Andrea wouldn’t know anything about what was there last week, or even last month. It does seem out of place though as they walk to the train station from the hospital. But weird bookstores are usually cool… and more importantly, it might be somewhere to calm down a little from her rising anxiety at being outside.

So they pop inside, instantly relieved at there not being open sky above her anymore.

The shop is dusty and the assortment of goods looks even stranger from the inside. Who would possibly be in the market both for an armillary sphere and for artificial rosewater?

The lighting is pretty bad, the cashier's face looks kind of greenish.

A bell jingles as Andrea enters, and the cashier looks up.

"Hello, it's very nice to meet you."

“Uhhh hi.” Ahhhh people talking to her. She just wanted to browse! Maybe if she doesn’t look at them, they won’t try to make conversation. 

Nope, she's totally going to. (Does she have tusks? Maybe she's using some of the "quality costume teeth" on the north wall.)

"Feel free to purchase something if you wish, but I am here primarily to offer people such as yourself magic."

Oh god, she walked into a weird woo woo shop didn’t she. If shes gonna be sold magical crystals to shove up herself she will only be partly flattered because of being correctly gendered, and insulted because of what a scam on womanhood that is.

Though… quality costume teeth… maybe it’s someone a bit too hard into Larping? Thats… less cringe at least. “Magic huh? Only if there’s no expensive courses involved.” Caveat for just in case it was woo new age bullshit and not larp sillyness.

"There are free classes and classes which most students pay for with income-sharing agreements, but I can awaken your potential today for free." She pauses. "Would you like a demonstration, first?"

Skeptical squint. That sounds a little more woo than role-play if there classes at all. But free seems less scammy… “Sure?”

Actually, third option exists. If this is a way to sell close up magic courses she will be actually impressed. Magic trick nerds need all the help they can get trying to make money off of it.

She flips the door sign to 'closed' and steps behind a shelf, in view of Andrea but not the windows.

A solid third of the crystals display starts floating towards her, then enters orbits around her.

“The fuuuuuuuck” Andrea swipes her hand to check for wires or air gusts, but this looks pretty convincingly magic! She just went to the hospital to have her kidneys checked, maybe something was more serious than the doctors thought? What could be dumping into her brain for such a realistic hallucination though? She even bites her lip to check for dreaming, yep, pain happened, is awake.

"Convinced enough?"

“What the actual fuck? What? Whaaaaaaat? I… what? That was real? Am I crazy?” How do you even react when magic? When your entire worldview is thrown out screaming from a window?

…she's going to set up some folding chairs and gesture meaningfully towards them.

"It was real, you're probably not crazy, take a seat."

Andrea’s a little… unsteady. In all ways. So she gratefully takes a seat. “Are those real?” She gestures to the fangy tusks. Was this a real orc? If magic was real why not orcs? Why not god? Why not the krampus for fucks sakes.

Well, a chair is a better place to be unsteady than on one's feet.

"Yes."

And she'll put the crystals back. This is a bit awkward, because several of the crystals are pendants that need to be maneuvered onto hooks, but she manages.

"We can get started when you're ready."

“With… getting magic?” Seems too unreal to really sink in for her. Her real thought is at least she’s not a muggle about to get her mind wiped by the aurors/men in black.

"Yes. You'll take my hands, and look into my eyes, and I'll pull us into a mindscape for you to use your potential. I don't actually know what choices you personally will get in advance, but I can answer general questions first, if you'd like. You could also … have a cup of calming tea, or borrow a rune of courage, or read one of the books, if any of that would help."

“If I’m not crazy… I won’t get over this for a while… where would I even start with questions? At least magic and like… modern fantasy orcs are real now, what else is real? Bigfoot? Greys? Is god real?” Her voice has understandably gone a liiiitle unhinged at these revelations.

"Bigfoot… Bigfoot… I feel like I've heard of him, though if you told me that actually humans these days were pretty sure that he was a master of tennis or such I wouldn't be able to confirm that. I feel like you mean something by 'grey' besides the color but you'll have to explain what. There are a lot of real gods, I work for Atropos, and there's also the Light, who tends to mostly work through celestials."

