Belief Sinks
Once upon a time, there was magic in the world, powered by the beliefs and dreams of people. But those who secretly ruled the world decided that that not everybody who could wield magic deserved to wield magic – and that there wasn’t enough magic to go around anyway. So they had their own magicians create special mystical devices that would suck up all the magic in the area, and concentrate it in one place. That would allow the secret rulers to properly control who got access to the magic, and keep it out of the hands of those that the secret rulers disapproved of. And it worked! It worked so well that eventually the secret rulers forgot to keep good records of how to make those special mystical devices. But that was fine, because there were plenty in storage. So they all lived happily ever after – well, everybody who mattered did, at least.
And then the Industrial Revolution happened. Steam power! Vaccinations! Germ theory of disease! Anesthesia! Nutrition science! Suddenly human-powered magic generation was no longer a scarcity problem. Quite the opposite, in fact: the stuff was building up. And when magic builds up too much… things can happen. Sometimes good things; sometimes bad things. Sometimes both at once, or, well, plaid things. Trust me; if you ever see a plaid event in the field you’ll know what I mean by that. And wish that you hadn’t.
Soooo… Belief Sinks are still around, and it is perceived that there are not enough to go around. The Secret Rulers (moving with the times, these guys started capitalizing their names, because you apparently now have to) are constantly shifting the existing Sinks hither and yon. They’re not even saving the magic anymore: they’re simply trying to burn off as much inconvenient magic as possible before something goes critical. The Secret Rulers would get more mages out in the field to throw spells around, except that the priority for mages these days is to have them working in labs, in order to try to reverse-enchant the Belief Sinks. The situation is under control. Pretty much. As long as the Sinks are moved around according to an arcane schedule (take that any way that you like) that nobody really understands. And assuming that nobody tries to ‘borrow’ a Sink ‘for just one day because it’s an emergency.’ Or that nobody thinks that it’d be kind of neat if a particular area actually did go critical, thaumatologically speaking.
In other words: the situation is probably not under control. Which is why the Secret Rulers have rapid-response teams. Well, that and the vicarious entertainment value.
I like this Seed, precisely because it explains both The Neverending Story and the Texas Rangers’ inability to get the final strike in Game 6 of the 2011 World Series.
If The Laundry were really a Civil Service operation, staffed by people who just want to get their twenty years in and then retire, I could well imagine this happening …