From A Summary of the Forms of Power, by Priestess Istai (Formerly Elah Salliar)
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The process of becoming an archmage is a long and complicated one, beginning as early as the age of seven, when the child is first old enough to properly understand instruction. At this point, they are inducted as a villai and begin learning all the important, yet mundane, pieces of knowledge befitting one of Ethluil. This includes reading, writings, mathematics, religion, as well as proper care of one’s beasts, tools, and ritual components. Depending on the precise opportunities afforded to the villai’s family, this may be served at a temple, court, fortress, manor, or other positions of status, preferably one with ready access to a Tower. The villai becomes familiar with humility, respect, and proper curiosity at this point.
Once they are deemed ready, usually at the age of ten, the villai is introduced to the appropriate spiritual exercises required to exercise their magical talent. This is usually initiated by the Ritual of Thoth, which as a matter of course drains all mana from the villai while stressing their soul, giving them a rudimentary sense of each.
Over the next several years of education, villai slowly learn and are introduced into the methods by which they can call forth their magic at will. Once they are capable of casting Flare on command, they are considered officially graduated from being a villai, which usually occurs a few years before adulthood, usually about eighteen. At this point, they are officially made an apprentice, serving and learning alongside a more experienced mage and assisting them with tasks mundane and magical alike.
During the course of their apprenticeship, the apprentice begins to learn more complex spells from their master. This begins by simply observing the mage at work, and how to cast proper spells. In time, they become a secondary caster in more complex spells, adding their prowess to their master’s, until eventually they are able to work in concert for pair casting.
Similarly, throughout this time, the apprentice becomes more familiar with casting utilizing tools; foci, wands, and staves. They learn the spells required for summonings, caring for familiars, and to properly assess the highest-quality ritual ingredients. They also learn the basics of runic inscribing, become more skilled at learning new spells, and may even develop their own specialty.
This stage of a mage’s training may last a decade or more before their master pronounces them proficient in rituals, often marked by the apprentice developing a spell of their own creation. Whether or not the spell already exists is immaterial, what matters is that the apprentice was not taught the spell nor did they learn it in some scroll or tome.
This ‘First Spell’ is traditionally quite important in the apprentice’s future career, serving as the backbone upon which all their other works will be measured against, and informing other mages much of the apprentice’s style. A weak or impractical spell is often seen to reflect on the mage, whereas the creation of a genuinely useful spell is seen as the sign of a prodigy. Thus, many apprentices may delay for several years perfecting their First Spell. While not tradition, it has become more common in recent years, as such tools have become more readily affordable, for their master to commission a foci or staff of the apprentice’s First Spell to demonstrate their faith in their apprentice. That it demonstrates their own success and wealth to afford such an exceptional gift is, of course, purely happenstance, and the ostentatious nature of many of these staves is complete coincidence.
The final step of any mage’s training is learning the Tabula Rasa. It is knowledge of how to cast this, and thus reliably utilize more complex spells, which marks a genuine mage from a mere workman or dabbler. Until this point in their training, it is withheld from the apprentice as to prevent them from attempting to cast without their master at-hand to oversee them and prevent them from performing some catastrophic ritual.
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Once the First Spell is complete, and Tabula Rasa mastered, the apprentice is made a full mage in a ceremony of empowerment. The ceremony is preceded by numerous blessings and rituals meant to empower the mage, to make their magic quicker to call upon, and a multitude of other benefits meant to purify and sanctify themselves in the eyes of the gods as well as empower them in their future as a mage.
The ceremony itself culminates in the apprentice, clad in undyed, ceremonially and magically pure robes, with no staff to aid (though they are of course presented with all the materials required for their casting) casting their First Spell from start to finish, beginning with the Tabula Rasa, and continuing for potential hours as they publicly demonstrate the evidence of their magical might.
Once the First Spell is cast, their master presents them with two objects, a book and a staff, each wholly blank, and instructs the new mage to, “Rise, in the sight of gods and mortal. Learn and teach, command and bargain. Master and serve. Rise, Mage, and know you are worthy.”
Once a proper Mage, the path of the magician splits, depending upon their specialty and background. Of course, those who are nobleborn usually return to their family. Others may enter the clergy, becoming full Clerics. Others still swear themselves to a higher-ranked noble house in military service to serve as an official Warmage. Yet others join guilds to become Shapers. Very, very rarely will a mage decide to leave civilization altogether to settle a new plot of land somewhere, and this process is rarely done immediately, but instead is delayed until such a time that they have a full support network built up and may relocate as a whole. Some choose to abandon civilization altogether, and those (as well as those who break their oaths of service) are known as Warlocks, masterless and aimless within the world, shunning all as they shun them.
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Almost regardless of circumstance, mages begin construction of their Tower if they do not move into a preexisting one. For Warmages, this is usually done at a location of strategic importance, granting a fortified position from which they may keep watch. Shapers add theirs to their guild’s hall, Clerics add an additional tower to their temple, and so forth. Some mages, particularly Warlocks, prefer to set their towers in as inaccessible a locale as they can manage to dissuade visitors, but such mages are rare.
