Mage Society

Mage society did not emerge in a single place or from a single tradition. Across the eight domains, isolated groups of essence-sensitives developed their own methods, rituals, and hierarchies over thousands of cycles. What eventually unified them — loosely, and often violently — was the formation of the Inter-Realm Compact, a framework of shared law that recognized mage practitioners as a protected class with rights to pursue research, trade, and political organization across realm boundaries.

The Compact is not a government. It has no standing army and no treasury. It is better understood as a shared agreement not to destroy each other without due process. Beneath it, mage society is organized into dynastic houses, each with its own seat of power, patron realm, and area of essence specialization. Some houses have existed for sixty generations. Others rose recently, built on newly discovered essence strains or the political fallout of older houses collapsing.

Admission into a house is partly hereditary and partly achieved. Every mage child with detectable essence sensitivity is catalogued at birth, assigned a provisional house affiliation based on parentage, and assessed over the following decade for aptitude, character, and potential. Those who pass formal initiation are granted full house standing. Those who do not are classified as unaligned — not powerless, but without institutional backing.