![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Worldbuilding
May. 24th, 2011 12:48 am
The trouble with magic is that, by its very nature, it does not play by the rules. If magic worked in anything resembling a reliable and consistent manner, it wouldn't be magic. It would join the other essential natural forces of the universe in being discovered and demystified by some great man of science, and then it would be no more magical than electricity or gravity. No one has ever proved the existence of magic and no one ever well. It is too fickle, and too subtle for scientific study, taking refuge in the fuzzy region between unlikely and impossible and vanishing like smoke when subjected to investigative rigor. Indeed, some of the most successful practitioners of magic through history were utterly convinced that they were absolute frauds, and this in itself may have been the key to their success.
Magicians (in general)
Considering its mercurial and elusive nature, one might question why any sensible person would bother with magic, and the answer is that a sensible, or even perfectly sane, person wouldn't. Users and would-be users of magic are a wild, desperate lot of peddlers, vagabonds, thieves and poets with scarcely a respectable person among them.
It must be understood that the average user of magic is not a magician. Most magic is performed by persons who have something of a knack but do not fully understand what they are doing. They may realize that they are doing magic and may even actively attempt to do magic at times, but generally they will perform no more than a dozen actual acts of magic in their lifetime. In very rare cases one or more of these will be very large and elaborate magics, but the user still is not considered a true magician.
A magician must perform true magic fairly regularly to merit the title (though there are exceptions to this, for example Lewis Asking, the Ice Man, performed only one magical work, however since it was so extensive and lasted for most of his lifetime he is considered a true magician.) A poor magician might do magic once a year; a truly excellent magician might average as high as once a day. Usually magicians will go through a high point in their careers wherein they do a great deal of magic in a very short span of time, then go into a decline of sorts, though for every rule there are exceptions. The particular powers wielded by magicians are vast and varied. Some may crack the earth and summon lighting, others slightly influence the opinions of their peers on matters of politics or baseball. Many works of magic are so small only a magician can detect them, and only an incredible minority truly stretch the limits of the possible. Magics that perform the impossible or near-impossible are sometimes given a different name, and called miracles.
Magicians (particular types)
Most magicians are generalists, doing a little of everything and rarely sure which thing they will end up doing until they actually do it, however there are a few notable exceptions. The most immediately apparent are the seers and the prophets.
Seer do not exactly see the future, though some of them do use spells to actually see the present at a distance with varying degrees of success. Instead, Seers operate on glimpses that amount to little more than strong hunches. Often the future they respond to is mere moments ahead. Seers tend to be risk-takers with very fast reflexes. Several legendary historic fighter-pilots are commonly believed to have been seers.
A prophet has essentially the same power as a seer, but a prophet also has a message. Most but not all prophets also associate themselves with a deity or higher power. The message carried is usually radical and often socially transformative, meaning than prophets make enemies quickly and often rely on their powers to escape dangerous situations. Both seers and prophets generally display no magical abilities beyond their precognition and occasional far-sight, except in the case of very strong prophets, who may perform a very small number of miracles during their lifetimes, usually at the height of their magical 'career'.
