Common Disciplines of Barsaive

The Archer

Every fighting force in Barsaive wants archers, and every archer knows exactly why: a bow reaches where a sword can't, and reaches first. But ask an Archer what actually separates their Discipline from a soldier who happens to carry a bow, and most will tell you it isn't the weapon at all — it's the habit of mind that comes with it. An arrow in flight is a straight line between a decision and a consequence, and Archers have learned to see that same straight line everywhere else in life, whether they're aiming at a target or trying to understand one.

Precision that borders on the uncanny. Every Archer hits what they aim at with a consistency that unsettles people who've never watched one work — not through brute talent alone, but through a trained stillness that other Disciplines rarely bother to cultivate. Some go further, marking a target with a private, magical sign that makes every follow-up shot truer, as if the arrow already knows where it's going before it leaves the string.

Shots that shouldn't be possible. An Archer's relationship with cover is adversarial. They ricochet shots off walls and pillars to strike targets who thought they were safely out of the way, and loose a second arrow in the same breath as the first when one shot won't be enough. Between engagements, they simply call their spent ammunition back to hand — a small, practical magic that keeps a quiver full through even a long, ugly fight.

Threat as a weapon in its own right. Not every problem needs an arrow fired. An Archer holding a steady, visible aim on someone is often more persuasive than the shot itself — most people, faced with that choice, decide against testing it.

The arc, extended past the battlefield. The same eye that traces an arrow's path to its target serves an Archer just as well examining a crime scene, reading old evidence, or firing a shot into open air just to see which way it wants to fall — a trick some Archers use to sense the direction of something they're hunting. To an Archer, a motive and a crime are joined by the same kind of line as a bowstring and a target; finding the line is the whole trick, whichever direction it happens to point.

Underneath all of it is a discipline that Archers themselves describe as the hardest part of the craft: knowing when not to loose the arrow. The distance between a sharpshooter who serves something larger than their own aim, and one who's let the pull of a clean kill take over entirely, is thinner than most Archers like to admit — and every one of them has, at some point, felt it start to give.

The Beastmaster

Most people drew a hard line between themselves and the wild — sealing the doors, clearing the land, keeping the forest at the edge of the torchlight where it belonged. Beastmasters never drew that line. While the rest of Barsaive was busy holding nature at arm's length, Beastmasters were out learning to live inside it, and most of them will tell you the wild was never the enemy — the Horrors were, and the wild has its own quarrel with them too.

That makes a Beastmaster a strange kind of ally to have. They move through wilderness the way a merchant moves through a market they've known for decades — reading which paths are safe, which plants will feed a party of six, which shelter will hold against a storm. But underneath that practical woodcraft is something stranger: a Beastmaster's body doesn't always stay entirely their own, and their sense of "self" is looser than most Namegivers are comfortable with.

A patient, earned trust. The heart of the Discipline isn't a spell or a trick — it's time. A Beastmaster who wants a wolf, a hawk, or a warhorse at their side doesn't compel it; they spend days, sometimes weeks, proving through food, patience, and consistent care that they're worth an animal's loyalty. That loyalty, once earned, runs deep enough that the animal will take real risks for its companion — and deep enough that losing it, through cruelty or carelessness, cuts just as hard as losing a person would.

A body that isn't always one shape. Some Beastmasters go further than companionship. They reshape their own hands into claws to fight like the animals they study, or empty themselves out entirely, sending their spirit into a borrowed body while their own lies still and unguarded behind them.

A will that bends what won't listen. Not every animal in the wild is inclined to be a friend, and a Beastmaster doesn't always need one to be. A hard stare and a steady nerve are often enough to hold a hostile or frightened creature in place. This has no power over anything that thinks the way a person does, and none at all over a Horror or its constructs; it only works on the truly wild.

Sight beyond their own eyes. With a companion's trust secured, a Beastmaster can borrow more than its loyalty — a hawk's eyes over unfamiliar terrain, a hound's nose to find what's hidden, even a moment spent fully inside an animal's senses to see a place no person could otherwise reach.

There is exactly one line a Beastmaster does not cross: deceit. The bond an animal offers is given freely and without the capacity to consent to being lied to, and a Beastmaster who tricks a companion into danger, sells one into cruelty, or otherwise betrays that trust doesn't just lose an ally — something in their own magic breaks along with it.

