Spellcasters are well-known throughout the Shrouded Lands, and are the subject of much legend and intrigue. A variety of terms are used to describe them, and the precise meanings of those terms are not always clear.
“Mage” and “wizard” are used interchangably to describe accomplished spellcasters, most of whom seem to be scholarly: keeping spellbooks, conducting research or experiments, learning from a master or a school, sharing a body of lore, etc. “Thaumaturge” is also used to describe wizards, but perhaps suggesting quality - the term is used in the once prestigious Imperial Academy of Thaumaturgy of Jahur and to describe the accomplished mage Severard.
More complicated is the term “sorcerer”. At times, it appears to be synonymous with mage and wizard, or perhaps serve as a general term for all spellcasters. For example, the Necromantic Office entry says that most sorcerers apprentice themselves to an established wizard. The Idjits are described as alchemists and elementalists, and as meddling sorcerers, and compete with a “rival wizard guild”.
In Thring, priests of Baron Autumn are described as sorcerers and they are associated with black magic. Their hyper-specialisation (one sorcerer is a master of featherstitch magic) might distinguish them from the illusionists and necromancers - or maybe this is just a different style of specialisation.
Those whose magic comes from blood or birthright also seem to be specifically identified as sorcerers rather than wizards or mages. The dragonblooded and tieflings who cast spells by dint of their heritage are described exclusively as sorcerers.
Some examples of specialist wizards are necromancers, illusionists and wizard-transmuters. Shuttered’s only wizarding academy trains necromancers. However, at least in the case of necromancers, these terms may also refer to spellcasters who practice necromancy without following the scholarly path of the wizard. There are also hedge mediums, who do not seem to be advanced enough or learned enough to be considered necromancers.
Earth elementalists work within the Honorable Society of Engineers alongside wizard-transmuters. It is unclear if elementalism is a specialisation of wizardry, an alternative form of sorcery or not a form of spellcasting at all.
Artisans and artificers create magic items, as wizards are known to do, and both alchemists and wizards seem familiar with alchemy. However, none of these professions seem to be spellcasters in their own right. Astrologers, alchemists and hexers now study at the Imperial Academy of Thaumaturgy, where once there were wizards and sages.
The Witch Queen of Cragsend is a mage, and the Witch Queen of Thring is described by some as a sorceress. In other cases, someone is identified as practicing witchcraft without a link to sorcery or wizardry being made - as in the case of Kolfrosta the witch-priestess and Alberon learning witchery from the Pacharia.
Members of the Witch Clans can cast a spell based on their family, but this does not appear to make them spellcasters, wizards or sorcerers - or even witches. Likewise, the magic abilities of druids and bards seem to be different to those of wizards and sorcerers.
The Yaboons are humorously known as the “wizards of bureaucracy”.
There are a number of descriptions of clerics and wizards working together, which suggests that their magic is different, and Edrin was a priest who is now learning sorcery. The whispered caress is specifically identified as a divine spell. The lion priests placed a spell on the top floor of the lighthouse to sustain the people there almost indefinitely (46.10). For simplicity’s sake, priests, clerics and divine magic have been excluded from this article - where it is identified as divine magic.
Likewise, while the art of pactmaking is definitely magical, it is not clear that it involves spellcasting. Warlocks and shamans are thus not discussed in this article.
Wizardry and magecraft
Wizards and mages are associated with a number of practices: The art: Wizards describe their power as their art. Laws of reality: As mages grow in power, the laws of reality twist to their whims. Despite their power, their bodies are vulnerable to the passage of time. Trying to achieve immortality is a particular goal of several wizards. Wizard’s towers: As well as Severard’s, there is an abandoned wizard tower in 07.33. Familiars: Drunk giant bat Hiccup wants to be a wizard’s familiar (12.09).
The practice of spellcasting
Some wizards reference spellbooks, but it does not appear that all do. Snakes are books, and some in the Bone Field are spellbooks. Carvings in the Vale of Tirandelle seem to be spell formulae in an ancient script. The Arch-Lich of Naros had a spellbook, now in the Sealed Library.
Gnollish singing can interrupt a Dust Man’s concentration - and perhaps also a wizard or cleric’s.
The High Tongue is the language of sorcery, at least in Shuttered, and the nobility of Shuttered. The mockingbird occasionally calls out spell formulae in this language. Most nobles know at least a few cantrips. The City teaches that there are a thousand spells and one.
