Conduit magic

Conduit magic is a practice of manipulating the forces, energies and matter of the world via sentience imprinted on physical objects. It can be used to create both incredibly simple magical effects - such as crystals emitting light when in a magical field - and very complex designs, capable of reproducing several effects.

Mechanics
Magical conduits rely on slivers of sentience - artificially created Class I spirits. An intent in the form of instructions is imprinted upon a physical material by someone proficient in magic. Sentience is imbedded in the material in two steps: When the imbedded sentience interacts with the ambient magical field, it carries out its instructions and manifests a magical effect.
 * 1) concentrating on the instruction mentally and willing the sentience into the material;
 * 2) physically working on the material to establish the bond and help bind the sentience. This usually takes the form of engraving, etching, painting, chipping, sculpting and so on.

Although technically any physical matter can house bound sentience and thus serve as a conduit, in practice some materials seem to be easier to imbed, more reliable and less likely to spontaneously degrade. Reliability in this context refers to the predictability of the results, i.e. the conduit replicating the instructions exactly or not. Degradation is the natural process of sentience escaping the conduit and/or acquire extra information that eventually breaks the instructions. While theoretically perfectly reliable materials exist, degradation is a consequence of the underlying principles of sentience and is inevitable.

Some overview of potential conduit materials:
 * metal - somewhat hard to imbed, bet very reliable and resistant to degradation;
 * silver and copper seem to be excellent materials, owing to their relative softness and ease of imbedding.
 * gold and iron are good materials, too, though less optimal for various reasons.
 * metallic alloys, such as bronze, brass, electrum and so on, can be excellent conduits, depending on the needs of the caster.
 * clay / ceramics - easy to imbed, relatively unreliable, somewhat resistant to degradation;
 * chemically purer clays are both more reliable and more resistant;
 * sand and loose soil, although very easy to imbed, are practically useless.
 * stone and crystalline minerals - generally very hard to imbed, very reliable, very resistant;
 * rule of thumb - the stricter the crystal matrix, the harder to imbed and more reliable / resistant;
 * softer and more brittle minerals, such as chalk, sandstone, graphite, are poorer choices than granite and basalt.
 * regular crystals - quartzes, corundums, beryls et cetera - are in general excellent materials because they are extremely reliable and very resistant to degradation. These gemstones are, however, also very hard to imbed with sentience.
 * wood - easy to imbed, relatively reliable, very prone to degradation;
 * some woods are less prone to degradation, but it seems to be somewhat random.
 * wood from individually prominent trees - sacred trees, old trees, particularly beautiful and venerated trees - often proves itself to be better conduits than other wood.
 * other organic matter - varies wildly;
 * plant fiber and cloth thereof seem very similar to most woods.
 * fruit, flowers, leaves are essentially useless for conduit magic, except for very short-lived purposes in improvised condition.
 * bone seems to be extremely hard to imbed and is very prone to degradation, likely due to residual sentience. If successfully embedded, however, bone conduits are extremely reliable. Using bone and adjacent materials is often taboo and may lead to unsavoury practices.

History
Some forms of conduit magic have been present in practices - ritual magic - probably since the beginning of magical practice by humans. Some magical acts, such as the magic circle, drawing wards and creating wax sigils, all ancient practices in the ritualist traditions, are arguably just ill-understood magical circuits.

Gondalans became more aware of conduit magic in the 24 - 25th centuries, as the study of magic grew and established itself in Asàel, particularly the northern, primarily Coer-inhabited lands. Asàelese scholars in the Wise Company, such as Bannan Miosci, Tsüpare Cuifazi and Sióle Vearnais, all played some role in understanding the basic principles behind conduit magic. It was Sióle's work on single-input varied-output devices in particular that was seminal in the study of magic as a whole - she created the first instruments that not only reacted to the presence of magical fields, but were able to produce different results (usually, various colours and/or brightness of lights) based on the strength of the field.

Conduit magic was revolutionalised in the second half of 26th century, as the Coeric magic user Chàillan na Mardell figured out ways of creating portable, efficient conduits that produced varying, controlable magical effects when consciously interacted upon by. Most of his designs involved metallic jewelry, and the idea of "magic rings" have become a staple in Gondalan magic, both real and fictional.

Although Chàillan's discoveries where lost for a while, they resurfaced less than a hundred years later and caused upheaval, as it essentially allowed for "read-to use" spells to be created beforehand and effeciently minimized the danger of magical damage to a caster, as long as the caster had time to prepare the needed conduits.