Hello!
I recently considered writing some fan works set in the PGTS world, and I’ve found I’ve had quite a few random questions that weren’t significant enough to warrant a separate topic for each one, but I still wanted to know before I really got into it. I’ll likely send in some more questions as I find them. If there isn’t any info shown about the information in canon, any theories/thoughts are more than welcome!
Here are a few questions that I wanted to check before properly getting into the story:
How does the Red Guard go about detecting Aberrants? Is there a specific spell used for their detection, or is it just word of mouth and general reports?
Aberrants focus primarily on continuing or activating their effect, right? So, if their effect requires a target, like a spell that requires metal to make metal rings, and can’t make rings out of any other material, how would they go about getting that material? Would they spontaneously summon it, actively hunt for it, or some other method?
Is there a specific process for getting licensing to cast spells? Does a spellcaster have to be literate in order to get that licensing? Is there a cost requirement/fee?
Obviously celerium is best to cast spells through, but what is the actual efficiency compared to other materials? For example, if a diamond is cut in the same size, shape and make as a celerium piece that can channel 1000 thaums, how much would that diamond be able to channel? 750? 500? 250?
How would an Aberrant that gives output work? for example, an Aberrant that’s effect works like a divination spell, detecting, say, vibrations in the ground? Would the Aberrant be the only one to receive the information, or would it be sent to everyone within a certain vicinity, or would something else happen?
As far as i can tell, any break event is easily detectable by anyone nearby, but even further away for mages. It’s not stated if the Red Guard have special spells, but I think that a regular finding divination spell should be able to point to any Aberrants within its range.
The process for becoming a licensed mage in Lenore is simple - attend and graduate from the University. Presumably other countries like Osham and Silva Erde have different requirements. So yes, this does require mages to be literate, just to pass the entrance exam; however Gilbratha certainly (and possibly the rest of Lenore) have a high rate of at least basic literacy, enough to support multiple newspapers, including one aimed at the poorer residents.
Exact ratios of thaumatergic capacities arent spelled out. However, the black star sapphire seems to be only about 2/3 as effective. So i would estimate that a diamond the same size as the Conduit Siobhan is using in book 4 (celerium with a capacity of 800 thaums iirc) would have only 200-300 thaums. This is of course adjusted by clarity, defects, and possibly mage created diamonds channel even less than natural ones.
I have thought about these questions a lot. And I’ve been handling most of these problems by fudging. For instance, I don’t create any original aberrants with detailed mechanics so I don’t need to have an accurate representation of their effects. I’m avoiding making a character that’s too much in the know about it - they’ve studied it a little, but they aren’t experts. That may, or may not, help you.
But, some of these questions have an answer:
The University is clearly the only institution in Lenore that can give a license. Azalea answered that question here:
The literacy rate in Lenore is bad:
The man crossed his arms. “Potentially useful, if you can find someone who can read.”
“Gilbratha’s literacy rate is the highest in the country.”
“It’s one in five.”
Percy opened his mouth only to close it again, unable to argue with that.
Percy and the coppers are literate, as are the crown families, but, like early America, all schooling is private. Either your parents teach you to read, or you don’t learn it.
Obviously, if a thaumaturge is present for the break, they know it happened. Siobhan’s experience:
She felt all the things at once, tasted emotions, heard the ripples of space, and felt time shudder through her skin.
Thaumaturges experience the break more severely than the nonmagical. In that chapter describing Newton’s break, it was Tonya and Siobhan who ended up on the floor. I read something to this effect somewhere else in the books, but I can’t recall where. But! The Red Guard acts more like a spy organization, relying in word of mouth and alerts. This is apparent in Codename Moonsable:
“Fike kept going, looking to Thaddeus with the kind of determined, hopeful expression people often got when they needed him to fix a problem for them. “The alarms were set off in the morning, once the crowd of sycophants struggling to fit inside her house became noticeable and strange enough for one of the neighbors to call in the coppers. This form isn’t responsive to communication, but becomes frustrated and even violent if its wiles are resisted.”
