Exclusion zone

An **exclusion zone**, abbreviated **EZ**, is a geographical region on Aerb to which a kind of magic (for a loose definition of the term) is restricted.

## The Exclusionary Principle

***I could see the air quotes out of the corner of my eye.***

*The following is an extract from* Worth the Candle: A Brief Description of Aerb*.*

When an exclusion occurs, some particular magic, magical effect, physical effect, or entad ceases to function in all but a relatively small geographical region. When an exclusion happens, there are typically two immediately visible effects. The first is that magic everywhere stops working, except within the exclusion zone. The second is that exclusion is often accompanied by some calamity within the exclusion zone.

### Typologies

* Silent exclusion: A “silent” exclusion is one in which no one is affected by the loss of magic, usually because it wasn’t in use, and there is no accompanying catastrophe in the exclusion zone. These are typically discovered after the fact, with the “reason” for the exclusion being discovered at a later date, if at all.
* Dead exclusion: Enpersoned and entad exclusion zones are not necessarily permanent, especially because exclusion on its own does not provide immortality or indestructibility. Once the person dies or the entad is destroyed, the exclusion zone is “dead”, meaning that the excluded magic no longer exists in the world. Sometimes, the exclusion zone can be reclaimed.
* Full exclusion: Occasionally an exclusion will be detected by the loss of magic among its practitioners, but without the apparent creation of an accompanying exclusion zone. To all appearances, the magic is simply gone from the world. (Sometimes the exclusion zone is found at a later date. This was especially the case when telecommunications were not what they are today. Needless to say, if people find the exclusion, it’s no longer a full exclusion.)
* Partial exclusion: If the exclusion applies to a specific magical effect or to a school of magic, sometimes the exclusion will be partial, i.e. not affecting the entirety of the school or effect. Specific elements of soul magic have been excluded but the school as a whole is not afflicted. Specific applications of the bulk teleportation spell have been excluded, but the spell is not excluded. It is unclear what causes partial exclusions.
* Empersoned exclusion: Sometimes, in addition to the restriction of magical effects to a geographical area, it’s additionally restricted to a single person within that geographical area. As a rule, these people cannot leave the exclusion zone by any means. There are currently thirteen empersoned exclusions.
* Entad exclusion: Similar to empersoned exclusions, but an entad is confined to the exclusion zone instead of a person. There are currently six entad exclusions.
* Double exclusion: It’s occasionally the case that two exclusions form next to each other with overlapping area, or one forms within the borders of another. This holds no special significance, except insofar as it might complicate attempts at dealing with the exclusions.
* Free exclusion: An imperial term. An exclusion is considered ‘free’ if it has arable land and poses no direct threat to the mortal species. Thus far, only two exclusion zones have been deemed ‘free’, the Lalonei exclusion zone and the Parsmont exclusion zone.
* Minor exclusion: An imperial term. Minor exclusions are capable of maintaining a small population with little outside support in conditions not much more hostile than a hot desert or arctic expanse. People living in minor exclusions experience and expect hardships, and tend to have lower lifespans, but they are in no imminent danger.
* Major exclusion: An imperial term. Without significant magical support or extensive non-magical preparations and planning, lifespan in a major exclusion is measured in hours. Any person living within a major exclusion zone is doing so with either tacit permission of an enpersoned exclusion, or heavy wards and magical support.

### Causes (and Questions)

It is unknown what causes an exclusion zone, but a shorthand for the cause, whatever it might be, is “the exclusionary principle”. There are, however, some common links between the exclusions, which provide a starting point for talking about what rules govern the exclusionary principle. First and foremost, exclusions coincide with zone-encompassing calamities so often that the simplest rule is “whenever something would destroy the world, an exclusion is created instead”. This is clear, intuitive, and wrong, given the number of counterexamples that are available.

A more complex version might be “whenever something would fundamentally change the world, an exclusion is created instead”. This accounts for both calamitous exclusions and more benign ones, but leads to the question of what ‘whenever’ might mean. Given the existence of silent and full exclusions, the answer can’t be a simple set time period before the change would occur. Without being able to answer that question, we’re left looking for a unifying exclusionary principle, if one exists.

It’s also unclear how exclusion zones themselves are created. Geographical footprints vary wildly, from less than twenty square miles in the case of the Nightsmoke exclusion zone, to eighty-two thousand square miles for the Fel Seed exclusion zone. Geographical boundaries sometimes follow natural features such as rivers and mountains, but sometimes present as regular polygons etched on the surface of Aerb. Further, the exclusion zone is rarely centered on the source of the calamity, instead seeming to select its center at random. There is little rhyme or reason to these differences.

Lastly, the question must be raised: where are all the good exclusions? Why are exclusions so universally bad for the mortal species? In particular, the majority of the enpersoned exclusion zones wouldn’t have been calamitous if a different person had been subject to being enpersoned. The only reason that the Doris Finch exclusion zone is looked at with fear and suspicion is that the copies are of Doris Finch. Had it been anyone else, the exclusion zone would be a veritable paradise. At this point the evidence for some kind of selection effect is so overwhelming that there must be an answer. Does enpersoning drive people insane? Or are only the insane selected?

[Juniper’s Notes: From a worldbuilding perspective, the exclusionary principle exists to justify a whole bunch of zones of adventure. From a DM’s perspective, it exists as a diegetic way to stop OP things from destroying or changing the whole world. It’s also a way to ‘end the world’ without actually ending the world. I did always love ending the world...]

***I could see the air quotes out of the corner of my eye.***

*The following is an extract from Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition.*

Why do exclusions happen? Sadly, there is no one specific answer to this question, but the best working understanding at present is that *exclusions happen in order to prevent degeneracy.*

As with our working definition of what an exclusion *is* , our definition of *why* an exclusion happens immediately runs into some difficulties. What does ‘degeneracy’ mean? What does ‘prevent’ mean? And does this apply to all exclusions?

The easiest and most central examples are those phenomena which would, if not checked through exclusion, spread throughout the entire world. Bowdler’s contagious redaction would have removed core ideas from the minds of most mortal species. The entire world might have fallen under the spell of Herront, loyal to the bitter end. Aerb might have been overrun with Doris Finches, or smothered in a layer of glass, or merged together into a solid piece of metal.

Yet there are other exclusions where the question of ‘degeneracy’ causes some scratching of heads.

The world would be *different* if Elisha Blue’s ‘zombies’ could be created by any necromancer with a bit of schooling and skill, but it wouldn’t mark the end of civilization as we know it. In fact, given the sanctions and restrictions that have been levied against Blue-in-the-Bottle, there’s a strong argument to be made that nothing much would change at all: imperial society as a whole has rejected that approach to labor, so exclusion does nothing in particular, the ‘degeneracy’ or even just ‘change’ having been stopped through terrestrial political means.

The people of Corflowers are compelled to protect an entad hat, but is this ‘degenerate’? It’s very difficult to say. Certainly the Hat of Brilliant Protection is powerful, and the Cult of Brilliance is strong, but it doesn’t appear that they would be all that much stronger if the hat weren’t excluded. When people invoke ‘degeneracy’ arguments, they might imagine that the hat would have spread its influence far and wide, infecting every head of state, turning all of mortal society towards the singular purpose of guarding a long hat. This seems far from an assured outcome though, and was even less likely at the time of its exclusion.

Demiplanes, a historical phenomena of created extradimensional spaces of immense size, do not seem degenerate *at all* . Why should it matter at all whether there are ten or a thousand of them? If demiplanes still existed, we might find them at the heart of major cities, expanding real estate and providing fertile farmlands, but in what sense is this degenerate? How does that exclusion fit within our working definition?

Contrarily, we can look at certain things which have *not* caused exclusion.

Radio is now an accepted and widespread technology, but at the time, there was significant concern that instant mass communication of voice would cause exclusion. Certainly radio is widely accepted as one of the most notable advancements in the last two hundred years, responsible for reshaping society and culture. Why was it not excluded?

Similar questions can be applied to a number of historical advancements which have served to reshape society in different ways. The extensive train networks that crisscross Aerb, the Bessemer process of steel production, the ubiquity of warding, the integration of teleportation keys as a mass transit solution, all of these things are examples of things which have demonstrably changed the world and society writ large in various substantial ways. Many of these *might* have caused exclusion, or were, at the time, thought to possibly call down exclusion.

