Basic Information
The Stone-Flying Wizard is a wizard (or other magic-user) deemed responsible for the creation or positioning of megaliths. Only a handful of examples occur in folklore and myth, and even fewer in modern media, but perhaps that's to be expected considering that most megalithic sites are prehistoric in nature. Whatever explanations were once offered for them have now been lost in the mists of time.
In the case of Stonehenge, tradition states that Merlin moved it to it's current location. There's a few accounts of it, varying in a few details as to whether he used magical words, or complex machinery. In some versions he made them "light as a pebble" so the soldiers of Aurelius (uncle of King Arthur) could carry them to their ships. In other takes on it, he made the stones float upon the air.
Similarly, folklore and tradition insist that wizards made Nan Madol, the stone city upon the waters of Federated States of Micronesia, by causing large stones to float to the city. The canals at Nan Madol were supposedly dredged by a Dragon, and the magic that enchanted the stones made them fly through the air with enough stability that men rode upon them.
There's of course many ways to move megaliths around, even though most stones weigh 2 to 3 metric tons per cubic meter. Various methods involving sleds, log rollers, levers and draft animals have been used by archaeologists and engineers in the modern era trying to figure out how huge blocks of stone were moved such long distances by primitive prehistoric peoples. The best of these methods require a couple people per ton being moved, and some methods take as many as 18 people per ton pushing and pulling. It's also possibly that a lost civilization or precursors might have additional technology we hadn't considered. In the documentary Flying Pyramids, Soaring Stones a team from Caltech use a huge kite (420 square feet, or 39 m2) to raise a 14-ton obelisk, suggesting that the Great Pyramids may have been built with a kite.
A Stone-Flying Wizard might utilize such scientific methods (see Sufficiently Advanced Technology and Ancient Astronauts), or might be an actual wizard. Telekinesis or Elementalism might form the basis of such magic.
Sources
Game and Story Use
- One thing that always amazes me is how fantasy and historical fiction is so packed full of familiar European castle designs. Surely in a fantasy world where actual wizards and elementalists have actual power, you expect to see more Seven Wonders Of The World (or at least Church of St. George, Lalibela), and less Motte-and-Bailey. Especially considering how pitiful a typical castle design would be against fantastic foes who can fly or burrow.
- Go wild! You've got spells that turn rock to mud and back again, spells that dig ditches, spells that create walls out of nothing, etc. Surely that can beat the finest achievements of men with sticks and kites.
- Due to his or her Architectural prowess, the Stone-Flying Wizard may fill a role similar to a Mad Scientist or Court Adviser.
- Perhaps the majority of Megalithic Sites and Archaeoastronomical Sites were built by Stone-Flying Wizards. Those monuments may be all that's left of an ancient mystical Lost Civilization of Neolithic Geomancers.
- Or, secret practitioners await in a lost valley or other far corners of the earth, waiting for the a new age when they might practice their art openly again.