I suspect they could easily have a divination, but it’s probably only something like watching for a large number of sudden deaths. You don’t know what the effect is going to be, so you can’t watch for it. There’s two kinds of divination, and the second kind resulted in the Haze War, but you seem to need to know what you’re looking for. Oliver described it this way:
A divination spell sends out many little tendrils—strings, if you will—and those strings come into contact with relevant pieces of information and return them to the caster, filtered through whatever translation and analyses method the spell is set up with. The initial number of strings stays basically the same, even if they must reach farther, and so at greater distances they take either more time or more power to gather all the data, and are less likely to be one hundred percent accurate.
Or as Liza explains the divination rays:
A divination spell that returns information about you to the caster shares one thing with any actively cast, long distance curse, compulsion, or even messaging spell. Both must find you to work.
My ward shunts aside, reflects, captures, discourages, and devours any non-mundane possibility of information leaking to magical observation.
Liza and Oliver seem reliable.
Finally, what does promulgate their effect really mean?
That’s a fascinating and open-ended question in the books so far. People keep trying to decide if the Raven Queen is an Aberrant. Lacer explains why she’s not:
Aberrants cannot cast spells. Like a magical beast, they propagate only their own inherent effect, simple or complex as it might be.
So, they speculated what the effect would be:
What would her concept be? ‘Dark miracles?’
I’ve got a theory on how Azalea writes it. She takes an idea of an effect that a spell is trying to create, and then makes it into a horror monster. Adoration? Moonsable. Calm? Newton. Fat sacrificed into a beauty glamour? Severin Whilkes
And for those Aberrants we don’t understand, the effects are not well understood by the unreliable narrators. This is an exploitable trick: Aberrants have rules, but it would probably do just as well to think in that pattern and go from there. The simpler it is, the more convinced the reader will be that you understand the rules.
A horror monster’s complex effect just becomes a lack of the narrator’s understanding. If Alien (from the movie) showed up, what would the effect be? Boundless growth? In fact, it doesn’t matter that much; you still have a monster to deal with.
I appreciate the answers and theories! This actually helped a lot with my thought process on a few things, but i have returned with a few more questions (it seems every answer brings some of those, don’t they?).
Regardless, here are a few more questions:
How dangerous is expirimenting with alchemy in comparison to, say, a normal spell? For example, S’s sleep-proxy spell took several months of expirimentation, calculation, and theory to be fully made. In contrast, however, the creation of the proprioception shadow potion was a much shorter affair (though im blanking on exact times right now).
How dangerous and how difficult would it be to expirement with alchemy in comparison to normal spellcasting? More than that, how much understanding would be needed to properly expirment with potions versus portents or potent powers?
Another thought i had was how much thaums a normal person could channel in comparison to a thaumaturge? I know most at the beginning of their time at the University are said to have somewhere in the 100-200 range, so how significant is that compared to your average person? Is it 50? 25? 10? 5? Im curious and am not sure if the exact numbers have been given out before.
You’re in luck on the Thaums: Azalea has written about capacity on these forums, including the AMA:
Plus, its the subject of much speculation on readers’ parts. If you do a search, you’ll find a lot about it.
I’m guessing the weakest beginner might scrape together only 3-5 thaums. And, everyone seems to have a trick or three, and the spark shooting spell (first book) is less than ten thaums:
the average of ten among true novices …
I guess the real unanswered question has been, how many thaums for a big spell? All we know for sure is true invisibility will kill you, and Lacer manages it with probably over 4000 thaums.
On to potions:
I think they are a lot more dangerous than S. lets on. I think she easily could have hurt herself badly with the darkness potion, and lucked out.
But, people look at RQ in wonder because she is also an incredible potion maker. She read a couple of books on potion making and came up with a potion so interesting the Red Guard would like the recipe.
So we know that celerium can come in many different qualities. Raven queens ring can be used by a master. Masters have atleast 900 thaum. And the fake ring broke after Raven queen cast through it. Best case she cast 600 thaums worst case less than 200. The spell cast was the sleep spell. We have seen that spell be cast while she had will strain and she refused to cast above 200 with said will strain so it would have to be less than 200. But we don’t know if the version she cast cost 200 thaums or more.