Okay… gods were real… yep thats totally something she can handle finding out. At least until she has a panic attack over it the second she’s alone. “So not big G god like… Jesus God? Yahweh God? The monotheist abrahamic god who hates gays and sinners and people with foreskin? Greys are little grey aliens who abduct people in flying saucers.”

"A lot of Christians like the Light, but celestials are basically indifferent to body modification and sexual preferences and tend to be pretty in favor of forgiveness. All of the ones I've talked to will refuse to confirm or deny pretty much any question about Jesus, but I haven't really pressed. And one assumes that since the celestials work for the Light or such, the Light is probably on the same page? And your description of greys doesn't sound familiar."

“Huh…..” You know what, Andrea is allowed a little bit of shock, as a treat. Gods and magic are real.

This is why Andrea is in a chair.

If Andrea just wants to sit and process for a bit, Imrijka is going to get out a book.

“So uhh… why me?” She says eventually.

"Good question! You might have a witch relative, you might be an incomplete reincarnation of some witch, or there might have been some other reason."

Confused head-tilt. “I meant why did you pick me. But I guess that answer implies I'm special in some way? You aren’t just giving people magic at random?”

"You're full of witch potential, yes. I'm just here to help you awaken it smoothly in a way that works well for you."

“So there’s other ways? Would I have been a.. ‘witch’ otherwise?” Is this orc lady dropping magic powers and worldview shattering revelations on her because she’d just wake up magic one day anyway? Or they just like being the one to hand out superpowers to normies.

"You likely would have, but natural awakenings tend to be traumatic, and don't let you pick which aspects of your heritage to express or how you'll improve your strength going forward."

“So I get to pick what… Heritage? Magic? I get?” Choice is good. She approves of choice.

"Not everyone has access to all the same options, but yes."

“Oh good, how do I know wich ones I have?”

"You'll just have to start the awakening process."

“Oh… should I do that now then?…” This is all so surreal Andrea’s brain is just going along with it like its a dream right now.

"Yes, I think so." She offers her hands to Andrea.

She reaches out to take the orc lady’s hands, guessing thats part of it.

The next step consists of looking into Imrijka's eyes. This may be particularly easy because they're glowing now.

Okay time to stare into glowing eyes. They can manage at least this much eye contact.

Andrea's not in her body anymore. She's in something that could be analogized to a starfield, if one felt poetic, or a points-in-space-focused data rendering, if one didn't.

Andrea is close to a group of three nodes, one of which is especially close to her. Imrijka is clearly present, but not with a location in the space.

There's also 10 of something, in a compartment large enough for 150 units.

Eep? Uhhh, this is trippy. Things just keep getting more unreal. “Uhhh help? What do I do?”

"Right now you're perceiving your current and potential power points – you'll spend those on magic – and the three 'classes' of witch. Reach for one, you'll get more information about it. Nothing is final at this stage."

She grabs for the close one then? 

This is the Academic class. Classes are mutually exclusive. If Andrea picks this class, she'll gain power points through study, at square-root rates. Furthermore, the class has a distinctive 'feel' to it, and adding this to a build will discount other nodes with the same feel. The nodes that come in tiers that feel academic will be twice as efficient, and she'll be able to use study time alone (without power points) to develop in two of the tiers that feel academic.

Dnd wizard vibes? Free magic without power points? Whatever those are. She likes studying. Well, when she can focus she does.

She reaches for the next one since orc lady hasn’t spoken up.

The next one is the Sorceress class. Sorceresses gain power points through practice (and require much less practice per day than academics require study), again at square-root rates. They can take ranks in as many elementalisms as they want regardless of affinity, and can empower their elementalisms with the color of their auras. (Andrea's would be a pastel blue, if she went this route.) And again, sorceress-ish nodes will be discounted.

So… dnd sorcerer vibes… Does hasbro know about witches? Elementalism seems kinda cool but she will wait to see what other magics she can get.

