Without going into too much detail, the Lyrian Empire is, well, an empire. That is to say, they have an emperor (Or empress, at one point) and support expansionist ideals.

The empire is three centuries old, ancient by my standards, but young by a fantasy novel’s. The land it originally occupied (It has since expanded.) used to be a cluster of predominantly human kingdoms, which isn’t too surprising. When ravenous elves invaded the land, the kingdoms united under the rule of a warlord by the name of Jolmot Chanture who went on to repel the assailants and initiate the Chanture imperial line.

The Capital Chamber was organically birthed from the cooperation between the emperor’s advisors who themselves had a degree of power. They organized themselves into a committee and then essentially copied their structure onto local polities. The issue with this arrangement being that the chamber system was never fully planned and thus sports countless inefficiencies. Furthermore, the chamber members are responsible for selecting their own successors. Though the other members could, in theory, veto their counterpart’s choice of successor, they never do because it would disrupt the status quo. Though the Lyrian Empire doesn’t officially have a noble class, the Chamber’s familial nepotism is so pronounced, they might as well.

Members of the Capital Chamber typically don’t own entire regions; however, cities usually spring up on the land they do control, clearly proving the advantages they receive from being Chamber members. Ultimately everyone is subservient to the emperor, but they’re generally left alone. It’s not feudalism, but it’s close.

None of this makes me angry. Sure, I see myself as an egalitarian, and their government structure certainly bothers me, but not enough to anger me. No, I’m enraged by their long history-and continuation-of subjugation, oppression, and slavery. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the general populace is largely indifferent to the matter.

The Lyrian Empire is generally fairly inclusive of other sapient species, which is both surprising and unlikely, however, that doesn’t stop them from keeping slaves. Slaves aren’t designated by race, but instead by where they come from. As an example, descendants of a group conquered 200 years ago might still be in slavery.

That said, the Lyrians aren’t stupid. Whenever they conquer a powerful or useful nation, they usually do their best to fully integrate them as full citizens.

The idea of slavery disgusts me, one thing I value above all else is free will. Sure, it may not be a complex reason for my hatred of slavery, but it’s a very good reason, nonetheless. My view on expansionism is a bit more nuanced. I mean, its situational, if a genuinely “good” nation tries to take control of an objectively “worse” country, it’s not all bad, right? But it’s a double-edged sword, really. Everyone thinks their country is better, so at the end of the day it always leads to warfare. I was never good at pondering over these sorts of issues, but from what I’ve read, the Lyrians had oppressed some truly utopic nations, obviously that angers me.

And there’s nothing I can do about it. Well, actually, if I ever see any slaves in “my” village, I can do my best to sabotage their masters. While slavery is universally accepted in the Lyrian Empire, that doesn’t mean it’s widespread. For the most part, only the extremely wealthy keep slaves. Therefore, I doubt I’ll see any nearby for a long time.

I mustn’t dwell too much on these irritating and depressing circumstances right now, I’ve got experiments to run, and there is research to be done.

While I’m on the topic of the village, I want to bring attention to their latest development!

Apparently, the Local Chamber has given it a name, which they’d subsequently told to the new immigrants before they departed. The immigrants had then gone on to spread the name to the original settlers. Without dragging it out too far, I’ll just go ahead and say it; “Sevit.” Nice and short, I like it.

Before resuming my reading, I take a moment to take note of the town’s progress. Sevit is currently a hive of activity, the builders are still working on the majority of the shops and other large buildings in the town proper, however, many farmers have already started preparing the surrounding fields for cultivation, and now have shacks built on their land. How they divvied it up is beyond me, but I’m sure there must have been numerous disputes over property lines.

The administration of the town is a right mystery to me, as far as I can tell, no one is in charge, and yet things seem to be running fairly smoothly. I can’t identify anything resembling law enforcement, but maybe it’s too early for that anyway. Actually, is that Clifford’s job? Could be.

I kind of want to straight-up ask him. But that’d be stupid.

I get the feeling the town’s center isn’t owned by any of the villagers here. I suspect the Local Chamber, or perhaps a wealthy individual living elsewhere, has been given claim over that land, as a payment or reward of sorts for organizing and supplying the colonization efforts.

In fact, I have evidence to support this idea. My frequent snooping on Wes has clued me in on the fact that he’s leasing the land on which his shop is being built from another person. And what a shop it is, second in size only to the administration building, which is itself an unreasonably ambitious construct, I can tell Weston’s planning for the long game.

I’ve spent enough time looking around for now, it’s time to get back to reading. I probably know enough about the Lyrians by now to get by, so I can finally begin focusing on magic. The obvious starting point for my foray into this new science is the book titled “The Introduction to Arcane Principles.” I’m fortunate to have this volume. As much as a book can be in this admittedly educationally limited society, “The Introduction to Arcane Principles” is incredibly popular. From my understanding, it’s printed all over the known world and is considered an essential read. (Again, amongst circles who actually read in the first place.)

I begin.

…

After a full 40 hours, I’ve finished.

Now I know what you’re thinking, 40 hours is unreasonably long. In fact, the book wasn’t even very lengthy, so what gives?