One of the things we can see when looking at things which *weren’t* excluded are those which have had wide-ranging effects which didn’t apply to mortals. From this, we conclude that exclusion is *mortal-centric* , though this isn’t a firm rule. Through history, many events have killed entire species, sometimes in a single fell swoop, other times more sedately, as with the slow withering of the Calmandar. On occasion, this has even happened to one of the mortal species. Yet while rampant magic has wiped entire genres of creature from the biology books, this has not happened to the mortal species as a whole. Notably, certain exclusions cover effects whose rampancy would *only* affect the mortal species, such as those that impact consciousness, reading, or civilization.

In the end, exclusion leaves more questions than answers, each new one pinning the puzzle more firmly in place but not resolving it. We can but stand back, hoping that it will be revealed in time for us to do something about it before the last of the magic slips out of the world.

[DM’s Notes: An exclusion is whatever I want it to be!]

*Extracted text ends here.*

#### Deliberate Exclusions

There have been a small number of deliberate attempts at "invoking" Exclusion.

* Clay Magic was excluded when a disgruntled ex-member of the Clay Corps, a small cabal of Clay Mages licensed by the Second Empire, spent years working to design self-replicating golems and get Clay Magic excluded.
* Nuclear weapons were excluded after an international group of scientists built and tested them in isolated areas, successfully ensuring that they could be peacefully excluded without ever seeing military use.
* The Risen Lands are heavily implied to have been a deliberate attack on the Kingdom of Francorum, most likely by Anglecynn,their neighbours. Amaryllis privately verified that there was a secret NFE research facility of theirs in the region at that time (not the recent one shown in the story, this one was in the countryside where it wouldn't be noticed).

In addition, there are several exclusions which *may* have deliberately beed caused by Uther, including Ice Magic and Demiplanes.

#### True Cause

In reality, exclusions were enforced by the Warden, with heavy input from the DM based on what he thought would be interesting and fair. This made them in effect serve as a form of "DM fiat" to squash whatever he wanted removed, among other purposes.

The Warden was an in-universe entity with her own powers, mechanics and limits behind the scenes. It was therefore possible to "break" exclusions and free what was inside them by blinding the Warden (or in a sense blinding the universe) with sufficiently strong antimemetic effects, or otherwise interfering in the hidden machinery of the world. The DM himself also broke exclusions regarding Juniper by giving him a gestalted skill at the start of the game, and later giving him the ability to generate hot dogs *ex nihilo*.

***I could see the air quotes out of the corner of my eye.***

*The following is an extract from Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition.*

### Exclusions and the Empire of Common Cause

The Empire of Common Cause is the large, dominant umbrella government of Aerb, and has laid judicial claim to exclusions through consent of its member polities. While this claim is relatively uncontested, many exclusions were once a part of member nations, and certain other exclusions are themselves *still* member nations, or non-member nations which are a party to certain treaties. The muddled legal nature of exclusion jurisdiction aside, the EoCC has been largely successful in staking claim to the world’s exclusion zones, and a small portion of the imperial budget is set aside for administration, defense, and research of exclusion zones.

#### The Department of Special Threats

The EoCC’s sprawling Department of Special Threats is responsible for exclusion zones and exclusions, including exclusion response, diplomacy with enpersoned exclusions, exclusion monitoring, and exclusion research.

Most exclusions under the purview of Special Threats have little more than a field laboratory somewhere on the edge of the exclusion, manned by a handful of scientists, many of them on loan from an institution of learning rather than actual employees of the empire. These facilities are often run-down, some dating back to the Second Empire, in part because of a perception that there is little to be learned from many of the exclusions and no possibility of exploitation.

In cases where there exists some threat to those outside the exclusion, a utilitarian magestone watchtower is often constructed, offering a view of as much of the exclusion zone as possible. This is often accompanied by a magestone wall around the exclusion zone.

Minor exclusions, which often have people living within them, are often administered completely by Special Threats, which acts in the stead of any local government. This is only a rule of thumb, however, as certain exclusion zones are not conducive to anything resembling governance, and others have functional governments which have survived the exclusion.

A typical outpost on the edge of an exclusion zone contains at the very least an outpost commander, research director, warder, and arcane specialist, though these roles sometimes overlap, and the size of any given outpost depends on the specifics of funding, the involvement of other institutions, and the nature of the exclusion itself. Typical activities include reconnaissance, policing the border, and handling any potential breaches (‘spillover’ in the parlance of Special Threats, as distinct from an exclusion break).

Many major exclusions are survivable with the right equipment, and a Special Threats outpost is always equipped with the capability to safely enter the exclusion zone, where possible. Additionally, those at the outpost are subject matter experts at the phenomenon within the exclusion zone, usually with some built up institutional knowledge of the conditions and problems within.

***I could see the air quotes out of the corner of my eye.***

*The following is an extract from Worth the Candle: A Brief Description of Aerb.*

#### Research Bans

The imperial bans on Research Deemed Likely to Lead to Exclusion (RDLLE, colloquially, “Riddle”) date back to the early days of the Second Empire, when a number of research bans were issued in the hopes of preventing exclusion zones from forming in populated areas and preventing useful magics from being removed from the world. Numerous provisions were made for when and where Exclusion Risk Activities could be conducted, with sites often selected on the basis of how it would impact the Second Empire’s dissident groups rather than potential loss of life, potential loss of economic activity, or other considerations.

In the time of the Empire of Common Cause, the RDLLE Acts place blanket prohibitions on a number of fields of research, and these laws are backed up by the full might of the athenaeums (which naturally stand to lose enormous amounts of power should their disciplines be excluded). Specific acts of engineering are also covered under RDLLE, including a number of large-scale proposed projects whose end results are unknown (or insufficiently known) to those who have proposed them.

These research bans are not without detractors. The bans are often criticized as overly broad, politically motivated, and detrimental to progress. To the cynical, the research bans are another of the crude legal tools the athenaeums apply against potential competitors, as a non-excluded breakthrough might make an existing school of magic virtually obsolete. To the optimistic, the research bans represent a dimming of hopes for the future (though this language obviously harkens back to the zeitgeist of the Second Empire).

*Extracted text ends here.*

The Second Empire's equivalent of the RDLLE acts were the Exclusion Risk Mitigation Laws E(RMLs.) They were precipitated by the Contra-Ethereal exclusion - which had seemed relatively harmess and useful - followed by the similar exclusion of Fleshsmithing two decades later. Despite the number of exclusions caused by the Second Empire, these were somewhat effective; they helped stave off the exclusion of smoke magic by limiting research into the reality-warping aspects of the art, at least until the Empire collapsed.

## Known Exclusion Zones

***“I won’t say it again. Infohazard protocols are in effect.”***

***WARNING: THE FOLLOWING CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS.***

There are 53-63 known exclusion zones, maybe more, depending on how conservative you are with your definition.There are six entad and thirteen empersoned zones.. There were three silent exclusion zones known to Uther of which illusion magic was one. There are at least 218 excluded things, some of which might not be zone-associated. 83 of Juniper's skills are excluded.

Over 8 exclusions have been caused by abuse of the Infinite Library for research, by Uther and his allies and later by the Second Empire, including the exclusion of demiplanes. Juniper has caused two exclusions, which took out all of skin magic and soul magic; the Council of Arches also caused the exclusion of rune magic rescuing him from Fel Seed.

Amaryllis states that there are thirteen Exclusions that Juniper might be able to defeat; this gives Juniper the Slayer of Horrors quest (which has 13 subquests, but includes Fel Seed, which Amaryllis excludes). Amaryllis might have been counting Caldwell Gatesmith twice, as he has two exclusion zones.

### Location unknown

* Dimensions: three parallel dimensions, excluded in Uther's time. The disjoint planes may also be excluded.
	+ Dream-walking into the dream dimension is believed to have been excluded to an unknown location; although certain entads and the like can still access it, and people are still capable of dreaming. In reality, the Lord of Dreams simply cut Aerbian dream-walkers off from it. The presumed, hypothetical Dream-Walking Exclusion Zone is designated DWEZ-P.
* Carrollism.
* Skill construction: Gestalting (#4), Custom skills (#17).
* Essentialism
* Rune Magic

## History

### Before Uther

Cidium, the city which appears to predate Aerb, has been suggested as a possible exclusion zone. However, the magic it's inhabiotants claim ensures it has always and will always exist has never been formally verified. Similarly, the Boundless Pit has been suggested as a possible exclusion zone; whatever magic created it does seem to be limited to the Pit.

The ancient empire of the Gomerons were killed when their magical mental augmentations suddenly failed, killing them instantly. This is sometimes classified as a "proto-exclusion". The artefacts they created remained functional but are impossible to repair.

