The Stays Daily Telegraph, a broadsheet printed by House Tannith ran a comic illustration. In first panel, a group of mage sit around a table luncheon. The caption reads “They have agreed not to mention the Question of Classification.” In the second panel, the table is overturned. Mages bludgeon each other with flatware. Hats are punched flat, dishes and spells fly. The caption reads, “They mentioned it.”
The Question of Classification has consumed the theoretical magic community for a generation. The previous system of (abjuration, conjuration, enchantment, evocation, illusion, necromancy, and transmutation), a system that fits so nearly into the sevenfold paradigm, has suffered several esoteric but devastating blows. The recent discovery of a divinatory spells dealing both psychic and force damage have pushed an faction of soothsayers to claim they represent an 8th Grand School. Healing magic was shown to be the inverse of necrotic damage, not a separate class of power form evocation. Illusionists wrested some light-magic away from Evokers, who in turn split into Elementalists and a bewildering array of sub-factionalists.
A few hoary old souls still support the Grand Schools unconditionally, but tempers run high. Profs. Velpish and Furitan of the Academy Unseen fought a duel over dancing lights classification as either illusion or evocation magic. At a faculty dinner, a visiting lecturer was heard to shout, “If cure wounds is Necromancy then I am a jackass!” to which another guest replied, “Pray ma’am, we are not discussing polymorph at this time.”
To head off further degradation of magic relations in Capital, a 3rd Ecumenical Spell Council was convened to redecide where spells would land in curricula and books printed in Capital. At the conclusion of the Council it was of course made illegal to begin questioning the assignations for the customary 100 years and a day.
Nothing output by this council affects practical mages, of course, who cheerfully reference spell-tables four centuries out of date or sometimes even a few decades ahead of the curve.
Selected Excerpts Captured by Council Reporters
Master Jives, Evoker of Ketrix: “If you’d read my latest paper, Gorrik, you’d know that all sane mages consider Flesh to Stone to be entwined spells: one to destroy flesh and one to create stone in its form! And since according to Maston’s Heirarchy creation effects take precedence over destruction effects, the spell-pair must be classified as elemental in nature!”
Gorrik, Concordant Envoy: “Flesh to Stone is clearly an transfigurative transmutation and not an elemental effect! Only a buffoon would replace flesh directly! (addressing hte presiding mage) With the president’s permission, this one would like to do the good deed casting the spellform on Jives so that we all might be relieved of hearing another of his ideas on any subject.”
High Wizard K’trey: “Lock/Unlock Spells clearly use unseen hands for lock-picking legerdemain, and their formulae should fall into the “Force/Manipulations” section of all but the most sloppy apprentice’s Spell Books”
Seven-Man Army: “If you follow the Morgstern Conjecture – not that you would, of course – you’d see that Lock/Unlock spells clearly are Transformative effects. The lock is simply replaced with a materially indistinguishable lock in a different state!”
High Wizard K’trey: “I’ve been following Morgstern’s hacky ramblings since before you were shoveling Firedrake guano. The use of ‘replace’ reveals your true agenda! Next you’ll tell me that on the Keyless Plane, each of our Prime Locks finds it’s long-lost identical twin in the opposing state, and this minor hedge-charm merely swaps them! Quantum Locks, pah! Now that’s a new one for my ear-trumpet!”
Seven-Man Army: “You’re not even worthy to speak Morgstern’s name! And as soon as the committee has raised funds to fill in the crater we’ll put up a proper memorial statue. Breaking out the old ‘Plane of Ideal Forms’ theory then? I think Prime Plane of Dunces is missing at least one exemplar. Replacing a lock with an equivalent un-locked form is no more of a stretch than polymorphing one creature into another.”
Abraxas the Black: “It was by my thaumograph that I first identified, cataloged, and even painted portraits of the diminutive demons responsible for most diseases! But your prejudicial codification is plain as day and would undoubtedly allocate this type of important research as a démodé “Dark Art!” It’s positively unenlightened!”
First Healer Manwe: “Your so-called thaumograph is closer to a thaumometer than to a true spectumating instrument. Remember your famous rant about “cheese devils” that you’d spotted through your ‘micro-scry’ instrument? I can’t believe you’d even show your face in this hall after that debacle.”
Abraxas the Black: “The cheese devils are real! I’ve seen them! I’ve summoned them! I still hear their curdling screams!”
Paranoid D&D 