The Shining Wyrm

7.ii

All workings, whether of mortal or divine providence, are touched and touch the nature of water.

A curse can be carried from surface to soil to stone and deep into the wells. A binding or ward can spread from lake to river and past into the deepness of the underwells.

It is possible, but extremely rare, for the will of a Wizard to travel by water and fill an entire city and all within it.

Or to sink even further.

It is for this nature that a great many highly inaccurate traditions and taboos are commonly held as truth. I have witnessed provincial lords trying to command their armies to kill themselves for thirst or break the backs of their wagon and horse in the effort to hold all the water needed for campaigns.

All to avoid the possible machinations of foreign practitioners or wizards.

While such rituals most assuredly do exist, the scope, spread and the diffusion of such over the tracts of land that feeds the waters of most clean sources is so vast as to be all but insurmountable.

Anywhere but within a Weird’s own domain the expense and precision required to master an entire demesne’s worth of water is impractical in the extreme.

The simple precaution of filling one’s own water skin from a pure source or securing such wells immediately drawn from by soldiers is more than enough to prevent nearly all possible methods of influence or attack that might be carried by way of waters and streams.

Tales of great plagues and terrible curses lasting for millennia after the events of their strikes is pure foolishness.

Unless you are literally sieging a Weird upon their chosen domain you should not fear an enemy enthralling entire armies by expending half their life time to begin such a spell and every waking hour after maintaining the effort to keep such a working active over a single water source.

Nevermind countless manors and villages across the countryside.

-On the Workings of Sorcery by Lord Sorcerer Urul The Written Weird.