She pokes the next one.

Warlock! Warlocks gain power points by doing quests for specific patrons, at a linear rate. Warlock patrons offer warlocks choices of soulbound relics. Additionally, they can mark relics they own and cooperative creatures, and get a sense of location and integrity for the marked entities, as well as the ability to affect them at any distance. (And, again, a generic discount.)

This node has some internal nodes, if Andrea's interested.

Seriously! Who at dnd knows about witches! The only thing missing is witch bards and witch witches. Warlocks with patrons is right out of the source book! Warlocks are sometimes dealt a bad deal in dnd… what with having patrons that could be rather nasty. ”Is it… safe? To poke at warlock? I don’t want to accidentally sell my soul to cthulu or something.”

"It's safe to look, all you're going to see is offers. You couldn't finalize your build now if you tried, you don't even have a race selected. Patrons don't typically own warlocks' souls or even our magic, they just can refuse to offer acceptable opportunities to develop in power. Patrons also tend to prefer warlocks who share interests with them, so it's likely that at least some offers will be from entities you find tolerable."

“Oh uhmm, okay then.”

Poke at warlock node?

Aithaloeis is the god of a volcanic arc in Alfheimr. His quests are going to mostly be located at that volcanic arc. Relics he offers include a cauldron for brewing storms, a talisman of Firecalling, robes of discounted Earthmoving, and a shard of light that will burn Andrea's enemies.

🝢 and her friends are planning to dissolve the barriers keeping the multiverse as it is intact, and she's offering Andrea the chance to be on what she thinks will be the winning team. She can't describe what kind of quests she'll be offering in this context, but she expects they'll be straighforward as long as Andrea isn't squeamish. Relics she offers include a talisman that will prevent her from dying if worn and allow Andrea to grow extra eyes and put them places, a key that will allow Andrea to create doors in any wall, and a weapon whose blade consists of an unshielded portal and is accordingly very good at cutting.

Hestia is a goddess of the hearth. Her quests are going to be related not just to domesticity but to the actual hearth, so if Andrea wants to never make burnt offerings or participate in rocket stove distribution, their relationship will not be very productive. Relics she offers include a system for animating a house, a gem that enhances healing, a set of servitor dolls, and a cauldron for more efficient potion brewing.

Mephistopheles actually does want to own Andrea's soul, but only will take ownership if it permanently departs Andrea's body. He estimates that his tasks are significantly easier than tasks offered by the median warlock patron. Relics he offers include a tool for binding summoned demons into physical bodies for indefinite summon duration, a really nice motorcycle, a trident with an extremely painful head, a key that allows access to the Index of Everything, and a crown that lets the wearer curse others to obey simple commands.

The other patron offers follow similar lines. There isn't one more in line with Andrea's interests than Hestia or one with easier quests than Mephistopheles.

Fire and volcanoes are cool and all… but what if she wants to live somewhere else.

An intact multiverse sounds important! She lives here! Nope!

Hestia is real? That’s neat, but uhhh maybe she doesn’t want to be a stove salesperson… even if the perks seem kinda nice.

You know what, rule of thumb of not selling your soul is a VERY GOOD RULE. The key demon summoning sound kinda cool… but also she wants the rights to her own soul thanks!

Andrea backs out of warlock options and tentatively chooses Academic. “Since Academic was closest… is that what I would have awoken as normally?”

"That seems likely, but I'm not actually certain, it's not one of the more studied aspects of this."

“Is there a way to tell what I would have been normally? Not that I need to let nature dictate what I am, but it’d be neat to know…”

"Atropos might know? I can ask her, it's not as though anyone would object to her telling us."

“Who's that?” Theres so much background magic stuff she knows nothing about! This is like growing up knowing none of the pop culture touchstones everyone else did but much worse!

"My patron, the Thread-Cutter, the Eldest Fate, the Inflexible. She's a goddess of death and fate. A lot of my quests involve guarding the flow of dead souls, but she's also a fan of general stability, so doing awakenings is also a decent quest source."

