That which is known as Magick manifests itself in intelligent beings who are fortunate enough to be born of a bloodline that has magickal abillity. Most intelligent beings have enough Magickal herritage to learn Magick but only very few are born with enough Magick in them to spontaneously discover the power within.
Magick is as old as creation, and in some ways it can be seen as an opponent to faith and the faithful. Magick came into being when the universe was created during the first thought and as the shattered remnants of the great spirit were torn asunder bringing fourth all life and indeed existence itself, just as the largest concentrations of this original essence brought gave rise to the gods, so smaller pieces gave rise to all of the other inhabitants of reality. Some species have within their ranks, bloodlines that inherited more of this original essence than others, these bloodlines are the families of the Magus.
In times of old these families cultivated magick and some of them even took it upon themselves to teach magick to others, after all, all children of creation are capable in at least some small way of learning and using this natural power we call Magick.
Years of persecution by the faithful of all but the gods of neutrallity have lead to the demise or obfuscation of all of the Magickal bloodlines. The Magickal have been driven underground in communities of the faithful, burned at the stake as enemies of the god (or gods as the case may be). This persecution is largely the doing of men than gods, men who fear the powerful Magi, fear those who could overthrow them and their churches!
Playing a Magickal alter-ego is unfair to the rest of your non-magickal party in the sense that being Magickal is indeed a huge advantage over average mortals. Magick is however only a tool and does not guarantee success in all situations, nor does it solve all problems, indeed, being magickal is usually the reason most Magi die!!! The magi are largely feared and persecuted by common folk wherever they go, many an unwary magi has met his end at the hands of the mob!
So lets look at the mechanics of Magick, this hidden art, the forbidden knowledge. The mixed blessing and curse that it is.
Just as the body, the mind and the soul equip the mortal with abillities to affect change in their environment, so to magick is summarized as a set of abillities that the wielder uses to effect changes in reality.
These Magickal abillities loosley describe the sort of reality the magician is attempting to effect. In the same way that strength is used to bash down a door but agillity is used to dodge a blow, so to the magickal abillities can be used to influence the world around the mage.
Their are five magickal abilities, one that governs each of the four aspects of the physical world and one that effects changes in the spirit world. Let's look more closely at each of these five abillities and what sorts of things in reality they dominate.
The use of magick is similar in many ways to the use of any other abillity your alter-ego has. The main difference is that undiscaplined use of magic is impossible, there is no simple magickal equivalent to instinctively using your agillity to dodge an incomming blow. Magick requires conscious effort, many theorize that this effort is a self-preservation mechanism similar to sleep paralysis that stops us from hurting ourselves while we dream, likewise we cannot accidentally use magick.
Magick actions are by nature, pre-meditated and often very specific because of the levels of concentration needed to perform even simple tasks. As such a number of practiced have evolved that magi use to achieve specific tasks. These skills, for the most part, take the form of spells; highly structured rituals that achieve very specific effects by carefully ordering and focusing the thoughts of the mage on the task in hand so that his magick manifests correctly.
There are also less formal spells known as cantrips that the mage essentially makes up as an when required, these also require some training in the basic thought discaplines required by all magi.
And finally, their are the Arts, after many hours of training the mage starts to develope sub-concious power over his environment because he manages to make his magick part of his every-day life and over-ride those natural safe- guards that prevent sub-concious use of magick by fledgling magi.
Cantrips are the simplest spells a mage can use, they are very weak in comparison to normal spells but they are very low in power cost, each cantrip only costs one power point even if they are cast in rapid succession.
The limit of the cantrip is that it only has a single dice of effect at best. Many mages cleverly stack cantrips to increase the desired effect but this soon becomes very expensive in magickal power.
Cantrips are also known as hedge magick, they are invented on-the-fly by the mage to suit his immediate needs, cantrips are simply small spurts of raw magickal energy roughly channeled by the mage to achieve an immediate goal. Cantrips in game play are desired effects described to the GM who then assigns a power cost to them and allows the mage to roll a number of dice equal to the power cost versus the mages Magickal School and a realm.
Cantrips are often used to assist other more normal actions, giving cumulative success to things like dodging or blocking!
Spells are the written word of magick, although there are many forms of magickal scripts, a mage can often understand them without actually being able to read them. Spells equate to complex magickal formulae that serve to invoke the correct sequence of events in order to draw fourth a desired effect from the mage.
Learning new spells involves practicing them or getting a feel for what the spell expects of the mage, learning a new spell is more like learning to ride a bicycle than memorizing a textbook. Spells are impure or vulgar magick and thus can run amok; only the most powerful mages are able to flawlessly cast spells over and over again. When a mage casts a spell he is forced to exert his magickal essence to keep it in check and produce the desired result, this is reflected as a loss of power points, the first spell a mage casts in a round costs one power point, the second spell costs two the third three and so on, in this manner a mage can tire very quickly and even kill himself with the extreme exhaustion.
