Why Nine Spell Levels?

 For Aclas

I’ve been thinking about how my practitioner does and doesn’t fit the actual thoughts I have about how Aclan magic works. This is basically a ramble on that subject. 

But, in essence, I’m trying to explain why there are nine spell levels, and why I think every wizard should know Fireball and Dispel Magic.

First Level - Simple Circuits

The most simple class of spells. Can be drawn out in about six seconds, give or take for the hand-eye coordination of the Practitioner in question. Magic flows round the circuit, and effect is achieved. 

Note, that ‘Simple’ need not mean ‘Weak’. Some of history’s most devastating spells - for example, the indefatigable Magic Missile and the thousand imitators thereof - are of the First Level. 

The amount of magic needed to activate a Simple Circuit is the measurement for 1 Thaum, the standard unit of magic. 

Second Level - Concentric Circuits 

Circuits of the Second Level employ layered or combined Simple Circuits to produce a variety of effects. This is as far as a static, easily drawn circuit can go - beyond this point, it takes too long to scribe out the actual circuit in a high stress situation, facilitating the need for fireproof ‘spellbooks’, spell tattoos and engraved circuits. 

The Second Level is by far the most common of the Spell Levels. 

Famous spells such as the lost Sending, the banned Invisibility, the extremely banned Charm Person and the beloved Magic Mouth are in this Level. 

Not all of a Spell’s function need be contained inside the caster’s circuit - Identify, for example, is a Second Level spell that connects your circuit to another, much more powerful spell, allowing you to reference the extensive texts of the Great Library of Shere without needing to physically have them. 

Third Level - Attuning Circuits

At the Third Level, specially designed circuits can adapt to the presence of other circuits, conforming to their shapes or responding to their stimuli. 

The most famous of these is the venerable (and well-used) Counterspell, which connects to and breaks an activating circuit before the effect can even begin. 

Animate Dead and Nondetection, for example, both ‘attune’ to the specific body they are cast on, fitting snugly to the dimensions of the corpse or the fugitive, as is required. Protection from Heat grows stronger in proportion with the heat it is protecting from, as do Protection from Cold and Protection from Rain. 

Fourth Level - Ongoing Circuits 

At the Fourth Level, a Circuit can repeat as long as the Practitioner has power to make it do so, sustaining the effect over longer durations than previously possible. 

Classically, Wall of Fire and Freedom of Movement are Ongoing Circuits, maintaining a long-sustained effect for as long as the Practitioner can handle it. 

Dimension Door produces a long row of many low-power micro-teleports in the blink of an eye, avoiding the classic problems (fragmentation, interpolation, destabilisation) of teleport effects, in exchange for a limited range. 

Control Water nudges all affected water, then resets to nudge again twice per second. Greater Invisibility repairs itself automatically when the effect is broken by strenuous movement or extremely bright light, and the theoretical spell Polymorph maintains a constant fight with the target’s soul to prevent it from transforming them back via sheer ontological inertia. 

Fifth Level - Responding Circuits 

Spells of the Fifth Level can be modulated while their effect is in progress - paused, accelerated, empowered or redirected. 

Consider Delayed Blast Fireball - a name which pedants love to bring up as "technically inaccurate" at trivia nights - which can be, well, Delayed - you prepare the explosion, then brake it. 

Arcane Hand responds to the manipulations of the Practitioner’s dominant hand, allowing for extremely precise control of what would otherwise be a very unwieldy implement. 

The banned and widely-reviled spell Dominate Person can be made to lie quietly dormant for years at a time, preserving its energy for when the enchanter needs to unbrake it, to reassert control over the unfortunate under the spell’s effect. 

Far Step is another attempt to solve the Teleportation Problem - one massive, slow teleport effect, released in short fits and starts to fling oneself many short, safe distances, instead of one long, dangerous one. 

Sixth Level - Sustaining Circuits

Spells of the Sixth Level can repeat themselves without needing to draw the power straight from the Practitioner - from whence they actually gather it varies, but often the spell’s design is complex enough for it to simply use the comparatively greater investment of power when first cast in a more efficient manner. 

Scrying, for example, produces an observation circuit at the target location, which self-sustains until the Practitioner is finished looking through it. 

Chain Lightning is simply Lightning with the ability to sustain, repeating itself over and over with slightly less power until it fizzles out on grass and mice. 

One of the theorised suggestions for the secret of the terrible spell Disintegrate - not widely taught outside of the isolated island of Kawo - is that it is simply a Sustained Magic Missile, firing over and over again, hundreds of times a millisecond. 

Seventh Level - Expanding Circuits 

Spells of the Seventh Level can create new effects while their main one is ongoing, in response either to the Practitioner's demands, or to set conditions. 

Finger of Death can switch halfway from a fairly simple murder-spell into a dense, streamlined version of Animate Dead. 

