Magic in the Realm
Magic is gnostic. It cannot be taught in its completeness. It cannot be explained. It can only be experienced. In transcendent states of mind, when the world fades and all that remains is a vision of something more, magic can, rarely, be found. Those who experience such visionary states are called primary sorcerers, and they are great and terrible. But they are also rare, for even exposed to the few known original sources of magic, few people experience the right kind of transcendence of reality to gain power.
Instead, most learn from these primary sorcerers, who write or dictate their visions and experiences. Those who can understand become secondary sorcerers, because while the deepest secrets are lost in translation, what remains is still potent. Secondary sorcerers can in turn pass on instruction to tertiary sorcerers, and so on, all the way down to the weakest senary sorcerers, who have only faint echoes of the power brought to bear by their antecedents.
There are five known paths of magic, each driven by a different original source. Students tend to cite their lineage of teaching, as even two primary sorcerers exposed to the same source will end up with different power based on their personality, interpretation, and perhaps unknown factors. Thus, someone might be described as a tertiary sorcerer who learned and casts their magic from Mariana's Book of Patterns. In this case, Mariana is the person who instructed them, and her source is the Way of Patterns. Each of the five known sources has its own customary name, and so it is possible to guess at what kinds of power this sorcerer might wield on the basis of their instruction.
Rarely, very rarely, someone experiences transcendence without the prompting of one of these original sources. Such primary sorcerers tend to be more than a bit removed from reality already, and experience a visionary state from simple drugs, hunger, or meditation. These primaries produce eclectic visions, and their paths are eccentric and hard to categorize. Oddly, this has only happened in the time since the first major source was discovered.
This message was last edited by the GM at 23:04, Sun 02 Jan 2022.