A/N: The magic theory section can get a bit side tracked (I swear, it's his character fault; totally not because I ended up writing too much).

If you want to skip it, you only need to know that two new principles of magic were discovered. Magic energy and the frame of reference of magic. The experiments are roughly as important as Lavoisier's demonstration of combustion in a closed vessel and the Michelson-Morley experiment disproving the luminiferous aether.

This is the first time I've written in my personal notes for months. I confess I have been neglecting making this record, so many things have happened since my last entry. Between the renewed zombie attacks, the troubles of civil war and other personal matters, I just never found the time to review smaller matters. Furthermore, now that proper documentation exists, the necessity of detailing my notes and thoughts here becomes less useful, hence I shall merely record my commentary and opinions on current affairs. In a way, this has now become my infrequently updated diary.

On Dust, The First and the Great War

Morey's letter has been both enlightening and worrying. The Great War has been the source of endless speculation and myth in Inath. Scholars, bards and children's tales all agree on a massive war that destroyed the ancient civilizations. But what the causes of the war were, and what specifically caused the destruction, is not known for sure.

Morey's discovery of this journal, seeming to be dated close to the end of the war, sheds some light on the end. Evidently, Dust is a weapon created by the First and was used to destroy the Tsar. Somehow, this weapon was turned against the First as well, whether by Tsarian copy or by some misfire, and it destroyed them. Or was the final straw after a long destructive war. In any case, the proximate cause of the fall of prior civilization seems to be an exchange of magical (or non-magical) weapons of mass destruction. Inath is a world that is couple of hundred years post apocalypse.

What sort of weapon was it? The 'piles of Dust' phrase seems to imply it has a physical existence, it's probably magical in nature and not explosive. Beyond that, we have no idea. Was it a biological weapon of some kind? Or was Dust actually a secondary effect of some more powerful phenomena? For now, all we can do is explore more ruins and spread the letters the First used to indicate Dust. In any case anyone finds a sample, casing or other material related to it, a large open bounty has been posted for any information and strict instructions not to tamper with it. No one wants to accidentally set off an ancient superweapon if any copies remain functional. That would be distinctly unhealthy.

We also have a mention as to what might have been the initial causes of the war. The journal scraps mention an 'end of their horrendous experiments'. This indicates that the First and the Tsar might have had a conflict over some fundamental ethical values, possibly related to Tsarian experiments of some kind. Maybe the Tsar were the first to start a superweapon race, or perhaps the disagreement was over something like the creation of the demihuman races, which we know the Tsar are responsible for.

Also interestingly, there was a mention of a shield that blocked the Dust for a time. Scholars of the First script tell me that the words used imply the shield was very large, immediately drawing a parallel in word choice to a legendary First hero who wielded a shield that could defend an entire city. The requirements of a magical shield projected over even a city like Minmay, as well as the power to keep it up for long periods of time as implied in the text, gives a rough indication of the scale of the First civilization. Perhaps a thousand to ten thousand times higher than Minmay currently.

With that level of power, one could easily imagine spells of a scale that could be considered strategic weapons. A spell cannon scaled to a million power units, could conceivably be used to launch attacks city to city. Not unlike ballistic missiles on Earth. The way magic works encourages such things. Construction of powerful magical spells requires only power and very little in the way of specialized industry and materials.

That would be like saying any industrialized city could simply store the excess output of their power grids to make nuclear weapons of the same energy yield. Even with a one third loss and ten percent efficiency, any modern Earth city could easily create one Hiroshima scale weapon per day. It doesn't work like that on Earth, but I can see no reason why, if the power is available, such could not be done in Inath. Superweapons are 'easy' here. That the city of First Landing is still standing, the supposed capital city of the First civilization, is probably a minor miracle.

Obviously, such speculation contains too many assumptions to be anywhere close to correct. In all likelihood, the scale of their civilization would have been many times larger as they were implied to have spread worldwide. City scale shields might not have been widespread either. And certainly additional problems are sure to arise at that level of power. Still, this gives an indication of what might have been involved in a magical superweapon exchange.

The ritual summons of today are just toys in comparison.

I shall tell Landar to design a hypothetical one million power unit spell and see what she comes up with.

Politics and Inath Federation

I am slightly worried about the stability of the Federation.