The Parsmont exclusion may have occurred as early as 1000 BE. The final doom of Celestar occurred in 121 BE, although it wasn't confirmed as a genuine pre-Utherian exclusion except in the alternate future of The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition.

### First Empire

The exclusionary principle is sometimes said to have begun around the time of Uther's appearance. Among the exclusions known to have occurred during his reign were the Glacial, William's Net, Semblance, Unity, Gessim Gall, Chthonic, and Demiplanar exclusions.

Dream-walking is believed to have been excluded during Uther's time (10 FE) to an unknown location, for unknown reasons, but in reality the Lord of Dreams blocked it off due to one of Uther's adventures. At some point during Uther's adventures, Aerb was cut off from the disjoint planes (an effect known as Uther's Interdiction), which he proclaimed he had accomplished for the safety of Aerb. Juniper speculated that this may have simply been an exclusion Uther took credit for.

Uther was one of the few people to be aware of the location of the Illusion Magic EZ, and arranged for the Athenaeum of Speculation and Scrutiny to be relocated inside the zone in 12 FE, with the asylum dedicated to the dream-skewered headed by Speculator Masters (secretly a master Illusion Mage.)

### First Interimperium

Fel Seed appeared, and was immediately excluded, four years after Uther's disappearance. Some rumours circulated that he was in fact Uther, although the theory was ultimately discarded.

Other exclusions during this period included the City of Lasting Blood, Theraba, Moot, Cadian, Glassy Fields, Bowdler, Flintonstele, Do Not, Spect, Knotted Noose, Flaguhan, Torn Tapestry, Whiffle, Pai Shep, Contra-ethereal, Papillion, Valley of Cards, Funnelin, and Zentria exclusions.

### Second Empire

The Second Empire was founded in 176 FE. Exclusions which occurred under their reign included Necrolaborem, Pendleham, Adamham, Publican, Wettring, Sunspots, Mendel, Domestic, Iron Chane, Oster, Old Gromsh, Æ, Million Nations, Barren Reef, Moljer, Lalonei, Ravenous, Feng, Glass Wall, and Degenerate Earth. Some exclusions, such as the Adamham, Publican, and Iron Chane exclusions, were a direct result of their aggressive research tactics.

The Second Empire had a policy of attempted exploitation of exclusion zones, including the Fountain of Everblood and Adamham.

In 311 FE, at the height of the Second Empire, there were shuist parlors on every corner, smoke magic bars, and forms of long-distance magical communication available (although not as ubiquitous as the later radio and telephone), all of which eventually be excluded.

The Manifest exclusion in 324 FE, which destroyed/subsumed the Imperial capital, marked the end of the Second Empire.

### Second Interimperium & Third Empire

Exclusions since the Second Empire include Doris Finch, the Risen Lands, Lunar, Greater Blasphemy, Herront, Datura Desert, Quixotic, Corflowers, Zestsez, Manifold, [Redacted], Blue Fields, Gatesmith, and Rove.

The Empire of Common Cause had made attempts to prepare for the exclusion of a major magic, but they were (in Amaryllis' opinion) woefully inadequate.

### Juniper's Adventures

Juniper has caused two exclusions, which took out all of skin magic and soul magic.

### Timeskip

The Council of Arches caused the exclusion of rune magic rescuing Juniper from Fel Seed.

### Alternate Futures

Exclusions never occur in the futures seen by the Infinite Library, even in situations where they obviously would in reality; the magic of the library seems to be unable to account for or predict the exclusionary principle being invoked.

Conversely, one of the common ways the Library forsees the world ending is if an exclusion manages to break free. The Warden is not completely omnipotent. They are only capable of containing one of the World Lords at a time, and could be potentially affected by Mome Rath's antimemetic powers (allowing for partial or entire exclusion breaks), which is why it was prophecied that three World Lords existing on Aerb at a time would result in the end of the world.

11 seperate apocalypses have occurred (in alternate Library futures, then averted before they happened) as a result of the ur-tyr government breeding various horrors in their EZ and accidentally letting them escape.

In the future that The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition was pulled from, [REDACTED] died of old age in 531 FE, allowing the info on his EZ to safely become public knowledge. The location of the Ice Magic EZ was discovered in 541 FE, although it wasn't even publicly known to have been excluded in Juniper's time (it was simply considered a lost art after the Ice Wizards were wiped out by Uther.) At some point, the L'io EZ was declared a Free Exclusion, although considerable confusion remained over what exactly had happened there, and expeditions to Celestar revealed the truth behind that Exclusion. Necrolaborum and the Republic of Doris Finch, on the other hand, remained intact and had not been liberated.

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 24: Manifold
2. ↑ Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 31: Blue Fields
3. ↑ There are even some indications that people have successfully used exclusion as a weapon. Specifically, the area now known as the Risen Lands might have been the result of someone using such a weapon in an act that might ignite a worldwide war… if anyone knew who was responsible.

Yes, Anglecynn stood to benefit from the Kingdom of Francorum losing a large portion of their holdings and getting thrown into economic freefall. Yes, it would have been trivial for a small group of scientists to build a lab in the countryside outside the view of Francorum’s primitive intelligence services. Yes, there’s some evidence that such a lab was built and yes, a portion of Anglecynn’s black budget payroll went to a number of scientists who specialized in the (now excluded) necrotic field effect.

After the exclusion, a fireteam that reported to me went into the exclusion zone to look at a small plot of land purchased with funds from one of Anglecynn’s many black budgets and found that it had been burned down. No, no one has seen hair nor hide of the scientists who were on the black budget payroll. If you had all those facts at your disposal, you could construct a narrative that looked **very** bad for Anglecynn, so bad that economic sanctions would be a given and expulsion from the Empire of Common Cause would be on the table, along with civil unrest and possibly war. Of course, whether or not Anglecynn actually did it would be conjecture, and it wouldn’t help anyone for those facts to be made public, especially since there’s no rogue element within the Lost King’s Court that we could point a convincing finger at as a scapegoat. - A Brief Description of Aerb - Chapter 7: The Exclusionary Principle
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 27: Glacial
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 29: Demiplanar
6. ↑ One of the things that I really wanted in place were backdoors into mysterious systems and diegetic answers to questions. So, the schlossvolk are a diegetic answer to how things get retconned into Aerb, and the 'machinery' that works on the renacim exists behind the scenes to get accessed by Dahlia, and ... other stuff. The Warden doesn't just exist as a member of the pantheon, or just as DM fiat, she exists as an interactable part of the world in one way or another. - WtC Q&A
7. ↑ Even if we got through the door, what good was that going to do us? Fel Seed could simply follow, unless he was prohibited by whatever force of the universe was responsible for exclusion zones (the Warden, presumably, if there really was a pantheon). - Chapter 230: The Palace

“Anyway, there’s the Layman, who you met, there’s the Scribe, who hand-writes all the notes, there’s the Architect,” pointing to a tall guy in a rumpled suit, “There’s the Warden,” a woman whose whole aesthetic seemed to be chains, a little on the nose for my tastes. - Chapter 246: Reflection at the End
8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 I decided on cutting skin magic, to save you the suspense.”

“You excluded all of skin magic?” I asked. “Scars and tattoos?”

“There were a few subfields that no one discovered,” he replied. “I always try to include little secrets like that, ways to expand things. I’d always wanted to do something with prehensile hair. But yes, all of it.”
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 162: "Deus Ex"
9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 “Okay,” I said. “The upshot is that he excluded skin magic because he thought it wouldn’t be interesting going forward. There was something about me going off the rails, but I had no idea where the rails even were, which I guess, when I think about it, was usually the fastest way for any campaign of mine to go off the rails. Supposedly Kenner’s Eye was too easy for his tastes, or I didn’t do enough to earn it, but I don’t think it would have escaped his notice that Prince’s Invulnerability is also a tattoo, and also a source of power.” - Chapter 163: Level Heads
10. ↑ Q: How does exclusion breaking work in-universe?

A: I had a few different mechanisms in mind. They all rely on there being some diegetic machinery behind the exclusionary principle in one way or another. One was anti-memetics powerful enough to affect the Warden (or alternately, the universe itself), so that it forgets you're even there or to watch that you don't violate the rules, and then *also* something that lets you go beyond the removal of mechanisms in some unique way that's not already blanket banned. The other was to affect the Warden herself in some way, either through outright attack (extremely difficult) or some other method. The third was to go into the rules of the world and alter what was there, reinstating something that had been 'patched out'.

Obviously all of those have something like consent from the Dungeon Master, given that he's the ultimate and unassailable authority.

