[whswhs]

Here's a different puzzle:

My initial scenario involve Romani children being taken from their parents, under an excuse contrived under the first child protective law of the late 19th century. Most of them are made available for adoption into English families; but those who test positive for magical potential on a predictive statistical algorithm get sent to a residential clinic for "abnormal children," actually a Technocracy lab/construct.

As part of what they go through there, they're subjected to a procedure that tries to trigger an analog of Awakening—but a controlled one; it doesn't give them full access to their Avatar, but only allows them to manifest fixed effects. In effect, it makes the child's body and brain into a biological Talisman. For example, one of the children has Better Body (structured so that successive dots go into Strength, Appearance, Strength, Strength, and Stamina) and Self-Healing (restoring 0, 2, 6, 8, or 10 Health Levels of injuries).

So how does this procedure work? It's somewhat akin to Gilgul, in that it limits access to the Avatar; but it doesn't destroy the Avatar, which would be level 5, so it's probably level 4. On the other hand, Technocracy practitioners don't believe in the supernatural or have access to the supernatural spheres. So it can't actually be Spirit magic. And I don't think it quite works as Dimension magic, because I don't see the Technocracy as thinking of the Avatar as an alien symbiont. (Well, maybe a few Void Engineers use that version!)

Reality is subjective, so if the Technocracy think of enlightenment differently, it works somewhat differently. So what I came up with was Life 4, to modify the brain so that the genetic potential for reality deviance was placed under control, supplemented by Mind 1, to guide the Life procedures to affect just the right brain centers, the ones that grant Awareness (which the children no longer are capable of) and make contact with the Avatar. So in effect what the Residential Clinic for Abnormal Children is doing is creating children with superpowers (I described this to C and she said, "Dark Professor X!").

The abilities gained function enough like static magic to be coincidental, even if they're outside the normal spectrum. (Of course, the Progenitor involved may be suffering Paradox!) But they are powered by Quintessence. So once a child has used their powers too many times, their internal Quintessence battery is empty and they start draining their own Health Levels and becoming ill. But that's a plot for a later story.

This is a lot more handwavy than the last rote. But I think at least making it level 4 is justifiable.