Mages in WA
Mages, essentially, are born human. They live most of their childhood completely human, and some humans with latent magic potential never truly awaken. To "awaken" requires an odd event in a rather mundane life - something out of ordinary, traumatic, or just not right. Nobody's quite sure of the exact nature of requirements to become awakened. Some people are more open to awakening than others. There are certain creatures that can force awakening on an individual. But overall, traumatic events seem to stimulate the change more than anything.
There are three distinct categories of mages [as catalogued by the technocracy]. Elemental mages are the most common, followed by Natural mages. The third are known simply as anomalies, or beings with singular abilities that have yet to fit a category. The most basic are listed below.
Elemental Mages: the most easily awakened, elemental mages seem to act accordingly to their element, or be attuned to their element, even before they are fully awakened. A latent fire mage may find that the fire bends slightly around his finger, or a lighter flame might not be snuffed by the wind if he wishes hard enough that it won't. The elements are tangible; they can be seen, felt, heard, smelt or tasted, which makes their mages potentially the most powerful and the most abundant. The catalogued elements are [in order of abundance]:
Fire
Air
Water
Earth
Spirit
Light
Void
Within these seven catalogued elements are what are known as the Elementals. They are spirits of pure element, entities that direct and succumb to the course of all energy within their elemental sphere. They are tangible to the awakened mages because those mages are attuned to that specific element. They can exist within their own sphere and on this physical realm simultaneously, where a human [even an awakened one] would have difficulty doing the same.
"Any elemental contact is stimulating to us, because elemental beings pour forth in abundance the vitality of their own particular sphere, and this vitalizes the corresponding sphere in ourselves. But if a four-element creature is drawn into the sphere of a single element, he is poisoned by an overdose of the one element in which he finds himself, and starved of the other three." [Dion Fortune]
Natural Mages: the second most commonplace, but their numbers are so greatly reduced from the aforementioned group that great pains were taken to even attempt a catalogue of the Natures. The Natures are [from most to least common]:
Past
Present
Future
Mind
Insight
Law
Chaos
These Natures have no such creatures as Elementals. They are powers within themselves, and rare is the person enlightened enough to touch one of these spheres. Ancient peoples often designated deities or mythical creatures as the embodiment of these spheres: the Fates, for example, held in perfect balance the past, present and future; the Chinese Dragons were the wielders and protectors of law and chaos; the Greek Athena represented the power of the mind and will; and so on. While no factual data has been formulated on the existence of these beings, certain awakened humans have been able to tap into the energy of these creatures or simply of these spheres, and birth it into the physical world.
Natures, unlike Elements, cannot directly be experienced through the limited human senses. They are simply perceived as something wholly separate, and although there is plentiful evidence as to their existence, there is little evidence as to their aspects and capabilities.
The third and final category are the
anomalies. These are so sparse that there is not enough evidence to promote them into an already-existing category. Records indicate perhaps as little as two instances of the following anomalies.
Dream
Time
See Tech File?