What is Magic?
It was a little over a year ago that I stared work on Shaper of Stone. By started work, I mean I showed someone a chapter from an anonymous author and asked if they would bother reading the rest of the book. I’m not exactly sure what I would have done had I been told that the story completely sucked. Luckily that didn’t happen, and I went on to finish the novel.
Originally I had this vision of a one handed mage who created an astral hand to replace the one that he had lost, and that morphed into a world of magic where a rare few could control matter based on it’s elemental composition. That grew into the theme for the first book Shaper of Stone and the sequel, Shaper of Air.
Shapers were rare. There numbers have never been large enough to alter the development of civilization. Magic in this world hasn’t become a replacement for science and technology, nor is it likely to ever do so. It is an oddity as likely to be feared as to be held in awe.
The magic performed by a Shaper is known as shaping. It is not the only type of magic, just the most visible to the uninitiated. The dracomen, thralkin and others practice mystic arts that have no similarities to shaping that are virtually unknown beyond their borders.
No one truly understands how any of it works. There are many theories and even more guesses, but the truth is a mystery that may never be revealed. If we knew how the magic worked, it would no longer be magical.