Except it clearly isn't just motive. Skill and knowledge plays a part too. In the book where Dresden was figuring out what Maggy had done to her boyfriend, although she had the best of intentions, she still gained some corruption due to lack of understanding of negative consequences.



On the other side of it, Ebenezar was capable of doing things like pulling down satellites on bases (which included human slaves/food) and gaining NO discernible corruption.



Similarly, Wardens are capable of using enchanted blades to kill people. If the person was armored such that a regular blade would fail, then without "rules lawyering" it seems reasonable to assume the magic is responsible, not the physical blade. Which means that in the broadest sense, which you propose, either the Captain or the Warden (depending on who pays the price for magical artifact usage) should be accumulating corruption.



It just doesn't hang together, unless you look at the actual law in the strictest sense. IE, killing with magic is bad. Using magic on something mundane, and killing with that is OK. The main thing is to not establish some sort of sympathetic connection between caster and target due to the active use and transmission of the forces of creation (ie, magic). In fact, this would imply that with the correct enchantment/spell/materials, you could make a staff or other focus with basically a magical diode; connection flows out, but not back.



It's entirely possible that most enchanted gear works that way, and that the more ad-hoc spellcasting doesn't for the simple reason that without a full loop, there is no maintained control over the spell. An artifact, using a more self-contained magical casting apparatus, just needs to be triggered or fed energy. That could act as a insulator between the wizard and any corrupting effects.

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