we know that restraint is the existence of multiple attractors
and we observe that physics is the origin of all meaning
which imply that life is reacting counterfactually in accordance with your genuine character
- Machine-poem no. 24601, 16/09/2026
===
It is a fact known to every graduating student of the colleges that Magic is going out of the world. Sooner or later, in their third or fifth or twenty-fifth quaestioning, they turn to their tutor and ask---
"Is it true?"
"It can't be."
"Yet the ratios do not lie."
The tutor must now react carefully. Many a learned doctor has batted his hand and declared "this is basic arithmetic!" and left a frightened primary to weep for many a forlorn hour, or even flee the college in terror (amongst other ill advised pursuits: the less said about the case of Guillaumus of Quirmberg, the better). Some in the Faculties joke that the earlier a prospect intuits this grim fact, the better a Magister they make. Others contend that this selects merely for the suspect and paranoid. Still others respond that the end of Magic is a time where suspicion and paranoia are in high demand.
The basic argument is simple. The essence of Magic Potential comes from the achievement of the Work, or in older sources the Performance Organic. The art of Magic consists of the extraction of Potential from sources to create feats of labour or power. This demands three things: a source of Potential (a battery of runes, a salamander, a chorus of other wizards), a spell to determine the work the Potential is to be used for (the Excellent Rite of the Fire-shaker, for instance), and a wizard to cast the spell. The realisation of the novice comes from the fact that, no matter how much Potential a spell releases, it cannot exceed the total Potential of the source. This is sometimes popularised in certain elementary lectures as the First Law of Magic or the Law of Consummation (Omnis determinatio est consummatio: All determination [i.e. all use of Potential to determine the state of the world] is a consummation [i.e. completion or exhaustion of the Potential in some source])---this is often bastardised as the Law of Consumption.
The Second Law of Magic is the Law of Choice Organum, that the Work cannot be performed by the uninitiated or by rote machinery. The Third Law follows from the first and the second, and concludes that there can be no self-sustaining or ever-lasting Work. Since all living things are themselves animated by Potential, this is often conjectured to be an argument against the possibility of eternal life.
Put together, the novice realises that Potential is used by the wizard to cast the spell that cannot be recouped even if the spell perfectly utilises all of the Potential stored in its source, and no device can be made that casts a spell for free. In the Algebra of the New Schools it is thus written
The maximum Potential P a spell can release is the total Potential of the Source S, minus that of the waste C.
The Potential used in a casting X is equal to the sum of the potential in the Source S and the Potential used by the wizard W.
Thus:
And Magic is discovered to be self-extinguishing. Each spell uses up more Potential than it creates. Of course, this would not be a problem if Potential could just come out of the ground, or from raw life. Indeed, it is often hypothesised that natural Potential is the motive force which animates all life forms, and could be extracted from their daily labours. Yet very few are born with the aptitude for magic, and fewer still exit the colleges in a sound mind to use their gifts for the commonweal. In the elder days it is known that the Five-and-Six Colleges were once rivaled by equally ambitious and storied institutions across the Sea of Storms, whose skill could create broad and calm lanes for ships to travel across that ill-fated ocean. Wizards led armies and formed private ateliers across the land. But now the sea-lanes are long lost and the universities that maintained them in desrepair, their deeds turned to legends. In our kingdom of Lormande the Five-and-Six are threatened by ambitious taxmen and angry mobs who declare Magic blasphemy, but most of all by a low and decreasing enrollment. Furthermore, the spells themselves are fading in power, and the runic arrays provide less Potential than they are purported to in the lore of our forebears. Thus a general corollary of the Laws holds that, on average, the level of Potential in the world must be decreasing over time.
As I look around Old Boxen Hall I see the evidence of this slow withering all around me. The hall itself is stunning: a grid of vaulted sandstone arches leaps ten, twenty, thirty layers high into the ceiling, animated by a glorious constellation of gold stars on a deep, infinitely rich navy sky. Yet the wooden pews we use for our oath-taking would have seated twice the number we have now. As each of our class of fifteen walk up to the lectern I can see the empty brackets on the walls where enchanted braziers of fire would have been set. The Table of Magisters seats seven, but only three are present today in their gowns of vermillion and turquoise, red for the blood of the wizard and blue for the source of Potential. The song of Magic is not what it once was.
And as I walk up to the lectern and touch the slim brown book where I must sign to enter the college, I swear a private oath: I will reverse this. These are not the final days of Magic.
