[pshrynk]

Knacks are an inborn part of all himans, and as it turns out the occasional dog. They are, obviously magical. What few people understand, is that they are in fact, everything about magic. Even those who practice what they pompously refer to as High Magick are dealing with Knacks.

Knacks are the little things that people can do. Everyone has a knack and needs to discover it in order to use it. Kancks can range from something as inconsequential as making paper clips line themselves up on their own in the drawer and as powerful ans being able to directly manipulate the flow of the reality stream as it flows about the user.
The Knack seems to be genetic in nature. Families with powerful magicians tend to begat powerfully magical offspring. Families with Knacks that run to making cheeses taste slighty more cheesy tend to shoot off children who can make cows turn right on command.

Noble Knacks are exceedingly rare. At any one time, there are probably no more than thirty people who can, with a glance, cause you to grow fur and start hunting birds for your lunch. This is followed by those with Large Knacks that can be described as Merely miraculous and there are probably about ten thousand of those in the world. Then there are the Useful Knacks, those who can, like Patrick, make anything mechanical work (as long as you ignore the electric parts of it) or make animals talk, even of one at a time. As a rule, most Knacks are generally worthless and are trotted out only as conversation starters at parties, rather than entering into everyday life.

Then, there are those who never discover their Knacks. How could one be expected to discover that one is adept at causing a satellite to plummet to Earth on command, when one is a peasant in England in 1307? Some Knacks are obsolete. One gentleman in France discovered quite by accident that he could heal all the wounds and diseases of a Tyranosaurus Rex. Employes of the British Royal Museum of Natural History still speak darkly of "That Day."

Conversely, new Knacks get discovered daily. Take for example, the Knack of Howard Hughes. He was blissfully unaware of his Knack of causing electronics to come to life until the Autopilot was created. After that, he very conscintiously avoided creating new electronic gear without being quite specific about the functional design. In fact, Miss Adolina Spitter gained a lifelong guaranteed employment by having the Knack of being able to describe in meticulous detail the things that could potentially happen, having been given a description of a state of beginning.