"That looks to be all on your menu at this time. Go back and pick up more ranks?"

"Sure! How many points do I have left?"

"Six!"

"Would that be enough to get one rank in Familiarity and two more in Aethernautics?"

"Yes, with one left over."

"Hmmm, what else have I not taken ranks in...that, and the last one for one rank of Hexes?"

"Perfect. However, you might want to put some back later, because there is also faction magic. To go with factions. Big loosely aligned witchy cultures."

"Noted. I take it my next decision to make is picking a faction?"

"You can hang out with many, but you can only fate in one, and only take one of the magics today. Magic colleges? The moon? The religious folks? Fairies and monsters and politics oh my? Secretive little cells of mischief?"

"I wanna hear about the moon!"

"The moon is lovely. Lunabella, it is called. Highest of standards of living, very rich and comfy place. Major thing its detractors point out is how everyone is technically slaves. This means everyone, so if you get a bad draw of matron after auctioning yourself off you can go to her matron about it and complain, and they get so intent on assuring everyone how happy their possessions are and how much free time they have and how their contract only covers the household itself and they get an audit every six weeks and so forth, and it seems like most people are very happy with the arrangement, but it is quite the technicality to overlook."

"Yep, that would definitely be a major adjustment for my modern American sensibilities! What do they get out of it being slavery, instead of, like, feudal allegiance?"

"I do not really know. Possible it is a mistranslation but it is the standard mistranslation if so."

"Huh. Are people bought and sold beyond the initial, um, auctioning?"

"Sometimes! Possible to specify about this in initial contract phase."

"Huh, so there is some negotiation, it's not totally one-sided?"

"Oh, yes, you are not sold until you sell and can hold out for whatever you wish to bargain for if someone will bite, just, cannot really enjoy more than tourism existence on Lunabella without participation."

"I see  What's their faction magic?"

"Dominion! It is how they are so unobtrusive on the moon: copy a section of reality to be a pocket dimension you control, mundane astronauts walk right by and never notice. There is a rank zero you can learn without ever going a-mooning, make a little forty-yard-radius bubble if you want to step outside of prying earshot for a conversation or a fight or a bit of magic-doing. Adding ranks lets you do the fancier higher-control version, starting smaller than this but ending town-size. Air conditioning and stuff. Time dilation comes in at rank two, local-only earth and water elementalism-ish control at three, four lets you exclude buildings and stuff in the area you're bubbling. Rank five you can anchor the bubble on a crystal so it does not count against the one at a time per witch bubble limit, and in your own bubbles, doing magic is free of mana cost and has a range of anywhere in the bubble. Sometimes I think that since they must live in these bubbles anyway on Lunabella, they might as well say the quiet part out loud that whoever owns a place might as well also own anyone in it."

"That does sound quite cool. I don't know if it's worth, well, the catch. I'll consider it a 'maybe' for now. What are the magic colleges like?"

"There are two. Big sister Hawthorne, little sister Arcadia. Hawthorne lives under Greenland, very strict and old fashioned; faction magic is wands, lots and lots of little grab bag charms, very handy, list on request. Arcadia has a pocket dimension that changes themes by vote every term, very loosey-goosey party school with a college town around it; faction magic is newfangled digicasting, bringing books and video games and things like that to life."

"Ooooh, Arcadia definitely sounds like my speed! What are the ranks of digicasting like?"

"At one, dream your way into a fiction - put a DVD under your pillow or fall asleep with a book or something, out you pop into the world it is about. Uses the creator's vision, not your interpretation. Time passes at normal rates, do-over at will or pick up where you left off successive sleeps. At two, bring friends, have a dreamy LAN party. Pull flat pixely Pokémons or what have you from the Gameboy or whatever they use these days into reality, but they don't last too long. Rank three, skip the part where you go to sleep, go bodily into it, run around in the entire Internet; all the fictions are shared, so you will meet anywitch else who is in The Great Gatsby at the same time, and you can leave things in the cupboards there and go get them later even. Rank four, skip the Gameboy, and less flat and pixelly. Still no firebreathing Pokémons, though. Rank 5, turn cartoon like you are who framed Roger Rabbit, you pick your style, bop in and out of paintings and movies and games and such, pop out again to scale or regular size whichever you like. Watch out for wind if you are two dimensions, but, plus side, slip through door cracks."

"Okay, that is extremely cool. Can you tell me a little more about what Hawthorne is like? I feel like I have a pretty good handle on what 'party school' means but 'strict and old fashioned' could cover a lot of ground."

"They do corporal punishment, up to and including death penalty if you fuck around too bad. Classes are mandatory, no skipping no slacking not allowed to fail. Sort you into a House by personality and magic, so you would get some House full of... alchemists who brew their own makeup or something... and if they do not keep you in line it gets escalated."