This choice: Humans: Magic-users and spells • Go Back...Chapter #8Tryzantium Wizards by: Yote   The talent for wizardry is rare in humans, occurring in roughly 1/666th of the population. Nonetheless, an experienced, fully-trained spell-caster can be the equal of an army - as such they are a resource tightly controlled by the government, the Church, and the Council of powerful Magi that oversee the development and deployment of all magic-users. Trained to fight and die defending humanity, wizardry is as much a military discipline as it is academic.
The study of magic as performed by humans and semi-humans, often referred to simply as The Order, is split into five sub-orders of Colleges. The most powerful individuals of each Order make up the Council of Five Magi. The Council constantly struggles to keep the lesser magic-users in check, and will mercilessly quash any signs of dissent.
The Five Orders
College of the Crimson Order
Study the Lore of Pyromancy and Demonology. Can conjure fire and summon demons.
A demon that has been summoned into the world must first be shackled and bound before it can be of use, lest it run amok. The Crimson College often holds elaborate parties where it's students practice their acts of bondage on lesser demons, serving girls, and each other, involving judicious application of leather and extracted, processed tree sap. The other Colleges are never invited, much to their chagrin.
Wear robes of red and black.
College of the Golden Order
Study the Lore of Alchemy. Can transmute objects and are master craftsmen of enchanted items. Can transmute themselves into a combat form of living metal.
Wear yellow robes often singed, sooty and stained from their study.
College of the Jade Order
Study the Lore of Life and Beasts. Are wizards most attuned to nature. Have power over nature and can summon thorns and briars out of the earth to attack their enemies, command beasts, or call on elemental powers to aid them.
Jade wizards are masters of shape-shifting, taking on animals forms for combat or travel. However, a transformed wizard will always have a distinguishing trait that they carry with them through all their forms, be it a birth-mark, eye colour, or their human voice.
The colour of their robes is green.
College of the Grey Order
Study the Lore of Necromancy and Vicissitude. Can reanimate corpses and cast curses of decay. Vicissitude resembles orcish fleshcrafting, granting the user power over flesh and bone, molding it like a sculptor molds clay. They can use these powers to fix bones and repair wounds.
Grey wizards are granted two forms: a monstrous form which is generally used in combat, as well as a blood form, which turns the user into a mobile pool of blood.
The colour of their robes is dark grey. It helps hide the stains.
College of the Light Order
Study the Lore of Souls. Capable of manipulating the very minds of beings - befuddling them, changing them, even extracting them entirely. Light wizards can move souls from one body or vessel to another, and as they age the most powerful of their Order are awarded the honour of transferring their souls to a younger body.
Are exceptionally dangerous and deceptive, but regarded favourably among the common folk simply because they wear robes of pure white and often cast illusions of great beauty on themselves.
Wizard's Toll
"Power corrupts. Magical power corrupts magically. "
- Albert Einstein
Although wizards are functionally immortal (but age slowly and can be killed), the continuing practice of magic exacts a payment on the body and mind. With every spell cast, a wizard becomes degraded somehow, less-human, eventually reaching a stage of inhumanity where they must be hidden from society or euthanized. The speed of deterioration can take as long as several centuries or as short as mere minutes, depending on a number of factors.
Each wizard's Toll manifests differently, but the Orders tend to progress along similar lines:
Crimson Order: The wizard gradually takes on a demonic appearance. Their behaviour grows increasingly depraved as their moral sensibilities decay. Ultimately they resemble nothing more than natural demons (in so much that a demon can be called natural) in both body and mind, and are often Bound by other Crimson Order wizards once they become a danger to themselves and others. Many, mistaken for demons, are simply banished to hell.
Golden Order: Their flesh is progressively replaced by metal or mineral, and over time they resemble sculpture or machinery more and more. While often still animated, their sense of self erodes to the point will not act unless directly ordered to or operated by somebody else.
Jade Order: As their Toll progresses, Jade Order wizards grow distant to human affairs and closer to nature. They spend longer and longer periods in their animal or plant forms. Ultimately, the distinguishing trademark that each wizard carries between forms disappears, marking the point when the human form and mind is irretrievably lost.
