What makes a wizard?

[hcobb]

Here's my answer, from Curse of the Necropus. What's yours?

At the end of the day on Friday you are sitting alone with her on the patio when she says "Teach me to be a wizard."
"You're too old to become a wizard."
"How is this the one thing I'm not too young for?"
"How do you stand up?"
"What does that have to do with it? I've got legs and I stand on the ground."
"You can stand because you are aware of the physical world around you. Your senses let you react automatically for sloping ground, gusts of wind and everything else."
"Don't you do the same when you walk around?"
"When I was six they broke my soul. There will always be a fracture right down the middle. Only half of me is here with you in this physical world and it will always be twice as difficult for me to learn mundane skills because half of my attention is always in a far different place balancing not against physical ground and winds but instead against the local flow of mana."
"Can't you at least teach me spells?"
"I can, but it will be very very difficult for you. I will have to teach you to go through the same exact motions, say the same exact things, think the same exact thoughts over and over and over again, because you will never hear the echoes of your own soul against the local mana field."

[amenditman]

That is the best answer I have ever read.

[Skarg]

Yes, excellent.

[JohnPaulB]

Originally Posted by hcobb

Here's my answer, from Curse of the Necropus. What's yours?

At the end of the day on Friday you are sitting alone with her on the patio when she says "Teach me to be a wizard."
"You're too old to become a wizard."
"How is this the one thing I'm not too young for?"
"How do you stand up?"
"What does that have to do with it? I've got legs and I stand on the ground."
"You can stand because you are aware of the physical world around you. Your senses let you react automatically for sloping ground, gusts of wind and everything else."
"Don't you do the same when you walk around?"
"When I was six they broke my soul. There will always be a fracture right down the middle. Only half of me is here with you in this physical world and it will always be twice as difficult for me to learn mundane skills because half of my attention is always in a far different place balancing not against physical ground and winds but instead against the local flow of mana."
"Can't you at least teach me spells?"
"I can, but it will be very very difficult for you. I will have to teach you to go through the same exact motions, say the same exact things, think the same exact thoughts over and over and over again, because you will never hear the echoes of your own soul against the local mana field."

I like your concept very much.

So it seems to me that the other psychic half of the world would have as much chance of psychic terrain and animals and life as the physical plane. Would it be like the Astral Plane?

Also if "they" broke his soul, which I guess means he went to magic school, there are other ways of breaking the soul that are not on purpose? Could there also be a quarter broken soul where the semi-wizard is less in the psychic realm, but also not entirely in the physical realm?

[hcobb]

I'm still working on the wording for why wizards aren't crippled in combat.

I'm leaning towards they see strange stuff all of the time (c.f. Ice King in Adventure Time), but that every living thing and physical object casts its own disturbance in "The Force".(t.m. Disney)

A wizard looking out into complete darkness sees all kinds of things all the time, but once they cast light (or Mage Sight) the two halves of their brain click onto what's real.