"Close. Realms are seasons plus Day and Night; Eternals are part of - or inhabitants of, or rulers of - the Realms, Heralds are their minions. You can cast rituals in a huge number of ways, it's just about finding a metaphor that works for you, and they're the most obvious way of casting magic. Archmages can ask Eternals to come talk about doing things directly, sometimes other people can too if they've got specific permission from the Eternal. Liao and alchemy aren't really 'magic' per se, they're just substances that do things, but sometimes we call the herbs that go into them magic to distinguish them from the herbs that go in your cooking. We also have spells, which are super refined bits of magic which do very specific things like heal someone or break their sword, you just have to do the right incantation with the right intent and channel mana through it.

Every magic thing costs mana - or at least every thing we can do directly, Eternals act like they're spending something to do magic but it isn't mana directly. Mana comes in personal - only useful for spells unless you juice yourself up with the right potions - and crystal - what it says on the tin, crystals that have caught some magic in them, you don't have to have mithril reflectors and condensers and so on to do it but it really helps.

Virtues are more related to liao than magic, they're the set of concepts that resonate with the human soul - probably the orc soul too, that's been doctrine for a little while but I think the committee for editing doctrine is looking at it skeptically - and that it can easily be aligned to, and that let it pass through the Labyrinth - or over the Abyss - quicker. Or not, in the case of malign spiritual forces, which are kind of like Virtues but bad.

I am currently assuming you can absorb information faster than I can throw it at you, but let me know if I should slow down or what I should clarify next. Oh, there's also artisanry, which is also not Realm magic but does involve putting materials we call 'magical materials' in things to make them do things they wouldn't otherwise do, like staves that make it easier to ritual, or bracers that let you use shields, or daggers that just spontaneously poison you."

He's not certain he should be giving Kiraavi a thorough magical education, but someone's blatantly going to do it if Kiraavi starts wandering around here, and it's kind of refreshing to just be able to dump all this on someone. Gives a new perspective on things, which is what being a Questor is all about, although right now he would kind of like to put some of those new perspectives back.

"I've got one of my chosen in the other world listening in, we'll have better questions if you go at a pace she can keep up with. Right now it sounds like I'd most want to hear about what rituals, spells, and maybe artisanry can do? I'll want to hear more about the rest later, of course."

"Right, sorry.

It's easier to talk about what they can't do, so - limits of magic.

You do have to have a resonance of the relevant Realm on your side to pull off any kind of magical effect - other than the few we've managed to refine down into spells, and those all started as rituals of one Realm or another.

There are an enormous list of resonances - and dissonances, specific Realms are also bad at specific things - but if you have the whole of magic to play with, you can generally find somewhere your effect will fit. Most magicians only learn one or two Realms because it's a time consuming study and it's harder to keep them all straight in your head if you pick up too many, although some people manage it.

There are also actual limits to all magic. The most obvious one is life - dead people are dead. You can talk to them in a very time limited way, but you can't bring them back once the body's too damaged to keep housing the soul.

Magic is also considerably better at offence than defence, at least on a personal level. You can enchant a castle, you can hide information, you can have contingent offense, but nothing magical will make you completely immune to someone hitting you with a stick - more resilient, sure, but not immune. It's also very hard to stop offensive magic - if someone pushes you back with magical force, that will take effect, whatever else you have going on.

Getting inside someone's mind requires consent. You can make people feel things, you can make bad things happen if they do certain things or don't do certain things, but you can't actively force someone to do something or not to do something; you can obtain some kinds of knowledge from people, the knowledge of how to make certain artisan items is a good example, but you can't see what they're thinking. Rituals that let you change someone's memory, or personality, require active consent and are fundamentally controlled by the target, rather than the caster.

You can't directly create things - you can combine things into other things, you can call in existing agreements with the Realms to supply things, but objects and Heralds are not directly created by magic.

Portals can only be opened between the world and pockets of the Realms, not different places within the world, by ritual magic directly - there's clearly a way to combine with artisanry and do it because the Sentinel Gate does that, but nobody has been able to make another one.

You can't make something totally invisible, and the offense over defence thing works for divination magic too - you can conceal the nature of things, but not that you've concealed something.

Uh, what else. There's the Law of Essence which is the really annoying one, basically the weirder and flashier the effect, the less likely it's going to work; usually it's easier to do something in a way that has plausible deniability? Oh, and magic basically doesn't work on the raw materials that get processed into white granite, mithril, weirwood and ilium - I'm fairly sure this is the universe just being inconvenient for the sake of it, I've heard lots of theories but I'm not deeply convinced by any of them.

There are loads of other weird little limits, like what exactly you can do to an army or a fortification, which kinds of skill you can share with magic, but those are the main ones.

Artisanry - I'm even less of an expert on, Prudentia?"

"We don't have as good a general theory of artisanry, we've only recently regained the ability to make novel items at all and it's a bit of a trial and error process. Wintermark knows a bit more, but they're helpfully oath-bound not to share. The recipes we've got basically either make you better at using the item for whatever you'd normally use it for, let you use the item for something vaguely related, bolster your ability to do things in general or your resilience, or make you better at magic in a variety of ways; but then there's all the weird ones like the pestle and mortar that lets you use the wrong herbs for a potion."

"Is it possible to use a Realm for its dissonances, or to reverse a resonance? Does your magic enable different kinds of offense, aside from just hitting something with physical force? What kinds of knowledge can you get from someone using magic, and is that dangerous to the user like Insighting is? Does artisanry only affect a thing's usefulness, or can it change other aspects of its nature?"

"Okay, perhaps we should get you a Stargazer. Adolphus?