This may come as a surprise to the contemporary citizen. Minmay has settled its peasant rebellion and Illastein's civil war is being guided by Morey. Despite the recent assault, the war against the monsters is going well, the spread of the bowgun, spell forming wands and linked wand batteries have effectively allowed anyone to defend their village instead of being dependent on the knights.

Yet it is that same ability that I fear will lead to later issues. Without a spark, Ranra and Ektal are quiet, the old order of aristocrats remains in place as long as times are good. But the lives of peasants are being touched by greater issues than before. Economic and military power is shifting downwards from a small upper class of knights and aristocrats to peasants and common soldiers. Already, many villages have a central store of charged wands and at least a few peasant turned alchemist making them.

All it takes is the right conditions, an economic downturn or a bad harvest, and a spark like an overbearing lord not afraid of his peasants. The peasants may have lived their lives under the feet of their betters but they are not stupid. They may tolerate the situation, but they do not like it.

I excluded Inath from this analysis. Minmay has the advantage of a well-liked leader and a strong history of welfare and good governance. Similarly, Inath is like a country sized version of Minmay. Morey might describe Queen Amarante as a naive story obsessed queen but she clearly can govern well in peace time and has to be a better negotiator than Morey gives her credit for. A Federation of all known countries under such conditions is an amazing achievement.

What little Minmay can glean from her people is near uniform popular support and an aristocracy whose excesses have been strongly curbed. Whether she achieves it by being a model figure or by darker means, Inath will likely weather any such unrest. In the case of extremity, the General is a formidable figure in war and strategy, the iron-fisted counterpart to her flowery self. Honestly, they are an enviable pair of rulers that Inath is lucky to have.

Others have no such luck.

Fukas and Elkas

Discrimination against Fukas and Elkas remains a problem as ever. Most of Inath continues to treat them as innately inferior to humans. Those of Tsarian heritage, like the Iris family, do not hold this attitude, probably a cultural holdover from the time when the Tsar created them.

Interestingly, by all measurements, the Fukas and Elkas actually have superior capabilities. Both of them have innately faster reaction times, higher muscle density and power, greater body balance and reflexes. This is before the effect of Ems, which propel them straight into superhuman territory. Testing of senses also shows that all Fukas have ridiculous sensory ability. Most of the improvements concentrate in vision and hearing, which have greater dynamic range and acuity than humans, but also present in tactile and smells. Elkas are even more extreme.

Both races learn Ems with an instinctive ease, with no measurable disadvantage in normal magic (other than frustration). Fukas have a slightly higher average power than humans while Elkas have huge reserves of magic as well as many times faster regeneration when wings are extended. The only area both races do worse than humans is swimming, Fukas having a body density higher than water and Elkas from a very awkward body shape.

Health-wise, there appears to be no differences other than lower bone density. Fukas are only slightly more fragile compared to humans but Elkas are extremely sensitive. Combined with higher muscle power and a loosening of mental limits, Fukas and Elkas can very easily break their own bones with too vigorous a jump or punch.

The discrimination is mostly sustained because they are minorities. I am trying to help them gain a better life by creating spaces for them to work in and demonstrate their ability. Recent... events have vacated the seats of some rural nobility and if the Fukas wish it, I should be able to gain a title to some land where I can then allow them to immigrate. I have posed the question, we will see if anything comes of it.

Mass Manufacturing

We are building a true industrial base in Minmay city. I cannot wait for the improvements to goods, service and generally everything that will come from it. Production of steel and cast iron has reached a level that a railway between Minmay and the Central Territory was contemplated. The proposal did not proceed due to a high cost to expected benefit, not due to the lack of ability to make the rails.

High pressure boilers are being tested, although still prone to explosions; that doesn't prevent Bashal's subsidiary steam company from doing a roaring business with the mines. Willio is grooming another of his star employees to take Bashal's place, focusing on tool steel, drill bits and other high performance applications, aiming to replace the experimental tool workshop in the University. With political and economic backing, standardized process is the new buzzword and it seems everyone wants to learn how to do it. There are talks about the creation of a parallel of Earth's ISO.

