On Magical Swords

This exchange of open letters occurred at the Ctesian Enchanter’s Society thirty-five years before the events of Mage Errant.

Open letter from Kanderon Crux to the Ctesian Enchanter’s Society, at the invitation of the Society:

Magic swords are utter foolishness, and no self-respecting enchanter should be crafting them.

I’m well aware of the weight of magic swords in stories and the collective imagination of civilization— it would, in fact, be impossible to ignore it. Don’t allow yourself to be burdened by said weight, however.

There are, of course, many practical reasons for my opposition to magical swords. 

Firstly, the embedded spellforms of an enchanted sword— any enchanted melee weapon, really— need to be reinforced and made redundant to a wasteful degree, to help it survive the impacts and clashes of battle. A simple firebolt-hurling bracer, for instance, only needs half the internal spellforms of an enchanted sword with the same abilities, and less than a third of the alchemical reagents! Not that I find firebolt enchantments particularly praiseworthy, but they make a straightforward, simply understood example.

Second is the question of pragmatic uses of time: The average mage simply doesn’t have enough hours in the day to master both magic and swordplay. There are obvious exceptions, especially among the Helicotan Lord Citizens and the Havathi Sacred Swordsmen, but there are good reasons for those exceptions. The Lord Citizens train in swordplay from the time they can walk, while the Sacred Swordsmen have little in the way of other responsibilities or duties other than training and going on missions. 

If you think you’re among those rare few talents who can handle both, that’s praiseworthy enough ambition, but for the majority of mages? It’s a wasteful effort. If you’re really committed to the idea of fighting both by hand and with magic, a spear is far easier to learn than the sword, but even that seems somewhat frivolous to me. (It should be noted that time spent mastering weapons is inherently less rewarding than time spent mastering magic— even a relatively new apprentice mage quickly surpasses the strength of even the greatest of mundane swordsmen.)

The third concern is a simple one, but is no less valid for its simplicity: weapons are awkward and unwieldy to carry. It doesn’t matter how brilliant or groundbreaking your enchantment is, how cunning or revolutionary your spellform layouts are— ease of use, carrying, and storage are among the most important virtues of enchantment, second possibly only to reliability. When an enchantment may take multiple forms, the more portable, convenient form is almost always the better choice.

There are other practical concerns regarding magical swords, of course, but I wish to set them to the side for the moment to focus on other, more important concerns: Namely, philosophical ones.

In short: Magical swords accomplish nothing novel. They exist for combat, but do not fundamentally alter the nature of combat— and, more importantly, they do nothing to alter the role of enchantment in civilization. They do not change the way thinking beings live, save in the crudest way— by ending those lives. 

The simplest enchanted sewer system has far more impact upon civilization than any enchanted sword the average enchanter might make. Without them, cities might struggle to grow to any appreciable size— indeed, we might, in a world without them, consider a city of mere tens of thousands to be large. Disease would be rife, as would be stench.

This is, of course, not to say that offensive enchantments are a waste of time— that would be profoundly hypocritical of me, considering the number of armaments I have crafted to defend Skyhold and my allies. None, of course, are so frivolous as magic swords— even the mightiest enchanted swords struggle to lay low armies, and those with that capability seldom owe any of that capability to their shape as swords. Their blades and hilts are merely aesthetic, decorations upon the true enchantment.

Rather, I seek to say that the purpose of enchantment as a discipline is to fundamentally alter the way in which sentient beings interact with their world, to give them tools that change their ways of life. To offer new capabilities entirely, rather than to merely enhance dull existing ones. Magic swords represent everything holding back our craft, and I encourage all enchanters of true ambition to seek elsewhere.

Kanderon Crux, High Librarian of Skyhold

Open letter from the Lord of Bells to Kanderon Crux and the Ctesian Enchanter’s Society, in response to the High Librarian’s prior letter. It is unknown how the previous letter drew the lich’s attention.

Kanderon Crux is, without a doubt, among the greatest enchanters to ever live. Without any false humility, I count myself likewise among those ranks, and even I, at times, still feel awed by her work, even in the field of lich demesne design, which I, for obvious reasons, am quite confident in.

It is in that spirit which I have to humbly assert the following:

Crux’s position on magic swords is on unstable terrain, and her disdain of them is unwarranted.

