Mages In Adel

The Week of the Census was always busy for Yiteh, but this time he had a special duty to perform that took him even farther out of his way. The skittish bird Iomadi scratched his feathered ears as he explored the village, asking strangers left and right where their village Spirit was. Finally he was pointed to a clearing in the midst of the wood, where the sunlight fell like a perfect disc. There he found him – though long-haired, covered in ribbons and flowers, perfumed and painted in the face, and dressed in a long and colorful robe and sash, the spirit of the village spoke in a male-sounding voice. He asked Yiteh to sit by him and meditate.

“I’ve no time for that, I have a couple thousand people to interview!” Yiteh replied, almost hysterically. “Just take this.”

He thrust out an envelope, sealed in wax with the burning lamp symbol of the Points of Light academy. The spirit took the envelope gracefully and turned it in his hands.

“What shall I do with this?” The Spirit’s beautiful face turned up to Yiteh, ever appraising.

“Give it to the most worthy child in your village. I wouldn’t know. If you’ll excuse me.”

Yiteh turned tail and ran, holding on to his hat as he did, and nearly in tears at the prospect of completing this census on time. But delivering the letter had given him some warmth in his old heart, and made his ears and tail just a bit more lively.

* * *

Though once enclosed within palaces and fortresses, mages are now more common than ever, though they still make a very dismal fraction of the population. The availability of magical instruction, once nearly impossible to achieve, has been greatly improved since the commencement of the Intolerable War, and the need for magical aid in battle. Some scholars contend, even, that the militarization of magic use remains deeply rooted in the culture, and has kept many mages from reaching their full potential. As long as a mage is required to learn to fight, that is time wasted that could be used to advance knowledge. Nonetheless, the arcane has advanced, and a common child might now stand a chance of becoming a great mage, where there was once no hope of it.

Becoming A Mage

Most Mages one will encounter in Adel are children or teenagers.  Adult mages just don’t adventure – they have next to no reason to do so. Once a Mage has grown into his or her twenties, he or she can usually find a position in academia as an assistant (with hopes of rising to tenure someday), or in the military as an artificer, doctor or quartermaster, in politics as a bureaucrat or secretary or even an actual political figure, or even in a sleepy village for those who value peace and rural life. Roaming the world, shooting fireballs, and digging through caves for old books is a task that an older, callous generation of mages once left to children and teenagers, and that has since been institutionally established to be left to children and teenagers. The average age of a Mage is 14.

Privileged children of the affluent and politicians who express the fancy for it have the easiest time becoming Mages. However, the Mage upper class quickly discovered that their own children make pretty useless mages. Pampered all their lives, they suffer weak health when made to use magic, and are next to useless when sent off to do dirty work. Since then, most magic academies lobbied for legislation that opened a lottery system. When the Census is administered to a village, the Census worker will have an unsolicited letter of admission for a child in the village. The Village Spirit is usually left to pick who the village will send. The only prerequisites are that the child have at least rudimentary education, be curious and healthy, and at least 10 years old. Thus, a few hundred villages every couple of years will produce a few hundred potential new mages for each nation.

There are three large academies of magic in the world: the Library of Alexandria in Vedaria, Points of Light Academy in Andaliel, and the Seminary Of Saint Ebele’s Joy in Sargasso. Each resides in the respective capital city of its Nation, often far away from home for the traveling children. Though each admits children from other nations through diplomatic agreements, they reserve many more positions for their own children, thereby increasing their own magical potential over those of nations like Emderuer, whose great academy was demolished in the Intolerable War, and Periterim, whose greedy oligarchy doesn’t want to incur the costs to foster their own magical culture, or see any need for it if they can pay for mercenary casters where needed.

During their instruction, the young mages study The Great Tree. This is a theory of magical education which holds that all magic leads into all other magic – there are “roots” of magic study which then reach into a “trunk” and finally “branches.” The roots are the important, basic kinds of magic, the trunk is advanced magic theory and language study, and the branches are specialized labors of magic such as Ancient Magic, Artifice, and other such advanced professions. Most mages stay in the trunk, however.

The Roots of Magic are the Six Disciplines of Magic in Adel:

Telemetry: Telemetry, known colloquially as “Divination” is the magical art of receiving messages from the unknown, and sending messages to known parts. Telemeters read the stars, prepare and read cups and basins of special liquids and oils, seek signs in mundane objects, and seek signs in their own dreams and bodies of coming events. Telemetry dictates that the world is a constant bombardment of coded information, which the Telemeter sorts out to the best of his or her ability. Telemeters also learn magical means of conveying their own messages to others, such as the creation of origami swans, and the use of telepathy.

Repulsion: Repulsion is the offensive art of magic. Repulsion effects include blasting things with raw force or with specific substances and reactions. A Repulsion effect is very fleeting, and good only to harm, but powerful. A mage cannot sustain a large flame drawn from just a handful of powders or chemicals, not without a lot of painful effort. As such, you still see Repulsion mages carrying torches and lanterns and oil, even though they can make flame in their hands.

