To the humes of Azaleon, magic is a new concept. Those humes capable of it are few, but it is common in ilim, enough that most ilim have a natural aptitude with it, and many weres will spontaneously develop it sooner or later. Humes innately fear sorcery and aura manipulation, as most with the ability to use it go mad at some point. For some, it happens quickly, while for others, it takes a long time, and where one falls along this spectrum is, as of now, seemingly random. Ilim and weres are not known to have this issue.
Sorcery is powered with aura, and the terms magic and sorcery are used interchangeably. Some also use sorcery and aura interchangeably, but there is a difference, as sorcery works different than raw aura manipulation.
Magic in humes only began occurring 30 years prior to Messiah's start. Roughly ten years later surfaced the prophecy of the Messiah.
Aura
While it is not understood in our world setting by those that live in Azaleon, aura is the natural energy of all living things. People, and animals and plants, naturally generate, release, and regenerate, small amounts of aura throughout their lives, in a constant cycle. Magi, thus, learn to consciously channel and control this aura, which allows them to affect the natural world in a variety of ways.
Aura is immaterial, inherently ethereal, and invisible to the untrained eye. It gathers and pools around and within living things, in some way or another; even the earth itself has notable amounts of aura within its make-up. In the world of Azaleon, aura is a very basic building block of life in general, akin perhaps to carbon or atoms. Aura is the science, and the science is aura, and the two must be kept in balance, or both will go out of control.
Those living in Azaleon do not fully understand aura, and there are no hume masters of it. The humes, up until recently, have not had the opportunity to see its effects for themselves, and no study regarding aura, its make-up, or effects, have really been wide-spread performed. Some research into the semantics of sorcery and how it works, and subsequently why it drives humes insane to use it, is becoming more common, generally only in the Western Free Cities. Jihon, on the other hand, has essentially banned nearly all usage of aura and auratech in its borders, and the penalty of violating this ban is death.
Aura is neither created, nor destroyed. There is a finite amount of aura in the universe, and one needs it present in order to fully harness the possibilities of sorcery. Many of those that have never seen it used for themselves before will deny aura even exists. Those who have seen it, but do not have the ability to manipulate it themselves, often fear it, not only for its unknown properties, but for its penchant for turning men into psychopaths. Even many of those that can manipulate it will fear using it, for they must be careful in doing so, and each usage of it pushes the countdown to their insanity ever lower. This is the foundation on which mage discrimination built itself, albeit it grips some regions tighter than others.
One can think of aura as a river. There is a river of aura that flows within, to, and from, every living thing, some large, rushing rivers, others small, trickling streams. All aura is only borrowed, and when the time comes, it must be given back.
Applications
Raw Aura
Manipulating aura in its natural state, without transforming it into anything else, is ostensibly more powerful and useful than the usage and application of sorcery, and there are many different circles of belief in regard to this. Some magi view sorcery as more of a way of killing time, gaining a greater understanding of aura and how it interacts with the natural world, and a way of showing off. Sorcery, unlike manipulating unchanged aura, has innate limitations, and some view that as a severe drawback of learning sorcery itself.
All magi can, innately, manipulate aura well enough to cause simplistic effects, such as forming artificial lights, or sensing the aura of others. The latter has decent use in path-finding and tracking, if one becomes skilled enough in aura sensing that they can pin-point individual signatures, or even tell hume aura residue from the residue of a gazelle's aura. The principles and capabilities of raw aura use go beyond this. Missiles and bolts of energy are common sights in mage battles, as well as the formation of defensive barriers. A skilled aura manipulator can use raw aura to wreak as much havoc as he would with advanced sorcery.
Raw aura manipulation requires little knowledge of its interaction with natural forces, whereas sorcery must be fundamentally understood, on a scientific level, before it can be mastered to any sort of significant extent. However, raw aura cannot take the forms of elements or solid objects, and inherently, its use is somewhat limited in that if one has need of a fire whip, they'll need sorcery to get it. As such, aura manipulation versus sorcery is really a give-and-take. It depends almost entirely on what one needs, which one to use, and while sorcery is difficult to master, it is certainly more rewarding and versatile.
