Benedict Jacka's Blog, page 80

Encyclopaedia Arcana #27: Charm Magic

Charm magic, otherwise known as emotion magic, is the domain of feeling, giving its users the power to sense and control the emotions of others.  Depending on whether they’re male or female, a charm mage is usually called an enchanter or an enchantress.  It’s traditionally considered one of the more feminine types of magic, but this is a little inaccurate – there’s no shortage of male enchanters, they just get less attention.

Swaying the Crowd

An enchantress usually gets her start learning to read emotions.  They can sense someone’s general emotional state just by being near them – whether they’re happy, sad, angry, afraid, or anything else.  With practice they learn to read emotions more precisely, deciphering the different layers and combinations of feelings in a persons mind.  They can’t actually read someone’s thoughts or tell why they have the feelings they do, but feelings and thoughts are closely connected and a skilled enchantress can figure out what someone is thinking with a high degree of accuracy.

Once they’ve mastered reading emotions, charm mages learn to affect them, and the most common (and the most iconic) spell they learn is the ability to charm.  An enchantress can shift the attitude of a person, making them act towards her as they would a dear friend or a lover.  Unless given a reason to suspect otherwise, the target usually doesn’t realise they’ve been charmed – they know they like the mage, but they don’t know why.  An enchantress can also play on a target’s emotions in other ways, giving them empathic suggestions to do or refrain from something and generally manipulating them to her wishes.

For obvious reasons, other mages have a problem with this (at least when it’s targeted at them).

Paranoia Fuel

The major advantage charm mages have over more direct magic-users is subtlety.  Charm magic is incredibly difficult to detect, to the point of being practically invisible – there’s almost no way to know if an enchantress is using her magic or not.  Targets can figure out if they’re being charmed by looking to see if their emotions have changed, but the problem is that emotions change all the time anyway.  It’s very, very hard to figure out whether your feelings toward a charm mage are natural or artificial.

The result of this is that mages tend to be really paranoid when dealing with enchantresses.  They’re afraid that they’ll be charmed or manipulated without knowing it, and so limit their dealings with them as far as possible.  Ironically, this means an enchantress usually gets suspected of manipulating emotions even when she isn’t doing it at all – since there’s no way to know if an enchantress is using her abilities, there’s also no way to know if she isn’t.

Light and Dark

Charm mages are one of the two types of mages that dominate Light Council politics.  The abilities of a charm mage give them an enormous advantage in negotiations and political dealings, and their ability to read emotions lets them pick up on the subtleties of an interaction faster than any normal person could.  It also helps that charm mages tend to be extroverted and social – even without their magic, they’re good at making others like them.

Charm mages in Dark society do less well.  While a Dark enchantress has even less limits on her freedom of action than a Light one, the major weakness of charm magic is that it’s not much good when it comes to brute force.  Dark mages don’t like being enchanted any more than Light ones do, but unlike Light mages their solution to the problem tends to be to apply immediate violence to the enchantress in question.  Charm mages who try to bring a Dark mage under their control often pay for it with their lives.

As a result of this charm mages have a definite bias towards the Light faction rather than the Dark, and those who aren’t Light are usually independent.  It’s less about ethics and more about convenience – the Light style of solving problems is much more appealing to most charm mages than the Dark one, and the social circuit of Light politics is a perfect home for an enchantress to dwell in.

Taken Covers & Extract

Here are the UK and US covers for Taken, as well as the first chapter!

UK:

And US:

And you can now read the full first chapter of Taken in the Extracts section.

There’s more news (and so far it looks good), but I’m going to hold off on posting it until I know for sure.  :)

Ask Luna #2

From: Alette

Dear Luna,

How long does a mage’s apprenticeship usually last, and at what age do they usually start learning?
 

They start learning whenever they get taken on by a mage, whether that’s at 13 or at 23. Though I guess really they start learning whenever they start using their magic. A full apprenticeship is supposed to last seven years, but only the really traditional mages do it that long. Four to five years is more common, for Light apprentices anyway. Dark apprenticeships are supposed to be shorter.

From: Joanne G.

Dear Luna,

What kinds of magical creatures/nonhumans have you seen? How do they conceal themselves from the general public? Can they cast spells of their own, like human mages, or do various tricks, like adepts? Also, are there sound/music mages who can learn to cast spells through song?
 

