A Short Note on the Origin of Magic Power

Though exceptions exist, a person's attunement to magic appears to be largely inherited. The existence of the so-named mage families, not to mention the royal bloodlines, are strong proof that magic capacity is a factor inherently tied to blood.

At least, that is the understanding that is promulgated as absolute truth. I have my own doubts about the matter.

The greatest unresolved question in magic theory is that of the "unblooded prodigal"- a mage of exceptionally strong capability who does not have any ancestors of remotely notable magical power. The number of such individuals, while not large, is sufficient to hint at explanations of magic ability other than blood.

Allow me to indulge in a moment of heresy- perhaps it is that magic power is not actually inherited?

It is not a secret that the mage families are notoriously reticent. Most sons and daughters of famous mage bloodlines only attend magic academies after the age of 16 (if at all), at which point their magical abilities are already largely developed. Could it be that the key to their abilities is some method of special training during the formative years? If so, this would explain their reluctance to openly share the secrets to their fame and power.

Needless to say, these are dangerous speculations.

A Short Note on Elven Seers

The mechanism behind the appearance of demonic hordes is still unknown to even the best minds of the world, but this does not prevent the prediction of such catastrophic events. Throughout history, several seers have been known to be able to accurately foretell the timing of demonic invasions; almost all these prophets are elves, or of elven blood. This is not to suggest that the elves possess some special quality that affords them particular prescience; rather, this is simply an result of elven lifespans, the immediate nature of predictions, and the frequency of demonic appearances.

With a considerably large margin of variation, demonic invasions tend to occur about once or twice a century on average. Therefore, most of the free and good peoples of the land, humans in particular, would only experience one or at most two demon invasion events in their entire lifespans. On the other hand, even the best of divinations is only able to foretell an event a decade in advance. The combination of these two factors means that it is very difficult to assess the accuracy of would-be seers specializing in predicting demonic invasions. A single correct prediction could easily be a fluke of chance; a second correct prediction made fifty years later would provide more convincing evidence of the seer's prescience. However, considering the lifespan of a typical human, it is very unlikely that a confirmed seer would live to be able to make a third forecast. An elf, or on occasion a half-elf, would not suffer from this problem; their greater lifespan would even allow more opportunities to confirm their predictive efficacy.

A Short Note on the Structuring of Monster Bounties

I recently had a prolonged talk with a senior clerk of a well-known Adventurers' Guild, and learned a great deal about the workings of monster bounties. While most of us will only understand bounties as being well-illustrated posters with a description of the task to be undertaken and a reward to be dispensed upon completion, there is actually an art to the creation of the bounty poster.

An uninformed person, such as I myself was before my conversation with the clerk, would think that the most important detail when creating a bounty poster was to accurately price the reward. I was quickly informed that this was in fact incorrect; the prize money was itself secondary; correctly describing and scoping the quest was an order more important.

The clerk then accounted to me several instances where the bounty task was improperly designed, leading to worse outcomes. Consider the most basic of quests available to adventurers, which is that of eliminating common pests or wandering beasts. Not only once has an inexperienced guildsclerk offered a reward on each rat or wild snake killed and brought in; the bounty was quickly exploited by unscrupulous adventurers who subsequently began breeding and farming the very creatures they were supposed to eliminate! Thus, it is a common practice nowadays for bounty descriptions to mention concrete outcomes such as the permanent removal of a specific threat.

Another mistake is to be too specific in the methods to be applied. As a general rule, bounties should not restrict the approach adventurers can take in handling a problem. For example, if one offered a reward for the defeat of a dragon in order to release the captive princess, it might be a long time before a sufficiently strong hero capable of slaying a dragon actually arrives. On the other hand, if the specific task (rescuing the princess) was presented as a quest, then other more feasible alternatives become possible, such as a stealthy operation into the dragon's lair. Of course, if the task were phrased instead as that of obtaining the princess' freedom, then even more possibilities present themselves, such as negotiation with the dragon itself.

A Short Note on Adventurers' Guilds

For some reason, adventurers are much more capable of dealing with monsters and demonic threats than standing armies. From data compiled by the royal historians, of the last 100 threats rated as "Kingdom-threatening" and above, 90 were defeated by adventurers, and only 10 were successfully resolved using armies.