- WtC Q&A
11. ↑ There were a bunch of rules behind the scene that weren't very important and could only *really* be revealed through prophecy, like 1) the exclusionary principle could only contain one of them at a time and 2) they would grow more powerful with each other's power to draw on. Mome Rath's antimemetic power breaking Fel Seed free of containment, or at least allowing expansion of the borders of the exclusion zone, for example. - WtC Q&A
12. ↑ Just beneath that, there were listings for a primary and secondary attributes, Cunning and Endurance, respectively, with familiar numbers in place, and what looked like a small, greyed out button labeled “Gestalt”. [...] I was about to move away from the skills, because there was more of my soul to explore (quite a bit more), but I stopped for a moment and looked in at Deception. As soon as it filled my view, I got an error message in red:

 ***Error: Illegal Construction, Gestalting Deprecated, Exclusion #4***

The skill informed me that it was actually a gestalt between Lying and Stealth, with two primary abilities and two secondary abilities, but gave no real information about what that *meant.* In the parlance of D&D, “gestalt” meant merging two things, usually classes, such that they were more than the sum of their parts, but I wasn’t sure that fully applied here. The problem with gestalting was that it usually increased the power level, and there was rarely a reason not to do it, if it was allowed. And apparently, it *wasn’t* allowed, except that I had been running around with it like that for my entire time on Aerb, and I wasn’t about to go changing it now if I didn’t have to. [...] I flailed my body, which was still thankfully under my control, while trying to back out of the interface -- trying.

 ***Error: Illegal Construction, Gestalting Deprecated*** - Chapter 64: In Which Juniper Stares At His Character Sheet, Again
13. ↑ I held out my hand. “I wish for a hot dog.”

A hot dog appeared in my outstretched hand.

Dehla began gesturing frantically as I took a bite. The hot dog wasn’t very good, as I had known it wouldn’t be. I’d used three of the hundred hot dog wishes already for testing, the first to make sure that they actually did something, and the second and third to make sure that there weren’t combat applications. Grak had watched when I’d made the third wish, but hadn’t seemed as surprised by the results as Dehla seemed. It was a new wavelength of magic, distinct from the signature of the entad bands, and noteworthy in that regard, but it wasn’t going to upend anyone’s conception of reality.

“Translation?” I asked.

“You used an excluded magic outside the exclusion zone,” said Pallida. The pink of her skin had gone somewhat pale. I glanced at Grak, and he shrugged. Apparently, he hadn’t known that. - Chapter 114: The Meeting of Minds
14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 14.3 14.4 14.5 Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 7: Contra-ethereal
15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 15.3 15.4 Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 22: The Fleshsmiths of Pendleham
16. ↑ Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 28: Quixotic
17. ↑ “No,” said Ellio. He didn’t take his eyes from Juniper. “There are sixty-two exclusion zones, places of unimaginable horrors, places that are, at best, inhospitable to life. Those exclusion zones come at the expense of useful magics, and every effort put forward to stop the exclusions from happening has failed. The world is getting worse, everyone knows it and no one talks about it, the world is hostile to our very existence just as a matter of course, and grows more hostile every year. We’re getting ground down, and no one is doing anything about it, because there’s nothing to be done.”
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 160: "On the Merits of Oblivion"
18. ↑ “How many of these exclusion zones are there?” I asked.

“Fifty-three,” came an answer from the bed.

[...]

“Fifty-three?”

“By a conservative count, yes,”
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 19: "Montage!"
19. ↑ Empersoned exclusion: Sometimes, in addition to the restriction of magical effects to a geographical area, it’s additionally restricted to a single person within that geographical area. As a rule, these people cannot leave the exclusion zone by any means. There are currently thirteen empersoned exclusions.

Entad exclusion: Similar to empersoned exclusions, but an entad is confined to the exclusion zone instead of a person. There are currently six entad exclusions.
—*A Brief Description of Aerb* Chapter 7: "The Exclusionary Principle"
20. ↑ “Silent exclusions, Uther called them. A part of my work here, with the others, is keeping that secret contained. I’m one of three.”
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 109: "The Veil of the World"
21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 21.2 21.3 Most of the ones in red were magic of some kind or another; Glass Magic, “Deprecated, Exclusion #112”, Groove Casting, “Deprecated, Exclusion #217, Constriction Magic, “Deprecated, Exclusion #18”, on and on. Some were ambiguous as to whether they were magic or not, like Ex Nihilo, “Deprecated, Exclusion #216”, and I wasn’t quite sure how I was supposed to know what, exactly, a skill with that name was supposed to do.
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 64: "In Which Juniper Stares At His Character Sheet, Again"
22. ↑ 256 skills, 82 (!!!) excluded, 40 at one time for J, unrestricted # skills for others (why?), no limit for others (incl. self) (why?)
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 105: "Notes"
23. ↑ 23.0 23.1 23.2 “You don’t have books published yourself?” asked Amaryllis. “You haven’t already seen how this meeting is going to go? Because if this library can bring in books from some alternate future, then there’s nothing to stop you from writing your own books, and there *also* shouldn’t be anything to stop you from taking information from the future and advancing the arts and sciences by decades at a time.”

[...]

“Exclusions,” said Everett with a cough. “We tried. It caused exclusions. There was once a thing called a demiplane.” He sounded wistful, and not entirely with us.

“The future that the library provides is a false one,” said Heshnel. “There are some things it cannot account for, beyond just itself. The exclusionary principle appears to be one of those things. There exists a moratorium on research.”

“Eight exclusions,” said Everett.

“More, when the Second Empire got ahold of the Library,” said O’kald.

Heshnel frowned slightly. “Yes.” - Chapter 113: A Hell of a Time
24. ↑ 24.0 24.1 24.2 “Something was excluded,” I replied. “It was [...] Essentialism,”
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 211: "Gilding the Lily "
“This was the third contingency,” said Lisi. “The other two plans should have worked, but didn’t. We got an exclusion.”

“Which?” I asked, frowning.

“Rune magic,” said Lisi.

“Fuuuuck,” I said.

“Yup,” replied Lisi. “No rune magic, no soul spikes, no way to prevent people from going to the hells, not unless they have a hundred thousand obols and a week to prepare … there are reasons time is of the essence, and that’s one of them.”
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 233: "Tartarology"

	* Murder in Duplicate - As soon as it was discovered by a precocious young girl, the ability for a person to duplicate themselves was excluded to a thousand square miles and that single person. Doris Finch lives her life in duplicate; to complete the exclusion, it will be necessary to kill every single one of her. (0/9,511,346)
	* Manifest Destiny - The fall of the Second Empire was, by some accountings, inevitable, but by others, it was the work of a single incident. The exact nature of the magic that allows the immortal man named Manifest to puppet his subjects from a distance is unknown, as is his exact location, but it is clear that with the magic excluded, his range is limited to only Lankwon, once the Imperial City, now the City Made Manifest. Defeating him will be an impossible task, but one that you have taken upon yourself.
	* A Door Into the Soul - Caldwell Gatesmith has the dubious distinction of being responsible for two exclusions. Through his portals, he keeps watch over his domain. If he spies you, and you do not meet with his satisfaction, his portals will cut with an edge designed to cleave time and space.
	* The Z-word - Captain Blue-in-the-Bottle is the reason that no one says it. That's his word.
	* Everything Eater - More monster than man, no one has seen Rove's face in four hundred years and lived to tell the tale. He sits at the center of a half mile of dirt, flesh, and garbage. If you slay him, you will be the first to have survived contact with him.
	* Better with Loops - Through magics unknown, a young boy of eighteen found himself reliving the same month over and over again, with death only bringing him back to the same crisp spring morning. Time does not behave within his exclusion zone, and only bringing a permanent end to his life will restore the area to normalcy. Beware, lest you be trapped in the cycle.
	* [REDACTED] - The more you [REDACTED], the more you [REDACTED], until [REDACTED]. Merely knowing his name makes him [REDACTED], and his gender alone is a piece of information you might wish you didn't have, if [REDACTED]. Better to go in blind.
	* Unwavering - In the beginning, they said that the goblin inspired loyalty, until it became clear that what he was doing was more literal than figurative. To kill him, you'll need to fight through a veritable army of his loyal servants, if you don't end up becoming one of them yourself.
	* Fleshsmith - For millennia, fleshsmithing was a noble trade of Pendleham, one practiced by noscere and ignoscere alike. When a small cabal took the craft too far, exclusion reared its ugly head, leaving Pendleham as the City of Flesh, where none dare tread.
	* Aches and Plains - Perhaps farming might seem an innocuous thing to evoke the exclusionary principle, but given the time and attention brought to it by a billion minds, it was inevitable that someone would breach its deeper secrets. The land of Pai Shep is now guarded by a single warrior-farmer, his fields impeccable, his power absolute.
	* Guardian of the Underworld - A machine of vast intellect, funneled into the body of a broken man. The people of Aerb have yet to pass his tests, but perhaps someone of a different world has the wherewithal to be allowed within his inner sanctum.
	* Finger of the Sun - When the elves broke Celestar, there were a small few who continued on with their research. The product of their effort brought nothing but pain.
	* Gone to Seed - There is a place on Aerb considered worse than the first four thousand hells. Fel Seed sits on a throne of living flesh, unable to spread beyond his domain, but with a rule of horror within it. You know his weakness.
	—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 75: "Stats for Nerds"
27. ↑ 27.0 27.1 27.2 27.3 Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 54: Æ
28. ↑ 28.0 28.1 28.2 28.3 28.4 28.5 28.6 Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 8: Adamham
29. ↑ 29.0 29.1 29.2 29.3 Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 18: Barren Reef
30. ↑ 30.0 30.1 30.2 30.3 30.4 30.5 30.6 30.7 Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 12: Greater Blasphemy
31. ↑ 31.0 31.1 “Um,” I said. “That’s … not really accurate to Chernobyl. I mean, there it’s something called a nuclear weapon --”

