"How'd you grow up around magic without being part of one of these families?"

"Long story, and no one involved is likely to be relevant in Jacob's Bell. I'm not actually sure if the first time they disowned me was before or after the first time I disowned them, but let's just say Johannes Lillegard is not the name I was born with."

"Hmm, noted. You mentioned chronomancy?"

"Pausing time, storing time, turning it back or forward. It sounds very powerful, and it can be, but if power is a currency then chronomancy is expensive. The Behaims tend to be very good at knowing when not to use it. There's more that I could tell you if it looks like you're going to be going up against them, but it's impolite to spread people's secrets without reason. And following convention matters."

"Mmhm. The three things, implements and familiars and demesnes, how do you get them? How many can you have? What are the former two for?"

"There's a ritual for each. Like most rituals variance is allowed, but it's relatively standardized. You get one of each, and it's a lifelong decision. Practitioners who object to being tied down in one place might never try for a demesne, and it's unspeakably important to take a familiar you can partner with. What a familiar is for depends on the nature of the partnership, but one fairly common version involves the Other giving the practitioner a share of power in exchange for a place in the world.

The implement is for everything. It's your metaphorical hammer that you will try to fit to every nail. It's what people think of when they think of you, and that would matter even if it were otherwise normal. Some people use the most powerful magic item they can get their hands on, and usually regret it in the long term. Others use some personally significant object, and risk having other people misunderstand it. It's as irrevocable a decision as the other two, even if a mistake is less dangerous."

"Okay... You mentioned names are important, I think? Or implied it? Is there some—well, how does that work, exactly?"

"A name is an identity, as far as the spirits are concerned. If you lose your name, you lose your place in the universe and will weaken and fade away until you're at least dead. Changing a name can be done safely, usually requiring a ritual, but it does risk changing who you are. At the very least the ritual will alter connections you already have to things and people. If you're considering it, the Awakening is a better time than most so you'll be known to our world under the new name all along. How sure are you that no one in your bloodline is a practitioner?"

"I think my father's mostly just a horrible person, and if anyone in his family does magic they never told me. Conversely my mum was killed by—something, an Other, I'm fairly sure now. It's her name I want to use. Woods, not Baldwin."

"I am sorry about your mum. If it helps, I am working toward the day when that stops happening, even if no one alive today ever sees it." That statement comes across as sounding heavier, like the kind of thing that ought to be accompanied by a gong or thunderclap but isn't.

"In that case you probably don't have to do anything at all to change it. You're just as much a Woods as you are a Baldwin, from the spirits' point of view. They predate birth certificates. And if neither side is a practitioner family you don't have unexpected inheritances to gain from or worry about."

"Good. That makes me feel better." She looks at her notes again. "Okay, I think I r—no, one more thing: just what kinds of things are Others? There's the snake lady and that big guy, what's the... distribution? Are, like... fairies real? Goblins? Unicorns?"

"Yes, yes, and not that I've ever heard of but that isn't a no. "Others" is by design a very broad term. In general if there are legends about a thing, there are probably Others that either conformed themselves to the legend or get called that because they're superficially similar. Or even that inspired the legends. But make sure not to put too much stock in the labels. There's a lot of research involved in knowing what's what and what it means, like that a bright sword would be effective against a goblin but you'd prefer a rusted one if you have to fight a fairy, or what to use against which choirs of demons.

Or you could choose an area of practice that interacts less with Others, like illusions or divination."

"Oh, yes, that reminds me, do I have to choose an area of practice to specialise in, like chronomancy or enchanting or illusions or divinations?"

"You don't have to. I didn't. But dabblers are looked down on—unfairly, I think—until they get powerful or skilled enough to call themselves sorcerers. Choosing a specialization is likely to be useful if you care what other practitioners think of you, and remember that reputation is valuable."

"But on the other hand if I do that it'll be that much harder in the future to then unspecialise and learn the other crafts, I presume?"

"Actually no. It'd be like starting almost from scratch if it's a completely different field, but it wouldn't be harder than if you hadn't learned something unrelated first.

Most do prefer to only advance very far in a single field or related ones for comparative advantage reasons. I know Laird Behaim does augury and basic shamanism, but I'd be surprised to hear he also puts much effort into enchantment."

"Huh. In that case, what's the actual advantage of doing everything from scratch, if you get more rep by specialising?"

"Some people just find it interesting. In my case it plays into the image as implausibly powerful that I hope to have once I go public, and helps avoid predictable weaknesses like a chronomancer or summoner might have. Other people might not have access to advanced texts in any field. Specialized knowledge is another form of currency, and not everyone is rich.

Your choice of field might depend on what you're trying to do with it. Is magic likely to play into any of your long-term goals? You shouldn't be a chronomancer if your goal is to learn as much as possible, for instance, or a diabolist if you want to live very long. Enchantment could be useful if you want to go into politics, and so on. You probably haven't known about magic long enough to have opinions on what to do in this world?"

"...live very long? Well, ideally I'd live forever, that'd be grand, but yeah I haven't really known about magic for long enough, until, what, an hour ago I thought I was following some creep from a secret conspiracy that had murdered my mother, now I find out magic's real. I don't know what field I'm gonna pick, I don't know which fields there are, though I'm leaning sorcerer."

He smiles at that answer. "Ambitious. Does wanting to live forever mean you'd prefer to minimize high risk and high reward situations?"

"I'm not exactly risk averse, per se, but I do want to get the best expected reward I can. And that's not ambitious at all, becoming immortal myself is the bare minimum, you just told me the world has a magic system that seems like it was created with my name on top, I'd want to make everyone immortal, including Others, even if that meant I'd have to colonise other planets to put Others there so they won't eat humans if they're all that into hurting people. And that is not the end goal, either."

"What's the end goal?"

"Utopia. Maybe I'm naïve and idealistic, I dunno, but I don't like the way the world is right now and I want to make it better to the best of my ability, and that doesn't just stop once I've reached any specific milestone. There won't be a point where I'll be, ah, yes, I can rest now, I have accomplished goal X. I want to fix things."

"The main thing that needs fixing, that I'm aware of, is the fact that most Others are homicidal. There are more inevitable flavors of doom available, but nothing that's as urgent.
I do know a possible method for changing the Others, in the long term, but it is multiple kinds of spectacularly bad idea and is approximately a suicide mission. It wouldn't give you phenomenal cosmic power unless you succeeded despite the stacking of several decks and you separately managed immortality well enough to live to see the results. The risk and the unlikely reward are both high enough that I don't know how the expected value measures. Do you want to hear it?"

"Are you joking? Of course I want to hear it."