Magic in society

I sulf was speaking almost five centuries ago, when mages (properly Viks) were still severely outcast from society. Only slowly were secular laws loosening the restrictions on mages - and here "loosening" means "no longer condemning to death anyone who so much as possessed magical ability," rather than actively protecting them. Still, religious law and tradition was resistant. In fact, Isulf was speaking at the beginning of the latest push by mages for religious recognition. This campaign would - three years later - be successful with the promulgation by the Grand Sanctorum of On Magical Power and Creation, legitimising the existence of mages, establishing a moral framework for the use of magic (and thus a definitive list of evil magics), and permitting the establishment of a religious Cult - the Cult of Magic - for those mages so dedicated to their gift as to use it to give thanks to The Creator.

Isulf would not see this victory. Two years after this speech to the Grand Sanctorum he was assassinated on the road from Hornhill to Calthor. The law did not permit him to cast many of the spells he could have to protect his party that night - and he refused, even secretly, to break that law until it was changed. For this he is formally recognised as Blessed among the Sanctorum - though there are plenty who will refuse to call him such, even now.

Before we see what progress has been made since Isulf's day, let us summarise the past 900 years - the Ages of Exile and of the Creator - and the role magic has played in them.

Even the proudest mages are under no illusions why tension exists between the population of Sammerden and themselves. Before the present age - before the Sanctorum - magic and religion were both less regulated, and entwined more often. After some 11,000 years of sentient life, and perhaps 7,000 years of identifiable civilisation, a magical organisation called the Creator's Circle, led by a mage and alleged holy man Held v'Tor, sought the ultimate synthesis of magic and religion - the use of magic to teleport into the Creator's realm, achieving perfect bliss and salvation.

Though a hugely proud and vain endeavour (and, as we will see, appallingly destructive), it was not unprecedented. There is evidence that Held relied on language and ideas stretching back millennia to support the idea that magic could lead to salvation - even that magic was the necessary route to salvation. Of course, it is doubtful that these prophecies and writings were literally meant, certainly not as literally meant as an attempt to physically teleport to the Creator's doorstep. Nevertheless, without a Sanctorum, and with magic leading (rather than serving), there was little protection against Held's utopian radical interpretation.

Held v'Tor relied on a particular type of magic called Blutvik, or Blood Magic. Magic in Sammerden relies on the user's willpower and conscious effort. Put simply, magic only allows you to perform deeds you can conceive of, and have the strength of will to perform. Even today, teleportation is a difficult art requiring significant willpower - and this is for journeys not invading the Creator's realm. At the same time, it had long been recognised that the blood of living creatures could be used to enhance the power of magic, making difficult things easy or impossible things possible. Importantly, the help rendered is relative to the size and intelligence of the creature whose blood is used. Thus, blood of the sapient races of Sammerden - particularly the larger Welds, Alder, and Hemhatids - is among the most valuable for blood magic.

The Creator's Circle understood the difficulty of the insane scheme they had hatched - and accordingly planned to use the blood of thousands of their followers to aid in the attempt. Even before the Age of the Creator the involuntary use of another's blood in magic was wholly taboo - but without the Sanctorum or any centralised religious authority the Circle managed to amass a popular cult following and camp in and around the Tower of Mithvus (an ancient centre for magical study, whose few remaining inhabitants were easily ejected). Resistance to their plans was growing, and there was talk of a military expedition to disperse the cult and arrest the ringleaders just before the ritual was completed.

But completed it was. On DATE, the fifteen most senior members of the Circle killed approximately 1,000 adherents each - taking their blood to enhance the spell they were casting. The details are necessarily scarce, but apparently only 3 'survived,' wrecked utterly by the attempt and transformed into the Accursed. The bodies of the dead rose as the first Empty - and the Age of Exile had begun.

We will not retell here the whole sorry story of the flight of the living races into exile - that can be found elsewhere. Nor will we dwell too much on the whole political, religious, and social upheaval which the races of Sammerden endured in their 50 year banishment from their homes. For magic users, however, there were two important developments during the Age of Exile. The first, which occurred spontaneously as the living were fleeing eastwards, was a sudden spike in anti-mage sentiment and actions. The news that spread from village to village was not just that the world was ending, but that mages had caused the world to end.

Many of the professional associations of mages naturally condemned the Creator's Circle (and had done so before their failure), but the controversial practice of Blood Magic now became an evil one. Many blood mages - who had practised honestly, and relied only on animal blood - were immediately suspected and killed by their neighbours and sometime clients. This was particularly pronounced in cities, where a collection of mages, and less familiarity with neighbours made accusations of a Blood Mage Conspiracy more believable.