The obvious realization should be that soldiers and knights are a waste of money, and ineffective at dealing with such problems in the first place. In fact, in many small kingdoms and independent city states, it has become increasingly popular to reduce the army to a small core of soldiers, and to use the resulting savings to establish and fund "Adventurers' Guilds". For the unacquainted, Adventurers' Guilds are state sanctioned bodies to organize adventurers and channel them towards useful work. The most basic guilds can be as simple as a bulletin board to advertise monster bounties and a clerk to handle bounty claims. On the other hand, the more elaborate guilds offer other services such as training, healing, and equipment maintenance.

Of course, several mistakes were made in the initial iterations of Adventurers' Guilds. Open bounties that could be attempted by everyone had the tendency to attract people attempting to make a quick fortune, but who were not sufficiently skilled for the task. While this did not drain the state's resources, as no payout was made to failed bounty attempts, it resulted in an overall loss to national productivity as labor was lost to failed adventuring, not to mention the possibility of lives being lost in reckless bounty attempts. After undergoing much experimentation, the majority of Adventurers' Guilds today incorporate some kind of tiering system for adventurers, gating the scope of available quests for adventurers of different skill.

A Short Note on Infinite Dungeons

To a surface dweller, the natural laws of an infinite dungeon would appear all but identical to that of the surface, and thus it is not an uncommon belief that infinite dungeons are merely extremely deep underground structures not unlike mines or tunnels. A more learned study would reveal such opinions to be strictly incorrect. For example, when one ventures deep into a natural mine shaft, the ambient temperature rises, and the airflow quickly becomes stagnant. These conditions do not occur even in the deepest floors of infinite dungeons; the temperature and airflow are consistent on all floors of an infinite dungeon.

Of course, I omit some of the most obvious observations that argue for the magical nature of an infinite dungeon. The first is the endless nature of the dungeon itself; each infinite dungeon discovered thus far has had no limit its number of floors. Each day, lower and lower floors are still being discovered and cleared, though progress slows the deeper one goes; supplies are the main issue there.

The next observation is simple to make; one has no problem seeing in infinite dungeons. To be more exact, the underground ceilings of floors in infinite dungeons emit light no less bright than that the surface, though no much heat seems to be given off. The process is not yet understood as anything other than magic, though that magic seems more a property of the dungeon rather than that of the ceiling material; a block chipped off from the ceiling walls fails to emit light when removed from the dungeon.

Now, having explained some of the properties of infinite dungeon, it is possible to conceive how infinite dungeons can support life. In effect, most of the parameters required to sustain life are present in infinite dungeons, as conditions are almost identical to that of the surface. The main constraint would be the lack of a full water cycle in the infinite dungeon; there is no rain. This is not to suggest that there is no water, however; some floors do possess a supply of water, and larger floors may even have ponds or lakes. The main problem is the scarcity of liquid water; as there is insufficient space within even the largest floors for rain clouds to form, the constantly lit environment causes most liquid water to eventually evaporate. This explains the high humidity present inside infinite dungeons. Instead of rain, water is mainly recycled in the form of dew that condenses on shadowed crevices and chambers, and by dungeon creatures that have special adaptations to harvest the water content of present in the air. For humans permanently settled in infinite dungeons, water is extracted using a series of large black sheets. The outermost sheet serves to block off the ceiling light, allowing the lower sheets to cool off in the shadow. Dew then collects on the cooler lower sheets. Conveniently, the shadows cast by the black sheets creates an artificial darkness which is otherwise absent in the dungeon; most dungeon settlers rest during this man-made "night", and wake to collect their condensed water.

Decimation

The relic I was hunting down was an ancient one, with sparse records of its use dating as far back as Roman times. Of course, given the mythical origins of all relics, Humanity's first contact with this particular relic might have been even earlier, especially given the nature of this relic.

Its name was Decimation, so named after the ancient Roman punishment. In truth, the Roman practice was only a pale approximation of Decimation's abilities, which is rather chilling to consider. Whereas the practice of decimation was the removal of a tenth of a population, Decimation, when activated against a selected victim, erases the victim from history. And the victim's ancestors. Tenfold, back ten generations.

