User talk:Daric Gaersmith/TES Fan Fiction Collection/Reading Fan Fiction/The Armour of Contempt

The smell of magicka

If I may contribute to your speculation, I am of the opinion that the "smell" of magic is more a product of what the spell itself is, and would be related to the type of spell employed. I've been contemplating this myself, as it's an interesting topic, and logically, I can only see a smell as the "end result" of magicka being used. Such as the burnt smell associated with flames or the ozone after a crack of lightening, or the cool icy smell associated with snow and ice.. All of those strike me as byproducts of destruction magic in particular, whereas I can't imagine something like invisibility, calm, healing, levitation, etc to have smells. (Assuming these are cast outward towards another being, creature, or item, as I imagine any real magical effects used internally on a person wouldn't be so outwardly revealing as in a video game, where the lighting effects are a visual confirmation that a spell, even one that you'd think would not make a light of some sorts (although, like I said, I am speculating and this is merely my opinion on the topic)). ES^{(talk•email)} 08:59, 23 January 2013 (GMT)

Thanks for contributing, Eric. Your opinions are always welcome. You seem to have a good insight into the things that interest me about writing TES-based fan fiction, and I value your input. In The Armour of Contempt, it is said that the protagonist, Criid, "could smell magick-stuffs, and hot wood." When you take these two smells together, they do tend to indicate your impression of the smell of majicka as having just been released. I was taking the "smell magick-stuffs" part alone, and pondering on whether, having a cohort of battle-mages approaching the theatre of operations, would be preceded by a whiff of magic in the air. Perhaps it would not be noticeable emanating from a single mage, but would become concentrated enough to be noticeable in the presence of a large number of magical practitioners, such as you may find in a Mages Guild or at the College of Winterhold. Would the old stones of the College have become imbued, over time, with the pungent odour of raw majicka? – Daric↝talk 10:04, 23 January 2013 (GMT)