Scholars assert that the affinity which wizards have unto towers is due to the propensity of spells to be better cast within a circular room, and attempting to build a circular room in a more horizontal building is often impractical. Warders say it is due to the relative ease in which wards are capable of projecting themselves upwards, and thus maximizing the amount of space warded by a single array. Clergy say it is due to magic being less unpredictable the further from the ground (and thus closer to the heavens) it is performed. Nobles say that it is purely a status symbol, that having a larger tower is indicative of greater wealth and magical might. Military leaders point to the defensibility of such a structure, that it is far easier to protect valuable goods and secrets by raising them off the street.
In truth, it is all of these and more besides. There are a multitude of factors which lend themselves to the tower design being the most prominent, and it is not as though it is a universal structure either. It does remain the iconic symbol of a mage-in-residence, and for that reason alone it might yet endure. The more mage towers which make a part of a building, the better-defended, the wealthier, and the more powerful it is. These factors are well-known.
As a mage grows in power and skill, they will continue to build their tower, usually upwards, and often grow their support alongside it. After all, being a mighty mage requires far more than a mere lifetime of training. This ‘tower magedom’ is on occasion considered a separate stage of magehood, which begins with tower residency, continues as the mage sources and collects the artificers and alchemists, the beastmasters and smiths, the warders and scribes, and the hundred and one other specialized professions which feed into their magics.This stage of magedom is where most mages reside in, and stay their entire life.
As time continues, they continue to make and refine their spells, bind familiars, write books, master magic, and grow in power and knowledge. Most mages take on their first apprentice roughly five years after founding their tower, though some reclusive mages may never do so.
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As mages continue to grow in their magical prowess, they may begin to gain one of several titles. The most common of these are as follows:
Sorcerer: A specialist in a single type of magic. This is often elementally-inclined, but may be as narrow as a single spell or as broad as a class of spells, such as divination, healing, or warding. However, the broader the category, the more difficult it is to earn the title, as it requires familiarity enough with the given magic that a Tabula Rasa is often not needed to cast the corresponding magic.
Wizard: The nigh opposite of a sorcerer, a wizard is one who possesses at least passing familiarity with most types of magic, such that they are capable of accomplishing nearly any goal without the aid of another full mage. Exceptions are of course granted for large workings and cooperative casting, but the mage must be just as or more knowledgeable than any other mages taking part.
Magus: One who has taught many apprentices, above and beyond the normal requirements. These mages are often likely to share even personal magics with their apprentices, and view the pursuit of magic as a pure and philosophical goal unto itself, separate of all other ends. They are intimately knowledgeable with the nature of magic, and require little in the way of actual magical might to earn this title. It is most common with elderly mages not because they are more altruistic, though some are, but merely because few mages wish for their knowledge to be lost with their death.
Shaman: Sometimes thought of as little more than sorcerers specializing in binding spells, a shaman is more accurately one who utilizes the spirits of the land as additional participants in their casting. Particularly skilled Shamans occasionally eschew the Tabula Rasa altogether in larger workings, preferring to allow the full interference of the spirits, bargaining with them beforehand with both word and spell to ensure they aid, not harm, their workings.
Artificer: A title often given to mages working in guilds, an artificer is a mage truly dedicated to the craft of foci and magical items. In particular, they must create a proper magical item of their own, an object with persistent magical properties and not simply an advanced focus for a spell. The usual dividing line for this is whether or not an unawakened individual can utilize all of its aspects.
Thaumaturge: While rarely granted outside of the church, a thaumaturge is a worker of miracles; they have at one point or another served as the channel for a divine spell. In theory, this is the simplest of all titles to obtain- to the point wherein mundanes are entirely capable of earning it- yet remains the rarest of the ‘common’ titles.
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The final goal for many a mage is of course the vaunted title of Archmage, and while the precise requirement to become such varies somewhat, they all possess a single commonality: the ability to cast a complex spell with a single gesture and a single word. This feat, of course, is no simple matter of mastery. It is impossible for any mage to become so proficient as to cast a spell with naught but will, save for an act of Thaumaturgy. Instead, this represents the culmination of decades of research for the mage to have tools perfectly suit them, rare and custom ingredients perfectly attuned to the mage, and development of the spell to customize it utterly for the mage’s own mana. To do so requires becoming proficient in nearly all forms of magic, becoming a true specialist in one or more fields, accustoming one’s self to the spirits of the land and peering into the heart of magic itself, to say nothing of the requirements inherent to the creation of the tools required, which rarely does not involve the mage throughout the process. In that way, an archmage is usually a sorcerer, wizard, shaman, magi, artificer, and more simultaneously.
They are, after all, the true peak of magehood, the culmination of decades of drive and learning, and a veritable city of support from their first teachers to other mages in their employ, all funneled into a singular, mighty title:
Archmage.