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Magics: motifs in literature and folklore (and technology?)
- Promises must always be kept, but not necessarily in the way both parties expect.
- Doors and gateways are usually guarded, sometimes by a simple password and sometimes by a guardian. The guardian may ask a riddle.
- Great magic always has a cost. (Relinquishing the first born child...)
- Powerful things like gods and wizards go in diguise (often as beggars) amoung mortals.
- Wishes are dangerous.
- Children are clever and ruthless.
- The rules of what is possible change in the forest.
- Names have power. The older something is, the more names it is liable to have. Some of those names may have been forgotten, even by itself. Some of the names for that thing will have more power than its other names.