Sorĉadology

One of the greatest feats of magic a typical citizen of Hillit would ever see are mighty machines imbued with prestructured magic. These constructs are enchanted with magic, usually by a skilled scribe called an artificer. While modern enchantments on objects fade, there are a few ancient ones that have persisted through the ages. To try and understand what it is about these enchantments that last so long and grow in power, arcanists founded the study of sorĉadology, or the study of enchantments.
Basic enchantments require one of two ingredients and one crucial tool: a crystal or a chunk of wood handled by a being with a soul. A particularly skilled person¹ can exert the energy in their soul to manifest uniquely outside their body. When this manifestation, called “spirit paths” (sorĉadologists were never the greatest at naming arcane things) or sigilos (other arcanists tend to be better at it), interacts with specific materials, it can leave etchings in them that fade with time. Sometimes, certain sigilos react to the caelus materia and manifest magical effects.
The training to manifest sigilos is a fairly common part of the modern arcanist curriculum, but most aren’t particularly skilled at it. Those who can regularly and successfully manifest reactive sigilos often become artificers. The only thing these artificers need to create enchanted items are the right materials to have lasting etchings in.
The most common material used is quintessence crystals, specifically feric crystals. A skilled artificer can cause an enchantment to last for years or even decades in a quality feric crystal. When the enchantment fades, the crystal is ready for a new enchantment. The higher quality (and higher priced) crystals can last longer (especially when enchanted with sympathetic effects), but the most prized is yonu crystal. The longest lasting enhancements have been etched into yonu crystals and have been reported to grow more potent as time progresses rather than regress. In any case, a small crystal (a quarter to a whole gram’s worth) is all that’s needed to house most enchantments.
The other potential material is the wood from sacred trees, which is a dramatically different beast to handle. Sacred wood allows for very powerful enchantments to manifest on a large scale with a unique consequence of no quintessence corruption to manifest with it. However, sigilos burns its patterns into the wood grain, meaning it cannot be reused for any other enchantment. In fact, a single mistake in the sigilos would essentially ruin the rare material for all future enchantments. In addition, the sigilos patterns that are urned into the wood need to be physically scaled to much larger surfaces than with crystal, which can make it unwieldy for complicated magic. The artificers of the Goldenwood specialize in sacred wood enchantments.
A lot of useful enchanted objects, often called artifacts² or simply magical items, have a single component that is a feric crystal which houses the entire enchantment. After a fair few years, an artificer needs to often reinforce the sigilos patterns to keep up the magic.
There are ancient examples of artifice that do not use sacred wood or crystal to sustain their magical properties. Instead, they appear to be carved into metal or bone. This is not fully understood and is an active school of study.

Other Cultural Examples of Artifice

The nation of Irita is not the only civilization that has active studying of artifice. While the far majority follows the crystal artifice of the humans, some cultures have independently developed their own interpretations of sustained magic.
The Dwarven Race utilize living metals and runic carvings to temporarily enchant mundane metals (silver, steel, etc.). The enchantments tend to not be as potent as quintessence crystal sorĉadology, but the enchanted material is more common. They require the use of living metal tools (orichalcum, mithril, and adamantite are popular) and the technique is largely secret outside of the clan crafters of Dakurakol.
Genasi believe quintessence crystals are sacred and pure manifestations of the soul. It is cruel and vile to carve magical sigils into such crystals, so the Susaloan people tend to abstain from crystal sorĉadology in all of its forms. Instead, they have their own flavor of crystals tied to the inner planes that they sing and resonate with. Some genasi, like the earth monk order, can grow virtually any crystal given a sufficient seed. Their gardens are beautiful and heavily guarded -- many people, including Susalo's neighbors Sorionith, might go to great lengths to claim any grown quintessence crystal and corrupt it with enchantment.

---

¹ A “person” in sorĉadology is defined as anyone who has a whole, functioning soul that has the potential to manifest with the material world. This has issues with people who were soulburned, which is a term from the school animology. The academic papers arguing back and forth regarding this is widely amusing to other schools of arcanum, like ĉielogy.
² Sorĉadology technically considers the examples of enchanted objects who grow in potency on their own as “artifacts”, but almost no one uses this very strict definition. Even most artificers call their creations “artifacts”, often with a sense of pride.