Historian

Historians, in a Practice context, are people who study accidental rituals aka emergent rituals - magic that is performed accidentally by Innocent people, often on a large scale.<ref name=":0">“You’ve been coming here a while?” Avery asked.

“Three years. Dom is from a family of historians. They study patterns in history, to see if any accidental rituals emerge.”

“Accidental rituals?” Verona asked.

“I don’t know how much to explain, because I don’t know how much you know, and I’m not the best teacher. Uh, when non-practitioners do stuff, they can still create rituals. We call them accidental or emergent rituals. If you find a big enough or ancient enough one, you can tweak it or harness it. City layouts forming diagrams that influence economy? Big money, potentially. Patterns in, I dunno, wars followed by baby booms? That could potentially be a whole generation that’s special. They came here to deal with Ray, the guy I’m apprenticing under, so I’ve got the scoop there.” - Excerpt from Leaving a Mark 4.4</ref> Heroics could be considered a related or sub-practice; the term Historian is sometimes reserved for those who deal with natural rituals in terms of notable places.<ref>Historians do something similar with places tied to events. - Pact Dice: Heroics</ref>

Methodology

Historian magic is related to Astrology in that it focuses on the big picture and deals with patterns on a large scale. There is also significant overlap with City Magic as Historians often track patterns in cities and deal with city-wide rituals.<ref>“Big diagrams tied into celestial practices, which I didn’t get enough time to study…”

“Yeah,” Zed said.  “Astrology is celestial diagrams, which are like your elemental diagrams I know you’re pretty competent with, but many more moving pieces, using massive reference points, math, and other formulas.”

Verona nodded.

“Historian practices can relate to that, but may focus on naturally occurring astrological practices.  Patterns emerging in how a city unfolds, the roads as diagrams, whatever.” - Excerpt from False Moves 12.9</ref>

Sight:

Elizabeth Driscoll's Sight is strongly influenced by her Practice as a Historian. She relies heavily on it and has done several rituals to increase its effectiveness.<ref>With her Sight, she could see the town- stare into the canvas, past it.  She’d done multiple rituals over the years, each one with long term effects, costs, and benefits.  Many of them were to enhance her Sight, to increase her capabilities, and help her get a sense for the locations.  City magic, history, memory, echoes, incarnations, she’d run the gamut of related practices, picking up key ones here and there, to assist her in what she did. - Excerpt from Gone and done it 17.a</ref> Her Sight allows her to see images that frame and contextualize people and Others. Used on a town like Kennet, she can gain an intuitive understanding of its layout and see past events that were important for its development.<ref>Staring down the town, she could see it in frame.  The lifeline was almost always the water source, and the water source was a river without much water running through it.  She could see the history and the town resembled someone drowning.  That spark of life at first settlement, surging at the start of industry, rail line, materials brought from elsewhere to be made into steel here.  Then that had dried up.  It had flagged in strength, gone beneath the metaphorical waters, a slight surge, for hunting.  Then the drowning.  A surge for winter activities, drowning again.   But with those last ones, especially as cars got faster and people traveled on their own between cities, this place became a rest stop.  A gas station and surrounding fast food places, maybe some shops to peruse.  It was an insufficient thing on its own to keep Kennet afloat, but it meant that when things were good, they were sufficient.  There was time to rest, to breathe.  When things were bad, they weren’t as bad as they could be. - Excerpt from Gone and done it 17.a</ref> She can then expend personal power to further clarify these events.

Naturally occurring Historian Magic:

• Metal pipes, charged with elemental energy from carrying water (or gas/electricity), serve as accidental wards against goblins that keep them out of most modern urban areas.<ref>Verona held out the nugget, then held it back as Cherry reached for it. “Do you go to the Ruins at all?”
  
  “Not much,” Cherrypop said, still reaching, wobbling on her perch of cans. “It’s mostly made up of stuff Goblins can’t deal with. Stuffed metal.”
  
  “Stuffed metal?”
  [...]
  “Metal with water running through it, like pipes,” Cherrypop said. “Metal with electricity running through it. Metal that’s hot, not so common. Metal with gas, like more, funner pipes. Metal with sand or rock running through it would be the same, but that’s rare. Hurts to be near, makes us weak. Lots of it in the Ruins. The other places we’d normally go are missing.” - Excerpt from Stolen Away 2.7</ref>
• Patterns of exceptional individuals in a bloodline, or in "turning points" of history, can subtly empower an individual to become Heroic.<ref>Heroic or historic practitioners are engaged in a long-running competition, tracing their way through the annals of history to search out the patterns and the ‘emergent rituals’ that have formed through the years. In the patterns, it is not just the bloodlines they study, but the patterns through which heroes or great people may occur or step forward from one bloodline. For a given bloodline, children born on specific generations, or in specific places, or in specific circumstances may stand head and shoulders above their peers, with more ability, canniness, special qualities, or a deeper relationship with fundamental forces of the universe, such as Death or Dreams. While living, these people are notable but not necessarily Other. When dead, they remain affixed to the greater tapestry, and can be called forth by practitioners.
  

There are multiple patterns for a given bloodline, and when multiple qualities or special circumstances coincide, the notability increases, as does the power of the resulting summon. When a sufficient number of qualities come into alignment, the individual becomes a Hero, a great figure of history or historical significance.

Some (perhaps most) families will work their way through a family tree, taking notes on the qualities and strengths of each family member, while extrapolating and reasoning the remainder of that family. Others will search out patterns in events to find people who were at turning points of history, rather than focusing on specific families. - Pact Dice: Heroic</ref>

• Roads could accidentally form a massive Diagram, such as the layout of a financial district influencing the economy (which could then be exploited by a Practitioner to earn money.)<ref name=":0" />
• Patterns in wars followed by baby booms could make an entire generation subtly magic.<ref name=":0" />

Notable

• The Driscoll family, associates of the Blue Heron Institute.<ref name=":0" /><ref>Dom, as anyone familiar with the Driscoll family knows, is a beginner city mage and historian, and we’re excited to see if he takes after his big sister and parents. - Excerpt from Leaving a Mark 4.5</ref>
  • Elizabeth Driscoll is studying mystic urban planning
• Raine McKintosh, rivals of the Driscoll family<ref>“Are you a Driscoll?”
  
  “McKintosh.  We’re technically rival families.  But it’s academic rivalry.  We go through cycles.  Marriage alliances, then a few generations of separation, alienation, deaths… rivalry.  Then after a while, the marriages and alliances.”- Excerpt from Gone and Done It 17.2</ref>
• Benjamin Trover

References

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