The Power of Ten

Chapter 5-116: Reading Material

And now we return several years later to the Powered side of the equation...

Noble wasn’t actually my last Class as a One. That honor was reserved for... Binder.

Binder was the, mmm, more abusive and flexible of the Pact Classes. Where Warlocks had a Pact with a sponsoring Patron and could eventually draw great power from it as a direct servant and arm of that entity, Binders, well, they got around.

Binders were, in effect, master Summoners, completely focused on using the might of other beings for themselves. Thus, they could advance in four related, but very different areas.

The first was access to a whole lot of spells relating to Summoning hapless spirits bound to them and Buffing them up, your typical Slavemage ploy. Sure, the spirits were just ectoforms manifesting off immortal idealized Templates, and couldn’t really die. You were still Summoning creatures up to fight and die for you. It was basically the Enchantment/Charm school, except the obedience was already in place.

The second was a personal super-familiar, an Eidolon. This was a true combat beast, strong and growing stronger with time, a nigh-immortal entity called to the Binder, much like a Druid’s animal companion, only more exotic and magical. No two Eidolons were the same, and they tended to be reflections of the desires of their masters.

The third way they gained power was swearing temporary Pacts with mysterious entities and bargaining for special powers with them on a more temporary basis. These Vestiges, Fey, and creatures of Mythos were mercurial and unpredictable, but there were tons of them, one for any particular problem you wanted, if you knew the Names of enough of them.

The last way was actually Binding and Trapping magical beings, especially Outsiders and Fey, and bargaining with them for power... something the Evil ones among that mindset were more than happy to do, for a little thing called a soul... or for much less, if the Binder was sufficiently powerful, and had access to their Truename!

The problem with all that shit was... this world was Shrouded, and there was jack all to Call on!

Basic Summon spells wouldn’t work, because you couldn’t reach the astral space where the timeless Templates dwelled. You couldn’t call an Eidolon, because whatever timeless space they dwelled in wasn’t accessible. You couldn’t call out for Vestiges and Mythos entities, because they couldn’t be reached, either...

The only thing you might be able to do was trap, Bind, and Seal magical creatures or beings that were walking around physically, which wasn’t exactly a job you got a lot of experience at, as said creatures would go around trying to make you dead before they became a target. Bargaining with said entities would be done in the most hostile of circumstances, and Binders wanted to command armies, not be engaged in hair-rising close combat to get a creature inside a Formation and Bind it so they could extract a favor or magical power in a hostile bargain or two.

In short, what Binder gave me was more Spells Known, as they were a spontaneous Caster Class with limited spells and Charisma bonuses, meshing right into the Sorcerer Valence structure. Name Theurgy meant I’d eventually be able to infuse the spells into my Sorcerer Spells Known. Oh, and I got 2 skill points, too.

I could only sigh. Oh, well, it was just a little Karma... and maybe Binding would be important in the future. There were still some powerful shitheads running around granting Pacts, after all, who deserved to be shut down.

Nineteen total Classes I was being forced to take, many of which I simply didn’t need right now and could have deferred to at least Four or Five without any problem, not caring about the increased cost at that time.

There were enough undead to pay for me to get there many times over. Rassum Frassum Shroudborn Bloodline, Death Curse, Soul Memories, and whatever else was responsible for this!...

And what was really funny was that even without the ‘new’ Classes of Magus, Witch, and Inquisitor, Aelryinth had still possessed Levels of Favored, Soulcaster, Soul Warrior, Shifter, and all the Warlock stuff, too! I could only sit and be irked alone...

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On the third day of my Writing the new Spells for those interested, the coming Wizards, Witches, Magi, scattered Clerics, and Minstrels showed up with their own Write spells, given that I was running out of them, and I was charging them for the Write spells.

In addition, in a delightful display of solidarity, Heavenbound Hall got together and started making me Wands of Write. It was a minor spell which tons of junior Casters could use, so charging up the Wand was easy, and I naturally paid the Hall full price for it, which they split with the junior Casters, making them some easy gold.

This became necessary, as I was promptly inundated with demands for scholarly work.

I didn’t necessarily know more ‘right now’ than the strongest people on the planet... but I knew there was more out there, and I had access to those memories, and of things they simply hadn’t discovered yet. Yes, they were an information-sharing society, and once they started sharing information, they could advance with speed a medieval society would have found horrifyingly fast. La Renaissance didn’t stop just because it was magic, now.

But some things just took time. I already had knowledge of the rules and laws behind much of the magical and spiritual system here, and simply a much more advanced and in-depth working knowledge of spells and magic and How Things Worked. Indeed, there were whole schools of magical thought which were simply unaddressed because with the Shroud up, you couldn’t do much with them... like a good chunk of the Summoning and Conjuration spells.

The Theurgic Classes, where you started fusing magic of different types and styles together? Or the Arch-Classes, where you increased the raw amount of spells? They had no knowledge of them.

So, me being able to take their basic knowledge of spells and Metamagicks and blow them wide open was definitely a thing.

Making Bloodbound Pages like I was took time, and money, and nobody wanted me to stop once they realized that I could literally keep going, and going, and going. Improved Standard spells, Stat-dependent iterations of spells, uniform Raised-Valence variants of spells, more flexible spells, more specialized spells... we’d had the core engine in the Power of Ten, and there were people who had exploited them all.