Magnificent Mansion carves out a supernal pocket dimension, then builds rooms into it based on the Practitioner’s commands.  

The lost spell Sequester was famous for its ability to have durationless conditions set for its ending - creatures and warriors appearing from thin air when the conditions were met, with no time having passed for them, but years having passed on the outside.

Some spells simply need Expanding Circuits to achieve their effect. Reverse Gravity (and the theoretical Teleport) need a great deal of “If, X, Then, Y”, subcircuits, for odd edge cases such as, for example, very very heavy things, and creatures currently in flight. 

Eighth Level - Cascading Circuits

Spells of the Eighth Level can be set on runaway cascade processes, drawing magic from surrounding sources of energy to power effects that reach far beyond the thaumic capability of a single mortal. 

The simplest, most notorious spell of the Eighth Level is Horrid Wilting, the famous thought experiment of the necromancer Avrendus - it is a cascading circuit which is confined to a small area, and nothing more. Cascading millions of times a second, it rapidly extracts all heat, magic and other energy from the targeted area, leaving it completely still, frozen, and dead - before using the stolen energy to simply end its own effect and disperse the excess. 

The spell Demiplane produces a self-sustaining pocket dimension by means of an ongoing cascade expansion fighting against the inevitable contraction all pocket dimensions undergo, achieving equilibrium. Current legislation has banned the use of Demiplane among the very, very few wizards that can actually cast it, until the Constellar Commission can figure out where the spare energy is coming from. 

Mighty Fortress, a famous ancient spell, is a cascade matter-production and matter-arrangement spell - start the effect, go have a cup of tea, and come back to a cascade generated fortress with tolerably confusing architecture. 

Ninth Level - Autonomous Circuits

Spells of the Ninth Level are famous for their Autonomy - that is, the spell can adapt itself efficiently and appropriately to stimuli without the need for the Practitioner to do anything.  Ninth Level spells are effectively mythical. Certainly, no joe schmo Practitioner on the street fixing door-hinges for a living knows anything about them. 

These spells are fire and forget - once cast, they simply happen, adapting and transforming the circumstances to produce far-reaching, highly potent effects. 

Foresight makes billions of predictions a second under its own power, then picks the twenty or so the human brain can handle at once, and delivers them in a neat bow without needing to be told to do so. 

Meteor Swarm begins a high-level cascade of highly unstable chain-teleports to bring pieces of cosmic debris screaming down on pillars of radioactive fire - when the need for overkill arises.

The theoretical spell Kill is the most elegant form of the simple murder spell - it anticipates and overcomes all possible defenses in a fraction of a millisecond, then carries out the most energy-efficient form of total destruction. 

Some say these spells have a faint will of their own - Invulnerability activates itself in moments of terror, Meteor Swarm grows stronger when cast in blind rage, Shapechange is weak and paltry for those with an inflexible mindset, and, in what tales are told of the mythical Wish, the spell’s propensity for following one’s exact words surely implies malign intelligence. 

+

A spell of a given level has all of the traits of the levels before it. 

A Second Level spell is technically ‘Standard’, and Concentric. 

A Seventh Level spell is Standard, Concentric, Attuning, Controllable, Sustaining and Expanding. 

+

Side Note: Power Words

The Power Word spells are older than known civilization. The famous Power Words every mage thinks of are actually twofold - the Word itself, in an unknown language which rings the ears and heats the air in one’s lungs, and the Circuit which allows the wizard to speak it without the customary repercussion - that is to say, combustion. 

+

The Special Case - The Zeroth? Level

Fireball and Dispel Magic are (and this is a neat little secret), the same spell. The wizards of the Academy of Kelesh refer to it as Ur-Spell, or Zero, because it is by definition the first thing a wizard learns to do: the aimed release of energy. The wizards of the College of Spires refer to it as Blast, because, well, that’s accurate. Most other wizards call it, at least in its first stage, Prestidigitation, or Cantrip. 

Consider the two classic wizard’s tricks - snap your fingers to light a small flame, snap your fingers to end one of your spells. The fingersnap is the spell - producing a momentary, rudimentary circuit with your thumb and your middle finger, then snapping it, releasing the energy, and letting sparks fly. 

In a very real way, magic is fire. 

Reality is built in layers - when you destroy the physical layer, you shred buildings, ignite flesh, rip cobble from cobble with black smoke and the rumble of thunder. When you destroy the supernal layer, you quietly rend circuit from circuit, enchantment from relic, spell from source and magic from vis - it is quieter, but no less apocalyptic. 

This is why spirits scream, and angels cover their ears, when you cast Dispel Magic. 

Physical and Supernal, are the two layers the Practitioner reaches with ease. But what of the others - can a mage burn the spirit world without needing to go there? Send quiet death rushing through the twilit half-realm of the umbral plane? Rend irreparably the forms of thought, by unleashing Zero on the enlightened plane? Burn the very skin of God herself?