Enchantments

An “enchantment” is considered to be a spell that uses the magic of the caster to temporarily imbue an item with energy that gives it an unnatural effect upon itself, others, or its surroundings.

Due to the laws of magic, which state that unique forms of magic cannot, will not, and should not be mixed together, you can only have one enchantment on an item at any given time.

Wards are considered to be enchantments, but not all enchantments are wards.

## Wear and Tear

All enchantments will wear off over time as the magic returns to the soul of the caster, bringing the energy fueling the effect with it. Since the magic will be slowly returning back to the soul of the caster, the enchantment will fade over time and need to be re-cast on a consistent basis.

Note that, if you use your magic to perform an action, then the results of the action will still be there when your magic returns to you. For example, if you enchanted knitting needles to knit scarves for you, the needles would start to stop knitting once your magic began to return to your soul, but you'd still have the scarves they did make before stopping.

How often an enchantment needs to be replaced depends on how far the magic would need to travel to return to their soul of origin. Energy has to travel over space, the same as anything else, and magic will begin to return to their soul earlier if they sense it is further away, just as you might leave home earlier if you have to travel further than usual to get to work. Therefore, the farther away the caster is from the enchantment, the faster the enchantment will wear off.

As a result, it’s good practice to have your local source of enchantments and wards travel with you or live nearby. Locations with magical defenses will have mages on staff specifically for their regular upkeep.

In addition, enchantments (including wards) will react to magical collisions. This will cause some minor concussive damage to the enchanted person or object, and will cause some of the enchantment to shear off as it attempts to avoid the other magic. This magic will immediately return to their soul of origin, requiring enchantments under constant magical stress to be re-cast with more frequency.

### Death of the Caster

Normally, magic wearing off looks/feels like watching food coloring slowly sink to the bottom of a glass of water. It's gradual, and some bits seem to hang on a bit longer than others, but eventually it all trails away together. However, if the mage who cast the enchantment dies, the enchantment will wear off INSTANTLY.

As we know from instances of soul preservation, when a soul is no longer connected to a physical body, any magic cast by that soul has no "container" to return to, and simply dissipates as ambient magical energy, just like the soul would do if it wasn't trapped in a mummified corpse. Therefore, it stands to reason that any magical energy which had been cast by the mage before death would immediately dissipate after death.

Imagine a fishing pole. A fishing pole is made of two things: the line and the rod. When working properly, you can use the rod to cast out some of the line and then reel it back in. However, if the pole catastrophically breaks while some of the line has been cast, a) you won't be able to reel that line back in and b) the line might continue to unreel itself and float away.

Magic wearing off due to the death of the caster looks/feels like watching a video of someone being spritzed with a hose but in reverse. One minute, there's water, the next it's just GONE, like whatever ties that were holding it to the form of the enchantment had suddenly released them and they are OUT. Like pollen on a dark shirt, getting hit by a high pressure air blower or something. I feel like there's a better metaphor here to compare this too, but I can't seem to think of one.

All of this has fantastic angst potential if you think about it: Imagine if you travel with the mage who casts your wards so that they don't wear off as much, and they just cast one that morning that probably won't wear off for a week at least, and then suddenly in the middle of a battle, the ward goes down and your heart drops because you know and it's already too late.

## Common Enchantments

The following is a list of the specific enchantments that have been discussed in the context of this world. While countless other enchantments exist, these are a few of the most common.

### Wards

Wards are arguably the most common form of enchantment, to the point where there is a whole separate field of magical study within the Mages' Guild to study them separate from enchantments. Wards are enchantments specifically intended to counter the effects of someone else’s magic. This includes spells that protect or hide the target from magical forces, but NOT spells that protect or hide the target from *physical* forces.

### Signal Objects

Otherwise known as Familiar 'Summoning' Enchantments.

Items can be enchanted to send a specific message to a familiar when activated. The most common items used for this are jewelry, but it could technically be anything. They are normally enchanted by mages with a focus that allows them to communicate with animals, though mages with other focuses can often do something similar.

Usually, these items are enchanted with a message that “summons” the familiar. While this doesn’t actually cause the animal to appear out of thin air, they will make a beeline towards you the second they hear the magical call. Kinda like whistling for your horse in video games, but without any range limitations. Alternatively, they could be enchanted to say whatever you want, from “I love you” to “Help” or anything you can think of.

