Ekon Jaari
As a person, Ekon Jaari was moody, impatient and very hard to work with. As a teacher, he could show you the very magic that holds the universe together.
- Metthos
Magical Mechanisms
For thousands of years, performing magic was a poorly understood skill. We knew what worked and what didn't, because it either worked or it didn't. Magic as a phenomenon developed slowly over time, as new discoveries were made almost accidentally. It wasn't until a librarian's son from Where got his hands on Simeal's On Sorcery that we started to get an answer as to why magic works the way it does.
Revelation
Ekon Jaari was a smart child, with a notorious temper. In order to keep him out of trouble his mother, a librarian at the Archives of Where, started taking him to work and let him roam the stacks freely. Ekon was immediately fascinated and found that he had a knack for visualising complex arcane ideas and spell mechanisms. The story goes that his mother forgot to take him home after a particularly chaotic day at work, and only realised hours later. The Archive had been locked until morning. The next morning a panicked and distraught parent found her 15 year old son sitting quietlly at his writing desk, a 5 foot stack of books by his side. Legend has it he greeted her by saying "Thank you. I think I've figured it out now." Ekon wrote his findings in a manuscript which he called The Mechanisms of the Arcane. He then hid the manuscript under his bed for fifteen years.
Revolution
After fifteen years of keeping his manuscript private, Ekon's mother conviced him to look for a publisher. She had fallen severely ill, and the family was destitute. Ekon sent a chapter and summary to a number of publishers, and only one did not outright refuse, or even mock, his submission. Ta'ri Shaleback published The Mechanisms of the Arcane and almost immediately changed the world. The book contained not only a depth of insight into why some magic worked or not, but also into how one could change or alter spells to improve them, make them easier to perform, or even how to invent brand new incantations or enchantments. From this single manuscript, the science of Arcatecture sprang forth like a river finally breaking through a dam.
Revulsion
Ekon himself was not much pleased with the success of his book. He described it as 'the most profitable and biggest mistake of my life' and complained that he kept getting interrupted while reading by 'arcane sightseers and damned tourists'. He even went as far as creating a new ward and using it on himself to prevent people from getting closer than 10 feet to his person. Moodiness and prone to bouts of throwing ink at visitors notwithstanding, Jaari's Mechanisms is now one of the Three Great Works which helped the continent enter a new age of development.
