Strange Brew 09
24 Mar 2016 · page 580 of 1306
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Comments (16)
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Groundwater, Harry.
I used to know a guy called Groundwater Harry
(no I didn't)
Why would something in the water only effect wizards?
Because the stuff in the water isn't just chemicals or something but a curse, and curses can be made to target only certain types of individuals... and are apparently water-soluble. Because of magic. That way, only wizards have their precious bodily fluids impurified and their essences drained.
Water seems to repel or insulate against magic, large bodies of water interfere with it. The curse shouldn't be able to be tied to water nor should it be conducted by it.
Yeah, but considering that the curse itself also interferes with magic, could it be possible for water somehow amplifies that?
If it only affects, or preferentially affects, those with magical abilities, then common folk with little to no magic wouldn't notice anything while those with magic would be affected based on how powerful their magic is: the more they have/the more powerful they are the worse the effects of the curse. Thus, wizards would really feel it while normal folk might not feel anything at all.
This fits with Sid getting worse after a bath.
I consider this the most likely theory for the moment.
If it was a magical curse, wouldn't Gren be able to smell it and lead you to it?
Can Gren smell magic? I don't remember that. Where does it say that? If so, does that make Gren a witch? :)
[http://www.widdershinscomic...](http://www.widdershinscomic.com/wdshn/november-4th-2011/ "http://www.widdershinscomic.com/wdshn/november-4th-2011/")
It's making me wonder if it's actually related to a local pollen, hm.
It probably can't be something in the water (not directly), seeing how immediatly Sid got sick.
My theory;
Sid's just a hypochondriac, but the curse is real... but it's not magic. The gem was set in lead or had a lead chain, which explains the symptoms if Lady Witmore wore it often for a long enough time. Then she dropped it into a crevice, where it settled in groundwater.
Wizards are the only ones who notice because their now impaired mental ability keeps them from concentration hard enough to perform magic properly.
Good idea, but doesn't work. Water pipes were made of lead at that time, unless this is another random instance where Widdershins diverges from our universe; if that was a problem, the whole country would be a no-magic area. Could be something else, of course; there are plenty of more concentratedly nasty substances than lead. (Hard to see why most of them would be used for jewellery, mind, but maybe it was deliberately booby-trapped for some reason!)
In that case, though, why wouldn't everyone get the physical effects, not just wizards? Two ideas I can think of: either not being able to control their magic properly also means that it initially leaks out at random and that's what makes them ill. Or else it's just an anxiety reaction to consciously or unconsciously realising that their magic is disappearing - which, if you've been a wizard all your life, has to be almost Mal and Ben-level scary. And Sid's got it so badly because Sid is a nervous Nellie.
This is just going to turn out to be a psycological thing isn't it? Where everyone believes there is a curse which makes wizards weak, therefore wizards who find out about it get scared and instantly feel weak. Would explain why Sid only started feeling ill after he was told about the curse.
The gem is imbibed with a spirit of Hypochondria!