Role

Role is the way that magic manifests itself within a living thing, between the binary cateogires of User and Bearer. Users manipulate magic through themselves, and Bearers are themselves sources of magic. As an example, a Wood Witch like Alice Jameson uses an external source of magic to power her spells, and her Halfborn familiar Red Woolf serves as a reservoir of magic that either of them can tap into. This designates them as User and Bearer respectively. In the grand scheme of magic, the designation of Role is a way to differentiate between Witch-type magic beings (Users) and Mythic-type magic beings (Bearers). Users, with their heightened control over their own abilities, tend to be slightly stronger than their Bearer counterparts in a straight fight— which is why Witches are ranked above Mythics in the Hierarchy of the Occult. Bearers themselves access their magic through more direct means like aura barriers, transformations, or supernatural abilities, giving them less fine control in exchange for more raw power to work with.   In terms of power scaling, this means that both Users and Barriers require the skill set of their opposite Role to become truly effective; over time, skilled Users will build up reservoirs within themselves and become User-Bearers, while skilled Bearers will adapt new techniques for controlling their own magic and become Bearer-Users. The perfect state, then, is to be both a Bearer and User simultaneously— something that is impossible to achieve outside of very specific circumstances.   Outside of their Role, the form and strength that magic takes is largely dictated by the User or Bearer's state in the Hierarchy. But things are never quite so straightforward with magic, so upsets are more common than you might think...