“Ah, Blue Fields?” asked Fenn.

I paused with my mouth open. “There are nuclear weapons on this planet?” I asked.

“There were. But then they got excluded,”
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 19: "Montage!"
32. ↑ 32.0 32.1 32.2 32.3 Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 31: Blue Fields
33. ↑ 33.0 33.1 You won’t be able to do anything about the ones like Blue Fields or the Datura Desert
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 43: "In Search of a Quest"
34. ↑ 34.0 34.1 34.2 34.3 Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 36: Bowdler
35. ↑ Amaryllis let out a sigh that ended in a growl. “Redaction magic is excluded.”
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 123: "Medieval Stasis"
36. ↑ It’s not redaction magic, but it is something similar. More powerful, too. Small traces get left behind, which is as close to evidence as we ever get. It appears to have some problem with numbers, leading to accounts that are inconsistent with themselves, places where line items were removed but the total wasn’t changed. Proper recordkeeping makes it more noticeable, but you have to already have a good guess in order to start looking for evidence.
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 123: "Medieval Stasis"
37. ↑ 37.00 37.01 37.02 37.03 37.04 37.05 37.06 37.07 37.08 37.09 37.10 Exclusion List spreadsheet (non-canon) https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cf7Om1FB39v4KgvYjz5Mjcz4eefm9fQoXRglCUesoHs/edit#gid=0
38. ↑ A Door Into The Soul - The Gatesmith is dead, but his magic lives on without him, the portals with their infinitely sharp edges making the exclusion zone uninhabitable, except for those whose lives are worth the risk.
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 221: "Targets of Opportunity"
39. ↑ 39.0 39.1 39.2 “The Athenaeum of Speculation and Scrutiny was moved, at Uther’s behest, specifically to be located within an exclusion zone. It’s a well-guarded secret.”
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 109: "The Veil of the World"
40. ↑ 40.0 40.1 40.2 40.3 Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 47: Cadian
41. ↑ 41.0 41.1 41.2 41.3 41.4 41.5 Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 55: Celestar
42. ↑ Celestar is thrumming with renewed power, a raiding party from the Other Side crashed against the Gates of Leron three weeks ago - Chapter 109: The Veil of the World
43. ↑ 43.0 43.1 Fifteen years in, Celestar had fired a beam of enormous power at Aerb, enough that it might have boiled the oceans if it had lasted long enough. It represented the single largest loss of life since the Wandering Blight. A week later, the beam was stopped when ten thousand pounds of antimatter were dropped directly adjacent to the beam’s source. The ejecta from that explosion landed all over Aerb, causing even more damage and death, but the threat was dealt with. Amaryllis apologized for that solution, which used a combination of high-powered, high-tech magnetic containment and an overlooked part of rune magic, because she was fairly certain that it would have been excluded as soon as anyone tried it. - Chapter 132: Uskine Nervedah
44. ↑ 44.0 44.1 [S]pecial dispensation was given to place him into the lower Chthonic exclusion zone, which was meant to be as good as a death sentence. He instead emerged from the caverns after three long months and what was reckoned to be a five mile climb up through twisting passageways and attacks by horrific monsters.
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 185: "Mirror Room"
45. ↑ 45.0 45.1 45.2 Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 46: Chthonic
46. ↑ 46.0 46.1 46.2 “Fel Seed, Nightsmoke, yes, Parsmont, yes, City of Lasting Blood, technically yes, Glassy Fields, a big yes … but you’ve got things like the white spires here, which are benign, a few I don’t recognize, like this ‘Teeth City’, and it’s kind of a jumble.”
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 19: "Montage!"
47. ↑ 47.0 47.1 47.2 47.3 Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 45: Corflowers
48. ↑ 48.0 48.1 The Datura Desert would be dangerous even if it were only four hundred miles of hot sand with no water or plants to speak of, but it’s the thaum-seekers that elevate it to the level of a major exclusion zone
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 17: "Voting Blocs "
49. ↑ Caer Laga was in the middle of construction right when the blight began spreading over what later became the Datura Desert. They had time to finish the fortification and lay some powerful warding magic into the stones of the place.
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 20: "Desert Course "
50. ↑ The Datura Desert wasn’t always a desert, it was once thriving farmland and quiet woods. All that changed when a creeping blight started spreading across the land, killing plants and livestock. It was the mage Alvion who gave his life to create a well of magic in the city that would later become Barren Jewel, a magic that allows that place to thrive even as the lands around it have died.
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 15: "Whys and Wherefores"
51. ↑ To this end, Caerdall became the home to glass magic, dibbling, and conjoinery, all of which are now excluded. Of special note, Caerdall was a major institution of learning for soul mages during the time of the Second Empire until imperial forces declared soul magic a state secret and moved most of the relevant books and instructors to Lankwon
—*A Brief Description of Aerb* Chapter 2: "Athenaeums"
52. ↑ Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 68: Degenerate Earth
53. ↑ 53.0 53.1 53.2 53.3 53.4 Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 15: Domestic
54. ↑ 54.0 54.1 54.2 54.3 Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 63: Do Not
55. ↑ Dorisopolis didn’t have a formal name, but that was what everyone called it.
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 203: "Where the Streets Run Red "
56. ↑ The DFEZ was surrounded by tall walls a few hundred feet from where the exclusion itself started.
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 201: "The Aviary"
57. ↑ 57.0 57.1 57.2 57.3 57.4 57.5 57.6 57.7 57.8 57.9 34 FE: Fel Seed exclusion

[...]

194 FE: Pendleham exclusion

276 FE: Necrolaborem exclusion

[...]

324 FE: Manifest exclusion

[...]

446 FE: Doris Finch exclusion

[...]

519 FE: Risen Lands exclusion
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 196: "Notes II"
58. ↑ The one drawback, aside from trying to fight fucking Fel Seed, was that we’d lost a fair number of entads. Everything I’d been wearing was gone, left in the FSEZ and then presumably completely annihilated.
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 236: "More Dakka"
59. ↑ Fel Seed sits on a throne of living flesh, unable to spread beyond his domain, but with a rule of horror within it.
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 43: "In Search of a Quest"
60. ↑ 60.0 60.1 “This was during the Second Empire,” said Raven. “311 FE[...]”

“And there was more magic in the world then,” I said.

