Codex Arcana

"How did you do that?", Marius asked the man who had been juggling fireballs and levitating apples on the bazaar until a few minutes ago. All other children were thrilled and cheered, but Marius had studied every move closely. One day, he wanted to become a wizard himself.
The man kneeled down to him and replied "It's magic, young lad! I manipulate the arcane weave to —". Marius rolled his eyes and interrupted him: "Yes, but how? Draw me the runes!" He impatiently handed the man a piece of parchment. The man took it but didn't do anything with it. "The runes, as in the Codex Arcana!", Marius affirmed but the man's eyes remained empty. "You have read it, haven't you?" The man stuttered: "I... errr.... you know.... no..."
Marius stared at him in disappointment for a second. Then he snatched his parchment and exclaimed: "And you call yourself a wizard?" He ran away, leaving the imposter in disbelief.

Historical Details

Background

The Codex Arcana has transformed the way magic is taught by revolutionizing the way spells and rituals are communicated between different scholars. It establishes a universal notation for magic — just like scores are the universal notation for music.

History

For the longest time, learning magic has been up to the individual. Most people can't see the arcane weave and there are different methods to achieve the same effect anyway. This left even masters in magic with no accurate means to communicate their magic to their students. Everyone had to practice effectively blindfolded. This, combined with the fact that manipulating the Arcane Weave in the wrong way can have severe consequences for the wizard, effectively limited the abilities of most mages to minimal effects, such as spraying sparkles or warming a cup of tea.
From this context, a few of those who could see the Weave had a common vision for the future. They wanted to shape a better world where everyone could use magic and did so for the greater good. To achieve this, they formed the Circle of Eyes (referring to the fact they could see the Arcane Weave) and researched the structural changes to the Weave and their effects. They developed a notation for these changes and published everything in a book, the Codex Arcana.
With the later invention of Weaver's Glasses, their vision seemed to become real: Students of the arcane could be given the glasses, which allowed them to see the Weave. Then they could do their training while observing the effects and comparing them to what was written in the Codex Arcana. The book was soon being copied and translated for every magic order all over the world and eventually became the standard for magical notations.

Legacy

Despite its groundbreaking success and widespread use, the Codex Arcana has fallen far behind the hopes of its creators. Still, only one in 2000 people is able to perform magic due to other limitations. Just very few can manipulate the weave by themselves, all others need either an arcane focus to grant them this power or a patron such as a demon or a god. However, foci are expensive, the gods only support their most sincere believers, and demons are both hard to find and dangerous.
Still, the Codex Arcana is the first book any magic adept will read if he gets any formal training whatsoever. Even other professions will read it: The Inquisition and others tasked with identifying and hunting forbidden magic need it to understand tomes the might come across. Librarians need a basic understanding of the notation to keep their collection of magical books in order. Even those who never read it tend to know the name, even though they have no idea of its contents.

Type

Study, Scientific

Medium

Paper

Authoring Date

1122

Publication Status

Public and available in any library

Runes

Illustrations like the following one detail the specifics of a magical effect. The strokes correspond directly to a link to form in the Arcane Weave. However, they do not directly correspond to the exact moves, words and thoughts of the spell. There are many ways to archive the same effect - some say as many as there are wizards.