From: Agent J

Dear Luna,

Are there a lot of nonhuman magical beings living among us, and how do they conceal their presence? Are any of them dangerous to humans?
 

I’ll put these two together, I guess.

Magical creatures I’ve met – Arachne, obviously, as well as a blink fox, a xen, and quite a few elementals. There was a rakshasa too – I only saw him once, but he left an impression. They do have magic, but not in the same way that mages do. It’s not so much something they use, it’s more like a part of them.

From what Arachne’s told me there are still a few magical creatures out there, but a lot less than there used to be. Mages have wiped out most of them, or at least the ones they could find. The ones that are left are either really good at defending themselves or really good at hiding. Sometimes you hear a story about a monster being discovered that’s been preying on people, but usually by the time you hear about it a bunch of mages have hunted it down and killed it.

And yep, there are sound mages, have a look at the last bunch of answers. Didn’t realise they were so popular.

From: W.B.

Dear Luna,

How is it that mages have been able to conceal the existence of magic from the general public for so long? Also, is it true that there is at least one wizard in Chicago who is completely open about practicing magic for a living?
 

This is actually something I’ve wondered about. Obviously there are the Keepers, but I think the really big reason is the difference between normals and sensitives – normals have some kind of mental block about believing in magic and sensitives don’t. They won’t take any explanation seriously if it’s got “it’s magic” in it. I think it works differently with adults than with children, though – I’ve seen times where something happens, the children say it was someone’s fault, and the adults decide it was an accident even though the children were right.

I haven’t heard about a wizard in Chicago, but it would be easy enough. Everyone would just assume he was crazy or conning people or something. I mean, Alex doesn’t hide that he’s running a magic shop, and that’s what happens with him.

From: Redbird

Dear Luna,

Does magical ability run in families, or can you have a mage born to two nonmagical parents?
 

Both. A kid born to two mages is a lot more likely to be a mage herself, but you can get mages born into families with no magical history at all.

From: Agatha H.

Dear Luna,

There seem to be so many different kinds of magic, each with its own theme depending on the individual’s personality. Are there any techno-mages whose magic interfaces with technology, or mages/adepts who can control machines or build magic-powered devices that defy the laws of physics?
 

There definitely are techno-mages, though I haven’t seen one (at least not that I know about). I think they’re a relatively new type – there have always been mages who can affect machines one way or another, but these guys are different. Our classes don’t cover them, so I think they haven’t made it into the textbooks yet. Other apprentices talk about them, but they have pretty wild ideas about what they’re supposed to do and I’m pretty sure most of it is just guessing. I think Sonder knows a few, but I’ve never asked him.

From: Peter

Dear Luna,

A lot of mages seem to be portrayed as self-serving. Are there any mages who try to use their abilities to help others, like a fire mage saving people from burning buildings or healing/life mages working in hospitals?
 

Some do. I don’t know any who make a habit of rescuing people from burning buildings, but there are definitely some mages who have a reputation for being willing to help other people, or being willing to listen anyway. Though I think they get taken advantage of a lot.

I was curious about the life mages and hospitals thing, so I asked Anne. She said she’d like to do it, but it’s illegal. Apparently medical professionals in the UK have really tight controls on them and you can’t work on patients without a lot of qualifications which most mages don’t have. She treats anyone who comes to her, but she has to do it unofficially.

Cursed Review Roundup

I’ve been meaning to put up more reviews of Cursed for a while, and since the first reviews of Taken are already coming out, I really shouldn’t leave it any later.  So without further ado, here are the links!

Shades of Sentience

Tynga’s Reviews

SF Site

Paranormal Haven

Riley’s Reviews

The Bookbag

Book Chick City

Bookgeeks

The covers of Taken are out as well and they look great, so I’ll be posting those shortly, along with the first chapter!

Ask Luna #1

From: Elana

Hi, I’m interested in learning more about different types of magic, including ones that aren’t mentioned in the Encyclopedia Arcana. Can you tell me more about how the abilities of enchanters work? Also, are there such things as sound mages, and if so, how does their magic work?
 

Enchanters/enchantresses seem to be fairly common – the first one I met was called Meredith and the less said about her the better, but I’ve seen lots more since I started going to classes.  They can affect emotions, but it’s hard to know how they do it since their whole thing is that you never know what they’re doing with it or even whether they’re using it on you.  It’s kind of creepy to be honest.  I think there’s an Encyclopaedia article on them, I might go dig it up.