Not that rural and village mages were spared: some share the fate of torture and death, but more were 'protected' by their community on the understanding that they would be used to identify other mages in refugee groups they encountered. These experiences forged a distinct 'mage identity' among Sammerden's mages - who had previously not formed a single community, but identified more closely with their non-magical compatriots. This identity necessarily brought with it elements of concealment, and the secret signs and symbols necessary to reveal the identity to trusted friends.

Secondly, for those mages who made it to the safety of Exile (perhaps one-half of all who had lived before the Breach), they were surprised at the speed with which this hatred cooled. In part, of course, there were few visible mages to persecute - but the surviving mages found that there were no attempts at mage-hunts and that the revelation of their identity was not as dangerous as it had been. This, however, relied on them not performing any magic publicly or (potentially a worse fate) performing magic on demand for their 'host' community.

This attitude remained and mellowed over the course of the Exile in most of the Exile communities - such that there are several recorded mages openly attending the marriage of Conrad I and Morgene, and three even offering a summoned light show as a gift (though contemporary reports suggest that this was received in cautious silence, and many religious sources from the time contrast the weakness of this human made light show to the Creator's wondrous fire).

Still, among some races - principally the Tetra and Welds - there were hostile communities, who would shun or even harm mages in their midst, remembering the alleged sin of all mages. Given the ability for mages to be born to non-mage parents, there was a practice among some exiles of sneaking away - or formally banishing - young mages and/or their families. Many of these ended up either joining Alder clans, or moving onto the punishing Alder Plateau. To this day, communities of Mage Exiles live in and around the Alder Plateau - descendants of these persecuted mages. It is particularly strange that these communities (reportedly) remain >50% mages, as there is no clear genetic link in magical ability anywhere else in Sammerden, making these communities 500x more likely to have a mage born than anywhere else. Infrequent suggestions that this should be studied are made by magical groups in the rest of Sammerden, but these rarely get far (and have never been successfully undertaken).

We thus find ourselves around the great wedding fire of Conrad and Morgene - the moment of the Creator's redemptive revelation to the living. Again, the full religious implications can be left to others - we stand behind the three mages, performing a graceful light show in the sky to shocked and embarrassed silence. Whatever professional embarrassment they might feel is about to be ameliorated. In the mystical revelation of the Creator, the groundwork of the future Sanctorum was laid as well as the instructions for the divinely-supported reconquest of Sammerden. Much was to proceed as in a normal military campaign, with Conrad being assured that his spear would be blessed by the Creator to do particular damage to the Empty. Then, addressing the former practice of battlemages, the Blessed Morgene revealed to the assembly: "Let the Mages serve the Creator under their King; let moral magic serve to undo what evil magic wrought."

The precise meaning of this revelation has been debated since then (including whether it just applied to the reconquest, or is a moral law for all time). But in the moment it was acted upon swiftly - the Allied Corps of Viks was formed, and provided important service to the armies throughout the campaign of Reconquest, both offensively and in support of medical services. However, this was not a liberation for the mages of the Exile - taking the Creator's revelation to heart, all mages were required to serve in the Corps (that is, they could not stay in their unit and aid their comrades there), and non-magical officers were appointed over them to ensure their obedience. Lacking, as of yet, a definition of moral magic officers had to choose for themselves - the few liberal officers were known to permit 'harmless' magic (i.e. unnecessary, even frivolous, uses but most took an extremely restrictive view of 'moral' magic, and forbade any magic not immediately necessary. Most mages, therefore, lived as if they were mages only professionally - forbidden from magically assisting themselves, and forced to perform whenever their contemptuous officers demanded

Nevertheless, the Allied Corps managed to earn the respect of many soldiers it served alongside, and it undoubtedly helped the reputation of mages among the people of Sammerden, even as it was the foretaste of centuries of repression. As the Reconquest slowed at what is now Conrad's Gate, mages were recognised alongside military engineers and newly appointed Sanctors as one of the three ways the Empty could be restrained. Once the physical fortifications were built, both Holy magic (discussed elsewhere) and 'supernatural' magic were utilised in the strengthening of the barrier. The Creator signalled the rightness of this by flooding the surrounding land - creating the straits now known as Conrad's Strait and Morgene's Strait - presumably endorsing not only the Holy magic (which the Creator had supplied directly), but also the use of supernatural magic.