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Todd Jensen writes...

One question that I found myself reminded of because of your piece about "you have to both see and hear magic in order for it to affect you" in "City of Stone". Now, I very much liked the concept because of it giving established rules for how magic works in the Gargoyles Universe, helping to give it its feeling of verisimilitude. But at the same time, I've occasionally wondered about just how universal that particular rule is.

First off, faerie magic clearly doesn't always follow this rule. In "The Mirror", Puck was able to transform humans into gargoyles and gargoyles into humans when they weren't able to see or hear him. In "The Gathering Part One", Oberon was able to put the whole city to sleep even though, again, the affected people were clearly not all seeing and hearing him. Of course, the above rule probably was only meant to apply to human magic anyway, so these exceptions don't count.

But the area that I do sometimes find myself wondering about is the Roman Magus's "spell of modesty" that you mentioned, back in the days of Caesar Augustus. Because it affected every gargoyle on the planet, including their descendants. But nearly all the gargoyle clans that we know of are from areas that weren't part of the Roman Empire: Britain (which was partly conquered by Rome, but only after Augustus's lifetime), the Far East (never a part of the Roman Empire), and Guatemala (beyond ancient Rome's very knowledge). Obviously, the gargoyles in those regions didn't see or hear the Roman Magus when he cast the spell, but were affected by him. (I assume that it was probably a very unusual, even unique case, though of course, I doubt that you feel ready yet to explain it to us). A small mystery that I thought that I'd mention here.

Greg responds...

Mortal sorcery, yes. Not fae magic.

As for the modesty spell. Well, uh, hey, um, well, that was one darn POWERFUL magus. (Must have had the backing of ALL of Rome's Standard's and Practice's Executives.)

But seriously, he had help. The Archmage wasn't the first guy to combine magical artifacts.

Response recorded on February 01, 2001