There are sound mages too, but I haven’t seen as many of them – I only met one once and the only things I saw her do were party tricks like making music and ventriloquism (she was really good at mimicking voices).  They’re supposed to be able to do more destructive stuff like making things vibrate until they shatter, but I haven’t seen it.

From: Richard Thiemann (Serack)

How many Light Council mages are in Britan/London?
Are any of the Light Council factions more personality driven than ideologically driven? 
Do you know what factions Talisid and Levistus are?
I got the idea from the Encyclopedia that the Concords are global, and that parts of the structure of mage society are quite ancient. Are these ancient roots European? Was mage influence more global before European influence spread? 
———————–
I have no problems with you answering the above questions piecemeal. Especially that last one. 
 

You certainly got your money’s worth out of that email, didn’t you?  Okay, from the top:

1. I was told there are supposed to be about a couple of thousand in Britain.  I have no idea how many there are in London (how would you tell, anyway?  Put trackers on them?)

2. I’m not sure what you mean.  If you’re asking what the factions are like from the inside, it’s not something I’d know much about.  Pretty much all of what I hear about Council politics is from apprentice gossip.

3. Levistus is supposed to have links with the isolationist and director factions, I think.  I don’t know about Talisid but from the times I’ve met him and from how Alex has described the factions he acts like a Guardian.

4. How on EARTH am I supposed to know that?  I barely know enough to figure out which way is up in the mage world now and you’re asking me about how things were thousands of years ago?  Go ask Sonder, he’ll probably talk your ear off about it. 

From: Orion

Hi, I was wondering how many sub-catagories their are for each of the three families? and if it is possible for mages other than elementals mages to use gate magic?
 

The way Alex explains it, there are as many sub-categories of magic as you decide to give names to.  It’s like asking how many shades of blue there are.  Every mage’s abilities are slightly different, so it’s up to you whether you say they’re the same type or not. 

I’m pretty sure there are a few types of non-elemental mages who can use gate magic.  Space mages can definitely use it, I can tell you that one for sure.  Although I’m not sure if it’s the same thing – it was more of a blink-and-you’re-there deal, faster than the gates I usually see.  I think they’re actually better at it than elementalists are.

From: V. Stevermer

Hi, I was wondering, around what age do most mages/adepts usually discover their abilities? And how do they go about getting trained? How would some kid who just discovered he can manipulate fire or air or something learn more about the world of magic and find someone to teach him?
 

Most mages seem to think it happens around mid-teens – I’ve heard ages from 13 all the way up to 17-18, but I think it starts younger than that.  From the stories I’ve heard from other apprentices they can use magic before that, it’s just more gradual – it grows with you.  At least that was what happened to me.

Getting trained is basically a crap shoot.  The lucky ones get spotted by a nice Light or independent mage while they’re still young and become an apprentice that way.  The really lucky ones have a Light mage as a family member or a family friend and get brought up in mage society from day one.  The unlucky ones get spotted by a mage who’s not so nice.  I’ve heard some pretty horrible stories about what can happen to the unlucky ones.

PW Starred Review for Taken

Publishers’ Weekly already gave starred reviews to Fated and Cursed, and now Taken makes it three for three!

Jacka’s excellent third urban fantasy thriller starring British freelance diviner Alex Verus (after Cursed) features magical dueling with prestige and lives at stake . . .  The action is fast and smart, playing with thriller conventions so that while readers get excitement they also are encouraged to think about what magic might mean in human terms. A superb book in an outstanding, provocative series.
 

On top of that I’ve also got an interview running on the PW site!  Unfortunately it’s subscriber-only (which is a shame, since I enjoyed doing it).

In other news, the Taken covers are out!  I’ll try to put them up when I have the chance.

Encyclopaedia Arcana #26: The Keeper Orders

The Keepers are divided into three orders which function as largely separate entities.  Keepers from different orders may work together, but usually don’t.

The Order of the Star

The Order of the Star is the largest of the orders.  Their responsibility is the policing of magical society, which mainly comes down to enforcing the peace of the Concord.

Members of the Order of the Star deal almost exclusively with mages and adepts, making them the most visible of the orders to other mages.  The Order of the Star’s area of responsibility brings them into contact with non-Light mages on a regular basis, and as a result members of the Order of the Star are the only group among the Council who have significant experience interacting with Dark mages.

