Work Text:
In the wake of recent events, this grand institution has been riven with a kind of whispered debate. Though my hearing is not what it once was, even I have caught wind of this scholarly sussuration — and it seems to me that two positions have begun to emerge, regarding the actions of a certain chantry at empire’s edge.
The first of these positions might be summarized as: "I know, I know. But what if...?" It is first and foremost motivated by curiosity, and invites speculation on the Guild Mage Morrow's methodology, while waving off his ethical considerations (or lack thereof).
The second might be summarized as: "We are not having this conversation." It is first and foremost motivated by fear, insisting that what was done in Port Talon was an act of misguided hubris, and that such speculations as the above are, themselves, indicative of the same sort.
For the young among you, let me first say that such disagreements are by no stretch of the imagination new to the corridors of this institution. Indeed, in one sense, they are enshrined in our very founding principles. To wit:
Principle the Third
If it exists, it can be understood.
Principle the Fourth
Our understanding is never complete.
It is often remarked upon by first-year students who have not yet learned the instructive power of paradox that these two principles appear to be in flagrant contradiction. This objection, they are in turn answered by their seniors, can be resolved by remembering that they are part of a whole. One life is finite; the Citadel marches on. Its understanding grows, ever and always, and we—its instruments—do our best to both utilize and further that understanding.
On occasions, however, our reach exceeds our grasp, and we forget to be wary of, as the Archmage Sorrow famously called it, "The doubly dark" -- that is, the things we do not know we do not know. The glassy environs of the Citadel itself are but a single example. And given that one such occasion has recently occurred, in particular involving the realms and laws of Fairy, I have been asked by my peer, Archmage Steel, to rouse myself from slumber (both literal and figurative) in order to speak to what I know of such things.
I will not recount my qualifications for doing so. As the youth say: If you don't know, you'd better ask somebody.
Now, with scholarly preamble all laid out neatly, ensuring that anything controversial said thereafter is couched in qualification, let us proceed to say some controversial things.
Based upon my experience and study, the first and last lesson an intrepid wizard must understand when undertaking dealings with the fairy world is this:
They are, from the smallest acorn spirit to the mightiest ocean primal, bound by RULES.
This may sound contrary, for a folk whose collective sobriquet is (rather fascinatingly) nearly identical across all the languages of Umora: "the wild ones". But it is indeed both fact and truth — and before you correct my repetition, reflect well on the fact that the two do not always comport.
This notion, of the fae folk being generally rules-inclined, is also the exceedingly rare matter upon which even the wiliest wizard of the Citadel and the most mystically-minded witch can often arrive, to their mutual surprise, at something slant-wise resembling agreement.
The sticking point, such as it were, is the extent to which the parameters of those rules are unique to and defined by the individual spirit, or unyielding cosmic constants bound up in the sparkle-stuff of magic itself. And, by extension, whether they can ever be truly and completely KNOWN (in the spirit of the Third Principle, as one can know the names of elements or bands of light) or must simply be FELT (in the manner of a witch’s magic, as one feels a song composed in minor key to be sad, or a sunbeam to be sacred).
We know, for example, that the fairy folk tend to place a high premium on social etiquette. Certainly the average roadside tavern does not lack for whispered tales of those who, say, denied a chilly Honored Friend a spot by their campfire, and were soon afflicted with a curse such that they might never feel warm again. And it is noteworthy, in this humble scrivener's opinion, that these riddles of hospitality the fae folk seem so often to vex us with rarely conflict overmuch with a layman's definition of "basic good manners", whatever that definition may be.
But here too lies a wrinkle. For we know that such social mores change from place to place, and peoples to peoples. To spit upon the boots of a stranger might see one lose an eye on the docks of Carrow, yet out here amid the dunes it is an expected greeting. What, then, is one to do when encountering a fairy upon the border betwixt?
To spit, or to swallow? To ask, or hold tongue?
How do we reconcile the empirically observable fact that these ancient and immortal fae folk so often expect—indeed demand—customs of etiquette that seem by impossible coincidence to align perfectly with human cultures which they, the creatures themselves, often PREDATE?
What is the proper teatime etiquette, when serving a spirit who is OLDER THAN TEA?
Surely there can be no explanation but the dismissive: that these "rules" are merely the idiosyncracies of fickle minds who like to test and tease us. And if that be the case, then surely we learned big-city wizards can safely cast them aside, as we would the folksy superstitions of a rustic bumpkin.
Yet even a moment's consideration will reveal that this explanation lacks rigor. It simply does not account for the myriad tales (often beloved by wizards) in which, let us say, the less honorable of our Honored Friends, wishing some mortal a cruel end, finds themselves thwarted unexpectedly by legalistic turnabout. A phrase missed. A loophole discovered. Petard seized, and wielded to hoist the hoister. Indeed, it has often been remarked that dealings with that other world resemble nothing so much as a sort of high-stakes contract law, the mechanisms of which seem to bind the hands of opposing counsel quite as readily as they do our own.
I will not pretend to be able to resolve this dispute -- for indeed, it is upon the horns of this very dilemma that the phonotactics of the Lingua Arcana itself were first forged. There is a power to the Known, but so too the Unknown, and we wizards owe the latter a debt precisely as great as that which is owed to the former, no matter how often we elect to forget that fact.
And it is a fact. And it is a truth.
Thus I will simply drive home the essential point, and leave you with this:
Be they laws or mere preferences, there is undeniably a veil of social Something that envelops and enshrouds our Honored Friends. And when we treat with them, we step into and through that veil, and must do so with the curious-but-humble spirit befitting members of an institution ostensibly devoted to higher learning. For if we do not, we open the door to sudden tutelage of the most unpleasant sort.
And as the farmers of Toma say: "An open door is an invitation."
Silence
Archmage of the Citadel