Underneath all of it is the plainer, older craft every Beastmaster starts with: knowing how to live off the land, how to read a track, how to tell a sick animal from a dangerous one, and how to make a fire and a shelter out of whatever a forest happens to offer that night. Barsaive's cities mostly ignore Beastmasters until they need one. Then, for a little while, the wild stops being something to fear, and starts being something a Beastmaster can actually talk to.

The Elementalist

Every settlement in Barsaive stands on ground that was once purely wild — earth, water, air, fire, and wood, unshaped by any Namegiver hand. An Elementalist never forgets this. Where most people see weather, terrain, and raw material, an Elementalist sees five distinct, opinionated forces, each with its own temperament, each worth treating like a person rather than a resource.

The elements turned toward harm. An Elementalist's most direct power is simple in concept and devastating in practice — hurling fire, stone, ice, or lightning at a target the way another caster might hurl a curse.

The elements worn like armor. Just as often, an Elementalist turns that same power toward protection rather than harm — wrapping an ally in a cushion of compressed air, coating a blade in living venom drawn from wood, granting wings of gleaming metal pulled from raw earth. The elements make surprisingly good armor, once you know how to ask them.

Ground that answers to a different master. Some of the most unsettling Elementalist workings reshape the battlefield itself — ground that lurches and buckles underfoot, stone walls that rise where none stood a moment before, ice that spreads and swallows movement.

A gentler use of the same gift. Not every spell is meant to harm. An Elementalist can call on wood and water to knit wounds shut over time, purify tainted earth or poisoned water, or lend the smallest, quietest favors — a boosted grip while climbing, a staff conjured from bare stone, a meal warmed without a fire.

When something needs to simply stop existing. At the harder edge of the craft sit spells built to break things outright — stone shattered, a shield reduced to scrap, a weapon's edge dulled to nothing. These are used sparingly, and usually only when whatever's being destroyed has already proven it needs to be.

Underneath all of it sits the oldest and most personal risk of the craft: balance. An Elementalist who quietly favors one element over the others, without ever admitting it to themselves, risks tipping something in the world itself out of true — a danger real enough that Elementalists have a name for the correction, tithing a coin of precious orichalcum back to whichever element they've slighted, the same way they'd apologize to a friend they'd wronged.

Where a Nethermancer treats summoning as a career built on judgment and risk, an Elementalist treats it as something closer to diplomacy. Every elemental spirit they call on is a distinct personality with its own temperament and its own reasons for helping or refusing — fire spirits burn with passion and never lie, but punish the weak-willed; water spirits shift and contradict themselves endlessly; wood spirits are the hardest bargainers of all, rarely helping without a promise owed in return; earth spirits answer only to deep, patient meditation, on their own timeline and no one else's.

The Illusionist

Barsaive is a world of surfaces — a merchant's smile, a stranger's story, a road that looks safer than it is. Illusionists know better than anyone how easily surfaces lie, because they've spent a career learning to make them lie convincingly. What separates a real Illusionist from a common trickster isn't the skill at deception. It's the purpose behind it.

A trick you can't disbelieve away. At its core, the craft bends what people see and hear — vision swallowed in inky darkness, a fog of mocking voices that turns a crowd against itself, illusions reinforced strong enough that simple disbelief won't dispel them. Unlike a charlatan's cheap tricks, a real Illusionist's deceptions don't collapse just because someone doubts them.

Trust and doubt, given and taken. Just as often, the target of an Illusionist's magic is a person's feelings rather than their eyes — a mesmerized calm that leaves someone warmer toward the caster than they'd otherwise be. It's persuasive magic, and an Illusionist who uses it carelessly finds it curdles into resentment the moment the truth comes out.

Seeing past every veil. The same magic that creates illusions can pierce them just as easily. An Illusionist trained to detect deception often sees through a rival's tricks faster than anyone else in the room.

A borrowed face, a hidden nature. Disguise runs deep in the Discipline — not just a changed appearance, but the ability to mask one's very magical nature from detection entirely, walking through a room of suspicious mages without raising a single alarm.

Small wonders and quiet cons. Not every trick needs high stakes. An Illusionist can fake their own death convincingly enough to be left alone, throw their voice to create the impression of company that isn't there, or conjure a dozen small conveniences that make ordinary life easier.

