originalists and modernists in the Shadow Court

[Johan Larson]

Let's suppose that any human language can be used to work magic in Icelander's Shadow Court world. Ancient languages are commonly used to do so because magic was more powerful in the distant past and waned away until very recent times. Records of magic use and particular spells are therefore generally very old and written in ancient languages.

Let us also suppose that translation, though strictly speaking feasible, is hard. It's more like translating poetry than prose, except even harder. Translating a spell into a new language may preserve some of the themes of the original, but it really requires a near-total rewrite, because effective phrases in one language are not generally potent in others.

Because of this, the mages of the Shadow Court have focused on unearthing nearly-forgotten records of ancient magic use. The problem with this approach is that the spells found can only be used by those who are fluent in the original languages -- just saying the words isn't enough -- and that's a very small group indeed. Also, just finding the old knowledge is very hard, and making sense of it takes a long time.

More recently, some mages have begun arguing for a different approach, based on using modern languages. Current English works just fine for magic, they say, it's just that we haven't figured out how to do it well yet. But through a combination of careful translation, original research and experimentation, it should be possible to find out. And the payoff will be dramatically more accessible magic-use, which can be effectively taught to security personnel without requiring them to spend years becoming fluent in ancient languages first.

The proponents of these two positions are called Originalists and Modernists. Currently, the Originalists have more to offer since they can draw on existing knowledge of the arcane. But the Modernists have not given up and their effectiveness grows year by year. The day may not be far away when all operatives are taught some basic spells, in their own language.