First order of magnitude

Magic missile: A wooden sword to vanquish toy soldiers. However, mastery of this destructive trinket will gouge passageways in your mind that will prepare you for more advanced raw aether manifestations, and it will serve you adequately for a good time.

Ice Dagger: Useful to the initiate as practice in close-range engagement. Can find critical points that other spells of this magnitude cannot. Otherwise inferior to Magic Missile in nearly every way.

Horizikaul’s Boom: Useful for the initiate to disorient weak enemy spellcasters, and little else.

Shelgarn’s persistent blade: Shelgarn is a hyperbolic twat who has no idea what ‘persistent’ means, but this spell remains a useful anomaly that will serve you well as you hone your skill. Not a true summoning, rather the blade is an extension of your will to cut down your opponent. Most creatures will be unable to seriously damage it and its single-minded nature will buy you precious seconds. May be used to trigger traps or probe suspicious passageways, ruining most ambushes when it buries itself in a bugbear’s face.

Second order of magnitude:

Flame Weapon: A supplement to Shelgarn’s dagger, and a useful elemental focus for your own weapon. It also irritates a surprising number of people who are offended by the notion of someone carrying a flaming pole where they can see it. Will see little use otherwise as everyone will prefer their worthless, unenchantable farm tools to a beautiful flaming instrument of death that would remove an enemy at six times the speed.

Darkness: Concealment is oft necessary in war, and this spell remains useful against most surface threats. Take care with its size and positioning or it will blind your allies, shelter your foes, and is a particularly boring choice for the last thing you will ever see.

Cloud of Bewilderment: Highly useful disabling and area denial spell with an extremely short range that will place you at the very edge of the roil. Best employed against the weak-minded, which you will find in no short supply.

Electric Loop: A moderately intimidating close-range disabling spell that will knacker your allies more often than it inconveniences your foes.

Combust: An acceptable and satisfying melee weapon for the initiate. The shock of being set alight will fell most weaker foes more quickly than the flame itself, and the lingering blaze will erode those who lack the presence of mind to stop, drop and roll. Useful for lighting campfires once faced with anything more formidable than a moderately intimidating rat.

Third order of magnitude

Fireball: The first true manifestation of the white-hot wind. There are few spells better known as the Evoker’s art than this bright and beautiful detonation of radiant death.

Lightning Bolt: A useful, narrowly focused line of skyfire that will aid you in narrow confines, or in the company of allies who do not understand proper positioning, which is all of them.

Gust of Wind: A powerful backdraft that will purify the air and send most mages to their knees for long enough to be extinguished. Can also be used to open doors you believe may be trapped (they are.)

Scintillating Sphere: An objectively inferior counterpoint to Fireball in nearly all situations, possessing neither its range nor its beauty.

Fourth order of magnitude

Elemental Shield: A potent deterrent to melee combatants, and a useful bulwark against heat and cold. Also another useful focus and fair way to dry your clothes in this horrible climate.

Ice Storm: Slow to gain power, but higher magnitudes Auril’s Tears will pulverize most would-be acrobats who think to cheat death.

Lesser Missile Storm: A lukewarm bombardment of raw aether useful for sorceresses until they master the greater version, at which point they should burn this spell from their memories and never think of it again.

Wall of Fire: An acceptable method of controlling the battlefield and deterring attackers, as well as flushing archers out of cover. Use sparingly in expeditions, or your allies will cry endlessly as their precious orc jewelry and goblin loincloths go up in smoke.

Fifth order of magnitude

Firebrand: An excellent and precise hail of fire that will crown your arsenal for some time to come. Like aether, it is slow to guide, but beautiful to connect.

Ball Lightning: Oh yes go ahead and be different if it means so bloody much to you.

Cone of Cold: Potentially useful in rare situations where firebrand is not viable, where removing heat rather than increasing it is your most desirable outcome, or where speed is of the essence and close range a factor. Otherwise somewhat cumbersome.

Bigby’s Interposing Hand: Bigby’s additions to the Evoker’s art are sloppy and embarrassing, but only a fool would deny their effectiveness. The interposing hand is especially useful against single, powerful reavers who attack in swift flurries. Prioritize! Casting it at more than one significant threat is almost always a waste of time you do not possess.

Sixth order of magnitude

Bigby’s Forceful Hand: Hill giants rarely expect to be floored by a punch from a skinny little girl. Know your enemy, however, and do not allow this powerful but predictable trick to become a crutch, as nothing is infallible. Target enemy mages and get back to the incineration.

Greater Missile Storm: The pinnacle of raw aether spells. This invocation is a healthy workhorse that will never tire of liquefying your aggressors.

Chain Lightning: Useful for a more precise and discriminating distribution of annihilation, inflicting significant harm to its first recipient at higher magnitudes and dancing between any number of targets.

Seventh order of magnitude

To be continued when I have bled some more.