Practical Applications of Sand Magic

Adapted from a letter to Elder Councillor Vedo Icthus, 3E 420

The Redguards of Hammerfell are not well known for their sorcery, and indeed the magical arts are little respected and little practised in the province. But nevertheless an arcane tradition exists. In the Alik’r desert, mages practice an ancient pre-Ra Gada school that hinges on the desert sands and the Magnal energies locked away in such mundane media. The ancient stone and sand of the desert, especially under such constant attention from Magnus, has been infused with aetheric power since time immemorial, and it is the Redguard mages who have discovered the secrets to unlocking it.

Most often, sand magic manifests itself as a subtle, reserved school, focusing perhaps rather unimaginatively on the physicality of the sand, tossing it here and there in whirlwinds and missiles and all manner of spell. But the underlying natural philosophy of the school has far more practical applications.

The Yoku suspicion of mages extends to their other great domain, the sea. Most navies employ ships’ battlemages as a matter of course, relying on them to blast apart enemy ships as well as repairing and fortifying their own. The Redguards, however, and the Colovians who have largely inherited their naval traditions, will not tolerate wizards aboard ship – they are seen as an unpredictable, unlucky, and undesirable factor at sea. Yet even without this basic norm of naval combat, the Redguards are able to rule the waves of western Tamriel and beyond. How can this be?

The answer is that not even the Redguards are truly willing to eschew the ship’s battlemage – sand magic offers destructive power without requiring the physical presence of a spellcaster. Safely on land, a sand mage will gather fine hot sand from the desert, imbued with Magnal potential energy. The sand is alchemically prepared and then ritually empowered. The result is Yoku “blasting sand”, a seemingly innocuous substance that, if exposed to a flame, will be reduced to its most minute particles, releasing the ancient aetheric energy. The result of this rapid reduction is a violent explosion. This substance, totally inert as long as it is kept away from fire, is carried on almost every Redguard ship.

Where most vessels have battlemages, Redguard ships have cannon – long tubular devices of cast orichalcum which are loaded first with a portion of blasting sand, and then with a solid metal or stone sphere. A fuse carries a spark to the potent sand and the resultant explosion, channelled by the strong walls of the cannon, propels the missile with as much force as any fireball. While perhaps lacking the diversity of a battlemage, Redguard cannon are more than capable of tearing ships apart. One or two hits in the right places can capsize a vessel often too quickly for a ship’s mage to respond.

Redguard ships may not employ the breadth of magical utilities enjoyed by their Altmeri or Breton rivals, but the destructive power of the blasting-sand cannon is just one of many Yoku innovations able to compensate.

Attempts have been made to adapt Redguard cannon technology into smaller implements, so-called “hand-guns”, but never with much success. For the most part, the violence of the sand explosion requires far too dense an orichalc container to be practical in a handheld device, and reducing the amount of sand naturally reduces the efficacy of the missile. Aside from this, the peculiar Redguard reverence for the sword means there is limited demand for handheld ranged weapons on land – no self-respecting Redguard would seek to gun down his enemies before they came into sword’s reach.

Most efforts at adapting blasting sand technology have, as a result, been made in other lands, where the secrets of sand magic and Yoku metallurgy are spread far too thinly for effective research to be conducted. The Dwemer, it is believed, may have had their own equivalent of Yoku blasting sand, with evidence of magickal explosives emerging on the Morrowind mainland, but it seems never to have attained the significance or attention it receives in Redguard culture, perhaps because the Dwemer saw their automata, ballistae, and tonal magics as generally superior. In any case, the Dwemer, and all other races, appear to have consistently lacked the peculiar Yoku grasp on the science of Magnal potential energy, a mistake we should seek to rectify if we are to take full advantage of the most modern of military technologies.