Re: Ways to Gain Magery?
Get good at music. Find a fairy circle and try to survive the night under hill. If you do, you emerge seven years later with bardic magic.
Go a place that man has not yet gone, and commune with the spirit of that place to learn its spells. (Man has now gone most even remotely accessible places).
Die and get revived. Roughly 1 in 3 odds that someone without magic returns with, apparently.
Make love to a succubus. Impress her enough that she decides not to steal your soul, and instead tells you secrets of magic. (Boy, do more would-be mages die trying this one.)
Find a magical being and chimerize yourself with it, gaining its power. Intelligent magical beings are more likely to grant you spells, and more useful spells, but of course are unethical to do this to without consent, and rarely consent unless they are in grave peril. It also tends to have personality effects. Means that affect your body less involve drinking concoctions of their blood, or eating their heart, brains, liver, or, if applicable, mana organs. Naturally, the effects are much weaker, and tend to fade unless a stady diet is maintained.
Find and walk the ancient neolithic stone circle complexes now called the Runic Mazes. The only way through ends up being a route that corresponds to a rune, and figuring out your passage becomes your course of study in that skill. Fortunately, failure doesn't usually involve dying, but not even rune mages can help you through -- you won't learn it if you're told how to get through!
Steal a Spellthief's Eye from its current user. Corpse robbery is permissible but the resulting Eye casts at 1 less level of Magery.
(Not worth adventures, but common means in fantasy:
Be sufficiently holy and have it granted by the gods.
Take lessons from tutors with rare books and lots of lab work from childhood until almost middle age. Very expensive, very reliable.
Become a hermit at one with nature. Go 10 years without speaking to another human. Learn natural magic.)
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