The Discipline's real shame is the charlatan — an illusionist in name only, all flash and no substance, who fleeces the desperate and the gullible and calls it a living. Every honest Illusionist has met one, and every honest Illusionist resents being lumped in with them, because the whole point of the craft was never to exploit what people don't understand. It was to teach them to see clearly — even when what they're looking at was built, deliberately, to fool them.

The Nethermancer

Every settlement that sealed itself against the Scourge did it the same way: seal the doors, and don't ask what's on the other side of astral space. Nethermancers are the ones who never stopped asking. They're the people willing to stand at the threshold everyone else papered over — talking to what lives there, bargaining with it, occasionally dragging a piece of it through into daylight.

That's why they unsettle people who've never even seen them cast a spell. A Nethermancer doesn't glimpse astral space the way other magicians do, in flashes of concentration — they live half-aware of it constantly, spirits pressing at the edge of every room.

Wound, wither, and choke. This is the Nethermancer at their most direct — pulling harm out of astral space itself and pointing it at a target. A spear of pure ether. A grip that seizes hold of a body from the inside. A circle of freezing mist that leaves everyone but the caster gasping.

Slips through shadow to watch unseen. Nethermancers move through the world the way their allies move through astral space — sideways, and rarely where you'd expect. They melt into shadow, step bodily through it from one dark corner to another, eavesdrop on a private conversation through nothing but a wall's shadow, or borrow the eyes of the dead to watch a scene they were never present for.

Commands darkness and dread. Fear is a tool of the trade, not an accident of reputation. A Nethermancer can drown a room in unnatural dark, blind an enemy outright, or turn their own face into a gore-streaked skull to break an opponent's nerve before a blade is even drawn.

Wards the living from what shouldn't cross over. Not every working is offensive. Nethermancers know exactly what's on the other side of the veil, which makes them uniquely qualified to keep it out.

Lets a spirit's nature settle over an ally, at a cost. A Nethermancer can lend a companion the temperament of a spirit they've bound — the cold patience of a fog ghost, the brittle menace of something that used to be bone. It always costs something. Nobody wears a spirit's nature for free.

Calls something Other to answer. The signature act of the Discipline. Ritual circles scratched into bone or earth, tethers of shadow strung between two points, doorways opened just wide enough for something to step through. Most of what answers is willing, useful, even loyal. Some Nethermancers push further — into territory their own Discipline treats as forbidden.

Speaks with the dead, pulls the living back. Death doesn't end a Nethermancer's business with someone — it just changes the terms.

Barsaive tolerates its Nethermancers. It rarely trusts them. What outsiders rarely understand is the Discipline's one true taboo, and it isn't any of the grim business above — it's fear. A Nethermancer who flinches, hesitates, or lets dread take hold in the moment it matters has failed the single lesson their training insists on above all others: that fear is a tool to be used on others, never felt oneself.

The Scout

Every settlement on the edge of the wild depends on someone willing to go first. Before a caravan commits to a route, before a village decides whether a stretch of forest is safe to farm, before an adventuring party sets foot in a ruin nobody's opened in a generation, a Scout has usually already been there — or is about to be sent. It's a role built entirely on trust: the rest of Barsaive believes what a Scout reports back, because a Scout's whole discipline is built around seeing a place clearly rather than seeing what they hoped to find.

A sense for what's coming before it arrives. Long before formal danger presents itself, a Scout often already knows. It's not quite prophecy — more a trained, almost involuntary awareness that flinches at the wrongness of an ambush a half-second before it lands.

Ground that gives up its secrets. A trail that looks cold to anyone else can still speak to a Scout — a broken branch, a partial print, the wrong kind of quiet in an area that should have birdsong. That same eye turns just as easily to a crime scene or a ransacked camp, reconstructing exactly what happened and how.

A quiet word with the land itself. Some Scouts go further than reading a place — they talk to it. An elemental spirit, properly approached, will describe the safest way through unfamiliar territory. The most practiced Scouts send a small piece of that awareness ahead of them entirely: a spy-spirit that circles overhead, watching for anything unusual long before its summoner's boots ever arrive.

Locks, traps, and doors that were built to keep people out. Whether the job is a ruin, a vault, or a stretch of wilderness laced with old, forgotten wards, a Scout's hands are as trained as their eyes.

