Armand’s First Letter. Amelia’s First Letter. Cathy’s First Letter.
26 February 1025, Bois-de-Bas
Dear Amelia,
By now I hope and expect that you have given me a new cousin, and that both mother and child are well. Certainly you have had all of our prayers during the time of your confinement.
I am sorry to hear that Dr. Tillotson has found it necessary to abandon his colleagues at Edenford. One had hoped for more from those supposedly devoted to the pursuit of knowledge; but I am delighted to hear that he has found a refuge with John Netherington-Coates at the guild house in Yorke, and that he is continuing to work with you. And of course I am eager to hear the results of your experiments in sending messages by relay across the Abyss between Yorke and Toulouse. I just wish I could do more to help.
In your last you told me of the changes you have been making at L’École du Sorciers, and how you are in effect setting up a school not just for the classic Six Streams but for all known branches of magic, including forming and whatever mix of things it is that Cumbrian wizards do with such rigor. I have been quite unable to stop thinking of these things these last two months. The incorporation of forming proper, not just as the lost stream of Belazel but as a practical craft, means that L’École, a bastion of the scholarly study of wizardry, is now also taking an interest in what I might term practical wizardry, or wizardry-in-use.
I am well aware that your fellow scholars have been reluctant to pursue such a line for fear of its use in war, a fear that I share; but if used peacefully, just think what practical wizardry can do for the world!
Given the scholarly focus of L’École and other centers of wizardry around the world, forming will necessarily be at the heart of practical wizardry for the next generation at least. And so we are hampered by the nature of the Former’s Guild. The wizards of L’École share the fruits of their study only with those they trust, as a matter of practice, but the Guild shares its knowledge of forming only with guild members as a matter of guild law. More, it is not about protecting the secrets of the guild from misuse, but rather about protecting the profits and power of the guild as a whole.
I have seen how this works in Cumbria: the guild serves the powerful and wealthy and ignores the commons while letting the craft itself stagnate. I know you will remember how the Cumbrian shipwrights and the formers who support the shipyards tried to silence me during Le Maréchal’s War.
The Armorican Former’s Guild is already a rather different beast than the guilds in Cumbria or Toulouse. We spread the fruits of our craft much more widely, producing hardened cookware for the common folk and ox-less wagons for the drover, and we seek to learn ever more about the craft. But that all depends on me, and my priorities as the grandmaster of the guild. We are still bound by the guild’s law and I bound to say that the guild system of masters, journeymen, and apprentices cuts directly against such things.
We are few here in Armorica, we formers; I personally trained the other masters of the Armorican guild, and most of the apprentices and journeyman. As their master, it is my prerogative and duty to share with them all of the knowledge of the craft that I possess.
But consider masters Luc and Bastien. As masters of the guild it is their prerogative under guild law to keep any advances they make to themselves, and to their own apprentices, so long as they do not reveal them to outsiders. They were trained by me, and are in agreement with my practices and goals and so share their discoveries freely with each other and with me, but the expectation of guild law—and of the guild members in other Lands—is that they will not do so.
I have begun to wonder whether the laws of the Armorican Former’s Guild must change, in this moment when the masters of the guild are in such unusual concord. The guilds in Cumbria and Provençe would not be happy with the kind of changes I have been pondering, but it is well established by now that the guild here in Armorica is independent of the guild in the Old Lands.
The devil is in the details, as they say. I want a guild that encourages research, as the dons of Edenford call it, and a guild that shares its knowledge. I want to encourage collaboration with other forms of wizardry, for the practical advancement of all streams of magic and the betterment of society. But I also want to protect against the misuse of that knowledge.
The guild’s enforcement of secrecy helps to protect against misuse, but does not guarantee it; it all depends on the grandmaster of the guild.
And then, it makes no sense for wizards of the other streams to come together in collaboration in the context of the Former’s Guild. A school like your L’École is a much more likely place; and yet I am too much at home here in Bois-de-Bois to consider moving to Toulouse.
And so I am considering:we have no university, no institution of higher learning at all, here in Armorica, not even anything so focused as your L’École. Perhaps it is time to found such an institution here in Bois-de-Bas, for the good of my new Land and the pursuit of learning…particularly learning in wizardry.
It would not make sense to persuade Dr. Tillotson to come to Bois-de-Bas and leave him without colleagues (other than John Gamble); and perhaps it would do John good to have other wizards in the vicinity.
But how to prevent our research from being misused? That is the great question, and I welcome your thoughts.
My late father would be appalled at my notion of sharing the secrets of the craft, but that only gives the notion a delicious spice. I am more worried about John Netherington-Coates’ reaction.
Your troublesome cousin,
Armand
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Zymurgia House 