Schwartz and Weiss

Schwartz (シュバルツ, Shubarutsu) and Weiss (ヴァイス, Waisu) are a magic tools modeled to look like. Their purpose is to assist the librarians of the Royal Academy's Library.

Schwartz and Weiss were made to appear like larger versions of shumils. They have golden eyes, like most natural shumils do, and also have a golden feystone embedded in their foreheads. Schwartz has black fur, while Weiss has white fur.

While they are clothed, they look almost like real shumil, except for the feystones in their foreheads and their size, but once their clothes are removed, the places where their limbs join their torso look like those of a stuffed animal rather than the real feybeasts. They have extensive magic circles embroidered around their entire torsos, made from golden mana-dyed thread.

They wear clothes provided to them by their master until a new master takes over and provides them with a new set. Currently they are still wearing dresses made by the master prior to Rozemyne, which are mostly the opposite colour of their furs with highlights in their furcolours and fitted with many expansive feystones.

While the pair might appear like living beings, they are in fact magic tools. They have no true personalities to speak of, acting rather robot-like at most times. They have the ability to speak, but despite made by a noble for the use of nobles, their sentences are short and direct, likely as a limitation due to them being only automata, rather than actual living beings.

They are capable of lending out and retriefing books and carrel keys, as well as bringing returned books back to their respective place among the shelves.

When Rozemyne inquired how many books the Royal Library holds, Schwartz was able to give an estimate of the number of books and documents stored on the library's first floor.

They appear to be capable of learning to at least some degree, since they came to understand the meaning of being measured for clothing apparently on their own due to going through the process so often.

They are incapable of leaving the library on their own. Only their current master can take them outside, which requires direct physical contact, like holding hands for example.

Apart from the enchantments that allow them to act almost like sentient beings, the pair has also been fitted with sophisticated protection mechanisms to prevent theft and damage. Only their current master and those explicitly authorized by them are able to freely touch them. To give permission their current master merely needs to say so out loud within ear-shot of Schwartz and Weiss.

Once someone is given permission to touch them, that person will be exempt from any of the wards and is thus able to steal or damage them at will. Thus a master is well adviced to only give this permission to people they trust deeply.

When someone unauthorized touches them, they will immediately feel a tingling sensation that grows in intensity by the moment and quickly reaches painful levels, eventually becoming too strong for anyone to bear. There have also been reports of people being repelled before even making skin-contact with the magic tools or even being "blown away" by mana, making it likely that the defensive spells contain a component that reacts to the intentions of the offender, midly deterring those that act out of good intentions or mere curiosity, while warding off those with ill intentions with a level of violence proportional to the malice sensed.

They are also fitted with enchantments specifically designed to ward off outright attacks, capable of draining the power of incoming magical attacks and reflecting it back at the attacker. It is unclear how exactly this meachanic works, but when the defensive spell is active, both the eyes and the feystones set into the buttons of their clothing light up.

Schwartz and Weiss are so old that the exact details of their origin is shrouded in mystery. The legend holds that they were created by a past princess a long time ago. The knowledge of how to create such sophisticated magic tools able to walk, talk and work like them has either been kept private by their creator until their death, or has since been lost to time.

At one point in Solange's youth, the most recent master of the pair gave them outfits made purely for cuteness without considering how they might interfere with work. Their large hats kept falling off and their billowing sleeves made them knock over the stacks of gold payed as deposits. Despite these hindrances, the two magic tools attempted to continue their work unperturbed, neither trying to take off the cumbersome accessories, nor complaining even a single time. Their outfits were replaced with more practical ones within a couple of days. Since then it has become the norm to keep make their sleeves only reach their elbows.

Following the civil war and the resulting purge among the Nobility all other librarians were either called back noble society to contribute directly toward their home provinces or executed for being affiliated with the defeated princes. This left only the mednoble Solange as the sole librarian.

The three archnoble librarians that served as the previous masters for Schwarz and Weiss were affiliated with the defeated princes. Knowing their days were numbered anyway, they poured as much mana as they could into the two shumils, to the point of putting their lives on the line, in a final act of dedication. Ultimately they all survived the charging, to be sentences to death by the new king later. Despite the enormous amount of mana their final act provided, it was only enough to keep the two magic tools runnig for one year.

Due to their sophistication, Schwartz and Weiss unfortunately used up a lot of mana. Even if Solange had been able to dedicate her entire mana to keeping them active, it is doubtful it would have been enough. But as the sole oversee of the library, Solange had to keep many vital magic tools active and thus shortly after the last archnoble left, the two shumils ceased to function. Even so Solange kept pouring as much mana as she could spare into the two to make sure the wards could keep them save from theft or meddling. This dormant period lasted so long that when Rozemyne entered the academy, most nobles assumed the two shumils were merely inanimate dolls belonging to Solange, rather than the priceless artifacts they are.

It is tradition for a new master to provide Schwartz and Weiss with a new set of clothes, to mark the passing of the torch.

The normal way of passing ownership of the magic tools is for the current master to give permission to touch them to a successor and allow them to register their mana like with any other magic tool. In this way it is also possible to have multiple masters at once, to share the burden of mana around.


 * Cambridge Online Dictionary