Libros Arcana

By Phineas Whooperill

The nature of magic can be studied and debated ad nauseam. There are several books which do just that, and I encourage you to peruse the writings of Robleon Arcanis if you are in dire need of a good paperweight. For the love of all that’s wonderful Robleon, would it kill you to actually write something useful? …but perhaps that is hypocritical of me as this book is only useful to a small subset of casters. If you are concentrated and focused in your studies, save yourself the time and stop reading here. If however you wandered down a few arcane paths before settling on one, first there’s no shame in that as many discover what is known as sorcery before migrating on to wizardry, and second this book is for you.

Look, what you need to know is that if you are casting spells, whether you are doing it by singing, gut instinct , or study, you are basically manipulating the same forces in ways that only differ cosmetically. I will give you an example using the sport of hoopball.

In hoopball the player throws a ball through the air in an effort to pass it through a hoop mounted in some fashion on a wall, tree, or pole. Now our first player glances at the hoop, hefts the ball, and throws. On his third try he sinks it. On his fourth try he remembers how it felt to sink it on the third and applies that “feeling” to all future shots.

Our second player measures the distance to the hoop, weighs the ball, does some math, and shoots. Seeing his shot fall short he adjusts his math for the upward angle’s fight against the falling principle and tries again. He continues to refine his calculations until he consistently sinks his shots.

Both players are doing the same thing the same way. They are both trying to put a ball through a hoop by throwing it with their arms. The only difference is what they are thinking about while they do it. So too with magic. In this volume I intend to illustrate how one can take the ability to spontaneously cast and the ability to studiously cast, and use one to inform the other. If you are interested in why some magic seems to be musical in nature I reluctantly suggest you read Robleon’s Nature of Creation. Assuming you can get through all the “is a flower really a flower” nonsense without casting a fireball under your own chin he has some unique and not uninformed observations on the relationship between music and magic. And now let us compare a sorcerous casting of the Light spell and a memorized casting of the Light Spell.