It's A Swiss Army Wand!

[bloodyrosemccoy]

Been trying to work out a plausible timeline of magical progress in OGYAFEland. I like paralleling it to technological advancement--you know, magic carpets start out rather weak and tough to steer, and through the generations folks work steadily to improve them to carry more things faster and farther. It's rather fun to come up with incremental advances, rather than having fully-developed spells just ready-made throughout history.

Of course, this depends on all magic being more or less based on physical objects, which has been the idea all along. It contrasts nicely with the Impossible Magic some of my own characters demonstrate, it allows people to use magic like we use iPods now, without having the faintest idea how it works, it puts wizards in a spot similar to engineers and scientists, AND it means that I get to use a particularly blingy type of magic wand--since a wand in this world is a compact rod with several spell nodes affixed to it for easy access and use.*

And it certainly helps shape the history of this world.

I'm not sure how much of this will make it into the actual OGYAFE, but it's sure fun to mess with. Gotta enjoy backstorying.


*I've had a problem with wands ever since Harry Potter. How the heck do wizards figure out spells? Do they just stand in a field with a wand and a Portuguese dictionary and flap around until somebody explodes or something? Is magic like trying to figure out a cheat code to unlock a spell? Obviously it's not intuitive since you need to go to school to learn it, so they've got to be doing SOMETHING.

Comments

[baroncognito.livejournal.com]

Respond to a person's will? Which sense of "person" are you using? Could a cat, with sufficient willpower, use a flying carpet?

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

"Will" is shorthand for a long process of being able to conceptualize what you want it to do and recognize that you can manipulate it. Animals could do some simple magical manipulation, but it's rather like tool use--rudimentary at best. They lack the imagination to get anything particularly complex.