Dissonances are, as far as I understand it, what the Realm is bad at and you'd be better off using another one, although if what you're trying to do is cause bad side effects you might be able to, the Empire-wide enchantments manifest dissonant effects as downsides.

Magic can do limited offense, but is mostly better at holding things still or otherwise getting in their way so you can hit them more easily? I suppose you can tear down a fortification with Spring magic, or manifest venom, or enchant a dagger to go through an enemy as if you were a skilled warrior using a greatsword with considerable effort. It's generally used somewhat obliquely to direct offense, though - you'd be better off usually fielding a squad of archers and a rank of polearms, and putting a few battle mages amongst them to make their job easier, backed up by ritual teams for healing and repair and strategic effects.

Part of that's that you can't wear much armour and still cast, though, which means you've got to have someone there to protect your mages - it's possible to toughen people up with magic but it's much more expensive than just throwing a bunch of metal on them.

You can get a wide range of knowledge using magic and it does sometimes have a backlash if the thing you're looking at is sufficiently powerful - it's just like aiming a magnifying glass at the sun. Mostly it's things like active magical effects, traces of magic, magical bonds, but you can also do things like get your name from a pile of your bones. It's all 'external' information to some extent though - you can't read someone's mind - you can acquire skills from someone, you can sometimes see flashes of past events, but you can't know what they feel about it - except in the usual way of observing them, of course.

Artisanry can do all kinds of exciting cosmetic effects, although at that point it's hotly debated where just craftsmanship ends and actual artisanry begins, but as well-defined recipes artisanry tends to do specific useful things."

Adolphus' role in life is clearly to go and fetch people, although he's getting kind of worn out with all this stair climbing in one day; Stargazers like to hang out at the top of towers with their pet telescopes.

"Hm. So there's - not exactly an incentive for me to fight back, exactly, but I do want to make sure mages can't just walk up to me and do whatever they'd like, if things turn hostile; I'll think about that. From the sound of it the knowledge magic isn't especially dangerous - my vulnerabilities are a secret even at home, if you can only get flashes I don't think you'll be able to figure it out even if you get a relevant one - I suppose if you get a few you might be able to notice a pattern, how easy is it to target those?"

"You might want to let Adolphus go about his day soon, by the way, it looks like this is getting to be a bit much for him."

"Most things that are more complicated than realm and magnitude need the target to be in the ritual for at least two minutes - at least in arm's reach of at least one caster, or clearly encircled by them. Rituals are quite hard to do subtly - you can disguise one as a different ritual, but if it's not clearly a ritual at all then it's likely to fail.

I'm sure Adolphus will let us know if he needs a break. And if he does not, that is a lesson in Courage for him."

"As you like. How safe is it to interrupt a ritual? I expect they'll figure out pretty quickly that I can't just move away."

"Varies. The magic grounds out through someone, most often the ritualists themselves. Sometimes it's harmless, sometimes everyone's bones are now full of bees." This appears to be an entirely serious statement of a thing which actually happened. "The earlier you do it, the less bad it is, as they haven't called up all the power yet."

Bones full of bees. "I see. Is there a standard best practice for stopping a ritual like that without too much risk to whoever's nearby? Is it possible to tell the difference without letting them get too far along?"

"Convincing them to stop it safely themselves is best; it's usually easy to dismantle your own ritual safely if necessary. It's possible to identify the magnitude and realm of a ritual with a simple incantation, if you learn any of our magic; that and a list of rituals in Imperial lore will generally give you a good idea of what they're doing. Spring and Summer rarely give useful information, if you're worried about information on weaknesses I suppose Winter might, Autumn gives information on connections, Day on factual information, Night does a broader range of less straightforward visions and so on.

The symbolism and powers invoked have to have at least something to do with the effect, although it can be subtle - you might want to learn the constellations, runes, eternals, dramaturgic personae, Silutarian modes, and Paragons, those are the major modes of casting that have subtle meanings. Oh, and maybe the animal and bird totems but those are generally pretty obvious."

"Do you have books on those that I can have copied? Or get copies of, if you have an easy way of making them."

"I expect our stargazer will be able to show you around the libraries. We do have a small printing press but it's only really good for pamphlets."

Right on cue here's another guy following Adolphus down to the bridge head.

"...is this permenant?" is his first question.

"It is," he grins, though with a bit less enthusiasm than he had half an hour ago. "I'm Kiraavi, I'm something not entirely unlike an Eternal from another world; we're trying to figure out whether and how I can operate here without causing too much fuss, particularly if people try to use magic on me."

"Aulus Cascade. You - shaped this like it was part of your Realm? Is that real white granite?"

"That is real white granite," confirms the architect.

"I use a bit of a different paradigm than that, but it's a little like a Realm, yes. My kind of being is primarily made up of terrain, in my case roads, and we can arrange ourselves however we like within the limitations of our type."

"...okay, so, not Realm magic at all, more a kind of magical creature thing?

Is it, uh, going to move? Is putting a cart across it going to hurt you? I guess that wouldn't make it a very good road so... uh, do the roads have to be contiguous?"

"I might spread out from here, but this part isn't going to move unless I have some reason to re-grade it, and there's no reason whatsoever to avoid pulling carts here. It's more comfortable to be contiguous, or failing that to have all my parts within a mile of some other part, but I'll be fine in any case, I have plenty of discontinuities at home."

"...there isn't really a lot within a mile of here, sorry. I'm - kind of assuming the others have done all the politics bits with you? Did someone detect magic?"

"Uh, yes, me," replies Adolphus. "It, uh, wasn't very conclusive? Insight seems to be a bad idea but detect magic was pretty safe, there is definitely a lot of magic but it isn't, uh, bitey?"

"If you don't mind?" he asks Kiraavi.