Editing Witchcraft (section)

= Introduction =


All the people living in the valley of Icesus and beyond are constantly relying on the supernatural. When faced with difficulties, the [[gaesati|Gaesati]] will summon [[spirit world|animal spirits]] to help them, to trade with them, and then repay this in form of worship expenses to them. The [[eskara|Eskarans]] read out their powerful spell poems and wail out for help from their gloomy goddesses. [[valkor|Church of Light]] worshipers, on the other hand, pray for help either directly from their elemental god or from one of their saints who have served a god, and set their minds in a powerful trance.

Witchcraft is strongly present in people's everyday chores. As the Templar who believes in the Church of Light prepares for battle, he prays to his elemental god to direct his sword. When an Eskaran hunter hunts for deer, he recites a spell poem to find the animal's footprints. When a member of the Gaesati tribe sews a patch in her parka jacket, she asks the spirits to make the yarn durable. In the North, witchcraft and the supernatural are so mundane that it is impossible to say where witchcraft ends and where the "ordinary" world begins, because no ordinary world even exists.

Witchcraft usually does not cause explosions, energy discharges, or teleportation fields that glow blue. Instead, it typically works subtly and through natural phenomena. In witchcraft, with a powerful templar knight praying for help from his gods; his eyes begin to shine the light of faith, the sword appears shinier than before and sits in his hand like a cast. The Eskaran hunter, who uttered the spell poem, accidentally sees how the moonlight falls on the trail of a deer in his immediate vicinity, and the thread sewn by a member of the Gaesati people who asked for spirits' help, would seem to knot into place almost by itself.

Witchcraft is modest. Modesty does not mean that the observer would not be able to distinguish witchcraft when confronted with it. On the contrary, the power of the holy places can be felt and the presence of a strong priest, witch or a shaman can be felt dozens of meters away, unless one wants to cover up his own power. However, the presence of witchcraft can usually be specifically felt or sensed, not seen in any way. Witchcraft, then, in a certain way abstains from pomp. A really strong witchcraft can manifest itself, for example, as a scorching and intangible blue flame.

Witchcraft is not rational, reliable, or reproducible. It cannot be disassembled or cut away from the situation in which it is used. If a priest prays in front of his enemy in violent weather for help from his god and then his god sends him a gust of wind which throws the enemy down, the priest should not expect to be able to repeat the trick later. The whole essence of witchcraft denies the limits of reason and forces man to reach beyond them. For centuries, philosophers have tried in vain to put together some sort of all-encompassing theory on the nature of witchcraft.

To the south of Eskara and in the rest of the valley, witchcraft is called spellcraft. Therefore, the remaining text will address spellcraft as a greater entity with witchcraft being a subset of it.