Ask Luna #74

From: Arenna

Hai Luna,
When is Alex is going to realize that Anne is in love with him?

Not touching that one with a 10-foot pole.

From: Hrok

Hi Luna!

What is the difference between Fate and Chance magic? Also how far out can Fate magic work? For instance, can a Fate mage set an individuals destiny so that something will happen decades in the future, or is it like divining that the farther you go the harder it is to effect. sorry about all the questions obscure magic types, its just that the more “divine” magic types like fate and wish magic fascinate me.

Okay, so first of all, I don’t actually have any first-hand experience of this, so everything from here on is all second-hand. But it is something I asked Alex about a fair bit, so here’s the short version of what he told me.

Fate and chance magic are similar in the same way that lightning and fire magic are similar – they have similar strengths and weaknesses, and the end result when you use them tends to be pretty much the same, but the way they do it is different. Chance magic works by bending luck, so that something that might happen under very very unlikely circumstances happens exactly when you need it. Fate magic works by selecting a path that you want to happen. They can both do the same sorts of things, but the mindset is different. When I’m using my magic, I often don’t know exactly what I’m aiming for – I just make myself lucky, and I trust that it’ll work out somehow. From what I understand, that kind of thing doesn’t work for fate magic. You have to know exactly what you’re trying to do, and if you pick something that’s too unlikely, it won’t work at all. To be honest, Alex made it sound as though it was a lot weaker than my own kind is, but he claims it’s a lot more precise, which I guess has its upsides.

From: Kate Gowers

Can mages stop being mages?

What I mean is, it seems to me that a mage’s life kinda sucks, especially if they have any kind of moral compass. You’re constantly in danger of death (or worse), the mage world is morally dubious at best (Light or Dark – doesn’t matter), it’s tough to fit into ‘normal’ circles and have a ‘normal’ life. Unless you’re completely amoral (or immoral), there seem to be few benefits from where I’m sitting. In addition, there’s still politics, bureaucracy, back stabbing and the like.

I’m not really seeing an upside here…so if you’ve discovered you’ve got magical powers, can you just ignore them and avoid mage society all together?

Yeah, you can, and a lot of them do. It’s not something mages like to talk about, probably for exactly the reasons you just listed, but it happens – more often for adepts than mages, but pretty often for mages too. It’s hard to guess exactly how often, since it’s hard to count people who aren’t there, but according to some of the guesses I’ve heard it’s actually the most common way that mages check out.

It’s more extreme than just ignoring your powers. From what I’ve heard, if you really reject your abilities and decide you don’t want them, then you usually get your wish. Magic’s hard – you have to train and practice. If you go out of your way not to, then it’s like never training a muscle. I’ve had some people claim that if you go without using magic long enough then you lose it completely, like a bird that lets its wings get so weak that it can’t fly. Maybe they end up deciding that they just imagined the whole thing and convince themselves that magic isn’t real at all. It probably makes their life easier that way.

From: Blackmass

in the Mage Justice system an I use that word loosely what happens to criminal mages who are no sentenced to death for their crimes do the council have their own Azakaban?

There are prisons, but they’re only for prisoners awaiting trial. The Council doen’t really do ‘sentenced for X years’ as a punishment, probably because confining mages and adepts is really hard and they don’t want to do it long-term. Generally the sentences that are less than death amount to some type of fine or probation or service.