Linked Fate

Author notes

City of Intrigue pg 11

Lord Rend

on Dec. 9, 2008

Finally we get to see some of Lockre's magic… Yeah…

This page was kind of mediocre for me. On the one hand things like the shading and (most of the) posing came out well. On the other hand, I really dislike the way Lockre's speech bubbles blend in with the background color. And I really dislike the use of the 'dramatic' scene last panel. I would have like to have gone with something else, but… Well, the posing just was not working for that panel.

Moving along, lots of notes on this page…
Mira as a Life Dancer, actually can kind of sense Lockre's other personas. Generally though, the impression is that Lockre is distracted, not really paying his full attention to the world around him.
And finally some explanation for the odd dark red 'loop cape' (also called a mage belt) Lockre wears. It is a sign of his status as a master Aetheris Sage. This is significant in that Aetheris Sages are one of the Seven Orders, the formalized groups of mages. Unlike many of the other Orders, the Aetheris Sages do not specialize in any one particular type of magic. This leads to them devoting themselves to intensive study of all the types of magic, resulting in mages who specialize in excessively powerful spells that generally take a long time to cast. This means that, although they have shield spells, they really are helpless in melee combat, aside from some basic blade skills. Generally they act as siege mages in battle, although they tend to stay in libraries and schools rather than engage in battle, since they prefer learning to actual use of their spells anyway. They are an interesting order, although generally considered fairly useless by the more combat oriented orders.

As a side note the Orders and their specializations are:
Life Dancers- Life Magic and Aura Line manipulation
Anachos- Combat and Chaos Magic
Unuon- Combat and Order Magic
Paroxos- Combat and Strife Magic
Mortis- Null Magic and Necromancy
Asterium- Psychics
Aetheris- Chaos, Order, Strife, Null and Necromantic Magics

Within each Order, there are many schools were the mages are taught and each has a standardized ranking system:
1) Initiate- base level, just means they have potential.
2) Student- have started to learn the concepts and spells of their chosen order.
3) Apprentice- learned all the basic spells and theories of their order, now under the direct tutelage of a or Master to actually use the basics and begin learning more advanced spells and skills.
4) Adept- are able to proficiently use a wide array of spells, allowed to do so without direct supervision, most mages are of this rank and never advance any higher.
5) Weaver- Adepts are promoted to this rank once they craft a spell of their own, kind of a supplementary rank, one that is required for promotion to master but not needed to be considered a High Mage (although it certainly helps with that promotion).
6) High Mage- having mastered the basic and intermediate skills of their chosen order, high mages are allowed to begin learning the most powerful and advanced spells of their order.
7) Master- Able to proficiently use all of the spells of their order as well as craft new spells.
8) Headmasters- a purely political position, Headmasters are simply masters that want to have a say in how their order is run, any master is guaranteed to be a headmaster if they choose to be so.

Okay, that was a lot of information… Sorry about that, it all is going to the forum and information site I have (see link below).

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