… this is all so unreal. Gods of fate and death. Just mentioned like thats normal. “Sure uhmm…if it’s safe. I’d like to know…”

"It's a counterfactual of no strategic relevance in a domain that she's reasonably familiar with, and I think she appreciates me? Don't worry about it."

"It looks like the most likely natural awakening path involved you dying of cancer, being buried, and then awakening as an oread-mimi hybrid – oreads return to life after being buried, it can take up to a month depending on the damage level, I think for your cancer it would have been about a week. And I think you would have been an Academic with Hexes and Witchery and the Silly Goose complication, but a quick look isn't getting Atropos as good a sense of the rest of your build, it was apparently more variable."

“Cancer?” Shit… does she need to be worried about cancer now? Was it breast cancer? It would be just her luck that transitioning gave her breast cancer. “Thats… rough. At least it wasn’t dementia but cancer sucks pretty bad. Whats an Oread? Or a mimi? Or silly goose?” None of these words mean anything to her!

"Don't worry, you're going to finish this process with a fully healthy body for your species unless you take complications indicating otherwise. Oreads and Mimis are both species, and apparently you would have been a hybrid. Silly Goose is a complication which makes your form look like a child – the 6-14 age range, for humans – and makes you cute enough that people have trouble taking you seriously."

“I’d have been a kid again? Oof… I mean… not that I haven't wished to go back in time before… are you stuck like that? God nobody took me seriously until I was like 22 and it was the fucking worst. But if it explicitly comes with being cute….” Gosh all she wants is to be cute. Her gender would be being cute if she could pull it off, instead she’s bordering on milf as she gets older. But fuuuuuck being young sucked legally and socially. And then something catches up with her.

”I’d be a different species???”

"Oh, if you take the full version of Silly Goose you will definitely be very cute. And you'd mostly be still humanlike in appearance, just with a bit of fur and somewhat foxlike ears and a secondary canine form. Could be a different animal if you like, since this is a guided awakening, but it would have been foxlike if you'd done it yourself."

“Hah! I knew I wasn’t actually a catgirl. Sorry it’s just something friends tease me about.” Get to be a cute magical foxgirl and all she’d have had to die is die of cancer? That… sounded like an okay deal. “Honestly even with the alternate timeline where I awoke by dying of cancer, this sounds pretty good? What’s next after picking a magic class?”

"Most people look at race next but you can also look at complications." Or relics, but using power points to encounter non-soulbound relics is generally inefficient and most well-advised non-warlocks don't spend points on relics, and she gets the feeling that this witch isn't interested in unproductive technicalities right now.

“Uh sure, races. Of wich foxgirl is apparently one.” Being a foxgirl didn’t sound bad but she should look at the other options first before deciding.

She could stay 'neutral', which is the witch counterpart to 'human'. Neutrals have an affinity for the body and soul elements, average storage capacities and mana charge rates, and recharge by sleep. Enhanced neutrals, which she could be, also gain some hostile magic resistance and a second power development method.

She could be a 'siren', a humanoid with some feathers and the ability to transform partially or fully into a bird. Sirens have beautiful voices, can de-age in cocoons of feathers, and can return to life if their basically intact corpse gets breathed into. Siren witches have an affinity for the wind and beast elements, high storage capacities and charge, and recharge by taking away someone's breath (not generally fatal, stunning someone with beautiful artwork counts.)

She could be a 'naiad', essentially a mermaid but with the ability to have legs. Naiads de-age and resurrect when submerged in water. Naiad witches have an affinity for the water and beast elements, high storage capacities and charge, and recharge by submersion in water.

She could be an oread, as previously mentioned. Oreads have a bit of fur, can morph partially or fully into their animal forms, can burrow through the earth with extreme ease, and de-age and resurrect when buried. Oread witches have an affinity for the earth and beast elements, high storage capacity and charge, and recharge with physical closeness to loved ones in low-stress environments.