Grey Order: The body gradually takes on the appearance of a walking corpse. The wizard develops a desperate hunger to feel the warmth of life once again, manifesting in several possible ways, not worst of which is cannibalism. In the final stages, the blood clots in the veins, the flesh begins to rot and drop off the bones, and the wizard is humanely incinerated.
Light Order: The wizard's physical form fades away, until only their spiritual essence remains. As the toll progresses and their hold on the physical world weakens, their attunement with magic increases but so does their vulnerability to obsidian. Light order wizards risk being drained inside obsidian or other soul-catchers, their soul trapped inside the rock forever in an existence worse than death. To protect themselves against this, a Light wizard will often attempt to secure themselves to the physical world by binding their soul to an item, animal, or human, or transferring it entirely to a new host.
Sorcerer
Sorcerers are a rare type of wizard able to cast the spells of all five Orders. Sorcerers are always the seventh son of a seventh son, though not all seventh sons of seventh sons are sorcerers.
While they have almost limitless potential, Sorcerers rarely achieve greatness. Lacking a strong allegiance to any particular College, they are seldom given entry to any of the inner sanctums, where each Order's most powerful and secret spells are kept.
Additionally, the Magi work personally to curtail the training of Sorcerers, as a master of all five Orders would be a dangerous rival to even their combined power.
Familiars
Magic-users often keep animal companions, otherwise known as familiars, that have been magically bonded to them in a process called familiarization. Familiars absorb a fraction of their master's Toll, suffering the same deleterious effects and helping to extend the wizard's lifespan.
Additionally if the familiar is a magical creature, its master is able to perform any spell or ability the familiar knows. This rule applies even to shape-shifted wizards. For example, if a Crimson Order wizard were to familiarize a Jade Order wizard in the form of an animal, he would gain access to any and all spells known by the Jade wizard.
Despite the Magi's attempts to outlaw the taking of other spellcasters as familiars, very few wizards will baulk at the opportunity to familiarize a sorcerer, as doing so would give them access to the spells of all five Orders.
Female wizards
The acceptance of female wizards is a recent development, brought about only by the desperate need for spellcasters in these dark and troubled times. Change is slow to be accepted by the long-lived, stubborn-natured wizards, and many wish to return to the old ways, where any woman found practicing magic would be bound, burnt, familiarized or worse.
The forbidden, female-only study of witchcraft, a different branch of magic altogether, is still very much alive and persecuted brutally by the wizards, as it has been for thousands of years.
Binding
If a Wizard fails training, or is expelled, or goes rogue and is caught, they may be Bound. Obsidian manacles are affixed to the wizard's arms, legs and neck, and siphon away his or her powers until they are gone.
Binding is also the most effective way of a rogue wizard avoiding detection.
Enchanted items
A spellcaster may enchant an item, such as a wand or sword, giving it certain attributes or allowing it to performing a spell on command. While the initial Toll cost of creating such an item is much higher than casting the spell once, the benefit of an enchanted item is it can cast the same spell an unlimited number of times without accruing any further Toll. Because of this, most spellcasters enchant items with spells that they use frequently.
Enchanted items can be used by anybody, regardless of magical talent, and many are now in the hands of collectors.
Anti-magic
Witch-hunters
The rules governing the study and practice of magic are strict, and deserters are not uncommon. Many wizards go rogue, seeing the crumbling of the empire as an opportunity to claim personal power, and seek to establish their own towers and territories out on the borderlands.
Witch-hunters are men and women whose bodies have been fused with obsidian weaponry and augmented with clockwork prosthesis, allowing them to hunt down and kill rogue magic-users. The exact details of their creation and the extent of their capabilities are unknown; as such they are greatly feared.
Untouchables
Almost as rare as wizards, Untouchables are individuals who are supremely magically ungifted, meaning they cannot be affected by any spell. Their immunity to magic is a characteristic much desired by the Study, who employ them to keep a watchful eye on the students. | Members who added to this interactive story also contributed to these: |
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