Dennis L. McKiernan on Mages
(On the issue of _fire_ and a mage's limit of it.)
Yes, there is a limit, otherwise a Mage would become godlike. If a Mage has a special artifact, though, like, say, Krystallopyr, then s/he may be able to store up _fire_ in that artifact and use it without losing life force.
Tokens of power are essentially artifacts which allow a person to use them without expending life force, however, many tokens of power have destinies to fulfill and may not always react in a manner the wielder expects. Krystallopyr is one such token of power ... with a destiny you will find quite surprising, I think.
There are many small tokens of power which occupy Mithgar, and their purposes are quite contained (such as Aravan's blue amulet which detects some things of perilous intent, or Bane or Bale, or Dunamis), but there are also some tokens of power with quite powerful purposes (such as the Silver Sword, the Kammerling, and Krystallopyr). In any event, to answer the question posed: yes there are limits on the amount of force a Mage can draw from himself and/or from others, unless, of course, a token of power is present to augment what the Mage can do. As to just exactly what those limits are, that I cannot say since I haven't come across any lost Mithgarian scrolls which explain where the utmost extremes are.
-Dennis
Anyway, the amount of _fire_ that a Mage has can be likened to the "life force" that he has. One might liken it to the years left in his/her life, since casting spells causes a Mage to age. A small spell, like, say, "light" would seem to me to take only a minor amount of life force away from the Mage ... say the equivalent of, oh, minutes from his/her span of years. But a big spell, like, say, blowing up a fortress would take years from the Mage.
So, think of casting spells as stealing minutes/hours/days/months/years from the life of the caster. As far as Black Mages go, they steal life force from others to power their spells. And the more horrific way they kill the victim, the more _power_, the more _fire_ they manage to take from that poor unfortunate soul.
-Dennis
PS: That's why Black Mages do such horrible things to their prey, simply to gain as much _fire_ from them as they can get.
PPS: That's also why the good Mages cast few spells ... I mean, it's their own _life_ they're draining away, and although they can recover their own life force, they are out of action for a long while ... especially on Mithgar. On Vadaria (the Mage world) they recover much faster.
I figure that a Mage can never contain more _fire_ than that which s/he would naturally have when s/he is at the peak of life ... probably equivalent to the _fire_ s/he had at the age of, oh, 25 or so, assuming perfect health and at 100% of _fire_. When Mages rest they do recover _fire_ (and youth), and when they _rest_ long enough to restore _all_ their _fire_, they will then be biologically about 25 years old ... though chronologically they could be millennia old. As to how long a Mage needs to _rest_, it takes several millennia on Mithgar for a Mage who has spent nearly all his _fire_ to recover fully back to 100%. On Vadaria, it takes much less time. My best judgement would be that it takes about 1000 years of rest on Mithgar to recover each ten (10) years of spent life force. Hence, given that Mages would die after spending, oh, say, 75 or so equivalent years of life force (since the max life force occurs at the equivalent of 25 years of age, then spending another 75 years worth means that a Mage will die at the equivalent of 100 years old ... 25 + 75 = 100). This means that it will take a fully spent Mage about 7,500 years on Mithgar to recover full power, whereas on Vadaria it will take much less years of rest to recover from being fully spent to being at 100% again. Most Mages, though, do not spend 99% of their life force before resting. It is my leaning to have the recovery time on Vadaria be somewhere around a tenth to a hundredth of that on Mithgar, and so, instead of taking 7,500 years to go from completely spent to 100% recharged, on Vadaria it would take somewhere between 75 and 750 years. I have not yet made up my mind on this, but I do think that "magic" should be a costly thing, and being out of action
for looooong periods of time is indeed a high cost. What this does is make it very hard for a Mage to decide to use a lot of "magic" to resolve his/her problems, and almost forces them to depend on cunning and guile to achieve success. Using life force to cast magic is therefore something to not be entered into lightly, for the consequences can be quite extreme. Some artifacts allow Mages to store _fire_ in them (the crystal of Krystallopyr was one of these). Black Mages draw _fire_ from others ... via pain, fear, hatred, etc., and so Black Mages are quite prolific in their use of "magic."
-Dennis
(Dennis on the issue of mage biology.)
Like Elves (which Mages may be partly), following birth, (assuming they cast no spells) Mages age as do normal folk until they reach the age of about thirty, at which time the aging stops. In case you are wondering, all mature Elves are about thirty years old physically/biologically, no matter what their chronological age is. When Mages cast spells, they spend youth to do so--in the case of a Black Mage, they spend someone else's youth, whereas a Mage who hasn't succumbed to the dark side spends his/her own youth.
"Resting" is really a trancelike state, where the Mage's own immune/healing system kicks into "high" gear and begins repairing the ravages to the cells and system caused by spell casting. I put "high" in quotes, for it really is a slow process, especially on Mithgar where the aethyr is of a slightly different sort than on Vadaria (Mages regain youth much faster on Vadaria than on Mithgar, and that's why the loss of Rwn was so devastating to Magekind, for it held the only known crossing point).
During the time Mages are in this trancelike state, they seem to draw sustenance from the aethyr as well, hence, apparently no food or drink is needed. (I could be entirely wrong about this "sustenance" conjecture, but all the clues I have point that way.)
Anyway, the regaining of youth is a really slow thing on Vadaria, and even slower on Mithgar (though the immune/healing system is in high gear--I mean, regaining youth is a very difficult task for anyone's system).
---Dennis
PS: What I forgot to add was that when Mages regain their youth, they return to the age of thirty, and then are completely restored, at which time the biological restorative process stops, and the Mages come out of the trance (stop resting). Then they need to resume a normal existence (eating, sleeping, making love, etc.)
Of course, Black Mages on the other hand draw "fire" from those they torture, from those in agony nearby, from those in great emotional distress, hence they don't age but simply store up "fire" from others. This excess "fire" bleeds off slowly, hence if they don't use it to cast a spell in the time they yet have the stolen "fire" then they lose it and have to go to the trouble of finding or putting someone else in agony and distress. That's why they torture and flay and so on ... to steal "fire" to power their spells.
Black Mages can also restore their own youth by sucking up someone else's "fire."
But anyway, when Mages reach thirty, they come out of the trance. Oh, and this, too: if they spend all their own "fire", that's it, they're dead.
--DLMcK
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