Of Oaths, Obligations, and the Enchantment of Objects

Singhapura has a great many tools in their arsenal. But of everything, perhaps the most important for the running of a kingdom is dealing with people: empowering them, binding people to their word, assuring consequences. Not everyone agrees about how these things should be done, but every tribe that grows beyond its village boundaries agrees that things should be done. Every sophisticated civilization, to the best of our knowledge, has magic that supports these things.

Your Grace, let me show you the tools at our disposal.

Of Contracts, Bonds, and Obligations

The Taprobane Five Elements Oath

One of the most widely used Rituals throughout the Empire. The Five ELements Oath enforces contracts using the collective Authority of all participants. The costs require five distinct elemental correspondences to manage - hence the term. The idea is that anyone who violates the Oath has their own Authority turn against them. The Ritual is cast in two stages: the first stage makes active Oaths - at least the intent behind them - visible to the caster. The second stage will not trigger until everyone involved is there of their own volition.

There is a degree of unpredictability - it seems that several Sutras play on the idea of oathbreaking, and generally the degree of damage differs widely based on the number of potential causal effects at large. People have been known to survive oathbreaking, but at best they are reduced to a fragment of what they were, and forever afterward register as an anathema to anyone with magical senses.

This may be one of the most useful tools in Your Grace’s arsenal. Sapumal Keppitipola, the Paragon who led the design team, worked briefly as a banker in Lusia before devising this, and the mechanism perhaps reflects his experience.

Sapumal’s Sundering

The Sundering was originally a testing mechanism for iterating over the design of the Oath. The current version of the Sundering is a very simple and minmal Ritual that cuts magic and dissolves bindings. It requires a violent burst of effort; the older and more established the binding, and the larger the Authority behind it, the harder it is to cut. Backlash from both success and failure is considerable, often destroying the materials on which the Sundering is engraved - this is why we do not produce mass-produce magical swords with it.

Gajaba’s Thread

A Ritual devised by an LTU Paragon studying the Sympathy of Galdors and Vedics. It creates a connection between separated parts of the same entity, allowing effects on one part to propagate to the whole. Even the simple versions of this Ritual allow for enormous utility - such as coded long-distance communications, remote detonation on alchemical charges, and so on. The more sophisticated versions come with much higher costs but even allow simple Patterns to flow across, thus allowing workings linked over long distances. Skilled magicians work in deliberate asymmetries - the science delays, filters, or conversions is a whole Department.

Manike’s Gate

Yet another lesson from the Galdors of Ealdorfold. This Ritual binds an abstract principle to a physical location, creating a space where that principle is magically enforced - held in or kept out according to the caster’s design. The Heart Sutra and the Iron Sutra play hard on this working: for example, a truth-binding takes more easily in an ancient temple of justice and fails entirely on a suit of new steel armor. It is common that courtrooms in Singhapura carry Gates of Truth and Justice to guard against deception. The consent factor is satisfied by someone taking the choice to step through the Gate. The Gate requires many casters, and often creates a great deal of magical residue, and Gate effects (even on people only temporarily exposed) are easily identifiable by magicians.

Gananth’s Benevolence

This Ritual is derived from the study of Primals and the Diefic; it temporarily transfers an aspect of the caster’s Authority to another person. This turns the recipient into something resembling a temporary Invoker. Imagine a magical version of Your Grace temporarily lending a page your seal and authority. However, the impact to the caster is greatly unpredictable, and most people naturally do not want to give away their talents. Bbecause of this the Benevolence is not used lightly. I’ve heard it said that the Haugris Church makes heavy use of it by having elders - especially old Arbiters who cannot fight anymore - bestow their powers to younger generations as a last and final gift.

Rehobaum’s Dark Binding

This Ritual cleverly exploits the Heart Sutra’s recognition of a near-universal cultural motif: across every tradition we have examined, the shadow is closely linked to the idea of the person, and often their soul. The Dark Binding temporarily redirects wounds make to the flesh to the shadow. However, the Wheel Sutra is its enemy; it will spend eternity undoing the result, and there are enough horrific stories of magicians haunted by their own vengeful shadows, their bodies and powers broken. The Ritual is banned across most jurisdictions and carries a kill order except in serious medical emergencies or in self-defense.

Marambe’s Amplification

Searches the area for living plants and drains them of energy before providing said energy to a given target, be it person or Ritual. This is commonly used to defray the costs of a Ritual, and its overuse is blamed on the graveyard mismas that the Sin-Eater Legions now deal with. Living plants are among the finest conductors available - they have passed through the seasons of the world, seen growth and decay, and thus participated in the cycle of life. Now it is permitted for non-warfare reasons only with permission from the Taprobane University.

Kumara’s Purifying Flame

Burns away traces of magic from a location. This is critical in purifying the miasma of magical Graveyards before they reach critical levels. Unfortunately, it can only be powered by the caster’s own life force. The Temple of Eighteen was the origin of this Ritual; this is the Taprobane formalisation. Accompanying the Sin-Eater Legions of Singhapura are magicians and Temple of Eighteen adepts known as the Pyre Wardens who specialize in cleansing with this Ritual.

A Pyre Warden does not live very long. Becoming one requires being either exceptionally heroic or exceptionally foolish - magicians convicted of crimes are often offered this role as an alternative sentence. The families of Sin-Eaters are generally well compensated by the Empire, but even among them a Pyre Warden is considered special, and the names of every fallen Warden are engraved by the Emperor himself on the steles in his garden.

Yamuna’s Heart

Enhances an object’s natural properties, at the cost of destroying it completely once the Ritual ends. It may also be used to replace certain properties for a brief period with those imagined by the caster. The Iron Sutra actively resists this Ritual; the Heart Sutra partially offsets this, but only for objects that already carry sufficient narrative weight. On a famous sword, a named ship, an heirloom passed through generations, it may be viable; on a brick of no history, the cost would kill the caster instantly.

Tailor’s Power of Two

This exploits the superposition observations of the Paragon Sangamitta. For an infinitesimal period of time, this Ritual produces a double of the target. The double inherits physical properties, but not life, magic, Authority, or such. The cost is that the Ritual any thing it is attached to is almost immediately wiped from the universe. For this reason, a heavily minimized version isn used to amplify brief effects such as explosions; as the energy created in the explosion can fuel the spell briefly, allowing it to activate before vanishing.

Stories about the use of it on uncountable nouns or living subjects are considered a fantastic way to teach overeager students caution. For example, the Great Flood of Taprobane is considered a classic case of hubris and poor calibration.

In Conclusion

Of course I cannot describe to Your Grace every possible variety of enchantment, but I have tried here to illustrate tools that Singhapura considers most useful. As Daub grows, these tools will most likely become increasingly useful.

I am not entirely sure if these Rituals are commonly taught at the LTU, because much of this relies on Patterns that their RUT does not have. They can be emulated, but emulation of sophisticated effects on simple hardware greatly increased costs and makes the magic run much slower than it should. Perhaps this is a good reason to promote some cross-cultural learning, or even to lean on your Singhapura-affilaited acquaintances. Your Grace will surely see the benefits of these magics for many of Daub’s day-to-day operations.

Folio VII · Of Magic

Transcribed by Victor Konara