Underneath three faces of the Discipline — the wilderness Scout, the city Scout, the ruin-delving Scout — sits the same quiet discipline: move unseen, take everything in, and resist the pull to leave a mark on what you were only ever meant to witness. Most Scouts will tell you that's the hardest talent of all. Few will admit it openly, but most privately consider themselves a cut above the people who go crashing through the world without noticing any of it.

The Shaman

Most Namegivers who've never met one assume a Shaman is simply someone who lives rough and talks to animals — a curiosity, or worse, a savage who never learned better. Shamans mostly let the assumption stand. Explaining what it actually feels like to sense a beast spirit's presence pressing at the edge of a forest, or to feel the pull of your own patron spirit's judgment, isn't the kind of thing that translates well to someone who's spent their whole life inside walls.

A world that's never quite silent. Every Shaman carries a passive awareness of the beast spirits sharing whatever land they're standing on — not proof against every danger, but enough that a Shaman rarely feels truly alone in the wild the way other travelers do.

Borrowed shapes and borrowed strength. Some Shamans go further than conversation. They can take on an animal's own form for a time, gaining its senses and its body while keeping their own mind underneath, or lend a willing companion a measure of a spirit's nature — a wolf's ferocity in a fight, a bear's endurance against a long march — for as long as the spirit's patience holds.

A pack bound by blood. The deepest expression of the Discipline is communal. A Shaman who marks a group of companions as a single Pack, through ritual and a shared cost paid in blood, can work magic that ripples across every member at once.

A patron chosen, not assumed. Every Shaman's most consequential relationship isn't with a companion animal at all — it's with a single, powerful, Named spirit bound to them through a ritual sworn in blood. Some Shamans inherit this bond from a mentor, in an unbroken line reaching back generations; others forge it fresh, seeking out a spirit whose temperament matches their own philosophy.

Not every Shaman walks the same path with spirits. Beast spirits themselves vary just as widely: canine spirits value loyalty and trust; feline spirits are proud and difficult to earn; primate spirits are clever, social, and easily bruised in their pride; hoofed spirits are protective of their herds to a fault; raptor spirits hold themselves above nearly everyone; rodent spirits are curious, opportunistic, and rarely alone.

Underneath the wandering and the wildness sits a genuine, ongoing negotiation: the Shaman's own patterns and the spirits' patterns, walking side by side without either one dominating the other. Ask a Shaman whether they command their spirit companions or merely travel alongside them, and most will tell you plainly that the question itself misunderstands the relationship — a bond that has to be renewed and respected, not a tool that stays sharp on its own.

The Swordmaster

Every fighting Discipline in Barsaive can put someone down. Only a Swordmaster insists on doing it beautifully. Where a Warrior fights to end a threat and an Archer fights from a careful distance, a Swordmaster fights up close, in full view, and treats the fight itself as a kind of signature — a thing other people will describe to their friends afterward, whether the Swordmaster wins or not.

A blade that answers every question. At the core of the Discipline is straightforward swordplay, elevated by footwork and timing most fighters never bother to train. A Swordmaster can turn a defensive parry into the more dangerous half of the exchange, seize better footing mid-duel to make every subsequent strike count for more, or press an advantage with a second strike — sometimes from a second blade entirely.

Taking the weapon, not just the fight. Some Swordmasters measure a victory by whether they needed to draw blood at all. A well-placed disarm ends a fight as thoroughly as any wound, and leaves the loser with a story about the duel rather than a scar from it.

Words as sharp as steel. A Swordmaster's charm isn't separate from their swordplay — it's the same instinct pointed somewhere else. A dazzling first impression, a well-timed line of banter mid-fight, a dramatic exit line delivered just before walking away — all of it serves the same purpose a well-placed riposte does: controlling how the moment is remembered.

A sword with your name already on it. Tradition holds that somewhere in the world, one particular sword is waiting for one particular Swordmaster — and that finding it, learning its history, and living up to what it demands of its wielder is the great quest underlying the whole Discipline. Most Swordmasters never find theirs. The ones who do are the ones history remembers, sword and master woven together into a single legend.

Underneath the theatrics is a genuine tension every Swordmaster eventually has to sit with: style and survival don't always point the same direction. The showy parry, the dramatic exit, the duel accepted because walking away would look like cowardice — all of it can get a Swordmaster killed just as easily as it can make their reputation. Old teaching holds that every apprentice must learn to wield three blades with equal skill: "eyes to pierce, tongue to lash and sword to slash." Most eventually lean one way or the other — gallants toward charm and reputation, bladesmen toward a narrower, often lonelier mastery of the blade alone — and the rivalry between the two schools is as old as the Discipline itself.