She could be a 'sprite'. Sprites are an inch tall, with wings and other features from a specific insect. They can produce silk and honey, and use stingers to inject paralytic venom (which causes their honey to form a wax). They de-age and resurrect with immersion in sprite honey. Sprite witches have an affinity for the nature and life elements, medium storage capacity and charge, and charge by fermenting honey into personal mana potions.

She could be a mimi, as previously mentioned. Mimis have an associated animal, and gain two 'traits' culturally associated with that animal of moderate power – a bat mimi might be stealthier or have better hearing, but wouldn't be able to fly without assistance. Mimis have a bimodal height distribution and she'd be on the short side. Mimis stop aging at some point between 18 and 35 apparent years (lower for shorter mimis, generally) and can be resurrected if a tear is shed at a shrine to them. Mimi witches have an affinity for the beast and life elements, low storage capacity and high charge, and can charge from affectionate physical contact such as headpats from another. (Or, more slowly, from themselves, which tends to make them sad.)

She could be a 'lar', sometimes known as a 'brownie'. Lares are the protector spirits of old families, and their lineages often originate with old Neutral families. Lares bonded to families and homes passively maintain these homes by their presence and develop a danger-sense for these. Lares return to life when many fires are lit in their families' hearths. Lar witches have an affinity for the blood and life elements, medium storage capacity and high charge, and charge from caring for their family and its home, more slowly when observed.

“How does being a hybrid work? You said my naturally awakened self would have been a oread-mimi.”

lar seems… inconvenient. Being human and needing to sleep to recharge sounds sucky, sleep sucks, also sounds slow. How would you even interact with the rest of the world as a tiny sprite, big nope. Naiad? Maybe, taking a bath to recharge doesn't sound bad. Siren just… isn’t her vibe mostly. 

Oread and being able to shape-shift seems cool, but she would have to have a loved one to recharge… Mimi just looks like it was invented by an anime fan, animal girl that recharges from headpats? Seriously? Though that seems a pretty easy charge method… especially if it’s fast.

Winnowing down the list to her ‘natural’ races she would have been anyway, and naiad. 

"Being a hybrid is a wild magic. Six points by default, but discounted for sorceresses and for beast-affinity witches, which both oreads and mimis are. You have a primary race as well as a secondary race, and maybe a tertiary if you take it twice. You still have the elemental affinities just of your primary race, but you have the highest mana capacity of either race, and you get both charge methods and otherwise get features from both races. If you're eligible to be an enhanced member of both races, you can pursue that for both."

“Six points! But I only have ten! That would cost most of my budget.” Though if you had both charge methods of oread and mimi that works out pretty well, tentatively she will go for that if nothing else is tempting to spend points on. Plus there’s something about being the same kind of witch she would have naturally been anyway.

"It's only four with the beast-affinity discount."

“That’s still a significant chunk of points… can I look at the other stuff I can spend points on first?”

"Definitely. And just to be clear: Ten points doesn't sound like a lot to start with, but it's a bit above average, and the potential to hit 150 points is way above average."

“Oh” So she’s a special witch? That’s cool. If it’s potential that means it can be filled right? “So I somehow I can get 150 points later then?”

"Yes. If you continue as an academic, you'll earn power points through days of study. You can further increase that potential with complications, or get more power up-front at the expense of reduced future development."

“How long would it take to reach to my cap? I mean I guess old age doesn’t matter if you can come back from the dead…”

"If you spent 8 hours on study each day, it'd take around 134 years. Mimis don't age, you might die but not of senescence."

“That’s a long time… but my cap is high right? I guess thats fine.” Who knows, she has no frame of reference for any of this. “Can I see the other stuff then?”

"I'm older than that and it's not particularly remarkable."

And yes, she can. There are things which will make her point capacity larger (except for this one, which will make it smaller but give her more points right away and the capacity to use other capacity-increasing things for current points instead), things which cost points and come in five tiers of which she can take up to 3, and other things which cost points.

“Uhhhhh?” She is lost. Too much choice! Not enough info! “A little help? What am I looking at?”

