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The Gift

magicDraft

Ability to work magic that only a few are born with, and that every spell charges for in years of life.

Description

No one learns magic without being born with it. The gift lets one feel and move the essence, the force that gives life to all that exists. Few children carry it, and most people know no gifted person; the rest could study all their lives without striking a spark. Whoever has it is called gifted, and whoever practices it, a caster. There is no record of the gift passing from parents to children, though some families count gifted in several generations in a row.

Every spell is charged in life, because the strength that moves the essence comes from the caster. They pay with their own body, which ages by what the spell has cost. A trick barely leaves a mark. After a major spell, a caster may wake with gray hair that was not there the night before, looser skin and less steady hands, as if they had lived months or years all at once.

No one knows beforehand what a spell will cost. The price depends on what is asked, on the caster’s natural strength —their endowment— and on their channeling technique. Great endowment and good technique bring the price down, but never away: no caster has ever had a spell for free.

Rules and limits

The masters of the Vesper College of Mages rank spells in three tiers, by what they usually cost an ordinary caster:

Tier Examples Usual price
Tricks Moving small objects, lighting a flame, levitating for a few moments Almost nothing, but it adds up
Middle spells Far sight, notable elemental effects, great illusions, dominating and speaking with other beings, healing moderate wounds, teleporting, moving heavy objects A few days of life
Major spells Elemental or pushing forces on a great scale, altering time, necromancy, advanced healing From months to years

Endowment comes with birth; channeling is learned. A highly gifted, well-trained caster lights a flame without noticing and pays barely a few minutes for a middle spell. An ordinary one cannot afford even that every day: tricks count too, and over the years they show in the face.

The reckoning is never exact. Practice teaches a caster to estimate the price, but whoever gets it wrong finds out in the mirror.

Each pays with their own. No way is known to lay a spell on another’s life, nor to win back the years lost. A caster can close a deep wound in their own body, but the spell charges them just as if they were healing a stranger.

The law

In the Kingdom of Vesperia, magic is the crown’s business. Common folk are forbidden to practice it, and only certified mages may. The college examines the gifted and issues the certificates, but the laws that govern them come from the court.

Permission belongs to the mages of the Crown Council of Mages, to the masters of the college and to its students, who may cast only within the college walls. Outside them, an experienced caster earns the certificate if the college puts them forward to the crown and the crown accepts. The council recruits the best casters in the kingdom, and finds many of them in the classrooms of the college, with which it keeps close ties.

The law is not enforced with equal rigor on everything. No one calls the watch because a neighbor lights a flame in their palm to see by at night, or rolls a coin without touching it, and the watch would do nothing if it saw. Healing, on the other hand, is allowed to anyone and in any case. Whoever heals another gives them years of their own life, and no law of the kingdom punishes that gift.

Clandestine magic

Many of the gifted never set foot in the college and practice in hiding. In markets and taverns there are hustlers who sell a spell for a few coins. There are criminals who use the gift to force locks or slip away from the watch, and organized gangs who put it to work for their own ends. All of them risk being found out by the crown.

In history and culture

Beyond tricks, most people never see a spell in their whole lives. For many families, finding the gift in a child is bad news. The parents teach the child to hide it and not to use it, for fear of watching them grow old before their time.

The college holds the opposite: that whoever knows the price of their gift can use it wisely. Gifted come to its classrooms to learn to measure their endowment, refine their channeling and know which spells they can afford.

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