Shaping, a guide to the uninitiated
Shaping is a rare and powerful art the dreams of which have existed since man first looked at the world and wondered how it worked. First man attributed to the gods the phenomenon in nature which he did not and indeed could not yet understand. In some realities he was even right. That however is less consequential to shaping than mankind's continuing drive to discover and expand his knowledge and to make known the unknown. Eventually man used his intelligence to achieve some degree of mastery over the forces of the world through the systems of knowledge and power called science or magic. The creation, or discovery of shaping lies in this drive to discover, learn, and elucidate.
While the roots of shaping are in people's eternal efforts to understand and categorize the universe, the specific origin of shaping as an art lies in several similar individuals across many, many, many, disparate realities. The most common of the stories told of shaping's origins is that of the alchemist who thought that the working of things lay in their shapes. He saw this in his study and work with alchemy. He observed the way fire transformed stone and ore, metal emerging from rock like a butterfly from its chrysalis. He observed the effect of various liquids acidic, basic, and neutral upon a dizzying variety of substances. He observed that with the transformation of shape in one way or another came a transformation of means, of the properties of objects and phenomenon. The alchemist spent the entirety of his life chasing this thought even as he grew old and decrepit, even as he passed down his knowledge to his three apprentices. It is said, in some versions of the tale, that it was only on his death bed that the alchemist truly the shape he had sought since he was young. This is a farcically dramatic sentiment and most certainly erroneous. He had at the least a year with the shape of transformation that he had finally learned and took extensive notes on the subject on top of all the research he had previously done. Perhaps the alchemist had never managed to make an active use of the shape till just before his death. Perhaps he never made active usage of the shape, however, he had certainly learnt it, and described as much in his notes to the best of his abilities. Such a medium is notoriously inept for passing down knowledge of shaping.
Following in his footsteps his three apprentices attempted to continue his research. The first of his disciples looked at the whole of what was written through the lens of his teacher's art and indeed became a very fine alchemist. A most extraordinary one indeed, if the records are to be believed he committed a number of feats that others have found unreplicable. Everything from the elixir of immortality, to the crafting of the philosopher's star (an item far superior to the original stone and much relied upon today for a number of materials and effects that can be sourced from nothing else). It is thought among shapers that while the first apprentice perhaps never took to the true art of shaping he, through the use of his teacher's notes, elevated his skill in alchemy to the level of natural shaping (the unconscious perfection of a process until the demonstration of it accords with a shape to the point it is expressed and its associated phenomenon summon even without direct intent on the part of the worker). Skill risen above the domain of skill to become one with law, that is what it is held among shapers that the first apprentice of the alchemist achieved, and he is held in much respect by them for it even if such does not hold the same place in their history as one who worked the craft in full knowing.
The second apprentice of the alchemist is held by many as the first true recorded example of a shaper. He read his master's notes and saw in them a question and search apart from alchemy. He saw poetry of a kind among his teacher's descriptions of the shape of transformation and sought to further his study of the chaos of words he saw on page after page. So profound was the transformation is wrought upon him and the last disciple of the alchemist that it is held by some that the alchemist's notes may have truly held the shape of transformation as a shaping that transformed the reader. This aside, driven and guided by the notes of his predecessor the second apprentice threw himself into the study of shape even as he kept living as an alchemist. Unlike his predecessor he did not confine himself to the study of alchemy in the pursuit of shape and transformation. He sought it in nature, in people, and in the written word, and at last he had reached what his teacher before him had sought, though perhaps not quite the same transformation his teacher had found. He did so far more swiftly than his teacher having learned the shape by the end of his middle age. From there he continued his studies into the learning and usage of shapes accomplishing any number of miraculously impossible and implausible feat through the usage of shaping. Eventually he left his knowledge, notes, and records to his own disciples, which is how we know anything about the alchemist at all.
The last of the students of the alchemist gave up alchemy after reading the transformative notes. This was a great shock to his fellows as of the three, while he may not have been the most diligent nor the cleverest, he was the one that loved alchemy and their teacher the most. Not only did the last apprentice of the alchemist give up alchemy, but he also burnt his teachers notes. It is written that he said all he saw in them were the imprecise shadow of how to properly categorize the world. Indeed, the last apprentice of the alchemist became of those individuals that were at the forefront of the scientific revolutions in our worlds history. He for the rest of his life pushed not just for the advancement of our knowledge of the world, but for the proper categorization and explanation of it for the benefit of those who have not the fortune to have been taught as he had been taught. For this the people of our world shall forever thank him, though his story is no longer directly relevant to our subject.