"Ranked magics and other magics! Ranked non-elementalism magics are discounted for a class and for three elemental affinities – except Witchery and Wands, those are discounted for all elemental affinities – and some of them are so discounted for you you'll actually gain points for taking them. Elemental magics are mostly locked to specific elemental affinities unless you're a sorceress, which you aren't. There are also factional magics, which you get a discount for if you commit to spending some time with the associated faction – but some of which you can take without joining, such as Wands. The other magics are often single things – be a hybrid, create simplistic invisible servants, see auras, that sort of thing, but some of them are more complicated, like my armor and weapons."

“So if I did settle on Oread, and academic, what gains points?” Free points and free magic. Lets tentatively build this selection out. And maybe hybridise with mimi later on in selection if there’s points for it.

"Alchemy, Runes, Witchery, Portals, Aethernautics, and Wands. Also, Prestidigitation – that's an unranked magic – is free for you. If any of them sound like horrible traps, you can instead increase your potential by barring yourself from them, but I don't hear that complaint from Academics much. Do you want a summary of what they do at rank 1?"

“Uhhh sure! But free magic is free magic so.” Tentatively scoops them all up in the build.

"Alchemy lets you brew potions that are Curatives, Stimulants, Novelties, and some other types you can't manage at rank 1. It'll take an hour, though. you can cut that down by half with your class bonus if you don't want to reduce ingredient use or brew two potions instead. You'll need a big cast-iron pot and a heat source and a spoon, and you'll really want an auto-stirrer. I have those around. You'll also need potion ingredients.

At rank 1, Curatives let you replicate a limited range of medications – nothing particularly addictive or restricted, but expectorants and toothpaste and sunscreen are all feasible. Stimulants will basically get you something coffee-like. Novelties can replicate a lot of cheap stuff – dyes, the effects of helium on voices, that sort of thing. You can also make inverses of these, though potions are distinctive to the witch who crafts them, so I wouldn't recommend inconveniencing your enemies this way. Useful if you want to be sleepier or remove hair dye, though.

In terms of ingredients, at rank 1 you can get what you need at the grocery store or substitute ten witch kisses – that's the amount of mana a witch full of mana and without a mint can crystallize in an hour. Components get more expensive as you go up in rank.

Runes let you enchant objects with runes. Runes last as long as the object they're on, take about four times the ingredients that potions of the same rank do, and require rituals that are exponentially increasing in time to cast. At rank 1 that's just a minute, though. They tend to stay active for about 12 hours after activation, and can be reactivated.

You'll have access to Helák, Füsil, Motdet, Kalvÿr, and Vælbán to start – that's Luck, Fertility, Courage, Chill, and Augment. All of these can be inverted. Helák doubles the odds of positive or negative coincidences, respectively. Füsil increases the odds of contraception and healthy magical offspring, and has multiple inversions. One causes risk of miscarriage and unhealthy offspring, but the more popular usage these days is just a reliable contraceptive without side effects. Motdet reduces fear and helps clarify thought, and inverted increases panic. Kalvÿr chills objects to around water's freezing point while preventing phase changes, but oddly enough when inverted it still makes things cold, just less comfortably and conveniently. Vælbán grants 10% resistance or vulnerability to a particular elemental type of damage.

Hexes has a rank-zero effect you get for free, which is crystallizing mana into witch kisses, usable as currency and ingredients.

Witchery also has a rank-zero! Your great-great-etcetera grandma, who is also mine and a lot of other witches', decided to give us all a garment, a hat, and a rod. The garment is one-piece, the hat has a wide brim, the rod makes magic easier, and every time you summon them they're in decent shape. At rank one, you can summon and dismiss them instantly, though summoning your garment replaces all your clothes and your hat will also replace other hats. You can turn your rod into a flying broomstick and fly yourself plus cargo or someone light at around 30 kilometers per hour. You can also meditate to redesign this stuff, in case you think that your outfit really needs a nice floral print.

Familiarity has a rank-zero effect you can use for free, but you might want to think before using it, because you can't get a different familiar after picking one. You get a companion animal, loyal to you and fairly smart for an animal, you can dismiss and resummon it if it gets hurt or dies, and it can interact with spirits.

