Majik Practices:  Of Faeries

Enchanting

Enchanting is the means of placing concentrated majikal energy into a workpiece, not unlike putting the charge of electricity into a battery made to hold it.

The Faerie crystals, wands, and other special tools, are prepared in this way. Little is known about the actual methods or rituals that make up this process.

It is known, however, that there are two types of enchantments: terrestrial and celestial.

Terrestrial enchantments are majikal effects extracted from the earth under our feet.  These seem to be an aspect of the same arts by which humans perform sigil spells.

Celestial enchantments involve extracting and drawing the majikal resources of other worlds and has no equivalent in the human array of majikal craft.

Faerie Wands and Methods of Battle

An brief extract from Chadwick Yates and Forest Labyrinth:

“There was a small wand shop in the Flicker village, and the shopkeeper was a sly little Faerie with lime green eyes and hair streaked with two long waves of white. Apparently if a Faerie overuses his majik almost to death, parts of his hair will lose their color for all time, and this shopkeeper was a veteran of some battle in which he’d nearly died of strain. His name was Merrilow Keebee.

Keebee’s wands were for martial purposes, and they lay on strips of bark fiber in a wooden curio case, viewable through that spectacular stained glass for which Faeries only have a formula. Like many human curios, this cabinet was filled with mirrors and different-sized locked doors. The mirrors, he told us, bounced the image of different wands around, so that only he knew where one really rested. A thief who opened the wrong door and reached in to seize a weapon would be subject to a terrible flesh-eating spell. Though I didn’t know it at the time, this was a majikal trap, many of which are known in the old world.

Not all majik, the layman will be interested to know, is an instantaneous effect willed by the caster. Sometimes majik lies latent like a fog that the sun cannot disperse and the wind cannot move, an invisible snare that might have been set a thousand years ago, only these snares do not rust. There are also, as Yates and I experienced in later expeditions, majikal poisons which can take hold in the body and work terrible results.

What could these wand weapons do? Well, for starters, nothing in the hands of men. They were enchanted to some single effect: some were majikal swords that cut foes under the skin, causing internal injury directly, while others could squeeze the heart. Some could inflict a majikal poison. Another could act against nerves like electricity. They were not projectile weapons, as human stories of wizards often depict. The wands did not need to be pointed directly at the foe; they were weapons of the will. They struck instantaneously and could bypass any sort of cover. One shielded oneself not by dodging or parrying, but by some majikal “lifting” of one’s signature from the ground, which is the wellspring and the conduit of all majik.

It was through the Faerie perception of majik currents and such that they discovered this so-called “signature” of their target. The aiming of the mind and the will could go awry the same as a human’s sighting of a target down his barrel. As some men are born with better perceptions than others, so too do some Faeries more easily aim their spells. The wonder to me was that those with poor ability could not make an attack upon another Faerie at five paces, whereas a good Faerie warrior could rip open the internals of his enemy across five hundred yards of dense brush and thick trees, all without seeing him in the traditional sense.”