"Say more about wild magic?"

"Wild magic is magic that doesn't fit into the usual system of ranks, more or less. You start with the potential to develop some form or forms of wild magic, and have to invest potential into them to actualize them, but the correspondences between invested potential and resulting power are much less strict and predictable--generally but not consistently in a positive direction. There are also effects which fall under the aegis of wild magic which allow you to sort of, mm, pull on the strings of fate, to ensure that at some point you'll be put in a position for some specific beneficial thing to happen to you."

"Huh. Do people get to nudge those when awakening too or do they just happen to people?"

"You can't nudge which ones you have the potential to develop; you can invest starting power into some or none of the ones where the potential exists."

"Fair enough. Anything else?"

"Hm...I usually get into factions after some other stuff, while we're in the pulling-fate bit at the end of the awakening, but you seem like you'd rather have that first." 

"It does sound important."

"So, the factions in Witch society are complicated, and obviously you can have overlapping connections and conflicting allegiances, but the really big ones are the two Earth-adjacent universities, the College at Arcadia and Hawthorne Academia, the Watchers, the Hespatian Covens, the Alfheimr Alliance, Lunabella, the Outsiders, which I told you about earlier and which technically count, and the two big human-aligned groups, Alphazon and the ORC."

Hawthorne Academia is a very old and prestigious institution of higher learning that has been growing ever since its inception. The campus is dominated by labyrinthian gothic architecture that heavily employs space folding and relativity, with no objective up or down. The bulk of its area is located somewhere under the Greenland ice sheet, but parts of it sprawl out from connected portals that span the globe and Lunabella. They're strict and disciplinarian, with uniforms and a set of ethics not identical to the mortal standard. Perks include being extremely safe, aside from their own punishments, effective education, in both magical and mundane subjects, and truly extraordinary architecture. "

The College at Arcadia was founded much more recently by American witches who didn't like Hawthorne's strictness,  and is run out of a private pocket dimension. Rural American town vibes are melded with a mild city experience. Generally fairly laissez-faire as far as discipline goes but they do maintain a degree of country justice to keep the order. Heavily integrates modem lifestyle and conveniences you might expect from a mundane liberal arts college, while having quick access to expansive wildlife and wilderness to explore, with a generally paradisiacal climate. There is a modern but homey town surrounding the college, mostly inhabited by staff and alumni. The endless expanse surrounding it is full of features that change between every three-month academic cycle."

The Watchers. Also known as the followers of the Apocalypse, but it's a mouthful. A bit more of a traditional coven, the watchers date back to a few hundred years BC, and officially founded around 30AD. They integrate Abrahamic cosmology and teachings gleaned from all relevant faiths into one overarching narrative from a third party perspective. Watchers form an interfaith network throughout the world, and take closer interest in mortal affairs and politics than most witches, with influence in most governments and many formal religious organizations; they have a tendency to bury anything that threatens the Masquerade in red tape. Joining would give you wide connections within the mortal world, access to wealth and influence, and help in most churches if you say the right things."

The Hespatian Coven also operates under several other names with the way it subdivides into families that have overarching connections that cooperate in shared interests while retaining independent oversight for the most part. Rank-and-file members of a 'family' may not know about the broader scope, while those in leadership roles are in the know and in communication with other families. They range the classic secret society,to outright secret cults, and they incorporate mortals into their structure as a way to gain leverages, blackmail, and other resources. Assassins and thieves of the highest caliber. Even seemingly unhinged mortal conspiracies may turn out to originate from actual activities of Hespatian families. They also have unusually close ties with Hell."

The Alfheimr Alliance is the Earth of a parallel dimension, one farther from the center of the dimensional hypersphere than this one. The various nations and city-states of that Earth tend to be divided into alignment with either the 'Summer' or 'Winter' courts, although the two courts will also cooperate to interface with the rest of witchdom. Summer tends safer but also more authoritarian, while Winter tends more chaotic and libertarian. Finding a high position is generally easier in Winter, but you might just as easily be usurped from it."