Necromancy has another rank zero, but it just causes you to see ghosts and spirits.

Portals has a rank zero, which causes you to see mildly hidden existing portals and use them. At rank one, you can actually make them. Portals take the form of Portkeys, Gateways, and Rifts. Portkeys jump between locations and users can follow them along. Gateways are built at arches and door frames and activate when triggered. Rifts are just wounds in space, quick to cut but very sharp-edged. You'll need about $15 per mile of reagents for portkeys and gateways. Rank 1 rifts are going to be around 15 centimeters, with one end about 2 meters away from you and the other up to 90 meters if you can see it or 18 meters if it's just very familiar. You can only have 1 portkey or gateway at a time, you can't make any to somewhere you haven't been, and there's an 80-kilometer limit.

Divination has a rank zero, which is telepathic messaging with people you've met, though they can reject communications.

Aethernautics is not particularly impressive at rank 1, but it's not terrible? If you see a cosmic body, you can intuitively recognize its true name, position in the sky, and disttance from you, and you get a bit better with spatial geometry and distances.

Wands at rank 1 lets you use your rod to shed light like a torch, create a small static visual illusion, a slap-like pulse of force, push or pull something at a bit of a distance, emulate a weak dagger thrust, use your rod as a marker, improve someone's jump height, or interfere with weak spells. However, you can only use one of these once a day.

Prestidigitation is a solid bag of tricks. Adjust the flavor and smell and temperature of food and drinks within edible range, make poorly-crafted small objects that turn to dust after about a minute, create small flat illusions while you focus on them, or clean or dirty around 28 liters of space."

“Free magic AND bonus points? Why not just have them as standard, feels like you might miss out of you didn’t know.” Her counterfactual awakening where she dies didn't have half the magics she just got for free. And she still has 7 whole points to spend even if she decides to do hybrid. 

With prestidigitation they can feel like a real d&d wizard! Seriously who is giving hasbro all the deets on real magic to put in their games.

”What kind of stuff isn’t free? And if theres 5 ranks for each kind of ranked magic… yeah I guess having such a high cap makes sense. Gonna take a while to afford stuff.”

"Witches actually do default to having all the rank zero magics, and most witches can pick up the major ranked magics later. And a lot of stuff isn't free. Turning mud to stone with Hexes 1, telekinesing rocks and being half as vulnerable to blunt force trauma with Earthmoving 1, demon-summoning and curses and necromancy and improving your familiar bond, getting a sorcery you don't have an affinity for, advancing in the arts that start free for you, and there's a very open recent faction – less than a century old – whose factional magic, Digicasting, would let you enter fictional worlds while dreaming. Or you could get it cheaper if you wanted to join them, of course, faction magics are easier to get as a faction member."

“Wait what? You can enter fictional worlds??? Like it’s not all random dream logic but like actually being there?” She has never wanted anything more in her entire life. And then on a second parse through of the idea, she has a horrifying existential crisis about what if the fictional people are real and feel things and how the warhammer 40k fictional setting exists and the newr infinite suffering that would cause. “Wait are they real?… do the people in them exist? Is every fictional world real?”

"You can enter them, but I wouldn't say they're particularly real? Think of it more like a structured dream, drawing on the collective understanding of a work of media and weighted towards the authors."

Relieved sigh. “Oh, okay, so I don’t have to worry about the fictional people in dark settings.” Existential crisis averted.

”Then I DEFINITELY want that magic cheaper, as long as I don’t have to do anything terrible to get it.”

"Nothing terrible, you just need to go to Arcadia, the faction in question. Very lenient school, no tuition, free food and housing, they don't have classes in everything every year but they cover all the major forms of witch magic and plausibly at least something else you're interested in."

“Whats the catch? Free tuition? Free food? Socialist hogwarts that teaches you how to play dream videogames sounds kinda too good to be true.” Magic school to learn dream magic, and it’s free? Seems like a pretty final decision for her build.

