Talk:Maestro Felix Bertalan/@comment-8049634-20130421095651/@comment-7172255-20130421160852

Thanks:) I do, indeed, prefer details of magic and cosmology to be conveyed through unreliable sources -- in this case, something a 15-year-old boy wrote down after having a more-than-half-mad spirit translate things into Magyr for him. It can give specific "flava" to the occult for the purposes of narrative, but can at the same time be totally compatible with the general unified theory.:D

So in this case, Felix didn't really delve into the different ways the Price could be paid for the magic, as he did not have sophisticated enough vocabulary to understand or relate to the finer details. There are indeed different ways to pay the Price, and moreover, the price paid by the practitioner of magic can take on a different form than the price paid by the victim, and it could be both physical or mental, and indeed needn't involve physical discomfort. I would say there were about as many ways to pay the Price as there were prominent magic users -- as magic users are always loathe to share secrets with one another. Suffering was just the only Magyr word that Felix understood that was close enough in meaning.

So in the end, I like it that monks in the south could gain the use of magic through the withering of human desire, that the Ifrits and Djinns could do magic through piecemeal giving up of their physical body, that witches of Judge's Island could gain magic through sacrificing their firstborns, the barbarian clans from across the Tiertz can do it via blood-eagleing their prisoners on a moonlit night, and ancient warlocks of Ungren could gain magic through the use of elaborate torture chambers, scientifically tested to be the most effective.

The next bit is almost done, and it's on the magic of Contracts, which started out as an esoteric experimental branch of magic, but eventually became to the magic users of Old Ungren what theory of relativity was for modern physics. Contracts are fairly popular in the north (for an certain definition of popular), but virtually unheard of in the south. That said, they are particularly relevant to Felix, as well as to the Fiend of Serpentine (who is in my universe a very avid practitioner of the Yrzabelite school of magic).