Power expenditure in a round cannot exceed the mages Realm score for the spells being cast, thus a mage with a fire of six could cast no more than three fire based attack spells in a single combat round (one for the first, two for the second and three for the third = six points total). A mage may cast spells from many realms however, lets assume that the mage in the example above has a fire of six and a earth score of four, he could conceivably cast his three fire based attacks for the cost of six power points and then go on to cast a warding spell based in the realm of earth for the cost of four power points, all this in a single round, he would of course be exhausted to the point of collapse afterwards though.
The arts are acquired by a mage as he studies. A mage's natural talent for magick is brought fourth by repeated exposure to and use of his abillities, only a mages first field of study or calling awakens these hidden talents. Arts are the true magick from within, the art is the beings purest form of magickal expression and they cost no power to use only concentration. Some arts have been closely studied and replicated as spells but spells are no match for the pure power of the art.
Unless otherwise specified an art is only usable once per scene as the kind of inspiration they require is not simply on tap. One art is gained for each abillity the mage has, the art often grows in power along with the abillity.
As mentioned earlier, magick is not somthing that happens to a mage sub-conciously without large amounts of training. Almost all magi have a mentor and at least one of field of magickal study known as a "school of magick"
The magickal school score indicates the level of proficiency the pupil has mastered within the field of study. It is also a broad indicator of the level of understanding a pupil will have of spells of that school. In short a mage can only learn spells of a particular school if the spell difficulty is less than or equal to his school score.
The first school of magick a mage studies, imbues him with a methodology that becomes that magus fundamental interpreter of magick. This first school is the one that the mage uses to unlock the base principles of how he cast spells and prepares cantrips, this first school is in effect his perception of the world of magick.
It is this first school that unlocks the Magickal Arts for the mage. Never again in his studies will he find the level of magickal expression that he finds in this first school, this becomes his magickal mother-tongue.
Lets look at some of the more common schools of magick and the arts they they unlock
The wizards are the most wide spread of all mages, Wizards are what most people imagine when there's mention of a mage. The wizards are the scholars among the magickal community, they spend most of there time in study and research and thus have access to many spells of varied types, members of there order have gone as far as documenting and evaluating cantrips, keeping the best examples so they can demonstrate them to there pupils. To put it plainly; wizards are spell junkies, they use magick for magick's sake and they thirst for power and knowledge, if you bump into a mage in a dungeon, he's likely to have been sent by his mentor to find some or other trinket rumored to lie in the foulest pit in the place, simply because "it might be Magick my boy". A wizard lives for his magick - magick is everything to them. Unfortunately wizards have almost brought about the end of all things on more than one occasion, some say all those books made them mad and in truth that's not too far from the mark. To be a wizard is to put magick before all else, they feel intense pleasure when they cast spells, some say "it's better than sex", many wizards are a little eccentric to say the least, but overall they are a tightly knit community that hold regular meetings where they all revel in there power and have spell casting competitions and the like. All that spell casting has had an evolutionary effect on the bloodlines of the wizards, they have amazing capacity for magickal power and they put it to good use, casting huge and wondrous spells, imbuing items with magickal properties and crafting great artifacts with arcane ability. The wizard's arts are "power-centric" and focused on the creative use of magical energy.
The Necromancer is the death mage, perceived as the ultimate representation of evil and persecuted more than any other of his brethren, the way of the Necromancer is difficult indeed. The school of Necromancy was begun many eons ago by a great mage searching for the pinnacle of magick, the ability to escape death itself and some say that great mage succeeded in his quest, but it is apparent that there were many failures along the way, sadly these are the walking horrors known to us as the undead, the Necromancers of old unleashed the forces of the netherworld upon us in there quest for knowledge beyond death, many mages themselves still scorn the teachings of Necromancy for this fact alone, some rival schools have even declared open hostility towards the death wizards. Many Necromancers content themselves in quiet study, simply pursuing their art in peace, however there are those who are angered by the criticism of their colleagues and unleash hell and damnation at their foes at every opportunity. The teachings of Necromancy are learned at the peril (and oftentimes benefit) of the pupil; here I will include a list of each of the five arts taught by the school and a brief description thereof;
Sorcerers play the most dangerous of games... Sorcerers call fourth the powers of the nether; Demons! Sorcerers invoke the powers of the ancient spirits into this world, these powers come in a wide and varied range, some manifesting in the sorcerer himself, some manifesting in the immediate vicinity of the invoker. Sorcerers are often considered to be evil because they are "in league" with evil. Sadly it is true, a very high percentage of Sorcerers become corrupted by their art and their close involvment with evil eventually turns them to the path of corruption.
The dice are open-ended, thus making this abillity a source of great power for a sorcerer.
The druids are often known as the keepers of knowledge, they are clannish and very tightly-knit as a community. It is unheard of for druids to fight amongst themselves. Druids command the forces of the wilds, they summon forth nature spirits and command the beasts and birds. Druids keep darker secrets in their hidden conclaves often found in remote groves of oak or deep forest caves, some even say they murder innocents to draw power from them.