From: Orion
Hi, I was interested in the abilities that space mages and life mages have? Also, do mages have an increased lifespan compared to humans?
Life mages are healers. They can fix just about anything that’s wrong with a body, and they can fiddle around with its systems too – changing how fast their hair grows, when they wake up and fall asleep, hold their breath for longer, that sort of thing. They’re sort of the all-purpose doctors of the magical world. For some reason a lot of other mages seem to be a bit suspicious of them, but I’m not sure why.
Space mages, see below. They seem to be flavour of the week.
As far as I know mages don’t live any longer than normal people do. They do get access to life magic treatments and pretty good medical care, so they live a long time, but sooner or later they die of old age, same as anyone else. Some of them don’t like that, so they use magic to do something about it.
Life extension seems to be a touchy subject for mages – it kills a conversation pretty fast if you bring it up. It’s one of those areas they don’t like to talk about, and after the last guy I saw who went in for life extension I can see why.
From: Orion
Hi, I was wondering what Alex Verus’s real name is and why he changed it? Also, is it possible for a mage to be a hybrid of two different families of magic? For instance a wind mage who can use some mind magic etc.
Uh, as far as I know Alex’s real name is Alex. Why do you think he changed it?
As I understand it there are lots and lots of mages who can use different types of magic, but they aren’t really hybrids, it’s just the way their magic works. All the magic types are just names. Like you could say that someone’s an air mage who could use mind magic, or you could just say that affecting minds is part of air magic and it’s the air mages who can’t use mind magic who are the ‘hybrids’.
From: Kate
Hey, Luna
How do you know if you’re a sensitive? It’s hard to tell genuinely oogie-boogie feelings from a general morass of modern anxiety, but every now and then something really strong comes through and it’s a bit of a shocker.
I’d be the first to be sceptical, to be honest, so how to tell a truly sensitive reaction from perfectly normal paranoia and stress? Just ‘cos you can’t see ’em doesn’t mean they aren’t after you…
It’s a good question, I don’t really know. I used to be pretty much the same as you – I’d get the odd weird feeling but I’d never pay attention and pretty soon I’d forget about it. Sometimes I wonder if all kids are sensitive, they just grow out of it.
With me what made the difference was when I was told about my curse. I’d been kind of half-aware of it but I’d never really let myself think about it, but once I absolutely knew that it was real and couldn’t pretend anymore then it changed things. It’s like when someone shows you the difference between a real and a fake – you only need it to happen once and then you can’t help noticing it even if you don’t want to. From then on I could tell the difference too. Wasn’t much consolation at the time.
From: Flora
Dear Luna,
What are ‘space mages’ (I think Alex mentioned them) and what is it that they can do?
According to the teacher who covered it in class a while back, space mages are supposed to be all about transportation and remote viewing, and they can do weird Star-Trek stuff like warping space to make it longer or shorter. Their magic isn’t supposed to be offensive at all, just designed for movement and storing objects and stuff.
The one space mage I’ve actually MET was completely crazy and trying to kill all of us, so I wasn’t exactly taking notes. He could blink around with some sort of instant teleportation thing and do this freaky distorting spell which shredded everything inside it, which according to that idiot teacher wasn’t supposed to be possible. Next time someone tells me a magic type “isn’t offensive” I’m not listening.