An excerpt from the Corps manual on the education of the masses, edited by Vultu

[Haer Dalis 83]

[A dark-cover bound book, displaying a crow's fountain pen on the front, begins to appear on the shelves of the major libraries of Ephia's Wall]

The following text is an attempt to educate the masses about the intricacies of a studied, organized, and safe approach to magic. To combat a rampant simplification of all arcane subjects, the text will examine various spells among the best known to the general public, investigating their difficulties in an attempt to show the world of complexity that lies behind an apparent accessibility.

[Haer Dalis 83]

thysoo'hartu'ferzah'gamsh

Commonly known as Bull's Strength.

One of the best known and most misunderstood spells. How many times has a wizard had to suffer the incessant requests of an adventurer for this spell? How many times has a magician, after years of study and sacrifice to master the enormous complexity of a spell that modifies the very physiological structure of an individual, had to be reprimanded by a mercenary for the inadequacy of a certain casting instance?

Let's try to clarify the functioning of the spell starting from the breakdown of his real name. You may be wondering, in fact, what law underlies such a radical transmutation. How are the muscles of a human being modified in order to provide an increased, sometimes even doubled, supply? Let's start by emphasizing how the spell, in most cases, has a focus on the upper part of the human body, therefore the torso and arms. In fact, these are the parts of the human body whose contribution is most required in the situations in which the spell is used, and it is therefore natural for the spell to focus on these.

How? First of all, it is necessary to illustrate, especially for those who are not versed in knowledge of human anatomy, that the blood supply which is generated by the heart and then carried to the more peripheral parts of the body, differs in the upper half and the lower half, being different the vessels that carry the vital liquid. The heart, and pardon the pun, of the spell therefore resides in the very organ that keeps us alive. The central part of the spell, the hartu rune is placed at heart level, and a slight sign of depth is imprinted on it, to allow it to cross our muscle tissues and reach the actual organ. Here it has a fundamental effect, that of making human blood more viscous and therefore more resistant to compression.

The second part of the spell is more extensive, and touches the main muscles of the upper part of the human body. A ferzah hardening rune applied through a Web of Nayx affects the arms and torso, making the muscle fibers less elastic, stiffer, but also more capable of supporting a greater load. In fact, some subjects of the spell notice a slight, albeit fleeting, discomfort in the limbs, which in case of incorrect application of the ferzah rune, could give the impression of belonging to a puppet.

The combination of these two effects makes the application of Af-Arazim's law of viscous vessels practical, allowing the muscles of the body to exert considerably increased pressure and the joints to bear the leverage effect.

Then there are two other runes that are applied during the casting of the spell.

One is a thysoo rune, that is applied as first of the sequence to prepare the body to receive the transmutation. As always, upon modification the human body responds with rejection. The thysoo rune, applied to the temples, has a soothing effect almost imperceptibly raising the pain threshold and allowing the body to undergo the modification without being hindered. It also has the absolutely welcome effect of avoiding the subject the puppet effect we were talking about earlier, which would make him perceive his own body as not his own, affecting that muscle memory on which so many subjects of the spell rely for their own survival.

The last rune that is applied, the gamsh, is perhaps the most important and it is the one that will determine the effectiveness of the spell. As any self-respecting wizard knows after reading the second edition of Yerh Fastre's "Spells, and Recalcitrant Subjects", the human mind has limiters in place that prevent the full use of the body to avoid permanent damage due to a maximum and constant effort, and also maintain a certain margin of maneuver in the event that dangers or extreme situations require us to exert a greater than usual effort. The existence of these limiters would completely invalidate the effects of all the previous runes: the human mind, accustomed to seeing the muscles of one's body working at a certain regime, would not be able to adapt to a higher level of functioning and would not be able to require such efforts. Yerh Fastre's studies on the functioning of such limiters, and even more so his theory of the weave expressed in "Magical Paths and Ramifications within the Human Body" show us the paths in the body along which these limiters take effect and in which points the nodes of this interweaving, which he refers to as "bottlenecks", reduce the flow and perception. The effect of the gamsh rune, this one too applied at the cerebral level, has the goal of identifying the two nodes of interest, farfalle and yagret, and executing a short circuit, offering the Yerh Fastre weave a new path, with less resistance.
It is here that the greatest difficulty of the spell lurks, because the bodily perception of the subject in terms of strength is now no longer based on the experience and the calibration of the limiters performed in the years from birth to adolescence, but on a construct magic held up by the rune. Creating a new path that is too loose would have the effect of pushing the subject to use more force than the body can offer, with devastating consequences on the subject's health. On the other hand, a path that still offers too much resistance to the passage of perception would make the spell ineffective. Hence the variability of the effects of the sequence of runes, and the particular ability of magicians specialized in the school of transmutation in applying it to the fullest.

