The Candle Law

The Candle Law

Magic is like the heat of a candle flame, when place your hand close to it is warm, comfortable and it can burn you. But the further you are away from where you lit the candlewick the less powerful it is, but its light can still be seen from far away in the dark. ~ Petnelis Greenworm, The Second ArchKeeper

What is The Candle's Law

Named after a quote taken off handedly by Petnelis Greenworm, the second Archkeeper of The Recorded Truth. When a magic spell is cast it will degrade faster over the distance from where it was cast from the origin of the spell, contrary to the natural world in which time is our measurement of degradation. When a spell is cast it's source becomes the location it is cast from rather than a being or enchanted object that cast it. The most common proof experiment which is commonly done by a magic apprentice is The Candle Experiment. (see below) The core of the rule states that any spell that is cast and travels for further than a yard, will become unstable and begin to fall apart. This rule is broken only by gods, dragons and divine or ancient relics who precede all "Laws of Magic" and are deemed to be unquantifiable.  

The Candle Experiment & Candle's Law Extension

To conduct the experiment an apprentice is taken out to a clear flat field at night and given two candles then they are asked to cast their simplest spell to light the both candles and place each in a glass dome then take one of the candles and walk away from the first. Once the candle they are carrying goes out, which will this never happen before a yard of distance but always happens at some point within the hour that the unmoved candle stays lit. The more advance version of this with was proven after some rigid experimentation, but a mage who chooses to cast the same simple spell but provides more arcane energy into the spell can increase the minimum distance before it goes out. There are a few accounts of mages going as far 5 yards but not further as mages who reach that distance find the practice tedious and move on to more complex spells.  

The Teleportation Circles of Zamarrid & The Orb of Zamarrid

The High Elven scholars have spent a lot of time their tree archives, practicing different magic spells experimenting about the limits of magic and attempting to discover new spells. Having written a few dozen rules that are generally considered more like guidelines and to all the other races seem often broken at Alyah's whim. In the over nine millenniums of history of the elves The Candle's Law was always true, so when a magus from Zamarrid, broke it for the first time in recorded history. Many of the other species bushed it off as just a new exploration of magic, but The Recorded Truth sought answers and sent Relic Hunters to teleportation circles. Having traveled through and tested them, the mages found The Rings to be indeed stable over the vast distances they claimed to be and were utterly baffled, when they asked The Magus how he completed such a feat. The Magus showed them a drained orb relic that he claimed would be unable to ever use magic again and when a hundred years later a cataclysmic magical tidal spell was used to destroy the invading imperial fleet. He claimed that he'd restored magic to the relic by applying Viyah Waters to it, and the since named "Orb of Zamarrid" would now be used solely protect the city and its inhabitants. The Recorded Truth has sought on many occasions to be allowed to study the orb, but have since been denied by the Magus and The Mages Order defining that its vital role in the security of the city left no room from outside parties intervention.