True to the Rule of Sylune, which mandated that those who discovered a Spell were credited with it in the name, I passed those names on. Weirdboy’s name was soon buzzing on a lot of variant Spells on another world...

Then I introduced Essence Ink on the trail of Bloodbound Ink, and sent more merchants tumbling over themselves in disbelief.

Essence Ink, often called Copyright Ink, was like Bloodbound’s little, more sociable cousin. Essence Ink allowed itself to be copied, but only in the right Essence Ink, which was basically magically attuned to the Name of a work. It wasn’t something you used to make idle notes, as there was no Name attached to such things... But The Traveler’s Guide to Basic Magical Theory had more than sufficient heft to do such a thing.

It meant that nobody could just transfer or copy the knowledge within it down to give to others. Sure, they could READ it, which was totally fine... but they couldn’t get a solid copy, post it on the internet, run it off on copiers, make hedge notes from it, or ANYTHING similar. They had to buy an original copy if they wanted one of their own, as anything that was written down or taken from it in any form just dissolved into illegible squiggles, unable to match the Name of what it was taken from.

Stealing just wasn’t possible, and even plagiarizing couldn’t happen without accreditation or citing the Name of the original knowledge, by Rule of Mimir.josei

The Good Churches had already taken steps and means to get ownership of a proper publishing house, and were aggressively expanding and training the people who would be working in one so they could make more magically-worthy Librams and Tomes and stuff.

The problem here was that I had to be the one to write the whole thing. Things. Because there was definitely a whole lot I wanted to get out there, which wouldn’t have a hostile impact on me, but would bring together a whole lot of random knowledge and make training future generations, and the current one, much easier.

Using the Write spell in Cantrip mode allowed for easy scripting of page after page of text in any font, style, and language I wanted, but I still had to plot out the book, the flow of knowledge, the charts and tables, the accompanying artwork, limning, fore-edge painting, the glossary, accreditations, index, the correct Fonts, multiple languages, and so forth.

Investing in Book Design, of all things, thus became a thing, followed by Ranks in Drawing, as I also had to do much of the scrollwork and decoration of the pages.

Thankfully, once I took the appropriate Ranks, I had plenty of examples to draw from back on Luna-Terra, as Tens obsessed with making The Perfect Book for whatever their personal obsession was were everywhere, and combining art with knowledge was basically a holy cause for Sylune, Mimir, Muse, and Aru.

All the extra ornamentation wasn’t just for showing off. Oh, no. That was the stuff that made the QL of the books skyrocket, and made it easier to read and learn from them. Masterwork stuff had its own rules, and books obeyed them, too!

Of course, you had to do all the internal stuff properly, too, and the knowledge inside had to be proper. If you were dealing with magical books, you could put in layers and layers of script and meaning that could only be unlocked by those qualified to read them properly... or put cognition traps and the like woven between words and phrases with potentially lethal intent, i.e. ‘awareness traps’.

Those were a common thing of more demonic entities, and Mythos entities loved them. Forbidden knowledge that ate your mind and soul and turned you into a demon to eat your associates was a fine, fun thing to that lot.

But I wasn’t interested in making a one-off book people would clamor to read. I wanted a widely-published book of decently high standard, of which the original copy had to be Masterwork as a minimum requirement to satisfy the Naming requirement.

It was likely going to be the first of many, so I had to set a standard, too.

Visual File was a great tool for storyboarding the whole process, working out the artwork after I Invested the Ranks in Painting and Illustration and Calligraphy to finally make the thing. Hell, I bought two Ranks in Bookbinder just to make sure it was put together correctly, and so I could work with the printers properly.

Also, I had to make up a lot of Essence Ink, and attune it to the book. Each batch of such Ink could only be attuned to one Named Book, so production was a thing that would require teams of alchemists, chemists, and their helpers. As alchemy didn’t allow you to replace the human element, there was always going to be a demand for people in anything regarding magic.

Sharing the Essence Ink formula was easy enough to do. I got a one-time payment for the formula that would change the nature of copyrighted works... and as I knew the methods to get around the copying paradigm, I could give such to the Churches who could pass muster on what a true copyright should be, and how long it should last, or if it should be allowed at all.

Even the copy-breaking methods weren’t casual, so the copyright status of the material would still apply. Buy your own, no bootlegs allowed!

Of course, this meant a copy would be supplied to any public library or temple reserve if they so desired.

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When A Traveler’s Guide to Basic Magical Theory hit the bookshelves, it set off a firestorm in several directions.

Dozens of papers, treatises, theories, and explanations of what magic was, how it worked, and where it came from had to be immediately thrown out if the suppositions within were true. The simple confirmation of developed magic on multiple worlds set off firestorms in the intellectual community – there were other planes, and then other mortal worlds existing?! They were two very different things, and meant we weren’t alone in the multiverse... just isolated.

The existence of a true Copyright sent original authors into a tizzy. Of course, the Ink wasn’t cheap, so whatever was scribed in it in had better be worth a Name and important... but everyone wanted the formula and the no-copy ability. Information sharing was good and all, but people wanted to be paid for their work, not copied and robbed.

The simple fact that the book broke down the various Casting styles and Classes and delineated so much of the basic structure of magic was ground-breaking. Everyone wanted to know who Argos was, and how he’d made his Scale; who Weirdboy was and where his Metamagic Weirding came from; and who this Mulcaster person and where his groundbreaking simplification and dizzyingly sublime rendering of the Artificing rules came from...