Out of all the orders, the Keepers of the Order of the Star probably get the messiest and the most unpleasant cases.  Mages really, really don’t like being investigated, which means members of this order have the unenviable job of being required to piss off their fellow mages on a regular basis.  They have to investigate both Light and Dark mages, and it’s arguable which is worse.  Dark mages don’t recognise the authority of the Keepers and if they feel threatened are quite likely to shoot on sight.  On the other hand, Light mages who don’t want to be investigated will use their connections to bring pressure to bear on the Keepers, which may lead to the investigating Keeper being reprimanded or punished.

Keepers from the Order of the Star are given nearly all the political investigations, meaning that Keepers of this order have the dubious distinction of being the order that gets most frequently and deeply involved with Council politics.  Keepers who show political talent can rise far and fast in the Order of the Star, but a misstep can make them fall equally quickly.

The Order of the Cloak

The Order of the Cloak is responsible for monitoring the relationship between magical and mundane society.  Their two primary duties are to maintain the secrecy of magic, and to restrict magical interference in mundane politics.

Given that there are over fifty million normals in England alone, the mages of the Order of the Cloak are massively and perpetually understaffed.  They deal with this by making heavy use of subordinates, delegating as much work as possible to adepts, sensitives, and sometimes even normals.  As a result the Order of the Cloak contains an unusually high proportion of adepts and sensitives, and non-mages have more opportunity for promotion here than they would in any of the other Keeper orders, or indeed most of magical society.

Members of this order spend a lot of time dealing with normals, and so tend to find brute strength less valuable then the ability to operate undetected.  As a result the Order of the Cloak contains a high fraction of living magic users and other more subtle types.

The Order of the Shield

The Order of the Shield is the smallest order and also the most militant.  Their responsibility used to be the protection of humans from magical creatures, but with the steady decline of magical creatures in Britain their focus has shifted from anti-creature to general combat.  Nowadays they function as the Council’s military reserve:  when something blows up, it’s members of the Order of the Shield who are called in to deal with it.  Given the nature of modern magical society, this means that members of the Order of the Shield spend a lot more time in conflict with mages than with nonhumans.

Active members of the Order of the Shield are assigned cases which either have already turned hostile or are expected to get that way, such as arrests of Dark mages or search-and-destroy missions against magical creatures deemed dangerous.  Members of this order are sometimes also called in by the Order of the Cloak or the Order of the Star if a case gets violent, though the other orders are reluctant to do this unless absolutely necessary.

Most members of the Order of the Shield are not kept on active duty.  Instead they are kept in reserve, rotating through shorter cycles where they’re on call and longer ones where they are nominally on leave.  In emergencies off-duty members of the Order of the Shield can be called in, and in the past there have been periods where this happened frequently, but nowadays it’s extremely rare.

The Cursed Blog Tour Draws To A Close

It’s been over a month but the last stops on the Cursed blog tour are finishing up.  Actually, to be honest, they finished up a while ago, I’ve just taken a while to link to them.  We’ve got an interview at Tynaga’s Reviews, and Dark Faerie Tales has another guest post of mine, this one on life expectancy in the magical world.

Finally, for those of you interested in the writing business, I wrote the story of how I got my agent for Writer’s Digest.  It doesn’t involve the Alex Verus series at all (this happened way before Fated) but it might have some curiosity value.  You can tell how long ago it was from all the references to SAEs…

I’ve started to get the first few Ask Luna questions, so please keep them coming – when I get enough of them I’ll post them up with answers.  I’ve got a post overdue collecting some of the many reviews that have been coming out for Cursed, too!

Encyclopaedia Arcana #25: The Keepers of the Flame

All nations in the magical world have an organisation responsible for enforcing the Concord and their national laws.  In Britain, this organisation is the Keepers of the Flame.

Cops or Robbers?

The easiest way to think of Keepers is as magical police – they investigate breaches of the Concord, question witnesses and suspects, and in some case make arrests and bring suspects to trial.  Keepers are also tasked with the responsibility of protecting magical society as a whole, and so act as the Council’s military arm.

Another way to look at it – and the way other Light mages tend to see it – is that Keepers are the internal affairs division of magical society.  When a mage is doing something dodgy, it’s the Keepers who are called in to take a look.  This is rarely appreciated by the mage in question.