Well first, magic is amazing. At no point does the book attempt to help a person use magic, however, that doesn’t make its contents any less profound. It took me so long to finish reading because there was so much to digest and speculate on. Though it didn’t cover arcane theory to the extent I would’ve preferred, largely due to it being a poorly understood field, “The Intro” covered such things as the history of magical “technology,” as I’ll call it, different arcane disciplines and applications, and the limitations of magic.

Magic is used in a variety of applications, and what baffles me is that people still don’t fully comprehend what they’re working with. Magic is ultimately the act of achieving something with “mana.” Indeed, without mana, magic is impossible. Magic, as a concept, occurs when mana passes through runes. Of course, that’s easy to state, but what does it mean? Apparently, there is no way to “cast” magic without first passing mana through a rune. For example, if a person wanted to cast a “fireball,” they could never do so without a wand or some other device with inscribed runes.

But hold on, “How does a dragon “breath fire”, or a “grynn” perform telepathy?” you might wonder. Well, the “The Intro” claims that certain organisms contain an “essence” inside them that, when extracted, can be used to achieve a magical effect similarly to a rune. For example, someone could use an assemblage of runes to perform a “ritual” which extract essence from, say, an ember blossom’s petals. The ember blossom’s essence could then be used for whatever else you needed it for. From what I could gather, “essence” was a biological sludge extracted from arcane organisms.

Now, I have my suspicions that the researchers of this realm have gotten a few things wrong. Even the use of the word “essence” causes my metaphorical eye to twitch. No, this sounds like it could be the result of microscopic biomolecular runes. It’s a common habit of people without knowledge of microscopes to assume the characteristics of certain substances aren’t a result of physical interactions on an unobservably small scale. With their (likely false) assumption, it’s all too easy to conclude that “essence” is an acceptable explanation. Now, this is a preliminary theory of mine, naturally I’ll need to verify it in the future.

Perhaps, and I’m only spit-balling here, “essence” is actually a solution of proteins, enzymes, or whatever other biological material is being used, which act as tiny runes. If magic exists, and runes work, then by golly you can be sure that evolution would abuse it!

Onwards, “The Intro” doesn’t explain how runes convert mana into effects, and even goes so far as to say that it can’t be explained, ‘because magic.’

Yeah, you know me too well, I am not going to let that negligence slide.

I truly believe magic can be understood, but perhaps the process of doing so will require new techniques this world has never seen before. What could magic be other than a new branch of physics?

To be quite frank, if magic proves to be wholly “magic,” my worldview will be shattered.

Most new runes are invented via trial-and-error, however, some “runecrafters” have a foundational understanding of their work which allows them to, in a limited sense, consciously “design” new runes. Of course, because no one fully understands the fundamental, shall I say, ‘laws’ of magic, this was very difficult and highly unscientific. As an exaggerated analogy, it would be like electrical engineers trying to design a microchip without first understanding how electricity behaves.

A mage performs magic by forcing their mana through a rune. I was surprised to learn that a human mage cannot “regenerate” mana in the traditional sense. A human can store a small amount of mana in their bodies; however, they don’t produce it on their own. Instead, mana is obtained from the food you eat. So long as one of the organisms in the food chain that terminated with your meal has the trait of arcanasynthesis, you can acquire mana by eating.

In many ways, mana behaves like a gas. From my own observations, it diffuses from high to low concentration areas. However, it also seems to spontaneously enter an empty space. Take, for example, my dungeon. For the most part it is sealed from the surface, and yet mana is plentiful. In fact, through some perplexing mechanism, mana becomes increasingly abundant as the diversity and biomass of my dungeon rises. If you ask me, someone who is surely free of any biases, my ability to rationalize physical phenomena is exceptional. Rather than cause worry, this mystery excites me.

Let’s see, what else, ah! The official definition of a mage is someone capable of moving mana with their mind. This is important because a rune does nothing without a source of mana. Mages use their ability to do useful things such as raise the ambient mana levels in greenhouses, charge mana capacitors (typically in the form of naturally occurring white magicite crystals), or, most frequently, to provide mana to a rune. Apparently, anyone can become a mage with practice. “Potential” is essentially identical amongst all members of the same species but the differences between separate sapient species are profound.

In fact, one of the most important aspects of runecrafting and magic use is “mana logistics.” Large rituals need to be supplied with a copious amount of mana; it is in these situations that mana logistics shines. There are many ways to deliver more mana to a rune. The easiest and most common method involves simply gathering a bunch of mages together to work in unison. Other more niche methods include burning specific arcane substances which release mana during combustion, supplying pre-charged mana capacitors, or using a specialized rune on a sacrifice, preferably live, which forcefully strips it of its mana.

That I can use mana for telekinesis, telepathy, cut, merge, and creature modification is interesting. Does it mean there are runes inscribed inside my core, or is it more complex than that?

I’ve already “forced” mana into objects, which technically puts me on the path to becoming a mage, however, up until now I’ve not been able to simply “move” mana from place to place. Believe me, I tried. Fortunately, the next book on my reading list was written to teach a person how to do exactly that.

Fingers crossed the technique transfers to dungeon cores!