From: Tommy the Terrorist <[m--yd--y] at [super.zippo.com]>
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.dnd,rec.games.frp.misc
Subject: Magic 101: "What's in a spellbook, anyway?"
Date: 14 Jun 1998 08:13:31 GMT

Anti-Copyright (A) 1993, Tommy the Terrorist.  This text is explicitly
public domain, and is freely copiable, modifiable, usable, etc., by
anyone.  

[Note: a few references are made in the text to "spell names" from
products of the TSR corporation, but this is NOT a TSR product or
approved by TSR in any way]


"What's in a spellbook, anyway?"


One of the first questions the apprentice mage finds himself
answering (usually when trying to explain to his parents what
he's learning) is just what that spellbook he's lugging around is
for.  This leaves him with a task for which he might almost need
magic:  dispelling misconceptions.

Untutored peasants often think that a spellbook is a sort of
funny writing that a person reads to make something magic happen.
Usually they can't read either, and both processes seem like
some mysterious decipherment from ink to sound.  But that's not
what happens. A mage doesn't need to read the spellbook aloud at
any time, though he is free to mutter to himself while he's
memorizing, of course!

A refinement of this idea is that a spellbook contains
instructions for casting a spell written in some secret code. 
All one need do is precisely intone the syllables, waggle one's
fingers, toss some magic dust into the air... presto!  But if
that were true, mages would order their zombies to cast the
spells, and the undead creatures would unerringly, repeatedly
cast volleys of fireballs one after another.  Nor would learning
the first magic spell be any harder than the next:  there would
be no "wizards" per se, just people who have learned tricks.

A more sophisticated notion is that spellbooks are in fact
mathematical treatises that "prove" a spell into existence, and
that a mage reads the book to convince himself of the reality of
the spell's effect.  There is some glimmering of truth to this
notion:  the most precious arcane texts sought by the designers
of new spells cover sweeping theories of thaumaturgy that explain
how magic is possible.  But there is a difference between drawing
a pyramid and calculating its volume, and actually building a
pyramid in the midst of the desert.  Nor do the overall magical
concepts take into account the specifics of each individual
spell.

What a spellbook really is, is a toolbox.  The wizard uses the
magical script within to assemble an edifice within his mind of
incredible complexity, which awaits a few simple triggers to
release its magical force in a controlled way.  To understand how
this works, we need to examine the most fundamental element of
magic:  the rune.


Each one of those little twisty symbols in the spellbook is a
magical rune. As you can see, there are literally thousands of
them in the "description" of a single spell, interspersed with a
few shorthand symbols that the wizard may choose to draw to
remind himself of where he is in the spell.  You can pick out the
runes quite easily, though, because of the way that they
continually appear to shift and change as you look at them.

Each rune has a number of characteristics, which will be
discussed in more detail as we go on.  It has its own true shape,
which determines how it will interact with other runes in a
magical construction.  It has a name, which can sometimes be
spoken to magical effect during a spell or to trigger a magic
item.  It has a meaning, which determines what effect it can have
within a spell, and determines what objects will implicitly
contain the rune as a part of their natural essence.  Each of
these corresponds to one rune only.

The written rune can occupy almost any number of dimensions,
though five, seven, and thirteen are most common for spells of
human origin.  As the untutored eye looks at it, various planes
and perspectives appear, causing the portion of the rune that
impinges upon the consciousness to constantly change. Of course,
a wizard can control his perception more carefully and can
assemble an image of the entire rune in his mind, but even he
requires a "read magic" spell to be able to quickly absorb the
information in an unfamiliar text. The spell allows him to
perceive the image of each rune directly in his mind from the
paper, without needing to pass the information through the
cramped quarters of a two-dimensional field of vision.  The
process otherwise would be agonizingly slow --- as are the
efforts of the apprentice to assemble his first "read magic"
spell during his training!  The writing of such runes is just as
difficult, requiring training, exacting care, and special inks in
order for the mage to reliably print the rune on a supposedly
two-dimensional piece of paper.

As formidable as these runes may sound, they are in fact the very
simplest of the magical objects the mage will need to comprehend,
called "zero-order magical components" or "anenergetic isograms".
This is by necessity: the runes in a spellbook must all be
sufficiently simple to be specified by the mage's quill, and
cannot in and of themselves contain energy, as they must be
copied afresh into the mage's mind with each day's memorization. 
By comparison, the "runes" etched into a wand ("stabilized
high-order components") or held within a mage's memorized spell
can be hundreds of times more complex, and require the input of
arcane energy before they can be created at all.