Spells cast from the peak of Mount Scorshia at the right time are amplified in unexpected ways.
When ivory gargoyles force memorised spells from people’s minds, the shed spells take the form of small mewling animals. Rest is needed to memorise spells (33.08). It is not clear whether all spellcasters must memorise spells, or only wizards, or only some wizards.
Ritual currencies might warrant a closer look. Lady Lativa Delasar carries a chest of spell components with her into the badlands (06.05). Pearls are the material component of identify spells, specifically ones worth 100 gp.
Illusion
- Most every gnomish illusionist smokes pipeweed.
- The Dust Walkers have a hallucinogenic brew that makes illusions affect the drinker as if they were real.
- Illusionists often have trouble getting the toes just right, which is why gnomes wear sandals.
- Pointers are gnomes who are skilled at checking for illusions.
Types
Necromancers
- The necromancers of the Necromantic Office. They are mostly eunuchs and have some civil responsibilities: regulating proper corpse disposal and prosecuting those who disturb the dead without proper licences.
- Windseers of Winds learned information from listening to screams echoing through caverns beneath the city, actually the collective voice of the dead of the White Road. It is unclear if this is considered necromancy, though it involves learning from the dead.
Wizards and mages
- There are jackelwere mages who are armed with engraved bronze discs and who cast the gibberish hex (51.17).
- The pathfinder-mages can unbind and redirect the paths to and from the Holt of the Bloodied King (22.04).
- The Knights of the Cudgel are questing mages armed with enchanted clubs that each studies an arcane discipline.
- Wizard-transmuters work alongside earth elementalists in the Honorable Society of Engineers.
- Jahuri wizards guard a swarming brood of fire centipedes, sometimes used to clear mountain tunnels of hostile creatures.
- The sorcerers of Jahur defeated the fire centipedes when they were lobbed over the city walls.
- Urban wizards live on Sladder.
- Jahur’s Imperial Academy of Thaumaturgy used to host sages and wizards, but now mostly astrologers, alchemists and hexers.
- Hedge-wizards exist.
Thringish traditions
- The priests of Baron Autumn are described as sorcerers. They can create sack children who protect the sorcerers and assist them with their work.
- White wizards sometimes delight in animating the victims of black magic as sack children so they can slay their murderer.
Bloodline sorcerers
- Dragonblooded individuals can cast spells and create other effects, but as their willpower is sapped their control over their form wavers and they become more beastly and draconic.
- Tieflings make good sorcerers.
Illusionists
- The illusionists of the Indigo Academy are a collective of wizards who pose as ordinary citizens.
- Ghouls use illusions.
Other
- The elementalists and alchemists who make up the Idjits can harness electricity to create hybrid creatures.
- The high priest of Alberon commanded sorcerer-assassins, the origin of the Temple Invisible.
Spellcasters
Wizards and mages
See Wizards
Necromancers
See Necromancers
Illusionists
See Illusionists
Sorcerers
See Sorcerers
Unspecified spellcasters
- Hleid is dragonblooded, but her indolent life means that she knows only cantrips.
- Tiamat Reborn performs dark rituals and sacrifices in an attempt at apotheosis.
- Cerelaine has a book of spells.
- The frogs that make up the Spawn can cast spells - either many cantrips or a single powerful spell when they share a voice.
- Mabalaquain of Midshotgatepool’s thieves’ guild is an enchanter of some minor skill.
Spells and magic
Specific spells
See Spells
Chimeras and other permanent body modification
- The Suitor’s Tower is shrouded in storm clouds, with torture chambers where secrets as well as skin can be peeled off, labs, vats and creatures with spider limbs. Iraine created a chimera, Lars, from various body parts.
- Severard performed experiments on giant bees, including enchanting their magic-absorbing honey. The honey also reanimates corpses.
- Severard permanently enlarged centipedes, bees and spiders.
- Idjits harness electricity to create hybrid creatures like cloud mantas, shock lizards and memory-stealing birds of paradise.
- The Lady gave life to things both fair and foul and altered her gnoll servitors.
- The Lady created the ettin and Zor.
- Lord Goss’ kept sorcerer draws life from the trees of the Kingswood and crafts new life out of the limbs and organs of the creatures that Lord Goss brings back from his hunts. The resulting servants are quiet and efficient.