It's impossible to use this enchantment to communicate with a being with a soul, due to the individual magic within a soul repelling the magical message from the enchantment.

### Size Expansion

One of the most useful enchantments that’s in high demand is a “bigger-on-the-inside” enchantment. Technically, this is a type of Shapeshifting Enchantment, but its usage is so common, it should be mentioned separately.

As the description implies, this enchantment gives the target more internal space without changing the original size or weight of the container. Unsurprisingly, this enchantment is insanely useful, especially to messengers.

However, like any enchantment, it has its limits. Most notably, the greater the effect that the enchantment has, the faster it will wear off. This means that increasing the size of building interiors or creating room-sized spaces within small objects is extremely ill-advised. Anything within the space when the enchantment wears off will react… well, about how you’d expect. Best case scenario, your belongings are strewn everywhere and the container looks like a popped balloon. Worst case scenario… well, let’s just hope no one was inside.

For this reason, spaces made to contain living things (carts, buildings, cages, etc.) are rarely enchanted to be more than 25% larger than their original size. At most, a small amount of space is added to make the occupants more comfortable. Owners of such spaces are advised to never overfill the space with cargo or furniture. That way, if the enchantment wears off unexpectedly, the occupants will only find themselves somewhat uncomfortably squished. This is also less likely to happen, as less dramatic size changes will take far longer to wear off.

### Shapeshifting

> *See More: Shapeshifting Magic*
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### Clothing Alterations

Despite the wide availability of plant-based dyes in Duil fashion norms, many people choose to add colors or decorations to their attire with magic. Enchantments aren’t very practical for your everyday clothing, since the effect would eventually wear off, especially if you take the article of clothing somewhere further away from the mage who cast the enchantment. However, for special events like weddings, hiring a mage to enchant colors and decorations onto your clothing is often more affordable than getting a tailor,  especially if you probably won’t wear the outfit a second time.

Usually, these enchantments are done on the day of the event, which the mage will attend in order to ensure that the enchantments don’t fade too quickly. For simple jobs, some mages will consider the meal they receive at the event as payment enough, while others might ask for additional compensation for the time and effort it took up to cast the enchantment and remain nearby. Even so, it’ll still be far cheaper than buying a fancy outfit you only wear once or twice.

### Healing Enchantments

> *See More: Healing Enchantments*
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Not to be confused with Healing Magic, Healing Enchantments are used to help the body recover on its own from disease or other long-term sources of damage.

### Stair Accessibility Enchantments

There’s a specific accessibility enchantment that helps people who have trouble climbing the many, many stairs of Duilintinn's architecture that essentially acts as an escalator. However, instead of moving the stairs, the enchantment lifts and moves the person. It’s the same feeling of standing still yet moving, just with slightly different mechanics. This enchantment has to be regularly re-cast, but it’s still more efficient than trying to enchant all of the stairs; you’d be lucky if an enchantment of that magnitude lasted more than a few hours.

Much like how modern buildings are required to have some form of wheelchair access, most public buildings in Duilintinn, including guild hubs and outposts and garrisons of The Watch, employ at least one mage who can cast this enchantment as needed.

### Scrying Enchantments

Scrying without an enchantment sees a mage simply scrying for information from within the confines of their own mind. Scrying using enchantment has a mage enchant an object with scrying ability, allowing the information to be witnessed by others.

## Trivia

Many magical disciplines, such as Scrying and Healing, have both enchantment and non-enchantment variations (i.e. Healing Enchantments vs Healing Magic). Depending on the study, the differences between these two fields can be relatively minor (i.e. Scrying) or substancial (i.e. Healing). However, to the ire of those who study these fields, it’s extremely common that the average person will get confused, especially since the term for the non-enchantment variation is usually simply “magic.” This leads to hilarious situations where a mage will angrily correct someone who casually uses the wrong term; for example, a specialist in Healing Enchantments might become irate if someone refers to their abilities as “Healing Magic.” Of course, most people understand that the fault really lies on whoever came up with such a vague name to distinguish the two fields (*\*cough\* oops \*cough\**), and the entire phenomenon has become something of a cultural inside-joke.