Peering Arts is a field of magimystic study within the Briarverse. It also refers to the spell cast by the Mountaineers during the Search for Magiq initiative of 2019.
History
During the events of the Search for Magiq, the Mountaineers learned from one of Alison’s ancestral memories that Peering Arts, one of the Thornmouth affinities, was once an entire field of study, which centered around gaining insight into and additional context from works of literature and other works of art. The goal of Peering Arts as a spell was to ascertain the creator’s thoughts, feelings, and emotional context at the time of creation.
Usage
Believing the Mountaineers to have been obscured by a grounding hex, Alison and Yuridia developed a method to use the elements of Peering Arts to discover the origin of the spell that was obscuring the Mountaineers. They believed that by reworking the wording of the existing grounding hex spell, they would be able to gather any possible elemental splinters in the spell that was protecting them and bind the splinters to a peering tome, where they might reveal their origins or context at the time of casting.
The peering tome could be any kind of notebook or journal, but must be blank, save for any context about the spell that the caster knew of already. This information, such as the date a spell was cast, any known caster, or involved objects, would help give the Peering Arts magic direction.
There is no known text for the peering tome spell, as the caster must instead simply hold it and focus their intention to the bound tome and the work it is bound to. Opening the tome before the spell is complete will break the spell, but Alison and Yuridia were unsure what would signal the spell’s completion.
Results
Casting the Peering Arts spell resulted in the manifestation of each of the six magimystic elements upon each of the peering tomes, such as blinding light or crystal growth. Opening the tomes revealed entries that documented the thoughts and actions of Ascender in the days before casting the Determiner-12 spell, and each entry was accompanied by an alchemical symbol that corresponded to the caster’s chosen element.