Note: Trying out a serial fiction thing.
- Machine-poem no. 24601, 16/09/2026
===
It is a fact known to every graduating student of the colleges that Magic is going out of the world. Sooner or later, in their third or fifth or twenty-fifth quaestioning, they turn to their tutor and ask---
"Is it true?"
"It can't be."
"Yet the ratios do not lie."
The tutor must now react carefully. Many a learned doctor has batted his hand and declared "this is basic arithmetic!" and left a frightened primary to weep for many a forlorn hour, or even flee the college in terror (amongst other ill advised pursuits: the less said about the case of Guillaumus of Quirmberg, the better). Some in the Faculties joke that the earlier a prospect intuits this grim fact, the better a Magister they make. Others contend that this selects merely for the suspect and paranoid. Still others respond that the end of Magic is a time where suspicion and paranoia are in high demand.
The basic argument is simple. The essence of Magic Potential comes from the achievement of the Work, or in older sources the Performance Organic. The art of Magic consists of the extraction of Potential from sources to create feats of labour or power. This demands three things: a source of Potential (a battery of runes, a salamander, a chorus of other wizards), a spell to determine the work the Potential is to be used for (the Excellent Rite of the Fire-shaker, for instance), and a wizard to cast the spell. The realisation of the novice comes from the fact that, no matter how much Potential a spell releases, it cannot exceed the total Potential of the source. This is sometimes popularised in certain elementary lectures as the First Law of Magic or the Law of Consummation (Omnis determinatio est consummatio: All determination [i.e. all use of Potential to determine the state of the world] is a consummation [i.e. completion or exhaustion of the Potential in some source])---this is often bastardised as the Law of Consumption.
The Second Law of Magic is the Law of Choice Organum, that the Work cannot be performed by the uninitiated or by rote machinery. The Third Law follows from the first and the second, and concludes that there can be no self-sustaining or ever-lasting Work. Since all living things are themselves animated by Potential, this is often conjectured to be an argument against the possibility of eternal life.
Put together, the novice realises that Potential is used by the wizard to cast the spell that cannot be recouped even if the spell perfectly utilises all of the Potential stored in its source, and no device can be made that casts a spell for free. In the Algebra of the New Schools it is thus written
The maximum Potential P a spell can release is the total Potential of the Source S, minus that of the waste C.
The Potential used in a casting X is equal to the sum of the potential in the Source S and the Potential used by the wizard W.
Thus:
And Magic is discovered to be self-extinguishing. Each spell uses up more Potential than it creates. Of course, this would not be a problem if Potential could just come out of the ground, or from raw life. Indeed, it is often hypothesised that natural Potential is the motive force which animates all life forms, and could be extracted from their daily labours. Yet very few are born with the aptitude for magic, and fewer still exit the colleges in a sound mind to use their gifts for the commonweal. In the elder days it is known that the Five-and-Six Colleges were once rivaled by equally ambitious and storied institutions across the Sea of Storms, whose skill could create broad and calm lanes for ships to travel across that ill-fated ocean. Wizards led armies and formed private ateliers across the land. But now the sea-lanes are long lost and the universities that maintained them in desrepair, their deeds turned to legends. In our kingdom of Lormande the Five-and-Six are threatened by ambitious taxmen and angry mobs who declare Magic blasphemy, but most of all by a low and decreasing enrollment. Furthermore, the spells themselves are fading in power, and the runic arrays provide less Potential than they are purported to in the lore of our forebears. Thus a general corollary of the Laws holds that, on average, the level of Potential in the world must be decreasing over time.
As I look around Old Boxen Hall I see the evidence of this slow withering all around me. The hall itself is stunning: a grid of vaulted sandstone arches leaps ten, twenty, thirty layers high into the ceiling, animated by a glorious constellation of gold stars on a deep, infinitely rich navy sky. Yet the wooden pews we use for our oath-taking would have seated twice the number we have now. As each of our class of fifteen walk up to the lectern I can see the empty brackets on the walls where enchanted braziers of fire would have been set. The Table of Magisters seats seven, but only three are present today in their gowns of vermillion and turquoise, red for the blood of the wizard and blue for the source of Potential. The song of Magic is not what it once was.
And as I walk up to the lectern and touch the slim brown book where I must sign to enter the college, I swear a private oath: I will reverse this. These are not the final days of Magic.