(I think, perhaps, that it is best to set aside many other enchanted weapons for this conversation— enchanted bows, for instance, are unquestionably valuable tools to the right sort of mages, extending their effective range of attack many times over. They represent an entirely different paradigm of weapon enchanting.)

Oh, not all of her points are incorrect. Many of her claims regarding the practical concerns of enchanting magical swords are quite correct, but even combined, they don’t represent any compelling reason to abandon the enchantment of blades. Rather, they’re challenges for enchanters to overcome.

One of my most significant disagreements lies in the purpose of magic swords on the battlefield, the uses to which they are best put. Crux, for instance, only pays attention to the use of enchanted weapons by mages. Indeed, this can often be superfluous to a mage’s magic, and I’ll even agree with her on her claims regarding specialized strike forces like the Sacred Swordsmen or the Lord Citizens of my own city. (Note that I will reject many other comparisons between the two groups— the Sacred Swordsmen are composed of a few elites commanding disposable shock troops, compared to the universal excellence of the Lord Citizens.)

Crux entirely fails to address, however, the use of magic swords by non-mages or weaker mages.

Putting an enchanted blade in the hands of a common soldier, possessed of only a few simple cantrips, can turn them into a match for all but the greatest mundane swordsmen. Putting a magic sword into the hands of a sword-master? It can make them a threat to any battlemage on the planet, and to a great many archmages.

That omission is a curious one, given that Crux even addresses the uses of enchantment by non-mages in her own letter, with her discussion of sewer systems. (For any aspiring liches in the Ctesian Enchanter’s Society: I cannot overstate the importance of including sewer systems into your demesne designs. One of the most common failures of new liches is that of insufficient or nonexistent plumbing in their demesne, making it a deeply unappealing residence for potential inhabitants.) I don’t, of course, wish to imply a lack of concern on Crux’s part for non-mages— much the opposite, in fact, which makes the omission baffling to me.

More, there are quite a few valid tactical uses a mage can have for enchanted swords that Crux ignores. These range from the old-fashioned but effective flying sword or dagger, requiring little sword-skill from the mage; to simple use as tools of intimidation, something that should never be underestimated on the battlefield.

Glaringly, Crux overlooks the single most important use of magic swords by mages— their use as a tool of last-ditch defense for a mage. Innumerable mages have survived close encounters with monsters or enemy mages due to their possession of a blade, even if only to give them enough time to craft a spellform or recover a bit of mana. An also innumerable, but unquestionably larger, group of mages, have lost their lives for the lack of a blade. 

It is perhaps unsurprising that this would not be an intuitive tactical use for Crux— after all, she has no need for swords, and even without her magic, she could never reasonably be considered unarmed or defenseless.

The Lord of Bells, First Citizen of Helicote

Open response from Kanderon Crux to the Lord of Bells and the Ctesian Enchanter’s society.

I will begin by fully confessing the validity of the criticisms levied at my focus on use of magic items by mages— it is an analysis entirely devoid of the potentials of non-mages in combat.

But then, I view the use of non-mage combatants as tantamount to simple murder. Enough of them already die in wars even without actively participating.

(There are valid arguments to be made that no all-mage military force has the numbers to effectively occupy a conquered territory, no matter how magically superior they are. Indeed, history is rife with examples of nations and great powers conquering cities, only failing in their rule due to insufficient administrative forces. While these arguments are valid from a strategic perspective, anyone occupying conquered territory has no moral solid ground to stand on, and my opposition to the use of non-mage forces is a moral one.)

As for the rest of The Lord of Bells’ objections, well— I don’t disagree with him to any critical degree. My individual assessments of various tactics and uses for magic swords vary to a small degree, but by and large, not enough to write of here— not least because that path of discourse misses the destination I’m aiming for.

Which is, namely: the role of the enchanter should not be to enhance, but to transform. Enchanters should be radically transforming the capabilities of individuals and societies, or even granting new capabilities entirely. Magic swords? They represent, more than any other tool, that strain of enchantment that merely enhances, that fails to fundamentally change the abilities of the user in any novel way.

