Laws of Magic
The Seven Laws of Magic are intended to guard against the abuse of magic by wizards against other wizards and humans. Wizards in violation of the Laws are called warlocks and can be spared from the punishment of execution if a wizard of The White Council takes responsibility for them.
The White Council’s Wardens are the main law enforcement body of the supernatural world (at least as far as mortals go) and for the Wardens, the Laws of Magic are sacrosanct. The Laws of Magic are clear, concise, and offer little in the way of “wiggle room” (at least in the views of some Wardens), but are very much written to communicate the spirit of the law—which is the mode in which they are enforced. This stands in contrast to the other major body of supernatural legalese, the Unseelie Accords, where there is no spirit of the law—only the letter.
The Laws are as follows:
- Thou shalt not kill by use of magic
- Wizards of The White Council are forbidden to kill human beings through the use of their power. Self-defense is very occasionally allowed as a mitigating factor. This Law is also a primary reason The Wardens wield swords. Wardens have fought to kill with magic against other human wizards; it’s possible Wardens are given somewhat of a free pass in regards to this Law in combat circumstances. The law is very flexible, however, in regards to things that are not actually human. A wizard may kill, for example, a vampire, ghoul, or any being of the Nevernever without penalty.
- Thou shalt not transform others
- Thus demonstrating why we will most likely never see him actually turn anyone into a frog. Even if done successfully (it is an extremely difficult spell), transformation of another’s body against their will – changing a man into an animal, for example – creates an imbalance between body and mind that ultimately degrades the transformed subject’s mind to an animal state as well. (Transformation of oneself through magic is not necessarily as destructive, but still risky and potentially hazardous – see the section on shapechangers, below.)
- Thou shalt not invade the mind of another
- Forcible magical violation of someone’s mind by extracting knowledge against their will is inherently destructive – it as not black, but “dark, dark, dark gray”. Mind magic is so dangerous that the The White Council has not even dared trying to explore how to build better defenses, which gives an advantage to black wizards less bound by scruples.
- Thou shalt not enthrall another
- Enthrallment is the term for dominating another human’s mind and personality through magic by binding their will to your own; it is not the same as compelling beings of the Nevernever through arrangements or exchanges. So long as the wizard in question does not actually control the being through magic, the law is not broken. A popular alternative is trapping the creature in a magic circle until it accepts the terms of a bargain, though some Wardens have ignored this distinction in their zeal. As with mind-probing, magically controlling the mind of another person is an inherently destructive and evil act – it is almost impossible to control safely and precisely, and taints the user of the power as well as the subject even if done for the best of intentions. This taint often sends the user into a self-destructive downward spiral, where every act of magical mind control further twists the user and makes more such acts likelier; if the cycle progresses far enough, the user becomes functionally sociopathic, and impossible to rehabilitate short of execution.
- Thou shalt not reach beyond the borders of life
- This prohibits the research and practice of necromancy, described as the summoning, binding, and exploitation of the unwilling dead (the psychic talent of mediums for speaking to willing spirits is called ectomancy, and is not governed by the same Law). It would also theoretically prohibit any attempt to genuinely resurrect someone from the dead back to true life, although nobody actually seems to know what kind of afterlife, if any, exists (ghosts, even the most apparently intelligent and self-aware, are only psychic echoes of people created by violent death, not the actual souls of those people themselves). As the Laws are intended to protect humans against the abuse of magic, a loophole in this law allows the practice of necromancy on non-human dead.
- Thou shalt not swim against the Currents of Time
- This prohibits any attempt to change the past through temporal manipulation for fear of paradoxes. Even divination of the future is frowned upon in all but the vaguest, most general instances.
- Thou shalt not seek beyond the Outer Gates
- It is unknown just what the Outer Gates are, but the implication is that they mark the furthest boundaries of multiverse. Beings from beyond the Gates are known only as Outsiders, and are among the deadliest threats to humanity known – their sheer existence is antithetical to the universe and they are noted as being immune to most magic. One Senior Council member is conjectured to be permanently assigned to watch for attempts upon them due to the extreme threat.