Raven nodded. “More during that era than now, but less than during Uther’s time. Or maybe it was just more spread out, commonplace. Airships crowded the air around the Spires like flies,” she said. “The city of Five Spires paid a tithe to a dragon, I think.” She frowned. “There were shuist parlors on every corner that had been perfectly arranged so that you could spend five or ten minutes sitting in the center, which would make you focused and revitalized. And there was such a variety of cultures, so many of which have been watered down and mixed into a dull brown by the centuries. Five Spires was one of the cosmopolitan centers, even in Uther’s time.” She sighed. “We’ve lost so unbelievably much.” There was pain and longing in her voice, not just for a better age, but for this entire other life with Uther. “No telephones, no radio, no wires running everywhere. There were other forms of long-distance communication, all now excluded, but for the most part it was about books, pamphlets, broadsheets, and criers.” - Chapter 206: Parallel Lines
61. ↑ 61.0 61.1 61.2 61.3 Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 49: Flintonstele
62. ↑ 62.0 62.1 62.2 62.3 I had a very slight advantage here, in that I had a list of eighty-two excluded skills. They didn’t fully map to the exclusions, but there was a list I could start going down. Funnel magic? Conjoinery? Uniqulomancy? Carrollism (please no)?
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 109: "The Veil of the World"
63. ↑ 63.0 63.1 “Okay,” I said, turning back to Masters. “You replaced them while we talked? You have some way of masking sound and movement? And, let me guess, the exclusion was illusion magic?” That was a guess. Mentalism and Psionics also fit the bill, given their names, and there were a dozen others whose functions I could only guess at.
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 109: "The Veil of the World"
64. ↑ Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 64: Fool's Geldspiel
65. ↑ 65.0 65.1 65.2 65.3 65.4 Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 6: Funnelin
66. ↑ 66.0 66.1 There exists a singular shortcut between the two sides within an exclusion zone called the Gates of Leron
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 125: "The Remnants of the Past"
67. ↑ 67.0 67.1 67.2 67.3 67.4 Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 14: The Gates of Leron
68. ↑ Some of them were presented in the same dark red I’d seen in a few other places in my exploration of the interface, and the one labeled “Ice Magic” caught my eye. I expanded it to read it closer. Instead of a number, it had a diagonal slash, and the text box beside it read “Deprecated, Exclusion #16”.
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 64: "In Which Juniper Stares At His Character Sheet, Again"
69. ↑ Many ice mages came from their ranks, until Uther crushed the last of the ice mages and the school became a lost art.
—*A Brief Description of Aerb* Chapter 8: "Mortal Species"
70. ↑ 70.0 70.1 4 FE: Uther defeats the Ice Wizards
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 196: "Notes II"
71. ↑ 71.0 71.1 71.2 The cross-reference of the exclusion zones listed in *The Exclusionary Principle* with the list as partly divined from the information in my soul showed that there were quite a few more exclusions than anyone knew of. Ice magic wasn’t a lost art, it had been excluded, and the place that it had been excluded *to* was a mystery. By Amaryllis’ reckoning, we had the answers to a number of enduring historical mysteries … many of them dating back to Uther Penndraig’s day.

My germ of a theory was that Uther had been the cause of most of the exclusions. Because the historical record of exclusions lined up with the numbering of exclusions as written on my soul, it was easy enough to make some guesses in that direction. Ice Magic was “Deprecated, Exclusion #16”, and that meant that it must have chronologically happened after the so-called ‘Invasion of the Ice Wizards’, which had concluded by 4 FE. I wasn’t entirely sure that Uther had been responsible for that, but his historians had written about him climbing the Glacial Minaret to face down the ruling council of wizards, and after he’d defeated them, Ice Magic had become a lost art. Maybe he wasn’t responsible, but he was certainly implicated. - Chapter 94: Grayscale
72. ↑ 72.0 72.1 72.2 72.3 Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 42: Glass Wall
73. ↑ 73.0 73.1 Far inside the Glassy Fields exclusion zone, the only place on Aerb where glass magic still works, lies a castle coated in shards.
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 43: "In Search of a Quest"
74. ↑ 74.0 74.1 Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 19: Glassy Fields
75. ↑ That castle is in Terrormoor, or was before the exclusion
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 215: "Post"
76. ↑ As exclusion zones went, it was on the larger side, a hundred miles across, and shaped a bit like the side profile of a bell pepper, with a fat end and a narrow one.
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 214: "Glass Houses"
77. ↑ The castle in Glassy Fields is both warded and encased in razor-sharp shards of glass, with the vidrics sure to attack us on approach.
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 43: "In Search of a Quest"
78. ↑ The vidrics were a small animal that had shards of glass instead of fur, with a fox-like shape and bounding movements, their reddish internal organs visible beneath the glass. They hadn’t originated in the exclusion zone, but once they’d been introduced (or possibly discovered it on their own), they had spread like wildfire. Their glass fur kept the glass from building up on them, and they had the magical ability to travel through reflections, which in this place meant that they could do as they pleased.
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 214: "Glass Houses"
79. ↑ 79.0 79.1 79.2 79.3 79.4 79.5 Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 16: Iron Chane
80. ↑ 80.0 80.1 80.2 80.3 Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 62: Knotted Noose
81. ↑ 81.0 81.1 81.2 81.3 Thus far, only two exclusion zones have been deemed ‘free’, the Lalonei exclusion zone and the Parsmont exclusion zone.
—*A Brief Description of Aerb* Chapter 7: "The Exclusionary Principle"
82. ↑ 82.0 82.1 82.2 82.3 Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 26: Lalonei
83. ↑ “The Second Empire collapsed in 324 FE,” said Amaryllis. “It had been limping along for some time, largely as a result of its economic policy. Military integration and reform schemes were bleeding the budget, but the deathblow came when the capital city became the center of an exclusion zone.”

“That would be Manifest, right?” I asked. I had read through *The Exclusionary Principle, Seventh Edition,* and in the process picked up all of the outstanding quests that fell under ***The Slayer of Horrors.*** It was, to not put too fine a point on it, pretty fucking daunting. Manifest was an effectively immortal man who had the ability to puppet people on a mass scale, and the fact that he was limited to those within his exclusion zone was the only thing that made him a major threat rather than a world-ender.

“Oh,” said Amaryllis. “Right, yes. There were counter-imperialists in most of the member nations, and with the Empire effectively decapitated, and many of the imperialists crudely enslaved by Manifest, there was a rapid shift in power. - Chapter 56: Vacation Vocations
84. ↑ 84.0 84.1 Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 57: Li'o
85. ↑ “Well, there we come to the crux of it. There was a sequence of events that I never intended to happen, and here at the end of it, there’s you, in your current form, invincible except to a select few attacks, most of them ones that people won’t know or think to try, given that your particular form of defense should, by all rights, be impossible.”

“I’m too powerful, so you’re cutting me down to size,” I replied.

[...]

“I won’t say, one way or another, what will happen if you track down some other method. But Kenner’s Eye was always lame, and tattoo magic had always been for Everett anyway, nothing really intended for you, not that you used it, so here we are. It’s gone, wiped away except for in this city. It will probably be good for Li’o in the long run, actually.” - Chapter 162: Deus Ex
86. ↑ “The exclusion is for skin magic, though it might be localized to tattoo magic, since I don’t have the proper scars to test on. At a best approximation the radius is one hundred miles from the center of Li’o, though I only tested in three directions. It’s the subtype suppressive, not deadening or annihilation.”
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 163: "Level Heads"
87. ↑ 87.0 87.1 87.2 87.3 87.4 87.5 Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 17: Lunar
88. ↑ 88.0 88.1 88.2 88.3 88.4 88.5 Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 13: Mendel
89. ↑ 89.0 89.1 89.2 89.3 Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 21: Million Nations
90. ↑ 90.0 90.1 90.2 Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 20: Moljer
91. ↑ Necrolaborem was an ugly city. Like a few industrialists back on Earth, Captain Blue-in-the-Bottle had formed a company town, a planned community that was devoted, heart and soul, to the enterprise that revolved around his necromancy.
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 200: "Feeling Blue"
92. ↑ 92.0 92.1 92.2 Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 61: Necrolaborem
93. ↑ 93.0 93.1  In brief, Captain Blue-in-the-Bottle was a powerful necromancer during the Second Empire, one who reached heights that no other necromancer ever had before, not even in Uther’s time. His particular brand of necromancy got excluded, leaving him as the sole practitioner, but as far as enpersoned exclusion zones went, he was pretty calm and relaxed, capable of making deals with those outside his realm. At the time, that included the Second Empire, and they invested money into the Captain’s lands, putting up factories which were staffed by zombies, the name given to special creations that would slowly decay over time, but could be directed toward simple work until that point, the pinnacle of mindless labor. The Captain’s realm took in raw goods and sent out finished ones, at a fraction of the price that anyone else could do the same work for, and he did it with branding and public relations, little stamps that said ‘zombie-made’ on plates, hammers, all kinds of things. The zombies were, per the Captain, ethically sourced, only taken from people who died naturally in his realm, which had a fair population of the living as well.

