Schools of Magic
Summary
The Schools of Magic are mostly well known although recently new schools have begun being investigated. The schools are typically divided into their practices and general attitude that the populace has to these schools of magic. A follower of magic is often encouraged to sample all the schools to gain a base knowledge before choosing a favored occupation.
The exception to these are the Biomancy School which is still in its early stages of research, and the Enchantment School due to its negative view among the populace.
Abjuration
One of the widest accepted schools of magic due to its protective nature. Many people with wealth and/or power will want a good abjurer in their payroll to ensure magical protection is in place, making it an appealing school for wizards who want an easy life in court to study.
Biomancy
Biomancy is a newly categorized School. Thus, its study is still early while some spells are in the process of being re-categorized. A further step from Transmutation, the warping and transmutation of living bodies has become its own source of research and testing.
Conjuration
Conjuration is often studied by those who wish to help their other works by being able to summon aid or materials needed. Few who study this School to its full purpose learn to summon greater allies as most magic users prefer using the simpler spells from this school to aid them.
Divination
Diviners in Athoria are often freelancers, selling their abilities to peer through time, space and reality to those who can afford their arts. There are a few laws to prevent intrusive invasion of people's personal welfare, but these only typically impact the rich who can afford Abjurers to detect and prevent Diviners.
Enchantment
This School is outlawed in most places of the world after the World War during the Mortal Era. Kings and great leaders were manipulated via this magic and practitioners were found to be enslaving whole towns to their will. As such, as part of the Peace made the banning of this school was agreed by all countries. Now it is enforced with punishments when detected for stripping another creature of its free will.
Evocation
Evokers typically fall into two camps. Soldiers and Adventurers. The dispensing of training in the Evocation school is usually reserved for an armies battle mages due to its destructive powers, but there is no laws preventing any spell caster learning and practicing the School's magic. (Providing they don't start burning down buildings of course!)
Illusion
Most illusionists are performers or con artists, using their magic to enhance their normal performances and schemes. There are of course those who use these powers for more specific purposes and there are often meetings of travelling caravans held annual across the world to share in magical Illusion performances.
Necromancy
Necromancy is seen as eerie and creepy by most of the populace, but as long as a necromancer doesn't raise someone's brother in front of him, most are content to look the other way. The general outlook in most places in Athoria is once a soul has passed, the body is naught but worm food, so "waste not" and all that. Undead are typically not permitted within settlements however due to the creepy factor and worry of disease they bring.
Transmutation
This school was closely regulated for years to prevent illegal transmutations that could have destroyed economies and countries. Those types of spells have since been lost to time however so the practice is now spreading once more with the restrictions on this school being lifted to allow all to study as they will.
Historical Basis
The Schools of Magic have been refined and more detailed since their discovery. Each time a new school is determined, some existing spells may be recatagoriesed and new spells under that school become easier to discover and experiment with.
Necromancy Spells for example used to have spells split between Transmutation and Evoaction Schools until it became prominent enough to have its own school. Diviniation on the other hand when discovered was nearly an entirely new area of research.
Variations & Mutation
Haemomancy was a debated school of magic for some time, but has been widly accepted as a splinter of methodlogy in casting of spells rather re-classifying spells. The art of Haemomancy involves the use of blood (either the caster's or sacrifices) in the casting of certain spells as a replacement for material components or a method of heighteneing certain effects.
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