A note here about companies. It seems my original suggestion to Kalny to split off the pumps into a subsidiary was not required. Traditionally, guilds focused on a single area of industry. You'd have to tailor's guild, the ironworkers, the scribes and so on. Of course, people could belong to more than one guild or association and there may be guilds in competition over claimed industries, but by and large, the tradition has been that a single organization has a single purpose.

This has carried over to today's companies. Contrary to what I expected, no company has attempted to expand across multiple areas. Upon creating a viable range of products in a new area, the leader of the company will spin off a new company and co-own it with the employees who were responsible for that invention. Apart from sharing ownership and being subsidized in capital and knowledge, the subsidiaries are often left to their own devices. Eventually this creates a group of closely related companies whose leaders have partial shares in the others. In a way, this resembles the old guild system of master and apprentice. The myriad independent 'apprentices' have fostered a boom-town atmosphere, not unlike Silicon Valley during the dotcom bubble.

So far, the principles of mass production have been applied only to steel, bicycles, furniture and other durable goods. And guns. A standardized process for enchantment and crafting of the barrels has improved accuracy and made gun parts truly interchangeable. However, being able to reliably hit a circle the size of a human head at one hundred meters falls far short of what Earth can achieve. Higher muzzle velocity and stronger Resist enchantments are reaching the point of diminishing returns.

I suspect that the problem of rifling will have to be tackled to get any further. And that brings a whole new set of problems. The acceleration profile of an Inath gun is significantly different from that of Earth's gunpowder rifles. In fact, naive attempts to carve threads and force bullets down the barrel lose significant velocity. The issue lies in how force is exerted and its relationship to power; bullets riding a gunpowder burn are forced out by gas pressure which is only eased as they travel down the barrel, bullets accelerated by magic use power regardless of whether they are even moving. Too tight a thread fitting and the bullet doesn't even fire. In a way, Inath guns work more like railguns than gunpowder rifles. Options are being explored, for once I do not have any relevant insight to guide us. Perhaps we can try firing darts with fins instead.

Similar issues have arisen with the other inventions. Bicycles are hard and bumpy, with seats that are either too low or too high. Tables have sharp corners and inconveniently placed legs. Toilet paper comes in too large rolls, without perforations, and are hard enough to write on. Mixing taps are unheard of. Prospective magical lamps are just Liquid Light poured into a tiny lamp bowl and have a tendency to spill everywhere. Most 'inventions' are dominated by function and not design, made to be the cheapest easiest thing that barely works. Very little of it is actually designed.

In other words, there aren't enough engineers, all that anyone has the money for is 'how does it work' and 'how do I make it'. 'Quality of life' improvements cost too much or take too much time or are too hard. Landar tells me I'm too fussy. That may be true. Two and a half years since I arrived is insanely fast for the amount of improvement we have seen and things we have reinvented.

In happier news, Minmay's Time Square, the biggest and richest commercial area, is the first place public lighting has been installed. Lamps have been calibrated and placed around the square to ensure it is always lit. Liquid Light created by magic in decorated glass is activated from a central panel. The tailors, jewelers and a new very posh restaurant split the cost by size of shop front and will pay the City to keep the Square lit at all times. While this is essentially a vanity project meant to earn some income, the utilities systems created to handle the problems encountered will allow future expansions of public infrastructure across the city.

Astronomy

I have a larger telescope and have been able to track and see surface detail on each of the moons that share Selna with us. In order from the innermost orbit, they are: Ecury, Firma, Fournat, Everay, Enathay, Erinay, Eruthay.

The naming scheme apparently dates back to the time of the First. The five 'E' moons are airless rocky planetoids, except for Ecury which is too small for its gravity to make it spherical, they are generally uninteresting. Firma is our planet. Reddish Fournat is perhaps half Firma's size and displays extreme volcanic activity. There may or may not be an atmosphere, but if it has one, it won't be breathable.

Firma is the biggest moon by far, being nearly Earth sized.

I have tasked the Federation's first apprentice astronomer to find other planets in the solar system.

Zombies

Further research into zombie reanimation has demonstrated that zombies will not reanimate bodies which have been dead longer than a week or who were killed by disruption magic. Given the link to disruption magic, I suspect this has to do with lifeforce. Unfortunately, the magical disease theory was ruled out, locking death row criminals together with caged zombies did not turn live people into zombies. Zombies were previously proven to be able to animate bodies through physical walls but not magical barriers.