The only problem was, Captain Blue-in-the-Bottle had been lying, and the zombies weren’t fully dead at all. Instead, the person who died was locked into their body, fully able to feel everything that happened to them, but unable to take any action on their own. The ‘zombies’ would sit there doing assembly work, watching as their bodies slowly and inevitably decayed, unable to speak, unable to stop, watching their own demise at a remove.
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 158: "OP"
94. ↑ Twelve years in, this brand of necromancy failed everywhere on Aerb, save for that estate and an area roughly a hundred miles around it.
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 200: "Feeling Blue"
95. ↑ The Z-word - With Captain Blue-in-the-Bottle dead, his zombies will linger on, going through their rote actions until someone comes through to put them out of their misery. The human workforce will be a bigger issue, one that will linger for much longer, a trauma that will never fully be made right, not without godlike power.
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 221: "Targets of Opportunity"
96. ↑ 96.0 96.1 96.2 96.3 Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 50: Nightsmoke
97. ↑ 97.0 97.1 The SSEZ is often noted as being somewhat the opposite of the NSEZ, which has wrapped a city in darkness. In fact, both exclusions share a source, the projection layer, but where the SSEZ occurs because of chaotic weakening and churning of the projection layer, the NSEZ represents a thickening of the projection layer that lets no sunlight in. - Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition Chapter 10: Sunspots
98. ↑ Aerb had features that were stolen from my D&D games, and all the stuff I was most scared of came from the post-Arthur era. Fel Seed, Nightsmoke, the borogoves, the mimsies … I sent the party into the thresher because I was angry at the world. It was more than just making the encounters too hard and the world unfair, it was beyond the fact that everything I made was grimdark, it was the hopeless despair that infused everything. I introduced villains whose evil couldn’t be undone, where their murder would just be a matter of futile revenge and the world would never be set right. - Chapter 4: Reaver
99. ↑ 99.0 99.1 99.2 99.3 Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 53: Oster
100. ↑ 100.0 100.1 100.2 In its heyday, Claw & Clocks was home to three separate time-related magics, which had all been united under a single institution: butterfly magic, clock magic, and revision magic. The former two were excluded, leaving revision magic to be taught alone, sometimes seen as the weakest of the triad. Opposite the time-related powers were the bodily magics, which in the beginning included various forms of lycanthropy, a number of specic magics, and fleshsmithing, a discipline shared with other centers of learning. Fleshsmithing was excluded at Pendleham, which became the City of Flesh, in 194 FE and lycanthropy was outlawed and then eradicated by the Second Empire in 256 FE
—*A Brief Description of Aerb* Chapter 2: "Athenaeums"
101. ↑ 101.0 101.1 101.2 101.3 Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 51: Pai Shep
102. ↑ 102.0 102.1 102.2 102.3 102.4 Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 11: Papillion
103. ↑ 103.0 103.1 103.2 Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 58: Parsmont
104. ↑ The Abswifth was practically a god, or maybe a demi-god, at least within the bounds of Parsmont
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 70: "Moral Agency "
105. ↑ The ‘Flesh’ in the title ‘Bone and Flesh’ refers to the magic once employed by the fleshsmiths, though fleshsmithing was excluded to the Pendleham exclusion zone shortly after the athenaeum changed its name. The school of magic is (understandably) no longer taught at Bone and Flesh, but the name remains, now referring to the more mundane healing arts, which are taught in conjunction with bone magic. - A Brief Description of Aerb - Chapter 2: Athenaeums
106. ↑ Grak and I returned from the fleshsmith exclusion zone four days after we’d touched down there. I’d been a little disappointed with the whole thing: it was clearly a side quest, something that didn’t have all that much impact on the greater story. I’d been hoping that it would tie back in with the main quest somehow, or give me some kind of power up, but the actual benefits of being there were rather marginal, with just a few upgrades to my physical body thanks to a sympathetic group of resistance fighters, which was a whole thing. [...] The fleshsmiths were, for the most part, not actually that bad. If all of the Thirteen Horrors were meant to be some kind of reflection of me, then the fleshsmiths probably had something to say about my relationship with my body. I was a transhumanist, and one of the things that had always attracted me about transhumanism was the idea that I was my own self, a person that happened to run on meat rather than silicon, though that was something that might some day change. The lesson of the fleshsmiths, if there was one, was that bodies weren’t just some inert, neutral hardware that the mind ran on, they were part and parcel of thinking and being itself. [...] There were pustule mages there, which I’d have expected even if I’d been going in blind, rather than with a full dossier from Uniquities. On a purely mechanical level, pustule magic worked well with bodily manipulation, and on a thematic level, they were both variations on body horror and ugly biological reality. Pustule mages had come to me during a bad case of acne, I was pretty sure, and as such, represented one aspect of the general idea that Pendleham seemed to be pointing at. - Worth the Candle - Chapter 221: Targets of Opportunity
107. ↑ Fleshsmith - Pendleham will have to find a new moniker, because it is the City of Flesh no more. What will replace it is unclear, but with time, some sense of normalcy will set in, and a new member polity might find entrance to the Empire of Common Cause.
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 221: "Targets of Opportunity"
108. ↑ 108.0 108.1 108.2 108.3 108.4 108.5 Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 2: Publican
109. ↑ 109.0 109.1 109.2 109.3 Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 28: Quixotic
110. ↑ 110.0 110.1 “Before smoke magic was excluded, they managed to get some big farms up and running, harvesting and processing enough rare herbs that smoke bars were common. The effects were low grade, for the most part, at least the legal ones. You would go up to the stoker and get a glass bottle filled with fresh, charged smoke, and then you would sit down at the bar, or in a comfortable seat, feeling the effects.” I had done my fair share of reading on excluded magics. Smoke magic was primarily concerned with the alteration of perception, with the higher levels being able to push that perception into becoming reality. It had no connection with the he’lesh smoke magic, which was a completely different take on smoke-as-magic (that was just how Aerb was sometimes). “I would take something called Spire’s Shade, which made everything seem a little more rigid and grounded.”
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 206: "Parallel Lines"
111. ↑ The he’lesh are smokers, through and through, with a unique smoke magic available to every member of their species, though to varying degrees [...] A he’lesh who chooses to can gain expertise in smoke magic, which has many possible avenues, all of which revolve around smoking various magical substances. - Worth the Candle: A Brief Description of Aerb - Chapter 8: Mortal Species
112. ↑ Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 59: Ravenous
113. ↑ 113.0 113.1 113.2 113.3 Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 56: [REDACTED]
114. ↑ 114.0 114.1 “Now, the hope is that it’s not unique to the Risen Lands. They’re a former territory of the Kingdom of Francorum, so we can probably start by, ah -- here.”
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 38: "Don't Split the Party"
115. ↑ 115.0 115.1 Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 25: Risen Lands
116. ↑ The short version is that Silmar City was the target of the attack that formed the Risen Lands, it’s awash with the walking dead, and there was once a secret facility there dedicated to the study of necrotic field effect, which I believe contains a key we can use to teleport ourselves to safety.
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 7: "Twenty Questions"
117. ↑ Yes, Anglecynn stood to benefit from the Kingdom of Francorum losing a large portion of their holdings and getting thrown into economic freefall.
—*A Brief Description of Aerb* Chapter 7: "The Exclusionary Principle"
118. ↑ Everything Eater - The corpse he left behind was small, but the crypt is immense and dangerous, a countryside shaped into a messy ball that will remain his tomb for as long as it takes the scavengers to remove everything of worth.
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 221: "Targets of Opportunity"
119. ↑ Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 65: Rove
120. ↑ tree as Dorian Gray ref (sp? maybe read, Wilde, close to historical Gray Magic (excluded))
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 105: "Notes"
121. ↑ 121.0 121.1 121.2 121.3 Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 23: Spect
122. ↑ 122.0 122.1 122.2 122.3 122.4 Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 10: Sunspots
123. ↑ 123.0 123.1 123.2 123.3 Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 30: Theraba Island
124. ↑ 124.0 124.1 124.2 124.3 Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 52: Unity
125. ↑ 125.0 125.1 125.2 125.3 125.4 Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 9: Valley of Cards
126. ↑ 126.0 126.1 126.2 126.3 Fountain of Everblood: One of the six entad exclusions, the Fountain of Everblood is capable of producing an enormous quantity of blood, pulled from the Elemental Plane of Blood, though it is thought to have once had variable output, or possibly some other function. It is unclear when or where the Fountain of Everblood was first forged, but in 311 FE, an area near Wettring began to flood with blood, killing crops and causing other damage. The blood eventually stopped at the exclusion border, a spherical containment that slowly filled until it was at capacity in roughly 353 FE. The blood therein is shaded with the magic of the entad, though it is unknown whether this is an effect of the entad or the exclusion. During the time of the Second Empire, ‘blood mines’ were constructed around the exclusion at great expense to attempt to harvest the vast quantities of blood for useful purposes, but for various reasons, these facilities proved uneconomical.
—*A Brief Description of Aerb* Chapter 6: "Entads"
127. ↑ 127.0 127.1 127.2 127.3 Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 4: The Fountain of Everblood
128. ↑ 128.0 128.1 In that era, the trial by adversity was done in the Whiffle exclusion zone, and while survivorship rates were abysmal, Onion had reached the border walls seven days after he’d been dropped, windseared and injured, the only one of his cohort to have lived.
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 185: "Mirror Room"
129. ↑ Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 66: Whiffle
130. ↑ 130.0 130.1 130.2 130.3 Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 60: William's Net
131. ↑ 131.0 131.1 131.2 131.3 131.4 Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 5: Zentria
132. ↑ There had been hundreds of demi-planes, but they were excluded back in Uther’s day. There had been a mirror dimension and a dream dimension, both excluded.
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 128: "An Open Book"
133. ↑ Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 67: Zestsez
134. ↑ There were no less than thirty-seven dangerous parallel dimensions, three that were excluded, eight that had apparently been destroyed, and another twenty-six that were ‘inaccessible’, a fact that everyone seemed to accept.
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 128: "An Open Book"
135. ↑ 135.0 135.1  Following Uther’s Interdiction, none of the disjoint planes are accessible from Aerb, though it’s theoretically possible to get to them by first passing through one of the elemental planes. There has been no known successful attempt at doing so.