If observing from a point of view isolated from the time ripples resulting from Decimation's use, as allowed by certain other relics, then Decimation might be considered amongst the deadliest of relics. Entire races and civilizations have been erased from history by the removal of one or more key persons, or their ancestors.

The current owner of this relic was living in an utterly nondescript home in the suburbs, without any of the trappings of grandeur that most owners fall into. I might even have been convinced that he was unaware of the relic's magical nature, but the use of nondetection veils had already suggested otherwise.

Based on my research, he was simply a professor of history at a small university. I suppose he must have come across Decimation during one of his work trips overseas, several of which were apparently partly self-funded; it was possible that he was actively seeking out the relic through his travels in South America and Central Africa.

I waited until the professor had fallen asleep before breaking into his home. I did this with the help of a lesser relic, of course; teleporting in was the stealthiest option, though I lost the ability to make a quick escape. There was no choice. The relic had to be secured at all costs, as any use would be catastrophic.

My calculations proved to be incorrect. I did not manage to retrieve Decimation, as it was locked securely behind the steel walls of a safe. At the same time, the professor would not have been able to use the relic in defence. But he didn't need to; perhaps my overspecialization in fighting other relic owners blinded me.

I heard a distinct click in the darkness of the room. The cocking of a hammer. A human shadow against the cracks for the blinded window.

"I suppose you've come for the relic." the Professor spoke from across the room.

The distance was too far to bridge in an instant. Not all was lost, though; he seemed willing to speak. If I could drag things out, then there might be a moment of distraction sufficient for me to close in. Given the cover of darkness, he might even miss me.

"You don't know the power of what you have, do you?"

"I'm afraid you're incorrect. Regrettably, I do know."

Perhaps it was the silence of the night, or the tension of the situation, but I felt a chill down my spine. It was not possible- he couldn't have.

"D-did you-"

"Yes. But I'm not insane, you know, nor a monster. I just wanted to know whether it was all true. Whether relics indeed exist. But rest assured that I'm not insane; I'm not going to risk deleting myself and Western civilization just to learn something. That's why I'm wielding a gun, not Decimation. "

"But you did use Decimation?"

"Yes. If anything, the greatest difficultly was figuring out a scenario to apply it with minimal consequences to known history. Obviously, I couldn't use it anywhere in the modern world; people are too interconnected and interbred to take such a risk. Sure, I could be fairly confident that I wouldn't be erasing my ancestors, but I wouldn't want to accidentally eliminate, say, the inventor of the internet or some major historical figure. Any changes could easily have cascading aftereffects."

If he had used the weapon, then-

"The problem, then, was to find the least important and most isolated populations of people. Suffice to say that I've tested its effects to my satisfaction. And gladly, nothing has changed, except for a few footnotes here and there."

At this moment, I didn't know whether a good opportunity had presented itself, but I found myself charging forward all the same.

A Room of Killers I

No one else appears to be aware that everyone in the mysteriously sealed mansion was an infamous murderer.

To be absolutely accurate, not everyone was an infamous serial killer of some sort, and not everyone was totally ignorant of the criminal natures of the people in the room. I was the singular exception to both of these.

People have always commented on my problematic interest in crime news of the macabre sort. In hindsight, perhaps they were correct. The cause of these unusual circumstances might have been the result of my unique knowledge and interests. This was certainly not tempered by the fact that I had on several occasions wished to observe the most heinous of criminals up close.

Then again, if I was only an innocent party randomly inserted into this artificial situation, then I can only shudder at the outcome if I lacked my special insights.

The immediate question was, what was the purpose of this scenario? A set of rooms totally closed off from the outside, with sufficient supplies to last everyone for a week at best.

Even without knowing that everyone else is a murderer, someone will eventually come to the conclusion that the solution is to kill. 

Of course, if one was already a murderer, and a serial killer at that, then the thought process would be accelerated many fold.

And if everyone knew that everyone else was a murderer...

Judging from the state of relative calm, nobody has come to a similar conclusion yet. At the very least, nobody has acted suspiciously, or expressed any hints that they knew anyone else's identity.

A single pindrop might change all of this in an instant.

There was only one thought in my mind: How could everyone be killed?