Lunabella! This city on the moon was started in the 6th century by a lich with broomstick and a dream. It's a glistening city that has since grown to accommodate life and been terraformed into a garden region contained by crystal spires that maintain atmosphere, as well as hiding casual observation from mortals. They've produced outposts on other planetary bodies. Lunabella has a killer view, literally Olympian luxury--King Culicarius is widely believed to have inspired many legends relating to Apollo--and arcane transhumanism, with particular advances in transmutation magic."

The ORC and Alphazon are...since they're both headed by mundane humans and not witches, and tend to have witches as less than fifty percent of the personnel of either, I am not obliged by my standards of neutrality to present them the same way as the others, but you should at least know they exist. The ORC, short for Occult Research and Containment, is a para-governmental organization that has the advantage of being more effective than most ordinary bureaucracies, and the disadvantage of having nuked New Alexandria and having its headquarters in a minor dimension originally tapped by Hitler. Alphazon is a human megacorporation that controls several seemingly minor companies on the mundane side of the veil, but is the only megacorporation on this side. Nobody likes them much but even less do we tend to want to do without their services." 

May busily types up notes, as long as she's already got her computer out. "Am I to understand that all of these people if I walked up to them like 'hi I'm a new witch' would be like 'great would you like an enrollment and/or a job', or are you just listing them all for completeness?"

"Arcadia takes all new witches; Hawthorne takes only those over a certain level of potential, which I would be extremely surprised if you, in particular, failed to meet. The others are less welcoming to people who walk up out of nowhere, but I, you see, am not nowhere."

"Well, Lunabella sounds nice, but perhaps I'll have time to read their brochures later on if it doesn't much matter what kinda witch I turn out to be."

"It doesn't matter much. Well, I suppose the Watchers would be unlikely to take you if you were a warlock with a Greater Demon for a patron, but there isn't much overlap between people who would try to choose both of those options anyway."

"With, uh, all the magic flying around, do I need to be reevaluating my religious unbeliefs here?"

"Gods exist! Gods host afterlives for their believers, it is generally considered wiser to find a deity you vibe with in case of catastrophic failure of immortality than take your chances in the waiting room, the Watchers have a really powerful deity they believe to be the Abrahamic God but, like, there isn't any strong evidence one way or the other. Gods frequently make patron offers, you'll probably encounter some of those if you give Warlock any serious consideration."

"...how does there manage to be no strong evidence either way about whether some specific identifiable guy is or is not the Abrahamic god?"

"If he isn't, then there isn't one, but he didn't get big until it was too late for anyone to figure out what, exactly, this Abraham guy had been up to. Also, there's no evidence that he created the universe, much less in six days."

"Huh.

Okay. Anything else?"

"Hm..." she steeples her fingers thoughtfully. "I'm guessing, based on your entire displayed personality so far, that you'd probably like a broader explanation of the Masquerade." 

"It wouldn't hurt, though realistically I'm probably not going to turn down magic powers about it."

"I'm more worried about your taking the magic powers and immediately plotting to dismantle the Masquerade, personally. So, do you remember when I used the phrase 'dimensional hypersphere' in relation to the Alfheimr Alliance?"

"I was vaguely imagining that it's easier to get to some worlds from others and there's one in the metaphorical middle you'll pass through to get to anywhere far away and the Alfheimer one is a step out from the middle from us?"

"That's a very good guess, and not entirely wrong, but it's missing the key insight. The thing is, Earth--this Earth--is at the center of the dimensional hypersphere. Do you know enough about architecture or engineering to know what a keystone does, mechanically?"

"It's the wedge shaped rock that goes on top of an arch, right?"

"Right. And if you take it out, the whole thing collapses. Having a large population of non-magical humans who have a strong collective consensus as to how reality works is metaphysically critical to the structure of the hypersphere."

"How... was this determined... since it doesn't seem to have been done by experimentally taking out the large population of non-magical humans who have this consensus."