[Juniper’s Notes: Looking into it further, it appears that Uther’s Interdiction might actually have been an exclusion? I can’t figure out why no one calls it an exclusion though, except perhaps that Uther declared that he’d done it for the safety of Aerb, so maybe this one time he just took credit? It’s also weirdly underplayed in the history books, maybe because the disjoint planes weren’t really interacted with all that much by anyone but Uther, and had little impact on the average person’s life. Really, the disjoint planes themselves are a big cliffnote in Aerb’s history.
—*A Brief Description of Aerb* Chapter 4: "Cosmology"
136. ↑ 136.0 136.1 It’s often said that the plane of dreams is excluded, but this doesn’t fully convey the reality of the situation. What instead happened was that the magic of dream-walking was apparently excluded, to an unknown exclusion zone, if there is one, which cut off the ability of anyone on Aerb to step into the plane of dreams through that method. However, some entads on Aerb still function within the plane of dreams, and of course, the phenomenon of dreaming relies on interaction between sleeping mortals in the material plane and the plane of dreams itself.
—*A Brief Description of Aerb* Chapter 4: "Cosmology"
137. ↑ 137.0 137.1  “That one’s not in the history books,” I said. “I mean, I know that the plane of dreams is excluded, but I’ve read all the most popular biographies, and there’s no mention of who or what caused the exclusion.”

“It’s not actually excluded,” said Raven. “The Lord of Dreams simply shut the usual pathways. It has nothing to do with the exclusionary principle.”
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 130: "The Abject Despair of an Uncaring World "
138. ↑ 138.0 138.1 Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 48: Dream Walking
139. ↑ Gestalting Deprecated, Exclusion #4
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 64: "In Which Juniper Stares At His Character Sheet, Again"
140. ↑ The last skill I looked closely at was the one labeled “Custom”, which was in red. Like Spirit, there were no associated skills for it, but there were buttons where the text would normally go. It looked very much like this was a “roll your own” type of skill, the kind that you included in case someone wanted something truly outside the box. That apparently wasn’t an option for me, because it was “Deprecated, Exclusion #17”
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 64: "In Which Juniper Stares At His Character Sheet, Again"
141. ↑ Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition - Chapter 1: Preface
142. ↑ “For those ones, it was a proto-exclusion,” said Raven. “Not quite an exclusion as we know them today, but with many of the same features. In that particular case, it caused the sudden malfunction of a mental augmentation their kind used, killing them all instantly, and so far as we’ve been able to determine, none of what they made can be recreated or repaired once broken.”

“Wait,” said Pallida, “Are you talking about the Gomerons? Is *that* what happened to them?”

“How do you not know this?” asked Raven. “You *lived through it.”*

“Like I had any idea?” asked Pallida. “I was *in* Gomera at the time, and all I saw was everyone around me drop dead, all at once, for no discernable reason. It was a little horrifying, now that I think about it.” She kept her face expressionless, but I thought that *had* to be a joke.

“They weren’t prepared for the magic to fail,” said Grak with a grunt.

“No, they weren’t,” said Raven. “It was an unknown threat at the time.” - Chapter 146: Terrors of the Black Age
143. ↑ Worth the Candle: A Brief Description of Aerb - Chapter 1: History
144. ↑ There had been hundreds of demi-planes, but they were excluded back in Uther’s day. There had been a mirror dimension and a dream dimension, both excluded.
—*Worth the Candle* Chapter 128: "An Open Book"
145. ↑ 145.0 145.1 145.2 145.3 145.4 12 FE: Uther relocates the Athenaeum of Speculation and Scrutiny

[...]

30 FE: Uther disappears

34 FE: Fel Seed exclusion

81 FE: Internecine Wars

[...]

176 FE: Second Empire founded

194 FE: Pendleham exclusion

276 FE: Necrolaborem exclusion

324 FE: Second Empire collapses, Manifest exclusion

- Chapter 196: Notes II
146. ↑ “Fel Seed,” she began, then stopped. “We don’t know how Fel Seed happened,” she said, measuring her words. “There wasn’t a source, like the others, some magic gone awry or some entad that came out too powerful. He appeared in 34 FE, but … we’re not sure that there wasn’t some kind of incubation period, that he hadn’t gained his power, or that he was in hiding, and … there were rumors.”

“Rumors that Fel Seed was Uther,” said Amaryllis.

Raven nodded, head down.

“Not a theory that anyone gives actual credit to anymore,” said Amaryllis. “I read it once in a footnote, a theory that was dismissed in the same sentence it was brought up. I had the same thought myself, even before that.” - Chapter 123: Medieval Stasis
147. ↑ 147.0 147.1 Worth the Candle: The Exclusionary Principle, 9th Edition: Chapter 3 - Doris Finch
148. ↑ The Empire of Common Cause was barely prepared for a major exclusion, in spite of a lot of legislation that had been passed on the subject. I had asked Amaryllis about disaster preparedness as it pertained to the exclusionary principle, and she had spent a half hour in what I can only describe as full-on rant mode, covering a wide range of topics: regulatory capture, coordination failures, motivated optimism, toothless legislation, and pandering politicians. It was a somewhat harrowing experience for me, and she didn’t peter out until I tried to get through the thicket of acronyms that she’d used and tease apart some of the underlying assumptions. The long and short of it was that there were a few different magics which, if fully excluded, would end up with a lot of people dying avoidable deaths, and a lot of other people dying unavoidable deaths. As it turned out, getting people to plan for disasters that had never happened, and might not happen in the next lifetime, was actually pretty difficult. - Chapter 146: Terrors of the Black Age
149. ↑ “It is,” said Raven with a nod. “It’s entirely possible that the entity I spoke of would be excluded to his own patch of Aerb if televisions were ever distributed, and we might lose another metropolis because of it, but it wouldn’t be the disaster for all the mortal species that the Library was predicting when I left. Unfortunately, we have no idea whether the exclusionary principle will protect us until it actually happens -- or fails to. Obviously intentionally attempting to trigger an exclusion is something we don’t do. [...] The second major problem, at least for our purposes, is that the exclusionary principle is unknown to the Library.” - Chapter 123: Medieval Stasis
150. ↑ “It’s a series of stopgap measures and incomplete solutions, some of which likely aren’t going to be viable in the real,” said Raven. “Some kind of massive bomb, bigger than a nuclear weapon? That’s going to be excluded, with certainty.” - Chapter 132: Uskine Nervedah
151. ↑ “I suppose we’ll start with exclusion breaks,” she said. “We see them written about in the Library sometimes, though it’s never happened in the real world. We don’t typically take action on them, with the exception of co-opting the imperial monitoring stations. They’re always far into the future, one of the default end states of civilization or life, and there’s virtually nothing that we could actually do about threat containment. I mention it primarily because if you find some way of breaking the exclusionary principle, it’s entirely possible that you would accidentally end the world.” - Chapter 125: The Remnants of the Past
152. ↑ There were a bunch of rules behind the scene that weren't very important and could only *really* be revealed through prophecy, like 1) the exclusionary principle could only contain one of them at a time and 2) they would grow more powerful with each other's power to draw on. Mome Rath's antimemetic power breaking Fel Seed free of containment, or at least allowing expansion of the borders of the exclusion zone, for example. - WtC Q&A