[Haer Dalis 83]

shailah+artyof'combrai'uughfrei-***-***

Commonly known as Magic Weapon.

Spell of great utility and widespread diffusion, its first application tends to be attributed to George Constable, the first to detail its principles in his pamphlet "A sharp sword cuts more than a rounded one".
Unlike common belief, the spell is more refined than one might think since it contains three different principles, applied from time to time depending on the object you want to target. As the greatest battle masters know, the weapons available to mankind can be classified into three macro-categories, based on the physical principle that determines their danger and this classification is followed by profoundly different battle styles.
In the following we will detail the first of the three aspects of the magic weapon spell.

The first sequence of runes that we will examine is the one that applies to bludgeoning weapons. Weapon master Asef ibn al-Ahed, a great expert on weapons such as the hammer or the morningstar, defines bludgeoning weapons as those whose principle of effectiveness is based on the concept of impact. Of all the weapons these are the ones that, according to the Baz'eel's weapon master, most of all convey the strength of the wielder. Men of great strength or large size should always favor this type of weapon to maximize the effectiveness of their physical characteristics in battle.
How does the magic weapon spell amplify the effectiveness of such weapons? The principle behind this version of the rune sequence is based on a now ancient text by a gnome engineer named Burty Fizzingbuns titled "Touching Surfaces and Non-Touching Surfaces" detailing the variation in the transmission of forces between two objects based on the surface area that is in contact. It didn't take long for the first magicians to make Fizzingbuns theory their own, merging it with another rather unknown theory at the time. In fact, a character of dubious nature and dubious tastes (according to some, his stay in the sewers was more a choice than an obligation), a self-proclaimed slimemancer named Jimmy No-Bones, had at the time advanced the first hints of what would later become the "principle of the invisibility of surface imperfections" by Augustus Field, claiming to be able to smooth the surface of a hammer by immersing it inside a gelatinous cube and thus increasing its effectiveness. The experiment proved to be a failure and even more lethal for the experimenter, but it had now laid the foundations of Field's principle.
In fact, what was discovered in the following years was that a "controlled" application of corrosive material smoothes a blunt surface making it flat. In this way the contact surface that transmits the user's force is dramatically increased, augmenting the effectiveness of the weapon, be it a hammer, a mace or a club.

How, then, is a magic weapon spell performed on a blunt weapon? As you may have already noticed from the spell's magical name, this is made up of three runes in sequence.

The first is a rune of heat, of low power, artyof. This rune has the purpose of acting on the small amount of corrosive material that the magician holds in his hands, heating it (author's note: never forget to store the corrosive reagent into an area of your bag that is specifically prepared , lest one risks corrosion of other more delicate ingredients, such as cat hair or bat guano). This rune was not part of the spell initially. It was only after several failures that it was added, when it was found that a corrosive material, subjected to low heat, becomes more malleable.

The second rune, combrai, is a rune of matching. Its purpose is to create a bond of necessity, as explained by Yerh Fastre in the text "Necessity, how the world is and how it should be", which binds the corrosive material to the surface on which it is to be applied. During the execution of the rune the magician must slowly thin the corrosive material (author's note: the use of resistant gloves or a form of prestidigitation for remote manipulation is recommended) to transform it as similar as possible to a patina, which must then be made to settle on the surface of the object in question. At this point the combrai rune acts on the basic principles of adherence and adhesion, ensuring that the spell works as expected. It is at this moment that the magician must pause for a few seconds (author's note: it is experience in this case that tells a magician how long to wait) and let the corrosive patina act on the surface to smooth out the bumps.

The third rune in the sequence, uughfrei, is an air rune. Its purpose is trivially to envelop the object that is the target of the spell in a current of surface air. If you are wondering why, you should review Marco Capalbi's text "Melf and corrosion, how to stop before bones". The caster's purpose is to smooth the surface roughness of the weapon in question. It was therefore necessary to find a solution that would allow the removal of the corrosive patina. If the reagent used for the spell is of high quality, it has been found that subjecting it to the action of air (even better if cold) is the best way to exhaust its corrosive effect.

The union of the three aforementioned runes, if applied with skill and correct timing, has over the years allowed old maces and tangles of branches that have been given the shape of a club to acquire properties that make them extremely dangerous weapons.