"The professors are pretty much all volunteers and so it's hard to impose positive obligations on them. They might decide they don't feel like grading the exams they assigned, you might show up to class and find out your teacher is out watching a movie, and if you complain you might get a hug from a friend but nobody's going to reprimand the professor. It's not as secure as Hawthorne, and I'm not sure if it'll last as long, either. And they're lax enough that it's not terribly difficult for a witch to unintentionally spend all her time at Arcadia reading novels and not learning any magic."

“Still sounds kinda cool to be honest…” Free food and board and reading novels also sounds like a good way to spend college years. Though she definitely wants to actually learn magic. “I’m tentatively deciding to do Arcadia then.”

"For clarity, as an awakener I have an obligation towards neutrality between most factions, and will discuss their upsides and downsides accordingly. That doesn't mean that all of them will be equally good options for any given witch."

And she can point out how to be fated to interact with Arcadia and, relatedly, pick up some digicasting.

“Whats with the other factions then?” If she mentions factions plural, there should be more than just Arcadia the chill magical hogwarts.

"There's Hawthorne, the more disciplined magic school. They're very secure and can offer some remarkable witches enough compensation to get them to teach. You'd likely need to sign an income sharing agreement, they practice corporal punishment, and they conduct a lot of their affairs in Latin."

"The Watchers worship the Light and work with celestials. If you want to be involved in mortal affairs on the altruistic side without disrupting the Veil, they're a good place to start. They have some concerning radical elements, though."

"The Hespatians are the oldest known coven still in operation. They know more of the secrets to ritual magic than I would expect anyone else does, they have a distributed family structure that they find useful for stability, and they also have a lot of connections on the mortal side. They also definitely have families that practice ritual sacrifice of nonconsenting subjects and have been causally involved in some Outsider incidents."

"Lunabella is on the far side of the moon. It's very luxurious and beautiful and a good place to avoid being involved in conflicts. You'd also need to submit yourself to the authority of a matron to integrate yourself with the system long-term, but she'd have corresponding obligations to you and you could negotiate terms in advance. You'd probably want to learn Lunabellan Greek in the long run."

"The Alfheimr Alliance represents a broad coalition of Faewild polities, mostly in either the Summer or Winter courts. The Summer court is, depending on how you count things, plausibly the largest magical polity. It has a lot of rules to get used to that many find unintuitive and you will likely have to swear magically binding agreements to join. The Winter court is much less unified. If you want to found an independent town without trying to create your own pocket dimension, or slay monsters and live alone but get recognition every time you show up with something's head, they're a good place to start."

"There's also some factions I'm not required to present to you but which I'll mention for the sake of completeness. There's some other minor magical schools. There's Occult Research and Containment, a fairly mortal-dominated group integrated with some Earth governments, very picky about mortals but very useful for veil maintenance. Alphazon is lead by a bunch of corporate idiots who are remarkably bad at thinking more than five years ahead for people who pursue immortality, but they do run a lot of commerce and the portions of the magical internet with a pretty user interface so it's hard for some people to totally avoid them. The Outsiders, I think you got a patron offer from one, are enemies of all worlds. I'm not actually permitted to kill you if you join them during your awakening, but otherwise they and affiliated witches are kill-on-sight. They're also infohazardous."

..... This all implies a lot of stuff about the magical world that is not great. Outsiders that want to end the multiverse, Magical end stage Capitalism, Authoritarian magical schools, outright Evil wizards. Andrea has had too many people abuse power over her to accept what sounds like serious authority over her on Lunabella. People who follow Big G God also seem pretty sus to Andrea. The men in black being integrated with the governments sounds like a terrible time all around. And you know what, lets just never even look in the direction of anything that sounds like the Fae, thats how you get your name stolen or something. Chill magical school sounds great actually. "You know what... I think I'm sticking with Arcadia. Very much everything else is not my vibes. Yeesh human sacrifice covens and Capitalism and Cthulus. What else is next?"

"Maybe spending points on ranked magics?"