From old roots our magic has come – then, and still today, it is the province of an elite few, those born with the ability to feel magic or the discipline to learn. Why, then, should the masses of us be concerned with magic?

For most of us, magic is the flashing light emerging from a mage’s hands, or an illusion sculpted out of the nothingness of air. The first sight of magic never ceases to amaze, for it is set into our instincts that the world is solid and real – when we see that reality molded like clay by the hands of a practitioner, something inside us bursts and the realization suddenly floods us – there is something hidden behind the veil we call reality.

The old roots of magic rose up in a time of conflict. Magic, in the times of yore, was primarily a destructive force, used extensively in the Banner Heights War and the Mor'Duraan Wars of Masalla. During those times practitioners were unearthing old tomes that taught them ancient, primal spells – they were long in the casting, requiring hours or days of ceremony and incantation. But the devastating effects on the battlefields made such trouble well worth the effort.

Those same battlegrounds also served as the proving grounds for new and more effective magics. Thus, from the Elder and Ceremonial magics, the beginnings of modern Substance magic were formed.

Today, in times when battles are not constantly being waged, those old forces have been turned to more positive and experimental uses.

Within this tome you’ll find treatises on old magics, as well as today’s modern versions. Magic, of course, is an evolving entity, and tomorrow’s practice might be quite another thing altogether. But we live in a time when magic is often used, especially in large cities, to make our lives more pleasant.

Fruits and vegetables can be preserved or created via magic for eating deep in the winter moons, long after regular vegetables have rotted or withered away. Sewage containers can be enchanted with illusionary scents that overwhelm or disperse the ill perfumes, and diseases that once would have posed a threat to entire provinces now do little more than give one or two people a cough.

We can also thank magic for the good prices we enjoy on many imported goods – improved magics which tame the wild waters of the seas have made shipping safer, and thus cut down significantly on costs.

Magic also comes into our lives in less everyday ways – missing people can be found more easily, one can have their looks temporarily or permanently altered via illusion, and entire armies and navies can be replaced by a few potent mages, as is the case with Aranor and her protector, Cowan Faol.

Truly it is a time of growing magic, and there are those who warn of the folly of Antara, where magic ran amok. Only the passage of time shall tell us what today’s experiments will bring. But for the moment magic remains relatively rare, with powerful practitioners few and far between, and Queen Lillian’s hope of keeping it legal but still moderated by moral strictures seems to be holding up. The moons and years ahead will surely tell us more.