The Standing Agreement

The mechanism by which replica relics come to exist and continue to function, despite carrying no magic of their own.

True Relics as the Foundation

A wizard creates a true relic — an object imbued with inherent magic. When used, the relic expends that stored power to subvert the world’s resistance to change. The magic within pays the cost the world would otherwise refuse.

The Contract

A wizard can establish a contract with the world for a specific true relic: a standing agreement that declares sorcerers may use replicas of it. At first, the wizard must actively sustain this — enforcing the agreement against the world’s tendency to reject arrangements that increase effort.

Ordinarily, such an agreement would fail. Allowing replicas to function is a change toward a more effortful state — the world now has to maintain something it otherwise wouldn’t. The wizard covers this by paying an upfront expenditure of magic, enough to offset the cost the world would bear. The transaction is front-loaded: once paid, the agreement is in place.

Replication

With the agreement established, artisans can craft replicas that copy the form of the true relic. A replica channels the effect through the standing agreement, not through any power of its own. The replica must correspond to a specific true relic — there are no category-wide agreements. Every line of replicas traces back to one true relic and one contract.

Why They Persist

Once replicas are in use and people know they work, the balance shifts. The knowledge that a relic functions is held across hundreds of thousands of minds — sorcerers, their institutions, the populations they serve. For the world to make the replicas stop working, it would have to induce a change across all of those minds: the sudden failure of something everyone knows to be reliable. That shock is more costly than letting the replicas continue.

The agreement becomes self-sustaining. The world keeps it going not because a wizard is still enforcing it, but because dismantling it now would cost more than maintaining it. This is the same principle that governs all load-bearing patterns — the world favours short-term savings, and the immediate cost of breaking the pattern always exceeds the immediate cost of continuing it.

Strategic Value

A standing agreement converts a one-time expenditure of magic into a self-sustaining pattern the world maintains indefinitely. Once enough sorcerers are using a line of replicas, the wizard who created the agreement no longer needs to spend anything — the world bears the ongoing cost because discontinuing would be more expensive than continuing.

This gives wizards strong reason to spread replicas widely. The more sorcerers holding a given replica, the heavier the pattern becomes and the harder it is for the world to let it lapse. Spreading replicas is often advantageous — but not always. A wizard may choose to keep a particular relic and its capabilities restricted if the value of exclusivity outweighs the value of entrenchment.

Where replicas do spread broadly, the wizard gains a body of sorcerers who can project force through the agreement without drawing on the wizard’s personal reserves. The sorcerers act through the contract, not the wizard’s stockpile. Wizards spread and sell replicas; beyond that, they do not tend to the sorcerous orders that form around them.

Losing Power

A standing agreement can fade. If a line of replicas falls out of use — forgotten, abandoned, or simply no longer needed — the knowledge that they work thins out. Fewer minds hold the expectation; the inertia weakens. Eventually the cost of maintaining the agreement drops below the cost of continuing it, and the world lets it lapse. This is seldom grieved. By the time an agreement collapses, the replicas have usually long ceased to matter to anyone.