The Thief

Every Namegiver in Barsaive who has ever learned a talent has, in a sense, stolen it — pulled an ability from the world's magic that would otherwise take years of ordinary effort to earn. Most adepts don't like to think of it that way. Thieves do, openly and without apology, and it's this honesty about the nature of their own power that actually defines the Discipline, more than any single skill on their roster.

A hand faster than suspicion. At the practical core of the craft is exactly what the reputation promises: locks that open without a key, purses that grow lighter without a hand ever being seen, small objects swapped so cleanly the mark never notices the trade.

A story always ready. Just as valuable as quick hands is a quicker tongue. A Thief caught somewhere they shouldn't be can spin suspicion onto someone else standing nearby. Some go further still, feigning their own death or wound so completely that onlookers simply look away.

A borrowed face. Disguise is as much a Thief's tool as a lockpick. A skilled Thief can walk as someone else entirely, holding the deception through real scrutiny and real pressure.

Not every Thief wants the same prize. Most chase material wealth, but a significant number hunt something less tangible. The thief of knowledge, sometimes called the spy, values a well-placed secret over a well-filled purse. The thief of love, the romancer, steals hearts instead of vaults, using charm and disguise to leave a trail of broken affections rather than empty strongboxes — though even this, practiced honestly, is meant as a strange kind of gift: showing someone a truth about their own heart they hadn't faced on their own.

That's the line every honest Thief tries to hold — that even theft, done right, gives something back. The ones who lose sight of it walk what's known as the way of selfishness: taking from friends as readily as strangers, hoarding every gain instead of returning any of it to the world, trusting no one because trust is a weakness a thief like that can't afford. They mourn lost loot the way other people mourn a friend, because loot is the only thing they've let themselves love. Most Thieves who hear of one on that path don't feel contempt so much as something closer to pity — a fellow adept who forgot that the gift of theft was ever supposed to be a gift at all.

The Troubadour

No deed in Barsaive truly survives on its own. Without someone to carry it forward — into the next town, the next generation, the next fireside gathering — even the greatest act of heroism fades into rumor and then into nothing. Troubadours are the ones who refuse to let that happen, and the ones who understand, better than almost anyone else in Barsaive, that a society's memory is as fragile and as precious as any single life within it. They serve two Passions above all others: Astendar, who gives them their music, and Mynbruje, who gives them their truth.

A voice that can move a room. At its simplest, the craft is performance — songs and stories delivered with enough skill that even a tale everyone already knows lands fresh every time. A Troubadour can turn a whole audience toward a single shared feeling, hope or fury or grief, aimed wherever the song points.

A truer read than words alone give. Beneath the performance is a quieter, sharper skill: reading what someone actually feels beneath what they're saying, and knowing exactly what encouragement will land at exactly the moment someone's resolve is about to break.

The keeper of what's true. Every Troubadour is also, in some sense, a historian — a repository of legend, lore, and the small true details that would otherwise vanish with the person who lived them. Study an old blade or a family heirloom long enough and a Troubadour can draw out a piece of its forgotten history.

This is also where the Discipline's real danger lives. Whoever controls what gets remembered controls a society's sense of itself, and Troubadours know it — which is exactly why the honest ones hold themselves apart from politics and patronage, answering to truth rather than to whoever's paying for the song. Two temptations pull at every Troubadour from opposite directions: losing themselves entirely in the tale, so thoroughly swept into the tapestry of a story that they forget where it ends and they begin — and the quieter, guiltier failure of turning away from a story that needed telling. Most Troubadours will tell you the second failure is the one that actually haunts them.

The Warrior

Every fighting Discipline in Barsaive claims some piece of what a Warrior is, but none of them claim all of it. A Warrior doesn't need a sword's edge or a bow's range or a shield-brother's charge — strip away every weapon in reach and a Warrior is still dangerous, because the actual weapon was never the steel. It was always the training underneath it.

A body that turns anything into a weapon. At the foundation of the Discipline is pure adaptability. A Warrior fights as well with a borrowed chair or a fallen branch as with a forged blade. Warriors who've walked the path long enough will tell you plainly: their wits are their greatest weapon, and everything else is just what happened to be within reach.