- Tiamat Reborn and his followers have gathered a menagerie of creatures twisted through exposure to Tiamat’s blood.
Immortality and souls
- Severard uses his giant bee honey to preserve his body and his mind.
- Imorcar has cloned himself many times, each time the result is slightly more disturbed.
- Many former necromancers of the Office return as ghosts.
Necromancy
- Other than immortality
- Necromancer of the Office keep the White Road quiet, ensure that the dead do not walk without permission, animate the corpses of prisoners and stitch together flesh golems.
- Ranmore has a platoon of skeletons and hopes to raise the White Road.
- Victims of black magic can be brought back from the dead as sack children, in a ritual which is not inherently evil.
- Yaegha used corpse slather to create skeleton-melanges.
- The Cult of Dead Tiamat have raised skeletons, shamblers and a wight and hope to raise a dracolich.
- The Princess of the Seers conjures drow-ghosts from beneath the White Road.
- The windseers listen to the screams of those who make up the White Road.
- Tiamat Reborn is attempting through ritual to achieve apotheosis.
- Lady Anghart’s necromancer father put his soul in Lord Poddred’s body. Lord Poddred’s soul, by the grace of Baron Autumn, entered the preserved body of Lady Anghart’s father.
- Minotaur slaves who died in Grumluda were reanimated after death.
- Hastra and her coven burn essence of agony, refined suffering itself. It draws out tortured souls and soothes sadomasochists. The essence aids their seances, seeking blackmail material. If the fumes were to escape, they would animate piles of bones.
- Necromancers use bone shards of Tiamat for dark purposes.
Illusion
- Unwerth is himself many illusions layered on a giant toad by the Indigo Academy.
- Illusionists of the Indigo Academy create the illusion of drunkenness (or harder drugs) for those who drink water. Do not mix “cocktails”.
- Ghouls use illusions to lure prey into the lands where they dwell.
- Cerelaine has water elementals guard his spellbook. He cast extensive illusions on the Timberlode to convince its human inhabitants that they are elves.
Magic items
- Arkhaus created an enormous soulstone throne for the Dukes of Thring.
- The Knights of the Cudgel bear enchanted cudgels.
- Wizards and artificers use gems from the Dismal Mine to create potent magic items.
- Potion-making was taught at the Imperial Academy of Thaumaturgy, but the introduction of quicksilver caused serious problems.
Using equipment
- The Honorable Society of Engineers uses mud with faint magic resonance to date pieces of construction based on how the magic has faded.
- The Viceroys of Jahur have a teleportation circle.
- Wizards use calendars of the Undying Cycle so they perform rituals on important or auspicious days.
- The Mirror Throne was used as a focus for sorcerous dabblings, inadvertently binding a dark spirit from the Hells to it.
- Ota Verlime believed that the elf sorcerers and factions within Shuttered were spying on him using a network of crystal balls.
- Nara Olmsted created an alchemical compound that keeps centipedes away - most of the time.
- A hero was placed in a sorcerous mechanism that produces poor-quality clones of him.
- Alceron gathered the charcoal left from burning Ulmo to use for his own purposes.
- Ground bone shards can be used instead of ink to record magical formulae. Some spells can only be recorded this way.
Other
- Dormond managed to communicate with a sphere of annihilation.
- Dispelling hostile magic is described as something not all Office students learn.
- Barnabus turned himself into a were-man to escape death.
- Black magic can kill.
- Elementals can be bound, like the tempest bound to 19.30.
- The Eternal King of Sosaria commanded djinn to built a great wall from elephant ivory.
- Sala Olmsted has put strong wards against magical attack on the Olmsted Keep walls. The Witch-Queen of Cragsend, when she was a wizard with the Verlimes, set up wards that were “shredded” during the elven attack (18.07).
- An alliance of wizards and priests performed a ritual to reawake the Janissaries.
- Some say the sorcerers of Bergolast placed fingers of stone in the Sea of Typhoons to mark the city’s maritime borders.
- Shnutu knows the languages of every flying thing, and the many winds.
- Other possible categories: elementals or elementalism; binding (elementals and fiends); enchantment (of magic items or of people); language (High Tongue, Shnutu’s languages, sphere of annihilation)