Book I
This book gains a fair bit more attention than its successor since it delves into the nature of magical foci, and the author’s closing hypothesis has been taken up as a challenge by many seeking to understand the true nature of magic and its conduits.“This book is dedicated to anyone who has heard of The Pillars of Acidon, asked me how I built them, and then become bored halfway through my explanation. You’re welcome.” The book opens with a passage on Éda, The World. It talks about how the Earth Goddess takes many, many forms. Soils, sands, rocks, glasses, metals, gemstones, etc. It goes into some detail on concrete, which the author argues is a form given to Éda by mankind rather than one she took on her own (though he says “the particular philosophical and religious implications of that I leave to a smarter man than I”). After this passage, the book asks how one would go about measuring any one piece of material; it’s weight, size, density, value, arcane conductivity (usually noble metals and gemstones rank high here), and strength, just to name a few. The book states that to truly be able to manipulate Éda’s form, you must understand it. Following this are many pages filled with diagrams of various materials from common soil up to adamantine and diamond, ranking every one on each of the different metrics described previously, along with known spells that can affect each material. Notably there is an inverse relationship between the strength of a material and how easy it is to affect (“Dirt? I could build you a mountain of dirt. Adamantine? I’ve been casting away at the piece on my desk for years and haven’t made a dent”), but strangely many noble metals and gemstones are resistant to manipulation even if they rank “softer” than other materials. The author draws an interesting hypothesis from the second result; “whatever property allows these materials to be used as foci and magical conductors must be the same property that has my reshaping magics somehow flowing through or around them. Just like before, I’ll leave finding the answer to what that property is to someone smarter than me.”
Book II
This book is not a particularly popular one despite its merits. The grounded, tactical nature of it does not appeal to most wizards (the Varolian’s main literate demographic) who would rather just fire a lightning bolt at the problem instead of considering how to deal with a drawn-out combat.“This book is dedicated to anyone who has heard of The Pillars of Acidon, asked me why I built them, and then become bored halfway through my explanation. You’re welcome.” The book opens with diagrams of various materials similar to the ones detailed in volume one, though they don't make as much sense if you have not read the previous book beforehand. Afterwards, the book continues onto the vast array of potential benefits of being able to manipulate the earth around you such as building walls (an uncommon practice in the Republic but potentially helpful for villages with monster problems), towers, houses, roads, canals, and many more. The author mentions that he spent some time in Kanios helping to expand its already extensive network of aqueducts and canals to aid irrigation systems, before returning to his home to defend it against an attack from Praelos. After mentioning the attack, the author goes into detail on the various options he considered for defending Acidon. Explaining the potential strengths of walls, archer towers, ditches, etc. Each time he considers an option, he gives some for and against arguments (walls might be great but all it takes is one enemy wizard to make a hole, archer towers give a lot of range+sight but make singular easy targets, etc.) When arriving at his idea for creating pillars, he states “They’re a unique feature no-one has seen before in the Republic, they’re spread too far apart for enemy wizards to easily hit multiple but close enough together to prevent a bunch of ships easily getting through, have the range and sight benefits of an archer tower, and finally they look intimidating. What’s not to love?” After describing the concrete pillars, the book goes into detail on many in-combat uses for earth related spells (rather than large scale construction), such as creating temporary barriers, obfuscating enemy lines of sight, digging trenches or pit traps rapidly, and more.
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