The Prime Powers - A Keynote on the Schools of Magic

*Excerpt from the Keynote Address of the 624th Annual Wizarding Conference, presented by the host, Archmage Matren 'Duvaindir' Mercer, Headmaster of Aislinn Tower, the School of Illusion.*
Welcome, friends and colleagues! It has been a long time since I have been asked to speak at one of these events, and I relish the opportunity to open the panels at the 624th Annual Wizarding Conference. We at the Aislinn Tower welcome our colleagues from across the planes and look forward to hearing the upcoming discussions.
The Prime Powers
As you know, current arcane orthodoxy states that the Weave is balanced between several primal powers, and the unique mixes of these powers give rise to fundamental representations of magic. These powers are the fundamental building blocks of the cosmos, represented by vector fields, and their origin is not yet clear, to the known of us. There is some speculation amongst the Speakers who specialize in history and mythology that they are relics of a time in the far past, beyond even the Age of Legends, and that perhaps some truly ancient God or Fae might be able to offer some insight. Others still believe they are the essences of the Gods of the Beginning, kept secret and locked away by the Speakers. The powers cannot be drawn on directly, since they were blown apart by the First Sundering, at the end of the War of Creation, but they can be controlled in smaller, combined amounts, known to us as the schools.
**The First Power** field is the Power of Life, known classically as *The Phoenix*. It is said to be the point of creation and the source of an unborn soul. Because of this, it contains infinite possibility and theoretically infinite power. It is the manifestation of the universal force of life and passion.
**The Second Power** field is the Power of Order, known classically as *The Wheel*, the great seven-spoked cosmic loom that weaves the Great Pattern, using the lives of people as threads. It is believed to encompass all worlds and realities into a Pattern of the Ages. It is said to be the spinning wheel that weaves the pattern of the Universe. It is the capacity for the universe to order itself, and the tendencies for things to fall into patterns.
**The Third Power** field is the Power of Chaos, known classically as *The Sunderer*. It is the power of raw unbridled chaos. It is the tendency of the universe to become disordered, to move towards ataxia, and become entropic. It shreds the order instituted by the Second Power, reducing the universe back to its base state.
**The Fourth Power** field is the Power of Death, known classically as *The Void*. It is the end of all things, the final absolution. It is the counterpart to the Power of Life. The Powers work in concert, moving with and against each other. There is something akin to a cycle in the flow of the powers. Something is born, from the Power of Life, it lives, and is woven into the pattern through the Power of Order. It then dies and is unwound by the power of chaos, flowing back to Life, where it begins again. The Powers sit counterbalanced against each other, working together to create the Weave, and against each other to hold the others in check.
It is unclear if the powers exist as physical representations since, despite our best efforts, we cannot summon enough energy to pull their fundamental representations into existence. Based on this, we, therefore, believe that they act as bosonic gauge fields, subject to similar global symmetries as the more well-understood primary forces and that the fundamental excitation of each field is too massive to summon.
Nothing, apart from (possibly) a few creatures in history, holds any of the Powers by themselves for very long. It seems that the universe is diametrically opposed to holding the Powers in their Pure Form. Only beings of extraordinary strength can call a single power into existence by itself without being destroyed. Arcanists believe this is due to the inherent balance in the Pattern of the Weave and pulling too far towards a single power actively expels the other Powers from your soul. This imbalance acts against the nature of the Weave, and when the control is released, the other powers come flooding back, often violently. This influx of power is sometimes too much for a soul to handle, causing the body to burn out, and the soul to combust.
Mathematically this suggests that the fields obey certain coupling laws in order to remain stable at low energies, and I look forward to discussing the field theory with all of you in the mathematics panels tomorrow.
The powers are more typically drawn on in controlled combinations, what we currently know as the Schools. If we consider the number of Powers, there are eleven possible combinations that can be drawn on. The four single draws are unbalanced and incredibly dangerous for mortals, so we don’t consider them to be possible, and equally, drawing on all four simultaneously requires more power than mortals have access to. Drawing two opposite powers (First and Fourth, or Second and Third) without a third to balance is also impossible since there is no mitigating power to balance the other two. Drawing on only two opposing powers causes them to clash violently within the receptacle, either consuming each other or destroying each other. This leaves us with eight possible combinations of the Powers, corresponding nicely with the known schools of Magic.
Each of our respective specializations has focused on utilizing the stable combinations of field excitations to manipulate the Weave to our will, and we have only recovered a small amount of the technical expertise lost to us during the Chaos Wars. What little has been recovered of ancient texts details how what we now term Necromancy was once used for healing! Imagine that! I'm sure even now, my friends from the School of Necromancy at Schoolmance are working diligently to bring that expertise back under their domain...

# The Schools of Magic Table

* Abjuration – Life + Order
* Conjuration – Life + Order + Death
* Divination – Order + Chaos + Death
* Enchantment – Life + Chaos + Death
* Evocation – Life + Chaos
* Illusion – Chaos + Death
* Necromancy – Order + Death
* Transmutation – Life + Order + Chaos