Triora's Trial

V

After the chaos and disorientation of the Middle Ages, a new, distinct and fervent era began: the Renaissance. As Renaissance was gifting the ordinary world with new inventions, new philosophies, new ideas and set of values, it only brought about despair and isolation for the Unordinary. It was exactly during the Renaissance that the Ordinary revealed all the inner violence and hatred that they harboured ever since they discovered the presence of magic creatures: the discomfort that the existence of witches instilled in the minds and hearts of the Ordinary was going to prove fatal to them.

The fear of the unknown, the puzzlement for not knowing what to expect from those creatures and, more generally, the obsession of the Ordinary for wanting to find a logical explanation to everything, forced magic creatures to spread and reunite in small communities all over the continent: the diaspora of the Unordinary had begun.

As soon as rumours started to circulate about unordinary families being exposed in public, hunted in the streets or even strangled in squares, witches and wizards all around Europe decided that it was best for them to flee where nobody knew them. Since appearances could not give them away, witches and wizards could simply move to another town or village, and start a new life there without the terror of being discovered. This made possible for the magic community to build wide networks of witches and wizards in the same neighbourhoods, so as to revive a scent of home even away from home. In this way magic traditions, habits, knowledge and culture could be safeguarded, and the Unordinary could build their lives anew.

As a result of this self-segregation, witches and wizards began to completely step away from the ordinary society: they stopped following ordinary rules, and started making their own; through magic spells, enchantments and potions, the Unordinary were able to intoxicate the Ordinary into believing things that they didn't see, or tricking them into forgetting something they actually saw; witches and wizards worked incessantly toward sharpening their ways of prevention and self-defense, and they managed to gradually disappear from the eye of the storm.

Little by little, witches and wizards became so good at camouflage and tricking the Ordinary, that they could not be recognized anymore under the many layers of shielding that they created for themselves, and for the entire magic community. Those witches who excelled at potion-making designed essences that became fundamental in order for witches and wizards to live a life as normal as possible.

There was an elixir capable of contaminating the Ordinary's sense of sight. It was an opiate essence originated from a mixture of Belladonna, Tamarind, Cardamom and Valerian leaves, all pounded together with an extract of Vervain in liquid form added on top. The particular brew that would remain was able to obscure specific sections of the human sight, so that it was impossibile to see any object, or person, that had previously been ointed with that essence. Witches and wizards started to use this trick in order to fly on broomsticks without being seen. They called this distillate Occulto.

Then they invented a spell that allowed you to see clearly from a distance of a couple kilometres, the Amplificantia spell, and another, the Transeo spell, that would make you see through things like walls or trees. Both these spells particularly came at hand if you wanted to check that nobody was around.

There was even a spell that could make you read other people's minds (it would work specifically only on ordinary people), this was called the Intellego spell. The list goes on and on, but the one thing that all those spells, essences or elixirs, had in common, was that they all aimed at making life easier for witches and wizards.

Things started to become more complex when wizards started experimenting with Dark Magic. At the time, Dark Magic was considered a wizard-only territory, witches could not practice it yet. There was especially one spell that kept wizards puzzled for some time. This spell was able to make anyone forget about a specific memory they had and, being taken from Dark Magic, it did not only work on ordinary people, but also on witches and wizards themselves. This spell, named Recordatio, began to be used whenever a witch or wizard had not been careful enough and had exposed themselves to the eyes of an ordinary person.