The transition from one to the other occurs in the process of
"memorization" that all mages must go through.  The mage reads
the zero-order runes in his spellbook and imagines them vividly
within his mind.  Once he places them in the appropriate pattern,
he can visualize their linkage into patterns that allows the weak
energy flows from the runes to merge and grow stronger. The force
of such interactions actually changes and fuses the runes
together, creating complex runes of greater power called
"first-order components", which can then in turn interact with
yet other runes to produce component runes of the second and
higher orders.  Eventually the building process is complete, and
a spell is ready to be cast.

A spell is built to incredibly exacting specifications.  An error
in only one rune of the thousands involved would utterly negate
the spell's effect, and could even cause an unexpected
side-effect if it were in a critical position within the overall
structure.  Fortunately, since these runes are at first merely
pictured in the wizard's mind, he has the opportunity to
recognize his mistakes and correct them, even if it means
rebuilding part or all of his spell anew.  By far the more
dangerous error occurs when the spellbook he is using has been
damaged, because a rune so altered will retain its magical
properties, and will probably appear as a related, but incorrect,
rune.  The result of this can be a subtly altered spell that fits
together and functions, but has some other effect than what is
expected.

When the spell is complete, there will be only a few (from one to
a few dozen) of the highest-order runes within the mage's mind. 
These will all be of the same degree of complexity, which
determines the "level" of the spell. It is a basic theorem of
thaumaturgy that whatever their characteristics (such as the
number of dimensions they occupy, the amount of energy they hold,
or their degree of complexity), only runes of the same order can
interact, whether in a spell or an item.  Thus it is never
possible for a spell to have a level between first and second: 
either all of the runes are assembled directly from anenergetic
(zero-order) components, or they all represent convergences of
first-order components.

This should explain the difficulty mages have in casting
high-level spells. To the novice, imagining even a single
five-dimensional rune can seem next to impossible.  To combine
thirteen zero-order runes of five, seven, and thirteen dimensions
into a single first-order, 23-dimensional fire rune, then hold
that rune in memory without allowing its innate energy to break
it apart, then create equally complex first-order runes to shape
that energy into a missile, lock it onto the life field around an
opponent, and release it almost instantly with a simple trigger,
"then" keep the entire spell "in the back of your mind",
complete, without falling apart or fading away, until it is time
to use it in the heat of combat --- this is a feat that makes one
worthy of the title "mage"!  Yet such a spell seems like a mere
cantrip compared to the earth-shaking magics of powerful wizards.
 A "sink" spell, for instance, earns the sobriquet "deep six" due
to its beautiful and convoluted architecture in no less than 666
dimensions!  Compared to "wish" it is easy to master.

Another phenomenon seen with higher-order runes is that they
sometimes begin to show a rather unnerving level of autonomy. 
While all runes appear to shift and twist to the untutored
observer who cannot control his perceptions, the control rune of
the "Mordenkainen's Faithful Hound" spell, for instance, really
does move within the constraints of the surrounding runes.  This
autonomy is central to the creature-like action of the spell, yet
it raises disquieting questions concerning the relation between
living beings and spell runes. In this spell, as is more crudely
done in the "phantom steed" spell, a rune from the spell itself
is "summoned" to become a quasi-real creature.  This process can
in fact be reversed:  most notably, the soul of a sentient being
can be represented as mere runes by such spells as "trap the
soul" or "magic jar".  The understanding of many spells in the
enchantment/charm school has been furthered by consideration of
aspects of the mind in runic form, as has been the understanding
of the "polymorph" spells by similar consideration of aspects of
the body.

The most practical use of such information is in the control of
daemons and such creatures.  As their form is largely determined
by a massive input of magical energy, their actual form is in
fact an amulet or similar magic item upon which the stabilized
high-order rune describing them has been inscribed. Possession of
this item allows the control of such a creature; indeed, merely
knowing the true name of such a daemon can give the diligent mage
power, as the name in and of itself corresponds to the rune
describing the demon, and can be used to develop control over
this rune.  It is also important to note that with possession of
the amulet, or the true name, if a mage has complete knowledge of
the process of creation of that particular type of daemon, it is
theoretically possible for him to reverse each step of the
process to rederive the fallen soul or souls originally used to
create the daemon, which can then be raised or resurrected,
perhaps even convinced to adopt a new alignment.  Thus far all
such experiments have been published with a certain degree of
vagueness and a decided anonymity, as some of the Lower Powers
would likely wish to speak with the mages responsible.


Now that we know a little about runes, it's time to consider what
happens when a spell is cast.  We all know a wizard says some
magic syllables, waves his arms around, and often employs common
or exotic substances.  But why?

Occasionally the components of a spell are directly related to
its function. A "shatter" or "shout" spell uses the wizard's
voice as a source of sound that is amplified.  A fireball is
given a direction of travel by following the wizard's pointing
finger.  And "Leomund's Secret Chest", not surprisingly, needs a
chest to be enchanted.

