The Mirror Problem

It has long been established among magical practitioners that mirrors, particularly silver mirrors, are magically active devices with connections to the realm of Beyond. There are many theories about why this is the case, but the fact remains that when a mirror is present during a magical working it can distort the energies involved, with unpredictable results. While there are tales of idiosyncratic magics specifically intended to work with mirrors, these stories are usually cautionary in nature, such as in the case of The Glass-Eyed.

Before the discovery of universal magic and the subsequent growth of arcane development, the mirror problem was interesting to those who practiced magic but of little concern to the rest of the world. However, in the modern day, Magic can be found everywhere, and mirrors are increasingly becoming a public safety hazard. This was a slowly developing issue in the centuries before the Dragon Wars, but like many things, the eldritch energies the Cult of the Leviathan unleashed on the world have had consequences, and the problem with mirrors has accelerated in the years since the war ended. Many institutions, such as the Church of Albion and The Ministry of Correspondence, simply do not permit any mirrors on the premises at all. But outside of these organizations, mirrors are ubiquitous, and many stories have begun to arise of problems emerging from them as they are accidentally exposed to Magic. Part of the challenge in tackling the issue is its inconsistency. A young lady may apply alchemical beautifiers a hundred times before her mirror with no ill effect, only to find that on the hundred and first time a bloody face leers at her from behind the glass before it shatters into hundreds of lethal shards. Sometimes the mirrors show no reflection at all, or they begin to grow beyond their frames, covering the walls in sharp-edged living glass. In most houses, the mirrors are kept covered by heavy velvet drapes, drawn back only long enough to glimpse one's reflection, but even with such precautions, people are sometimes caught by their reflections and will spend hours gazing into them, only waking when someone covers the mirror again, unable to explain what trapped them so.

It has become a matter of enough concern that Her Majesty's government has commissioned a report on the matter from the foremost expert in the field, Professor Blewelyn Fayre of the University of Carbury. She is a Scholar of Reflective Sorcery and Liminal Optics, and has made a great study of the eldritch properties of mirrors, prisms, and other light-altering materials. The hope is that some mitigation may be found for the Mirror Problem, and that mirrors may be rendered safe for use around Magic. If not, it seems likely that radical measures may need to be taken to eliminate mirrors, and possibly other reflective surfaces, from populated areas of the world.