We also have the first demonstration of zombie information transfer. Zombies from the recent Fort Yang battle were able to animate animal bodies, which zombies captured before could not. Upon allowing the old zombies to mix with the new for a few hours, the old zombies acquired the ability to do so. More worryingly, people killed by disruption or old bodies could also be animated by the new Fort Yang zombies, although the zombies seem to prefer fresh human bodies to animals and animals to old bodies. The magical signature on animals are weaker than on human bodies, and the signature on old bodies are weaker still. Why this should be so, we have no idea.

Another windfall from the Fort Yang battle was the capture of a crystal zombie. Given the shape, it is clear the creature used to be a humanoid zombie but the monster is completely made out of a strange crystalline material that registers as magical. Not sharing the normal disruption effect of the Crystal magical material, zombie crystal had been noted to act like armour, albeit armour subject to magical disruption. Unfortunately, the crystal zombie might or might not be the shooter we have been looking for since it does not appear to have the light based weapon.

During the final phase of the battle, it was noted that no more light beams were fired after the black mist collapsed and the zombies reverted to charging tactics. Reanimation and repair of bodies might have also stopped, but the zombies were too busy charging to do anything else. The black mist then seems key to the zombies' new powers, without which they are reduced to mindless charges that the new weapons should easily defeat. Unfortunately, destroying the mist requires so much magic that doing so is not trivial.

Tremors

The few remaining tremor eggs have died. We have no idea why or how, or if the bodies inside were stunted. Given that the eggs were laid in two of the largest crystal mines, and that we haven't found them in the Borehole or other mines, we could guess that tremors require a very high magic density environment to develop properly. How, why? Questions are left unanswered.

Fundamental Investigations into Magic

The strange phenomena called 'structures' by humans and 'colour' by Fukas and Elkas are what make spells work. These seem to convert magical power into an effect of some kind, like heat, force, magical materials or other things. Conduits that move magical power and signals (which are just very tiny power conduits) are also one of them. The natural 'waves' that make spells move without an external version used by the spell cannons are not structures however, as we found out later.

I should start by examining what these are, what they are composed of and how they work. Common properties to all spell structures are that they have a volume and can overlap over each other, usually. They all require magical power to operate and simply disappear in its absence. Some are composed of magical power for their operation, some take it from the 'gaseous' magical power contained in the spell, although I cannot confirm if the second set just contain very small amounts of magic and convert the rest.

The most important structure, and most basic, is the spell boundary. This structure usually exists on the outside of the spell and prevents the magical power from the inside from escaping. Failure to form the magical boundary properly is the primary cause of spellcasting fizzles, the contained magical power simply escapes through the holes. This much is confirmed by placing powerful spells into a power box, then deliberately holing their boundaries. The escaping magic was captured in the box and detected as magical power density we could pump out and reclaim some of the power from.

The gas theory of magic was confirmed by just such a series of experiments. Placed inside a passive magical container, a large quantity of magic contained in a spell did not significantly increase the density of magic available to the power box. The power box expels magic touching its walls and the spell itself was not, thus the density of magic in the empty space between the box and the spell did not change.

However, all spells (except Alchemy) are known to slowly degrade over time. Over the period of minutes, or hours in the case of the higher power experiments, the magic density contacting the walls of the box would increase (measured by power gained from discharging the gradient) until it reached a level proportional to the power and size of the spell and inversely to the volume of the box. If the box was opened after the density stopped increasing, one would find that the spell inside had disappeared, and a proportionally weaker spell if opened early. Experiments with various shapes of spells indicate that power loss scales linearly by surface area of the spell.

The obvious conclusion is that spell boundaries contain magical power, but leak slowly. So far, this matched the prevailing theory of magic in Inath. I hypothesized, that if the final density of magic was high enough, the spell itself would still be working. When we open the door of the box, the density inside escapes and that destroys the spell.

In order to test the last conclusion, a spell was set to start heating a cup of water after a time in which all of the spell's power would have leaked away (determined experimentally and with a safe margin of error). A thermometer was placed inside and the experiment run inside a box. The results were... unexpected.