But more often the casting actions are symbolic representations
of something involved in the spell.  A spiderweb, for instance,
clearly has a lot to do with the "web" spell --- but what?  Well,
the spell is not just a random discharge of magical energy:  the
mage wants to evoke the energy in the form of a strong, sticky
mass of fibers that hang together in a mass, yet needs very
little actual substance to occupy a large amount of space.  He
could, perhaps, specify these things in his mind, but the number
of runes and combinations involved to specify the lines and
character of even a single spiderweb would be awesome! It would
not be a second-level spell.  Or he could use a simpler material,
but still a material, like the diamond dust in a "forcecage"
spell, to draw the lines of the web (but this gets expensive). By
contrast, the spider web itself contains all this information,
perfectly encoded as a part of Nature itself.

This information, like everything else to a mage, is equivalent
to magical runes; they are "implicit" in the material.  Since
they aren't actually drawn out, they are available to spells at
any level, whether as a vast landscape of zero-order components,
or as a single compound rune composed of them. Thus the use of a
material component also has the advantage of giving the mage some
flexibility in how he designs his spell, since he doesn't need to
match levels of complexity.  The runic composition of an object
is not directly visible to a mage, but can be deduced through
research; it then becomes possible for the mage to design the
runes he holds in his mind to interact with the material object. 
The use of a material in this way destroys the runes which in a
sense are the essence of the material, which causes it to utterly
pass from existence.  The only exceptions to this occur when the
material object is used only to direct the force of a spell
rather to contribute to it, so that its implicit runes channel
magical force but are not altered by it.

By contrast, the verbal and somatic components cannot usually
include much runic information.  Instead, they act as triggers to
release the energy within the memorized spell.  The crucial fact
for understanding this is that runes are "unique" within any
given magical system such as a spell or item.  The mage's vision
of the spell is such an item:  if he attempted to create a second
rune of the same type, he would merely imagine the first in two
places at one time, but it would still "really" be one rune.  But
if he actually speaks the name, which is equivalent to the rune,
then there are in fact two instances of the same rune within the
spell system, so to preserve uniqueness, the first disappears! 
So if the spell happened to be constructed so that all of the
force of the spell was bottled up behind that first rune, now it
suddenly flows forth, and the effect begins.  And, of course,
that is how people make spells, with either a verbal component
(specifying the name) or a somatic component (tracing the rune)
to cause a trigger-rune to disappear at the appropriate moment.

Techno rifraff may be wondering why the mage doesn't just imagine
the trigger-rune gone in his mind, especially when he's all tied
up in some prolonged negotiation with the town constabulary? 
Well, imagine you had a workshelf in a laboratory and you had a
powerful beam of "laser" light trapped between two mirrors,
bouncing endlessly back and forth.  And you wanted to make it
shoot out one end.  The difference between using the uniqueness
principle to eliminate a rune, and erasing it in your
imagination, is like the difference between speaking a word and
having one mirror vanish, and trying to smash it with your fist. 
In the first case, the spell energy follows flawlessly in the
conduits of the mind, and makes the spell work.  In the second,
the best one could hope for would be that the shattered mirror
would scatter the light harmlessly --- and if the "light", the
stored magic, were strong enough that would be very unlikely.

A more practical idea would be to substitute a verbal component
for a somatic, or vice versa, but this requires a number of
things:  first, the mage must know the name of the rune, or the
method of specifying it in the air with a few passes of the hand,
as appropriate to change the spell.  In many cases these are
unknown, or at least unlisted in the standard reference works of
runic components that researchers commonly refer to.  (Why don't
they stick to runes that are known?  Well, it's not that easy to
design a trigger-rune to fit neatly into the pattern of your
spell, believe me, and when you find one that works, you
generally are quite happy to use it!).  Second, the mage has to
work out the exact timing and consistency with other triggers or
gestures in the spell.  In some spells, multiple forces need to
be released simultaneously --- this requires exacting use, for
instance, of multi-part command words that, when spoken at the
proper rate, allow the energy to flow through several channels of
different lengths so as to meet and mix at exactly the right
place and moment.  In other spells, the problem is more
straightforward:  One cannot draw a trigger-rune in the air for a
"fireball" while pointing at the moving target as well.  (Two
hands, you ask?  Yes, but which one are you concentrating on?  It
takes more than a few funny gestures to draw a
thirteen-dimensional rune; it takes a mind!)  In general, a mage
would have to do some research to have any chance of substituting
verbal for somatic component or vice versa; it would depend on
the spell; and it would only be possible to switch if the spell
only had one such component to start.  Still, it would be a handy
trick to know, and the fact that it is done so rarely should be a
tip-off that it does not work on some of the spells for which one
would most like to be able to make such substitutions.

For more information on the varieties and uses of high-order
runes, one should consult the previous lesson, "The Art of
Wand-Picking".