(I should note that I leave enchanted daggers out of that critique almost entirely— I find myself consistently impressed with many of the enchantments worked into daggers. This is, I believe, nothing inherent to daggers as opposed to swords. There is no pressing structural or material explanation for the degree of divergence— even the simple difference in sizes fails to account for the wildly different enchantment philosophies between the two weapon types. Instead, I consider it a cultural artifact, driven by stories and traditions in magic.)

Perhaps I lay too much weight on magic swords as a symbol for the tradition of enchantment I object to here— I’m sure there are many individual exceptions. Perhaps I should be objecting merely to the tradition itself, not to swords as a symbol.

But symbols have power. Most sentient species— sphinxes, dragons, liches, even humans— are bound tightly by the chains of associative thought, and once a symbol becomes associated with a tradition of thought in any field, the once becomes interchangeable with the other. And I think my prior distinction between dagger and sword enchantments is clearly representative of that.

Magic swords represent something objectionable that has been, over the years and centuries, buried deep in the foundations of enchanter culture. We can, and should, do better. We owe a responsibility to the world that our flawed traditions and pasts cannot meet.

Kanderon Crux, High Librarian of Skyhold

Open response from Anders the Bald, prominent and eccentric member of the Ctesian Enchanter’s Society, to both Kanderon Crux and the Lord of Bells. This was one among many letters sent by members of the Society in this early stage of the conversation, but is included here because it was the only one addressed openly by both great powers. (There were a small number of other responses this early, but they were sent directly to the mages in question, rather than being sent as open letters. The other open responses came much later in the conversation.) 

I find myself respectfully disagreeing with both the High Librarian and the First Citizen. Magic swords are not the most pressing problem facing enchanting today, nor is the conflict between enhancing and transforming magic. 

No, the chief problem facing the study of enchantment today? 

Reproducibility.

Enchanters obsess over leaving their marks on the world, on proving their brilliance with ever-more esoteric and powerful designs. The true future of enchantment, however, lies in the ability to easily and quickly replicate enchantments, to streamline and increase their production to far higher numbers.

To take an example from the High Librarian’s first letter, let us pose a question about sewer enchantments: Which is more valuable to a city: An enchantment component that is revolutionary, that accomplishes its job in half the time using half the mana, but can only be manufactured by a single mage at slow speed, and plays poorly with other components; or an enchantment component that does its job slowly and mana-intensively, but is easy and cheap to produce, and causes little difficulty with other enchantments?

The answer, clearly, is the latter. To back up my arguments, I’d like to delve a little deeper into the question itself, and…

(Anders’s letter continues on for seventeen additional pages, and is largely of little interest to laymen, or even enchanters outside a few specialized fields. Most of the content of interest is contained in the above.)

Open letter from the Lord of Bells to Kanderon Crux and the Ctesian Enchanter’s Society, in response to the High Librarian’s prior letter.

Before I get into the meat of my response to Kanderon Crux, I’d like to thank Anders the Bald for his thoughtful— and extensively detailed— addition to the conversation. 

I think he is partially correct on the importance of reproducible enchantment components, but that it isn’t a universally important concern. Rather, the question of reproducibility versus originality is answered by the purpose of the enchantment in question. Reproducibility is not a particularly laudable concern for city-destroying superweapons, for instance. Really, the virtues of your enchantments come down to your values in regard to the item in question.

And that very idea— that an enchanter’s professional values derive from their purpose in enchanting— is what Crux misses out on in her analysis. She treats enchanters as though they are— and should be— united in purpose for their enchanting, when in reality, there are as many purposes for enchanters as there are enchanters. More, really, for no-one enchants for a sole purpose alone.

To be sure, Crux’s vision of enchantment as a transformative force, her pursuit of advancing the science of enchantment, is a noble one, and one of the worthiest set of values within our shared discipline. 

But, in its pursuit, she blinds herself to an equally laudable pursuit within enchanting, an equally worthy value set— that of enchantment as art. 

Enchantment is no mere dull method of production, is no mere endeavor of practicalities alone— it can be, and should be, a thing of beauty, of inspiration, even of bizarre failures that nonetheless provoke thought in their beholders. As much as enchantment is necessary for practical purposes, it is equally necessary artistic ones. Enchantment as art can produce for society objects that can become symbols and rallying cries in both war and peace. Enchantment as art can inspire not only new paths for other enchanters, but can also inspire individuals and societies to use old enchantments in new ways.