Fortification: Fortification is the magic of strengthening raw force. It generates barriers, magic circles, protective wards and powerful bindings. Like most Repulsion effects, most fortification effects are very conditional and short. It simply takes too much energy for a mage to maintain a binding or barrier for more than a few minutes at a time, though there are ways and means by which it can be done, such as through the use of special, expensive reagents that can provide the required energy.

Photomancy: One of the more long-lived effects a Mage can produce is through Photomancy. Photomancy postulates Light entering the eyes can be used as a bridge into the mind. Using special lenses, reflectors, some as covert as a hair pin, a Photomancer blends light to generate powerful illusions. An accomplished Photomancer can make people smell and taste things, make people see and feel, through the effects of specific reflective ores and even colors of light and what they do to the eye, and what subconscious messages that Light will then convey to the Brain of the victim, and what the victim will then experience. Photomancy requires the least energy and components, but the components used have to be well-prepared, and the caster must be skilled.

Transfiguration: The most difficult and dangerous skill is Transfiguration, or the partial or complete change of an object or creature into another. Transfiguration primarily uses the caster’s body as a component, so mages fond of transfiguration try to keep themselves just a bit above the average weight, if not somewhat chubby, to counteract its deleterious effects. Even a transfiguration effect cast on somebody other than the caster, will eat at the caster’s body for the required energy.

Alchemy: The study of exotic substances and the concoctions that can be made from them. Alchemy can be made to mimic many of the other effects, often for longer periods, but require the dangerous burning and boiling of reagents and the even more dangerous long-term storage of the concoction before it can be used. Alchemy creates potions, grenades and poisons.

Performing Magic

Arcane Magic is one part language arts, two parts chemistry and one part mind-over-matter. Arcane magic functions on the power of the mind primarily – a Mage develops his or her intellect and focus in order to empower his or her self to control the external world. But there are two necessary vehicles to performing magic: substances more malleable than others, known as reagents or components, whose effects are predictable and quantifiable, and languages which hone the mind and serve to direct thought in the proper direction to yield an effect. Each of these is necessary to perform safe and functional magic – but in distress, hastily blurting anything over a beaker of papaya oils could produce some kind of helpful (if dangerous and painful) effect.

The “trunk” of the great tree are the languages. There are three magic languages in Adel: Old Adelian is an archaic format used to read Lost World texts and use dangerous and incomplete Ancient Magic, New Adelian is the current standard for functional magic, and Droemedae is the instinctive language of the Droemedae race, and used mostly by them. To perform magic, the Mage constructs a sentence in a magic language that wills an object or force. For example, Heatstone Powder is often used to make Fireballs, and the Mage may will it to do so using a sentence such as “I will you to ignite, rush forward.” The magic languages can hardly be used to converse, as their grammar is stilted and rigid, and meant to keep the mage focused on the effect he or she is trying to produce.

All magic takes a toll on the caster’s health. Mages need to keep themselves healthy and in decent shape – while they won’t ever become bodybuilders due to the strain it would cause alongside magic, exercise is necessary for them, as well as a good diet. Up until a few dozen years since the present moment in Adel, this connection was not widely recognized, and many children died, unable to take the strain on their bodies. Now, maintaining a good diet and exercise is a part of every Mage’s study.

The Adventuring Mage

After two or three years of study, the young Mage knows something of the branches and the trunk, and is then made ready for a journey. The Mage enters the Age of Pilgrimage – he or she must travel for a few years (the amount is unspecified, and further probing will yield the mage a plethora of wrong answers). While traveling, the little Mage must keep a journal and a spellbook, recording his or her experiences and thesis work respectively. Young mages often find their thesis rejected multiple times, and are continually forced to find new ventures to pursue. Many mages are crippled or even killed in their adventures.

One can find these wayfaring children and teens in any number of dangerous professions. Military mages are almost all under the age of 17, and the Andaliel Archeological Society is a great host of bratty, life-weary children attempting to move up in the mage hierarchy. Many children just keep traveling, becoming free agents in places like Emderuer and Periterim that have weak magical cultures in need of their mercenary work. They must someday return to their academy to present their new journals and thesis work before a committee in the hopes of an assistantship, or at the very least, of a certificate of graduation.

Even with all their training, and their relative emotional maturity in relation to “normal” people their age, wayfaring mages are still children and teens. They are more vulnerable to injury and disease than their traveling companions, and are often less physically fit, even if they would be fit enough against people their own age. Mercenaries seeking a mage to round out their group will find that recruiting an adult is nearly impossible, and knowing this they will settle for having a child whom they must treat as equal, and pay as equal – or risk being set ablaze or turned into a newt by an often ill-mannered youth.