Magic Users

All groups operate under the same magic system. The world prefers lower-energy states and will reshape itself to avoid costly corrections. What separates the groups is how they engage with that principle.

Wizards

Wizards negotiate directly with reality. They credibly threaten to cause more discontinuity than the world wants to deal with, and the world yields to avoid the expense.

This requires real stockpiles. A wizard’s threat is only credible if they genuinely possess enough magic to follow through. A wizard who cannot back their demands gets nothing. Hoarding magic is therefore the central strategic concern: the more a wizard holds, the larger the demands they can make, and the less they actually need to spend because the world recognizes the threat as genuine.

Wizards are rare, mostly solitary or in small groups, and broadly uninterested in the affairs of ordinary people outside of commerce.

Religious People

Religious magic is the world maintaining something because it always has. A practice or rite has been done a certain way for generations; for it to stop working would be shocking — shock causes change, and change is expensive. So the world keeps the status quo. Religious acts of magic do not inherently require a relic. Relics are nevertheless useful: they focus the rite, making miracles easier to achieve than rites performed without one.

Tradition and adherence matter. The teachings stress adherence to rules, the dangers of morally suspect exploration, the temptation to reach beyond what the rites permit. Deviate from the established rites and the miracle may not come about. The practitioners believe the constraints are sacred; in practice, it is strong belief among the masses that keeps the pattern stable enough for the world to maintain it.

Sorcerers

Sorcerers wield replica relics — copies of specific true relics, carrying no inherent magic. Each replica works because a wizard established a standing agreement with the world for that particular relic, paying the cost upfront. The world maintains these replicas because the cost of them suddenly failing, after centuries of sorcerers reliably using them, would be greater than the cost of letting them continue. Sorcerers operate on the same principle of minimum discontinuity, but they do not negotiate themselves; they inherit a per-relic contract the world has already decided to honor.

The sorcerer is the load-bearing element. A stranger picking up a replica gets nothing; the relic only works when held by someone the world recognizes as a sorcerer. That recognition is not merely invitation and acceptance. The schooling is diverse in methodology but most often grueling — initiation, training, and acceptance by an existing body of sorcerers create enough social and organizational mass that the world treats the bearer as a valid continuation of the pattern. Sorcerers most often start to believe in themselves after having done sorcery successfully; that first success helps them “be” sorcerers later. Becoming a sorcerer is closer to joining an order than learning a skill.

Spiritual People

Spiritual practitioners draw on old and obscure relics that carry genuine stored magic — most commonly artifacts from the Olden World or otherwise filled with magic. Their power comes from the magic within the objects themselves, not from tradition or organizational backing or direct confrontation with the world. They also rely on rituals, though to a lesser extent than religious practitioners.

This makes them distinct from religious practitioners: a spiritual figure’s relic doesn’t need believers or institutions to function. It works because there is real magic inside it. But such relics are rare, finite, and not replenishable by any means the spiritual practitioners command. The relics themselves and the actions required to wield them may be obtuse — unlike replica relics, they were not designed for clear, human use, and their purposes and triggers are often obscure.

Wizards in Religious Circles

A priest who becomes a wizard — through whatever circumstance — learns that the teachings are completely false. The reasons the teachings give — divine mandate, sacred law — are wrong. The sacred laws are patterns the world maintains out of habit, nothing more. Yet the end product remains correct. The miracles work. The rites deliver. The teachings are wrong about why, but right about what.

Their belief does not disappear; it shifts. They no longer believe in the dogma itself, but they believe in the dogma’s function — and that conviction drives them to uphold it. They enforce strict adherence to rites because the collective belief of the faithful is what makes the miracles free. If belief falters, the world stops maintaining the pattern. A wizard-priest becomes the strictest enforcer of dogma not out of piety, but because the pattern only works while the masses hold it.

Meanwhile their personal stockpile goes untouched. They never spend their own magic on anything the rites can accomplish. More often than not, wizard-priests hold smaller pools of magic than dedicated wizards who live where magic is more easily accessible. When they do need to draw on personal power, they may turn to true relics or artifacts rather than a deep stockpile — and they are keenly aware of the dangers of breaking an artifact the congregation expects to work.

Revealing their nature as a wizard would shatter the congregation’s belief, collapsing the very pattern they rely on. They are bound to the role.