The Keepers are very, very old – not only are they older than any mundane police force, they’re older than most countries.  Practically everything about the group has changed over the centuries, including their name (they were once known as the Keepers of Secrets).  As a result, their organisation is a confusing mess of archaic and modern.  The Keepers have been organised in different ways at different times, but at present they are made up of three sub-divisions:  the Order of the Star, the Order of the Cloak, and the Order of the Shield.

Recruitment

New Keepers usually start their training as apprentices.  Keepers who’ve reached master rank keep an eye out for potential recruits, and pick them out at the novice stage.  Keeper apprentices are taught the profession along with magical instruction, and upon graduating to journeyman stage petition to be accepted into one of the Keeper orders.

Keepers are one of the more highly trained branches of the Council.  A Keeper is expected to be proficient at battle-magic, investigation, and also politics, although in practice most Keepers don’t manage more than two out of three.  The challenging nature of the work means that Keepers tend to have substantially more experience than other mages their age, and a result are generally deployed alone or in pairs.  It’s rare to see more than two Keepers together – it tends to be assumed that one or two Keepers can handle most situations.  If three or more Keepers are sent out in a group, it’s a sign that the Council is taking something very seriously.

Nobody Loves A Cop

Keepers aren’t popular.  The police-work aspect of their jobs means that independent mages see them as the Council’s brute squad, and Light mages view them in the much the same way that they would an internal affairs division – sure, what they do is necessary, but they’d much prefer for them to be necessary way over there.  Dark mages tend to see Keepers as enemy combatants, and this is more or less accurate – if the Council decides to go after a Dark mage, it’s the Keepers who’ll be sent to do it.  As a result, it’s not easy for Keepers to make friends.

Keepers have another problem, one that outsiders rarely notice but which in the long run is much more demoralising.  The Keepers are supposed to enforce the Concord, but they’re only supposed to enforce the Concord when the Council wants them to, and very often they have no idea when that is.  If a Keeper is strict with someone favoured by the Council, they’ll be reprimanded.  If they’re lenient with someone the Council doesn’t like, they’ll be reprimanded too.  Worst of all, it’s common for Keepers (especially the Order of the Star) to be called in on cases where different factions of the Council want different things, meaning that no matter what the Keepers do someone is going to blame them for it.  Some Keepers deal with this by entering the political game, allying themselves with Council groups and serving factional interests, while others just keep their heads down and try to do their job.  Either way, the disconnect between the description and the reality of their jobs tends to make experienced Keepers quite cynical.

Ask Luna: Introduction

Hi, my name’s Luna Mancuso.  If you’re reading this you’re probably looking for Alex Verus, but Alex isn’t here so you get me instead.  I’m Alex’s apprentice, shop assistant, and general gofer.  

As of two hours ago, I’m also now in charge of the Arcana Emporium email account.  Alex’s explanation for dumping this on me is that it’s supposed to be educational.  Personally I think he’s just too lazy to do it himself.  Either way, I’m supposed to answer any questions that come this way.    

It turns out the shop already has an email account, or at least it did.  It’s got 73,936 messages on it and having spent the last hour looking through them I’ve decided that nearly all of them are spam.  I’ve also decided that there is no way in hell I’m sorting through 73 thousand spam messages for a handful of legit ones, so I’m just going to write off the whole account.  Yeah, I know, this means none of the old messages are going to get answered.  The way I see it they weren’t getting answered anyway, so it’s not like it makes any difference.  Besides, Alex told me to answer any new questions, he didn’t say anything about the old ones.  If your email was one of the old ones then sorry, you’ll have to resend it.  

Until we get a new Arcana Emporium email I’m going to use my own, since at least I know it works.  I’ve set up this contact form to forward to my email account.  It’s got a captcha thing which you have to type in – yes, everybody hates them, but I’d rather not have my email spammed into oblivion, thanks.  The difficulty’s not high so it shouldn’t be too hard.

As Alex explained it, this is supposed to be some kind of general info/FAQ thing.  He says that he gets a lot of people coming into the shop who keep asking the same questions.  Honestly I’ve never done anything like this before, so I’ve no idea what kind of questions I’m going to get, but I’ll give it a shot.  I’ll check the account every day or so, and when I’ve got a few I’ll post them up along with answers.  Thanks!

- Luna