(And that, I think, touches on a failing common to many, if not most, enchanters, myself most certainly included— we tend to consider enchantments only in the light of our own purposes while creating them. Much like architecture, however, the ways in which people use enchantments is often as different from the way we designed them as the way people use buildings is different from the purposes architects designed them for.)

Magic swords might fail the tests of Kanderon’s purposes, might not live up to her values as an enchanter, but they serve so many other purposes, can be judged under so many other values. They are a symbol, yes, but not merely of an older tradition of enchantment— they serve as a symbol of so many other traditions and values as well.

Magic swords can be works of true art, and are worthy creations for that alone.

The Lord of Bells, First Citizen of Helicote

Open letter from the prominent Havathi enchanter Cliya Bagden to the Ctesian Enchanter’s Society, in response to the open letters of Kanderon Crux and the Lord of Bells.

I have to admit, I’ve followed this exchange of letters keenly, eagerly awaiting each new entry. This is a magnificent exchange of ideas by two of the greatest enchanters on the continent, but I do have one major reservation about the whole exchange.

Namely, that it’s complete bollocks.

Oh, to be clear, the ideas addressed so far are perfectly sound and worthy of consideration. It is, rather, the characters of the letter-writers that make this whole conversation so fraudulent.

When considering an impact an enchanter has upon the field of enchantment, one concern should override all others. It is not the brilliance of new designs, the social impacts of enchantments, nor even their artistry that weighs heaviest.

No, the top concern is really whether an enchanter has waged a war of intimidation, bribery, blackmail, and even assassination on other enchanters for centuries on end. And, let us be clear, both the Butcher Tyrant of Helicote and the Mad Sphinx of Skyhold have done so.

Kanderon Crux has systematically rooted up entire traditions of enchantment via all of the above brutal methods, forcing the field away from any direction that would threaten the system of warring, autocratic great powers that she embodies. Worse, she’s spent centuries deepening that brutal system’s hold on the continent by forcing the proliferation of liches, inherently repressive and unjust beings that number among the most vile of the great powers. 

More, her specific arguments against magic swords now do not come from any deep convictions or true philosophy— instead, they’re merely one part of a multi-pronged assault she is launching on the market, to prevent or remove magical weapons from the grasp of my own nation. Though we aren’t without our own shortcomings, Havath represents the best hope against the bloody great powers, and as such, we established the Sacred Swordsmen, warlocks who pact enchanted weapons to help defend free peoples from rampaging monsters like her.

Kanderon Crux’s arguments come purely in response to a threat against her own power.

The Lord of Bells might be claimed to be arguing from a place of deeper honesty here, but calling his hypocrisy lesser to Crux’s is like claiming drinking a river is easier than drinking the ocean. It is, to spell it out baldly, utterly irrelevant to his own crimes against enchanters. He has spent centuries sending brutal assassination squads after any enchanter who dares try to reverse-engineer his own designs, especially those of his legendary echo sabres. He has spent even more effort stealing enchanters away from his neighbors— including both Ctesia and Havath— by whatever means necessary, seldom remaining in the realm of the ethical.

This whole conversation is a farce, and I beg the noble enchanters of Ctesia to turn their backs on monsters who see them solely as resources to be exploited or threats to be exterminated. There are countless others who would not only take far greater value in your work, but of your actual persons as well.

Cliya Bagden, Chancellor of the Havath Academy of Enchantment

The next entry in the conversation was not technically a letter. Instead, it came in the form of Cliya Bagden’s corpse found in the main forum of the Ctesian Enchanter’s society, suspended above a decidedly ugly-but-effective levitation enchantment that was clearly of the Lord of Bells’ design (made of the unusual alloy he uses for his swords). Bagden’s cause of death was readily apparent:

There was a magic sword, grown entirely of enchanted crystal, clearly of Kanderon Crux’s design, plunged through Bagden’s heart. Along the blade were written the following words:

“Not entirely pointless, I suppose.”

Those wishing to read the rest of the conversation between Kanderon, the Lord of Bells, and various members of the Society may do so in the volume On Magical Swords, on sale by the Ctesian Enchanter’s Society. It is, we believe, essential reading for every modern enchanter.