Never meddle in the affairs of wizards, because they're right bloody bastards.
Gandalf, probably.
The Institute, after several hundred years of thaumaturgic experimentation carried out by the kind of person who is later described as "a little odd, but we never saw any trouble," to a reporter, had a lot of spare rooms. Many of those were on top of eachother, or inside eachother, or existed in some strange chunk of overlapping space time in some strange way that made a cartographers life a living hell. There were at least two rooms that you could see your back through the other doorway as you entered, and not thanks to a mirror. In general, new attendees were pointed in the general direction of the dorms and told "Its somewhere over there," and the staff just hoped that they wouldn't get lost and end up in a pocket dimension or something on the way.
All this contributed to many such rooms becoming a dumping ground for old junk that nobody could find any use for, and it was in one of these rooms that Thalimar Philotheon, High and Most Excellent Archmagus of the Institute of the Arcane, found himself, along with the Academician and Master Wizard Eudamon Abbipus, Dean of Demonic Studies. This room had clearly been used to dump somebody's library, and there were vast piles of books littered across the floor. Eudamon was literally headfirst in a pile the size of a large haystack, only his legs emerging from it as his bony knees kicked feebly.
"
Mmmmmph!" he cried.
"What?" Thalimar said, turning back to the bookpile.
"
Mmmph mmmmmph mmmph mmmmmmmmph! Mmmmph!"" Eudamon said, kicking his feet harder. Thalimar grabbed him by the legs and heaved, pulling him out. He emerged eventually, one hand holding his wizard hat in place and the other clutching a battered manuscript. "I've found it!" he said, waving the book proudly under Thalimar's nose.
"What am I looking at here?" Thalimar asked leaning backwards. He could faintly detect the scent of mildew, and a coppery stench smelled suspiciously like blood.
"
Applying Mass Rune Circles to Optimising Blood Sacrifice, by Principus Maxilo," the Dean said, as he picked a bookworm out of his impressive beard. "His thesis. Nobody took it very seriously at the time, but I used it once as a coaster when I was a student. A proposed set up to optimise the process of blood sacrifices and extract raw thaumaturgical energy by trading it as a pact with a Bound Demon."
"Fascinating as that sounds," the Archmagus said, slowly, "I fail to see why this was so important that you had to interrupt my work to find it." In truth, he'd been catching the rays at the peak of the tower, but if he was going to do this job he'd damn well better milk it for what it was worth.
"I'm not sure you understand the implications. Do you have a passing understanding of Blood summoning circles and the Thaumic Energy Bargain ritual?"
"No," Thalimar sniffed. "My field was always
elemental summoning, thank you very much."
"Yes, well, we can't all be layabouts," the Dean rolled his eyes. Thalimar bit back a retort. "Well, I'm sure I can briefly educate you. Traditionally, the summoning of a demonic entity for a Blood Ritual takes 9 days and 9 nights of hellish chanting, before each one can put down the Runes of Binding and seal the entity in place before one makes the bargain. The actual overhead was never the sacrifice itself - that happens in the order of minutes. I'm sure you appreciate that its not as easy as reaching into the Planar Ether and plucking a Muscle Elemental to open a jar for you."
Thalimar raised an eyebrow. The Dean chuckled weakly. "Ha, hah, just a little faculty joke."
"Go on," Thalimar said, tapping his foot impatiently.
"Well, if you had five sacrifices to make, say, it would take 45 days overall. Really, an unacceptable overhead. But Maxilo theorised and proved that a particular configuration of runes, arranged in such a way around this summoning circle, could in fact split the summoning call five ways and call 5 demons simultaneously to make a bargain. Actually, its very interesting - the real trick wasn't just getting them there, it was making sure that they don't all murder eachother. If you look at this particular Rune of Protection, its inverted to turn the Binding inwards to the Demons rather than outwards , and surrounded by this smaller circle of standard Runes of Protection. This was actually what won him acclaim, and to think that it was developed half-heartedly for another..."
"Get to the point, Eudamon!"
The Dean sighed. "Well, if you have no interest in the intricacies of Blood Summoning, this cuts down the entire process to the original 9 days and 9 nights, just by putting the victims at these points on the circle. We can cut down on the overhead by a literal four fifths! If you'll just give me 23 Grad students, 18 for the chanting and 5 for the sacrifice then we can..."
"No. No sacrificing Grad students." Thalimar said bluntly.
"What? But thats what they're
for," whined Eudamon.
"We don't have the manpower. But don't worry... we'll find people to sacrifice. This was definitely worth the trip. I'll send out the scouts to find a few ...volunteers." Thalimar could feel an evil laugh coming on. He wasn't sure why, but they kept on coming these days, generally in situations like this. Perhaps it was worth seeing a healer about it?
"Thankyou, thankyou!" said Eudamon, bowing. "You won't regret this. I'll organise the chanters soon!"
"Oh Eudamon," said Thalimar, as the Dean headed to the door. "Whatever happened to Maxilo?"
"Not carried away by a demon, if thats what you're worried about. Well, Maxilo had an interest in elemental summoning as well. One day he got up and declared he was going to find the Elemental Plane of Ranch Dressing, and that was that was the last anybody ever heard of him. Like I said - genius, but a little batty."
"Indeed," nodded Thalimar, "Everyone knows the Elemental Plane of Ranch Dressing is just left of the one of Lettuce."