But based on that we know there is at best a 1/3 reduction in thaum capacity. At worst if the sleep spell cost only 30 thaums to cast it, it would mean the diamond can only channel one thirtieth of celerium.
One disclaimer is that we do know that the diamond was man made and that does reduce the amount of thaums that can be cast through a substance.
Hmm…I mean, I’m also curious about how different alchemy may be in terms of not only the difficulty of making new recipes, but also the type of backlash that failing to successfully make a potion would be. We know that potions are made over a much longer time period, infusing the will in a ritual instead of directly causing an effect like casting a spell would do. As such, I’m not entirely sure that the backlash for failure and would be as severe or even of the same type.
Would failing to create a potion just cause nothing to happen? Would the potion become toxic to drink? Would it explode violently? Would it have a random effect, similar to but not the same as the intended effect?
I’m also curious if simply creating a potion by using ingredients that fit the idea and using a ritual to emphasize those aspects would be possible, with a clear enough will, enough patience, and likely several failed attempts. Would it be possible to create a viable effect with no training, simply by using a strong will and using methods close enough to viable alchemy techniques to use?
These questions plague me, especially since I find myself very fascinated with the parts of the alchemy magic system already shown (in case it wasnt clear, I’d prolly make a fan work focusing on an alchemist lmao)
It is revealed somewhere that the big advantage of celerium is not power, it is that if two Wills oppose each other, the non-celerium conduit will break first. Therefore if one country has access to celerium and another doesn’t, the one with celerium has a huge military advantage.
I can’t look it up here, but I think that this was when Siobhan was learning about the celerium mines running out.
A third set of questions plague me (or is it four? I’ve lost count) and I return once again to ask some questions that are luckily easier to answer than the previous ones. This one’s police themed (yay)!
Do the coppers of each city communicate with one another? If so, to what extent?
Is there any built in identification/tracking devices in a copper’s wand? If there are any, would the tracking be the same in a different cities?
What spells are built into copper’s wands? I know there’s the stunning spell, but I’m unsure if there’s other spells in the wands for utility, defense, and taking down targets that the stunning spell wouldn’t work for.
The diamond in the ring should not be used for a comparison - Lacer admits in book 4 that he created it with deliberate flaws so that it would fail and crumble immediately when used for casting.
For potions, iirc Siobhan mentions that a failed potion just burns or fails to become magical. It’s likely that a failed potion attempt could produce noxious fumes, catch fire, turn acidic or poisonous, etc. I also think that it’s easier to design a combination of two existing potions (darkness perception) than it is to create a wholly new potion or spell (dreamless sleep).
Coppers communicating between cities isn’t shown, and in fact it’s not clear if other cities have Coppers the same way Gilbratha does. The setting is rather like the early industrial age, so while there probably are notices sent about dangerous people (like RQ, Lord Stag, Aberrants, etc) it doesn’t seem like there’s a Lenore-wide structured law enforcement.
So far, we’ve seen Copper wands having a stunner, a smasher force spell, and a shield. Divination spells seem to require more space than a wand would allow, but the Coppers in general surely have access to the same type of artifact Siobhan keeps in her satchel to deliberately activate her ward. They probably also have access to unlocking artifacts, ESP style artifacts, and others.
One more question (I swear this’ll be the last one for a while)
Is there any inherent magic specializations/benefits from the other sentient nonhumans? I know prognos have a natural inclination towards divination, but what about kitsune? People with Jentil blood? Others?
There’s an illusion revealing spell on the Copper’s wands as well. It’s mentioned twice, but the first time is at the beginning of the first book:
The woman pointed her wand at Siobhan, and Siobhan tensed again, thinking her deception had been discovered.
However, instead of ordering her to lie down on the ground with her hands behind her head or shooting her with a stunning spell, the woman fiddled with the artifact’s controls for a couple of seconds, then cast an almost invisible wave that washed over Siobhan and prickled against her skin.
The spell irritated her nostrils and eyes, forcing her to blink back tears.‘Some kind of revealing or nullification spell?’