A body built to endure. Alongside offense sits a deep, deliberate toughness. A Warrior's skin can take on the resilience of bark early in training, and — once seasoned and unhurt — something far deeper and stranger later on: flesh drawn through with astral cold, hardened against harm for a full day at a time.

A body that refuses to fall. Whether standing firm against a blow that should have leveled them, driving a shield into an opponent hard enough to put them on the ground, or moving with an unnatural, gliding lightness that shouldn't be possible in armor, a Warrior treats their own stability as a weapon in its own right.

Underneath all of it sits the oldest teaching of the Discipline: the shield matters more than the sword, because it is better to avoid a killing blow than to land one. A true Warrior fights with clarity, not hatred — hate clouds the strike and serves no one — and holds no grudge past the fight that created it. Yesterday's enemy, once the battle's over, is yesterday's problem; only the fight in front of them today is real. The hardest lesson isn't how to win a battle. It's learning which battles are worth fighting at all, and which are simply pride wearing armor.

The Weaponsmith

Nearly every community in Barsaive holds its Weaponsmith in genuine esteem, and for good reason — a good Weaponsmith is as much a keeper of a settlement's memory and safety as any Troubadour or guard captain. The forge draws people in the way a hearth does, and a Weaponsmith who's tended one for years knows more about their neighbors' troubles than most would ever admit out loud.

Craft that outlasts the craftsman. The foundation of the Discipline is exactly what the name promises: real skill at making and mending weapons and armor, refined into something more. A properly forged blade or shield can be reinforced through days of careful, deliberate ritual work — a lifetime's worth of care poured into objects meant to protect the people who carry them.

A will forged like a blade. The same patient, repeated pressure that goes into tempering steel goes into a Weaponsmith's own resolve. They resist magic aimed against them with a hardness other Disciplines rarely match, and can even draw astral cold over their own body in a rare, demanding ritual — but only when they're already whole.

A memory kept in iron. Study a blade or a suit of armor long enough and a Weaponsmith can draw out a piece of its forgotten history — whose hands shaped it, whose hands carried it, what it's witnessed. This is why so many old weapons in Barsaive still have names.

Every Weaponsmith eventually feels the pull toward something larger than ordinary craft: a heartblade, a single weapon meant to hold everything they are, poured into metal over months or years or an entire lifetime. Finishing one is rare. Most Weaponsmiths spend decades on the attempt and call the effort itself worthwhile. Alongside that quiet ambition sits an equally quiet code: a Weaponsmith's oath is treated with the same seriousness as their steel, and breaking one can see them cast out of every forge that would otherwise welcome them.

The Wizard

Every Discipline in Barsaive touches magic, but only Wizards insist on understanding it — really understanding it, down to the theoretical bones. Where a Nethermancer feels the netherworlds in their gut and an Elementalist reads an element's temperament, a Wizard wants the underlying architecture: what a thing truly is, beneath what it merely appears to be, and why that distinction matters enough to build an entire Discipline around it.

Symbols made real. The foundation of Wizardry is the belief that ordinary objects and ideas connect to a deeper, truer version of themselves — a throne isn't just a chair, because "throne" reaches toward something real in a place Wizards call the Realm of Ideas. Learning to see and manipulate that connection is what actually powers a Wizard's magic.

Magic turned against magic. No Discipline understands the architecture of spellcasting itself better than a Wizard, and it shows in their specialty: dispelling another caster's work outright, or saturating an area with astral interference thick enough to make every spell nearby — including their own — harder to cast.

A mind that reads more than words. Wizardly research extends past books and into people — sensing the true direction of a person or object through nothing but a personal connection, masking their own magical nature from detection, or gently mesmerizing someone into warmer feelings than they started with.

Slow, patient unmaking. At the harder edge of the craft sit spells built to wear a target down over time rather than all at once — curses that sap strength month by month, fogs that cloud a mind's ability to act with purpose. Wizards, ever the patient scholars, are comfortable playing a longer game than most other casters bother with.

For all the genuine brilliance the Discipline demands, Wizards carry a reputation problem they mostly deserve: an intellectual snobbery toward magic learned by instinct rather than study, and a habit of looking down on anyone who reached the same destination by a shorter road. Other magicians call them "book magicians" when they think a Wizard can't hear.