In the first result, the heating did occur and I was credited by everyone for proving that spells operated with magic density and did not strictly require a boundary, something truly new to the Inath Academy. But when we tried to find the minimum level of density required to power a spell, none could be found. In fact, when a low power spell placed in a large box and the box evacuated of all magic density, such that the final density level was less than ambient, the heating still worked! Implying that spells could work based off ambient magic density! Since spells clearly don't, that was when we realized that something else had to be going on.

A serendipitous mix-up of test boxes running in parallel (it can take hours for high power spells to fully degrade) lead to our next breakthrough. A helper labeled a box that had concluded a post-leak heating test and instead ran a density measurement on it by extracting the density. The result was an intermediate value between ambient and the previously determined density level given the power of the spell.

By charting the result and slowing the rate of heating, we determined that running a spell in a box decreases the density inside. But only to a point. After the heating was exhausted, the box still contained a higher than ambient density. This residual unusable density was strange because we could clearly gain power by pumping it out of the box, but the spell couldn't use it. Creating a box containing a higher density than usual (by pumping in reverse while the spell was degrading and separately by conducting the entire box experiment inside a bigger box) did not change the amount of heating, all pumped density was unusable, as was magic density obtained from the Borehole or magic crystals.

This discovery of a spell-usable density and an unusable density sparked a lot of debate. Power was power, according to common wisdom, but here we were dealing with two types of power. Further experiments involving two degrading spells confirmed that usable density could be traded between spells and the unusable density portion increased less than linearly with respect to the power of the spell.

What was much more interesting was when an alchemist created his own heating spell instead of getting one from the spell forming steel staff, he obtained a significantly different result. Further examination showed that every alchemist had a different proportion of usable and unusable and indeed every alchemist created the spell yielding the same amount of heating with a different total amount of magic density! All having the same magic signature! A systematic survey of all alchemists in the University was conducted over two weeks and the usable density was found to be exactly proportional to the heating obtained from the spell, regardless of caster. Landar and Chakim were then found to have an abnormally low unusable magic density proportion, which lead to the obvious conclusion.

The amount of unusable density was found to be correlated with the amount of magical power each of them could output. The less unusable density proportion, the more powerful the mage.

This conclusion was subject to immense interest. We collected samples from everyone who could create a spell. The unusable density proportion against power capacity of a mage was plotted and found to be extremely non-linear. I managed to create a linear law, plotting power capacity (measured by total heating created from full power) against the inverse of unusable density propotion. The upper constant was then derived from the gradient and found to be about two thousand power units. The intercept was so small as to be below measurement error, implying that whoever could cast a spell with zero unusable density could channel nearly infinite magic.

Most of the researchers then proceeded to drop all other lines of inquiry in order to try to find a way to cast a spell containing zero unusable density, thereby granting whoever did it unlimited power! There was more than a little skepticism on my part.

Of note was that during the testing, all of the participants increased in power as expected from the repeated use of magic. This increase could be marked on the graph and everyone progressed along the same line. Landar's samples could be plotted as progressing along the graph when she performed the Iris training exercises for a week, less quickly when she stuck to alchemy. The Iris sought expertise to calibrate a power box set up as a magic capacity measuring device in the family home. Progress of power training could now be measured without an inaccurate estimate of a full scale release of power, which was dangerous for the most powerful Iris members.

The identity of the gradient constant was then physically tested. A power box the size of a person, containing unusable magic density left over by spells that the mage used to heat a big bucket (Iris members just pushed air around instead), and the exhausted mage. The unusable magic density inside was observed to decrease over time as the mage recovered his power. Power recovery was not faster in a high magic density environment, dashing hopes from certain quarters. But that was strong evidence that the constant was actually the physical amount of unusable magic density that the mage's lifeforce could expel without harm.

Further evidence along this line came with a new method of measuring magic density. Magic compressing steam engines were known to require more force for higher densities. Power boxes with the roof converted into a piston and filled with magic density could be shown to support weights. Measurements of all sources yielded exactly the correct answers, except for spells allowed to degrade. The force exerted by the density correlated only with unusable magic density, the usable density might as well not exist! So magical barrier pistons were a direct measurement of unusable magic density.