Breaking the Laws of Magic
The way magic works, whenever you do something with it, it comes from inside of you. Wizards have to focus on what they’re trying to do, visualize it, believe in it, to make it work. You can’t make something happen that isn’t a part of you, inside.
While the Laws of Magic may seem more like a guide for living right as a spellcaster, they are there for a very serious, very palpable reason – whenever you make use of true black magic, using your skill at spellcraft in a way that breaks one of the Laws, you change yourself, darkening your soul.
Does white magic change you back once you’ve gone over the line? Maybe…
It’s a very real line that you’re stepping over whenever you choose to break one of the Laws of Magic. By taking such an action, you’ve let the idea into your self-image and your beliefs – the very basis of you as a spellcaster – that you are the sort of person who breaks that Law. And very often, once you do that there’s no turning back.
Are you the kind of person who reads thoughts, twists minds, and kills with magic? There are many who believe that once you cross that line, you will be.
Non-People Don’t Count… Or Do They?
With the Laws laid down by the White Council it has been made pretty clear that they don’t apply to entities that aren’t people. The Laws of Magic are strongly oriented on protecting the life and rights of mortals. Creatures and folks that the Council might classify as monsters are fair game.
With that said, this is a rule of thumb where it’s easy to stumble into the grey area, with things open to interpretation by the Warden on the scene – and given that Wardens have a lot of latitude as regards the whole “judge, jury, and executioner” bit, it’s a grey area that you don’t want to step into as a spellcaster, if you can help it.
When a victim is involved (some of the Laws are “victimless”), one standard for judgment is whether or not the victim has a soul. Most of the laws amount to actions which violate the sanctity of life, breaking the bonds that tether a soul to a mortal being, whether by destroying the body or destroying the mind. This is certainly the most palpable or most “valid” way of looking at things; first and foremost, if a soul is involved, the stakes are high, and the Laws are sitting up and paying attention.
But to go beyond that mostly clear-cut standard, there’s a fuzzy border dividing people from monsters. Faeries don’t have souls, but they might still be seen as people.
Enforcement
When it comes to actions taken by the Wardens, the “humans only” part of the Laws is the generally understood application of their breadth, but the Laws themselves aren’t worded that way. This is deliberate vagueness in action, which gives the Wardens the “spirit of the law” latitude to investigate would-be warlocks before they go over the edge. In the end, the attitude here is based on the same thinking that recognizes that serial killers often start their careers by torturing animals (which isn’t, say, as illegal as doing the same to a person) before moving on up to humans later. In practice, this attitude by the Wardens gets mixed results, including the persecution of folks who aren’t actually breaking any Laws or on a short trip to Warlocktown. Still, a Warden has never actually executed someone for that kind of pseudo-breaking of the Laws (that we know of), though Wardens are fond of calling for in-depth investigations on the wizards in question. And such investigations often find out that a Law actually has been broken, once they’re able to start poking around.
The Doom of Damocles
The ostentatiously-named Doom of Damocles is the White Council’s idea of going easy on someone who has broken one of the Laws of Magic and gotten caught in the act. The Doom, once pronounced upon an errant practitioner, operates as a probationary period without a specified end date and with a “one screw-up and you’re dead” policy. It can only be granted as a reprieve from a death sentence by a vote of the Senior Council, the White Council’s ruling body. A similar vote is required to lift the Doom.
Even if you’ve argued a good case of extenuating circumstances before the Senior Council, the Doom is rarely exercised as an option. This is due in great part to the Council’s attitude that the usual death sentence is a surer, safer, and swifter way to get to the same result that will be happening anyway.
But that’s not the whole of it. Even if there are some sympathetic ears on the Council, no one is allowed to stand under the Doom without a sponsor—and, for that sponsor, his or her fate is linked to that of the Doomed. If the Doom ends, as it often can, with the death sentence carried out, the sentence applies to the sponsor as well. Some sponsors have been able to avoid this fate by acting preemptively to stop (i.e. kill) their Doomed apprentices at the first sign of risk, but often it’s just better to stand back, ditch on the idea of sponsorship, and let the blade fall instead of the Doom. In recent memory, only two wizards have been brave enough to step up to the job.