Another 'problem post' detailing debates and questions confronting the community of magic-users in TRoAPW.
Ley lines have been mentioned in an earlier setting post and equipment list.
Premise
There are points in the world where magic is concentrated in its effects. There is a greater flow of background power, an easier flow of energies. The shortest path between two points, as the Geometricians have demonstrated, is a straight line. Thus, there are places where one is on one of these shortest paths, and therefore, closest to two wells of energy.
It is thought that the two wells correspond in some way; even beyond the well boundary, minute magic tendrils - bearing no more especial power than most places - reach out and interweave, to form a line-like area. If two wells of magical power are hilltops, the ley line is the ridge between them.
If magic on a ley line is not so spectacular in its effects as at a place of power, it is certainly easier, more ready to the mage's instinct. Devices and substances that are only borderline magically active will become more active on a ley line. The comparison given for apprentice wizards is like going from an overgrown lane to a well-kept road: you must still walk for yourself, but the going is far easier.
The State of the Art
Wells of magic tend to have an established reputation for outlandishness. Finding or identifying them (in places where some remain to be found or identified) is often a matter for the antiquarian. Ley lines, however, must be charted and tracked.
Thankfully, this may be done, just as those state boundaries which do not follow some natural course like a river or a coastline may be surveyed. Of course, ley lines are to some degree as natural as a river, and even if they will not meander like a watercourse, there will be variations to be taken in. Thus, observations must be made.
Once, this would involve a string of magic-users walking across the land, firing off flare spells. The strongest flare would mark a point on the line. Thankfully, this costly method is less necessary with the invention of the witchsight theodolite. The buzzing band of the ley line may be seen by the observer, and its path charted. Accordingly, ley line surveyors exist as a skilled magical trade. These are related to but distinct from Nematists* - those who specialise in the study and theory of ley lines.
What use is this? Well, wizards will attempt to find homes along ley lines, but the costs of relocation mean that naturally not all wizards can do so. Some Colleges of Magic are placed on them and are useful in coaxing out fledgling magical talent. Wider application is thus far limited, with an exception. Wealthy landowners, having become aware of the lines crossing their land have begun to erect Thaumaturgical Follies: elegant pavilions full of magical devices (for, say, light, heat, scent, sound, simple motion) which would either fail or swiftly deplete elsewhere. Serious-minded wizards deplore these, but charge through the nose for them.
Opponents of the Nematists
Opposition to charting ley lines rarely comes from any magic-user: any mage but the merest neophyte can detect the ley lines and what they produce. Knowing where they are is at least useful, and so charting them will be a matter of When rather than If.
Thus, opposition comes from those locals (squires and commonality alike) who have a suspicion of any surveyor, let alone a magical one. Likewise, the idea that a wizard wants to move into the neighbourhood would be granted with a measure of trepidation, especially if their eccentricities include building a brand-new house miles from anywhere convenient.
If an opponent of ley lines were to gain an understanding of some of the ideas in Nematist circles, this could very well strengthen their opposition - for motives of profit if no more.
The Nematists divided
Of the group of magic users that make a particular study of ley lines**, two schools of thought may be discerned. These are the Static Nematists and the Dynamic Nematists.
As the term suggests, Static Nematists look purely to study and exploit the web of ley lines. This will not mollify Opponents, for their visions are quite as wild as anything the Dynamic may suggest. If every mage were to erect a mere humble cottage on a ley line, it would still warp land ownership pattern unthinkably, and Static Nematists have theorised about much more than that.
Dynamic Nematists are something else. Having noticed that ley lines do not sit in useful well-connected places, they intend to create more wells of energy and thus place more lines on the web. No magic-user would have to leave the towns to dwell in distant, lonely places. The wonders and conveniencs of the Thaumaturgical Folly could be offered to so many more.
The Static Nematist thinks the Dynamic, whether or not they can actually create new ley lines, is playing with fire (you do know why no-one ever settles permanently on a well of energy?). The Dynamic Nematist thinks the Static is ridiculously timid.
A question that remains open is if different ley lines produce different levels of power for respective sorts of magic. Those who hold that they do refer to a 'Spectrum' of magical streams and are referred to as Spectrumists (they are not important enough to be mocked often, but when they do, people refer to rainbow-chasers).
Implications
The vision nursed by some Nematists - of great automated workshops, some twenty yards across and twenty miles long, fed by the drip-flow of magical energy from a ley line - is unlikely to be seen by anyone now living in Calliste.
A fully-charted set of ley lines would doubtless lead to an alteration to land use, and perhaps, as well-funded well-equipped surveys increase in number and prominence, even speculation in ownership of certain well-placed plots. If you can hold onto that acre of scrub land where a ley line is just forty yards from the Roqueport to Loughdainne road, one day a wizard might be in a position to offer you quite a bit of money for it.
The flowering of wizardry in rural climes aside, there are two implications offered by ley lines that might emerge in the next generations. Magical tools and devices certainly function advantageously on a ley line, but the production of these more widely is not sufficient in terms of quantity or quality to create the linear factories mentioned above. What is far more likely are small workshops in talented, specialist trades that require delicate or intricate work (IE, watchmakers, gunsmiths, cabinet makers) obtaining sets of magical tools to drive production. Some greenhouses and other artificial environments might also be sustained by a ley line, though an automatic drainage pump for the fenlands is still a way off.
The other possibility, of course, is for workers with magical tools to use the ley lines to aid them in their industry. If navvies with rune-enhanced picks and shovels excavated the course of a canal along the course of a ley line, it would be a fair quicker process than if those navvies were to excavate a canal of identical length in a stretch of comparable ground. If something like a railway locomotive ever comes to Calliste, then using stretches of the ley lines could be the basis for the track system.
Of course, it takes a certain combination of factors to make this actually viable. Equipping workmen with rune-enchanced picks is not cheap or quick. There needs to be a reasonably accurate map of ley lines available, a pressing reason to go to work along them, ownership or similar of the land on which the line runs - and lots of money. The production of new roads operated as turnpikes would be perhaps the most likely circumstances under which a group could garner the funds and power to make such a thing happen.
A fanciful scenario suggested by some Nematists is that a line of crack troops suitably equipped with magical weapons stationed along a ley line would be a mighty bulwark. Perhaps they would - but they could not manoeuvre and maintain that advantage. Nor does every battlefield conveniently possess a ley line. This would be the sort of expensive technical advantage that wins battles, not wars - though maybe a well-informed, canny and lucky commander could contrive to fight most of their battles on a ley line. Of course, unless you have a great many magical weapons, the high ground will always be preferable.
Most of the above applies to both Static and Dynamic Nematists. Unless the Dynamic Nematists manage to start making their own ley lines and placing them advantageously. In which case there could be a great deal of change to infrastructure.
And all of this is disrupted again if someone creates a magical battery.
Comments, nitpicks, &c welcome - I'd rather work out the problems now than later.
*My Greek lexicon gives νῆμᾰ, nema as 'that which is spun, thread, yarn: the thread of a spider's web'. Which seems apt.
**One would struggle to be a professional or full-time Nematist, Grimoirean, or similar in Calliste at present. But if you gain that reputation, it's rather like being a policy wonk among more generalist politicians.