This was the first clue that the fundamental nature of these two magic densities were different. We knew them as magic densities by the power gain from the box as it was pumped out into the environment, but what if that wasn't the case? First point of evidence: A charged spell forming wand was tested in a piston box and the unusable magic density was found to decrease when the spell was cast and then slowly increase back to the original level as the spell degraded. The amount of decrease and the volume of the spell allowed me to calculate the unusable magic density of the spell, which was confirmed when a similar spell was transferred to a different piston box and allowed to degrade to the same result. Spell forming wands and spell cannons pull unusable magic density from the ambient conditions, and indeed, do not work at all in an evacuated power box, even if charged.

The second point was that the magic signature of a spell was correlated with the usable density, not the total density. The magic sensor Landar had made was actually a total density sensor, not a magic signature sensor. Signature in particular did not behave anything like a spell did.

The third point was that a spell forming wand used in low density conditions with a very high power, created a spell that was unusually rich in usable density, without encountering any difficulty. In near zero density environments, the wand fails to form the spell but once a very low threshold of magic is present, the wand works as expected. Further charging of the same spell by external supply of power pushed the usable density higher without changing the total amount of unusable density inside the box.

Thus, I hypothesize that usable density is some form of energy that magic uses to create effects, having no detectable volume. Energy present inside a box gets added to the box when the magic density is pumped out. Unusable density is then the actual bits of magic that carry this energy, supporting the observation that people seem to all have a similar size pool of unusable density that is expelled inside the spells they cast. This leads to the conclusion that you need some magic density to carry the magic energy and therefore any caster must expend some unusable magic when casting. Hence unlimited power is impossible.

But where from comes magic energy? Density appears to be conserved but energy is not. Energy can appear in a closed system as long as an imbalance in magic density is present or created. It cannot be created from physical energy in a compression piston because by measurements of force required, the physical energy used to compress the magic density is less than the heat energy that the resulting magic energy can create. In the first place, the different effects that magic creates have wildly different physical energies.

And casters appear to create magic energy out of nothing. Perhaps not in unlimited quantities but certainly more than the unusable density they can use.

It would appear that more research is required.

In parallel, a different question was also answered.

We also know that most normal spells will not move if not set to do so. Physical material does not affect spells and firebolts not set to explode on contact will happily fly through walls. So called 'stationary' spells can only be moved by casters or if hit by magical barriers. This of course, poses a frame of reference problem. Stationary to who? The answer appears to be the ground, as most mages on carts, Rekis and the river barges can tell you. But why the ground?

However, in all the testing with power boxes, we noticed that spells inside the power boxes will move together with the boxes. Literally, if you put a box around a 'stationary' spell, the spell's frame of reference changes to that of the box. Open the box and take it away, the spell is once again stationary with respect to the ground. More surprisingly, you do not need to close the box in order to move the 'stationary' spell. A box open on one side and moved in a scooping motion (ie. towards the open face) will in fact drag along any stationary spells inside, like leaves in a water current.

Following the gas theory, this makes perfect sense if 'stationary' spells are in fact 'stationary' with respect to the magic around them, just that ambient magic is generally stationary with respect to the planet's motion. Since the box walls will contain magic density and therefore is impermeable to magic, one could simply sweep along the ambient magic and carry along all the spells. We then called this the aether theory. That lead to us testing using magical barriers like a fan and creating shortlived currents in the ambient magic. To great success and less great applications.

Aether theory also explains the phenomena of spell cannon acceleration, which is based off the same effect mages use to move spells around. Simply, the magical effect is actually a relative of the magical pump that power boxes use, without the power collection effect. All it does is generate currents in the magic density comprising the spell and thereby accelerating it. I suspect a low power version is what mages use normally, that effect they describe as setting up 'waves' inside the spell.

Aether theory also implies that ambient magic density will impose a kind of friction analogous to air friction onto moving spells. Very long range testing of spells (over kilometers) confirmed this effect, the deceleration even scales in roughly the same way, inversely proportional to weight, proportionally with size and proportional with square of velocity. I think it's the same anyway, I never really studied fluid dynamics. Shapes of spells made a difference, with aerodynamic cones and bullet shapes losing much less velocity.

In any case, air friction was also observed to be much higher for magical barriers, as expected. While at the distances and speeds we use, this makes little difference, I am sure this knowledge will be important for the creation of longer range disruption spells. Perhaps some way to 'arm' them as disruption just before impact can be created.