the multiverse, differing methods of doing so, that known by the Chosen revolved around patterns, designs, and symbols placed upon the objects to which the enchantments would be attached. The Chosen discovered long ago that such visual designs, if placed, aligned, and combined properly by a user of magical ability, were capable of channeling magic into creating particular effects.

The choice of symbols, and their arrangement, not only depends on the desired type and orientation of magical effect, but also the physical shape of the object being enchanted; many symbols placed on a flat surface, such as a wall, will not achieve the same effect if placed on a columnar surface, nor a spherical one. A student of enchanting must keep in mind that such symbols exist in three-dimensional space, and can only be correctly used when inscribed on a surface that reflects their geometry.

Nonetheless, will and intent are also important elements of enchanting, even more than many other forms of magic. It is not enough for a prospective enchanter to simply make the symbols upon the object of their choosing; in order to be sure of success, they must do so knowing that the symbol creates the effect, and intending to achieve that effect. Making signs upon an object without the intent of creating an effect, or completely by accident, will produce no effect; making them with intent, but without accurate knowledge of what they do, is potentially more dangerous, since, depending on the relationship between the intended and actual effects, the results may vary from nothing at all, to a partially or completely malfunctioning enchantment, to completely unanticipated side effects.

From this, it follows that enchanting is not, for the most part, a discipline that can be easily mastered in its entirety. Successful enchanters are individuals capable of focus and concentration, with a good memory for symbols, their meanings, shapes, and applications, and precision in making them. Although a few exceptional individuals are skilled in all branches of the art, most enchanters specialize in particular shapes or types of surfaces, particular sorts of enchantments, or some combination of the above. As an example, Ilirith is an enchanter who, though skilled in her way, is almost entirely restricted to flat surfaces; of those, her particular specialties involve traps, barriers, and Writing, though she has some knowledge of others.

Although an enchantment is completed, or “sealed”, using its creator's own magical reserves, its actual effect is powered by ambient magic in the world around it. Although ambient magic is generally a renewable resource in any given area, it remains a fact that an enchantment may only absorb it a limited rate. Though certain types and configurations of symbols may improve matters, in practice, applications requiring high absorption of magic accordingly require the enchantments to be spread out over large surface areas. (Although total storage of magical energy is also a limiting factor, and in much the same way, improving this appears to be a less space-intensive endeavor.)

Enchantments therefore lend themselves best to applications that do not require them to quickly recharge: those that drain its stored magic at a rate near or below their absorption rate, or those which are, but are not anticipated to be used frequently or for a lengthy period of time. The relationship between an intended application and how much magic it uses is a complicated subject, and not always intuitive; nonetheless, some effects, such as the creation of matter, are universally extremely energy-intensive, while others, such as force-field generation and teleportation, can have surprisingly low energy requirements.

Although an enchantment will remain in effect for as long as it is intact, enchanted items, and indeed the enchantments upon them, are subject to deterioration in the manner of any physical object. Time will eventually wear away any surface, whether from erosion by wind and water, impact by some other object, even exposure to light. Although there is a certain amount of flexibility in the symbols as to whether they remain the right “shape”, an unmaintained enchantment will eventually either malfunction or cease to function. The correct methods of maintenance and preservation for a particular enchantment strongly depend on both the composition of the surface on which the enchantment is laid (ex. paper, stone, wood, metal) and the method of enchantment (ex. carved, incised, written/painted). Enchantments can be deliberately undone by erasing or marring the symbols used to form it, although (particularly in large and/or complicated enchantments) failing to completely remove a symbol, or removing the wrong ones first, can result in dangerous malfunctions of the effect rather than negating it.

One of the more curious and useful aspects of enchantment involves the incorporation of writing. The repertoire of symbols that can be used “natively” in enchantment, though vast and capable of considerable flexibility when used in combination, is nonetheless finite, and attempting to rely on them alone can present problems in situations where a degree of specificity is required. This is particularly the case when the enchanter wishes to set conditions on an effect that require the object of the conditions to be described: allowing a trap to affect some individuals and not others, teleporting to a particular place that has not itself been defined by a matching enchantment, and so on.

The discovery that there were particular symbols that could be used to “frame” written words, and accept them as input into the enchantment, was a revolution in the field, since before that point it was extremely difficult to fine-tune enchantments for particular purposes. The exact principles of its operation were still a matter of debate at the time of the Culling, but it was theorized that the framing-symbols that permitted the use of writing operated by, in effect, allowing the enchanter to use what they wrote as a sort of custom symbol: in effect, where a preexisting symbol for a particular effect was nonexistent or unknown, the enchanter could define one.

In theory, this could be done with any symbol without a particular preexisting use; in practice, the difficulty of knowing whether a random symbol had no preexisting meaning, and the difficulty of intending it to have a particularly complex or specific meaning, makes the use of writing for this purpose both easier and less dangerous. The “custom” nature of writing also appears to make it immune to the geometric requirements of most other enchanting symbols, allowing its easy use on surfaces with variable shape, such as the pages of a book. This flexibility allows its use in glyphic teleportation through the use of books.