Glyph Casting

Spell Glyphs long existed as a way of mages to store spells for later use, but they were rarely used over dedicated magic items because they were time-consuming to produce and usually could only be used once. A mage would be much better off storing mana in gemstones and then drawing from them when the time for casting arrived. However, during the Conquest Era, a new innovation in spellcasting involving the extensive use of mass-produced Spell Glyphs was invented to enable any ordinary soldier to have the potential unleash devastating magical spells without the use of expensive magical items. Spell Glyphs were intricately carved into Glyph Cards imbued with the magic of correlating spell and only requiring a paltry amount of mana that even a typical infant could conjure forth to activate. These rudimentary Glyph Cards were still disposable and would disintegrate after a single use, but the potential that even one single spell has to shift the flow of a battle made them indispensable for smaller squadrons in The Imperial Army who lacked proper arcane support.

## Spell Manuals

Similar to the Spell Tomes of Traditional Spellcasting, in order to manufacture Glyph Cards, a Forge Mage must utilize incredibly technically dense Spell Manuals. These Spell Manuals describe every detail that must be forged into to Glyph Card in order for it to function with levels of precision down to Micromicrotri measure. Even one deviation from the working design outlined in the Spell Manual will result in either a completely inert card, or worse, one that malfunctions in a catastrophic miscast.

Converting Spells Tomes into Spell Manuals is an exceptionally arduous task that requires a team of several professional archmages. Creating a Manual without the use of a Tome is unheard of, and while it is theoretically possible to reverse engineer a Glyph Card in order to deduce the contents of its Manual and replicate it, in practice, such a feat would require several dozen samples and approximately a century worth of skilled labor hours.

## Glyph Presses

While initial Glyph Cards were created through the dedicated work of master Forge Mages, with the invention of the mechanical engine known as the Glyph Press, most of the labor became automated and it was possible for Glyph Cards to be mass-produced. Furthermore, Glyph Presses also had the advantage of being easy to customize to the specifications of any Spell Manual, potentially requiring even less than a single day of labor to be converted from producing Glyph Cards of one spell to another so long as the working engineer was already familiar with both of the Spell Manuals he was working with. The ease and flexibility of production made the use of Glyph Cards attractive for both the Imperial Army and a number of influential Craft Guilds who found the spells-on-demand as either wonderful consumer products in their own right or as convenient components to larger industrial schemes.

## 3D Glyph Printing

During the Cyber Era, innovations in the field of 3D printing led to magnificent advances in the production of Glyph Cards. Long technical Spell Manuals could easily be stored in digital files uploaded to the Aethernet and their design specifications could be converted into file formats compatible with specialized 3D printers that just about anybody could access. For the first time in history, magic was truly in the hands of the masses.