On one hand, the leading ladies of stage and fashion are sometimes referred to as beauty witches. On the other hand, it has also become a euphemism for prostitutes, much to the annoyance of real beauty witches who consider themselves far above such common strumpets.
For the purposes of this book, we shall cleave to the classic definition of “beauty witch”: a woman of great beauty and elegant taste who is well versed in music, literature, and art and who can converse intelligently on most topics under the sun. She may or may not depend economically on the generosity of a protector, but she has no profession other than that of her personal attractions.
—From Sublime Loveliness: The Seven Most Celebrated Beauty Witches of All Time
5. SOON AFTER the advent of vaulting, mages realized that this revolutionary new means of travel presented a serious problem to the security of public institutions and private households alike. A mage who has seen the interior of a building can vault back into it anytime, which quite defeats the purpose of having walls in the first place.
A series of ingenious—and sometimes laughable—solutions came into being. Who can forget the Nevor-Same? Home, which changed the colors of a house’s walls and furnishings after every visitor? Randomly, one might add, leading to some of the ugliest interiors ever to assault a mage’s eyes.
Nowadays we enjoy advanced and discreet spells to protect our dwellings from ill-intentioned vaulters. The spells listed in this section, when implemented properly, are guaranteed to repel any unauthorized attempt to vault into your home.*
*None of these spells, singly or in combination, work when a quasi-vaulter is involved. Therefore we are terribly glad that quasi-vaulters have become virtually impossible to find.
—From Advice to the Novice Householder
6. NEW ATLANTIS’S rise as a dominant mage power was, in many ways, a surprising event. The island, while big—nearly twice the size of the Domain—is ill-suited to large-scale civilization. The volcanic frenzy behind its creation was too recent, its interior too steep and angular. Much of the ground is basalt, arduous to walk upon, impossible to cultivate. Sea life, astonishingly abundant when mages first set foot on the island, came dangerously close to irreversible depletion at several points in its eight-hundred-year history.
Two hundred of these eight hundred years, in fact, were known as the Famine Centuries. The isolation of the island, the relative primitiveness of long-distance transportation of the era, and widespread corruption among members of the royal clan made aid campaigns mounted by other mage realms largely ineffectual. At the end of the Famine Centuries, population on the island had plunged by at least 70 percent.
The Bane is believed to have been born during the last decade of the Famine Centuries, into a devastated, lawless society. Whether he would have still become the single most influential mage on earth had he come of age in a more prosperous realm, we can only speculate. But there is no doubt that the chaos and deprivations of his youth influenced his desire for order and control throughout his career.
—From Empire: The Rise of New Atlantis
7. MAGELINGS WITH elemental powers present additional challenges to parents and caregivers; there is no disputing that. Most young children give in to temper tantrums at least once in a while. But a toddler elemental mage in a screaming fit is liable to shift a house from its foundation or choke the air from a playmate’s lungs—without ever meaning to. And even when elemental magelings grow older, they might still inadvertently let their powers get the better of them.
In this chapter we aim to present a comprehensive list of training techniques for disrupting the direct connection between an elemental mageling’s anger and his or her instincts to turn to the elements. It has been repeatedly pointed out that violence is hardly the best substitute, but until we learn how to perfectly control small children’s emotions, their tiny fists will remain preferable to their—at times—disproportionally immense powers.
—From The Care and Feeding of Your Elemental Mageling
8. A QUICK word on countersigns before we move on to our first section of spells.
The spells in this and many other textbooks do not have countersigns. But no one ever became archmage using spells that can be found in public libraries. Heirloom spells and cutting-edge spells, considered far more powerful, usually operated with an incantation that can be said aloud—and therefore overheard by others—and a countersign that is never uttered, to preserve the secrecy of the spell.
By the same token, countersigns are also sometimes used with passwords, to maximize the latter’s effectiveness and security.
—From The Art and Science of Magic: A Primer