Sorcery
Everything in the world can be broken down into elements, primal forces present in varying degrees within any given thing. In the right combinations and formations, these forces comprise everything. Magi often possess an innate affinity for one given element, a natural connection to that type of sorcery, and an innate level of aptitude with it. While other elements can be learned to be controlled, it takes time, effort, practise, and rarely is it ever as strong as one's affinity at the end of it all.
Elements and sorcery cannot be created from nothing, as aura cannot, either. Magi have not learned yet to transmute one element into another, so the element they wish to manipulate must be present in their environment. The relevance of this limitation varies widely, as for some, their element is always, or almost always, present in some manner, while for others, their element is more rare. For instance, air magi rarely have trouble using their sorcery, but fire magi need at least a spark, and may have a hard time finding it.
Sorcery follows some very strict patterns and rules for its use. One does not simply create a tornado, set it on fire, and cut it loose. Such a haphazard creation would almost immediately fall apart. One must understand every aspect of how the wind of the tornado moves, how varying environmental factors will affect it, how it interacts with the flames, and so on.
Creation of advanced sorcery effects requires a solid understanding of the elements, how they interact with each other and the natural world, and the physics behind how they work. As such, only nobility really begin to get a solid, notable grasp of sorcery itself, as it requires a lot of learning, practise, and research, to understand how to pull off advanced effects. However, the things one can do with sorcery is not as limited as that which one can manage with raw aura, as sorcery innately takes on natural elements, and causes effects in-line with those elements' effects. Ergo, fire sorcery often can burn, and these function somewhat like free firepower without the work to get it.
Known affinities are: air; earth; fire; water; lightning; ice; light; and shadow. All affinities, if used right, can heal, and all can be used destructively.
Empathy
Extremely rare, and dangerous, an art, empathy is the ability to detect the current emotional state of others, and their overall well-being. Though this is not mind-reading, the specific combination of emotions may hint at potential thought processes. This can be reversed, as well, with an empath forcing emotions onto others, ergo, inciting an animal into a rage, improving the attitude of strangers toward them, or transferring pain from one to another. However, the target of such things must have some, even small, sliver of that emotion already present, thereby an empath simply exacerbates what is already there.
The powers of empathy are innately wild. An untrained empath does not use their abilities actively, instead the world pours its information into their head, unbridled. They cannot select what to sense, what to block out, and without training, or a calm environment in which to spend their life, they easily, and often much quicker than most magi, go mad from overexposure. Proper training is often even very difficult to come by, as only two bloodlines carry the trait, and it skips generations at times. One cannot, however, curb the constant information overload on their own enough to begin sorting through how to control it, and part of the function of a mentor is to calm the tsunami of emotional information enough the inexperienced empath can begin to recognise what is them, and what is external, and learn to keep control over it.
When properly trained, empaths can become incredibly powerful. Skilled empaths can filter the sounds of the world around them, pin-pointing an individual in a crowded room, or from miles away. They can easily call out another on a lie, or influence them into telling the truth. They can sense the physical ails of others, making them superb healers. Those with complete mastery can even mentally dissect the minds of others, permanently alter them, or destroy them altogether.
Empathy has been present, only in hume lineages, for hundreds of years, now, and all empaths have direct descent from another. Only two lineages now live that carry the trait, and these lines do not often produce magi, making it go almost entirely unnoticed up to now. One of these two lines are House Kenleigh. Kenleigh have satellite branches, distantly related houses that may, at some point, have an empath in their line.
Prescience
It is, perhaps, not a specific aura art, but more of a random ability that cannot be controlled, and unlike empathy, a seer cannot be taught to control it, either. Seers receive visions of events, sometimes these have yet to occur, already have occurred, or are occurring at the time they receive the vision. However, the visions never make direct sense; visions are relayed in a series of symbolic imagery, and each seer must interpret what this means for themselves. This can, at times, take rather the large period of time to make sense of. When a seer has a vision, they tend to space out, their eyes gaining slightly glowing lines of gold within the iris.
Some in the highly religious Jihon, and the heavily spiritual Galace, believe that seers were chosen by the gods, to lead the people in the right direction. Not all those with prescience are also magi, and in some areas, very densely populated cities where large religious centres are, they may be promoted as religious leaders, and occasionally almost outright deified. Cults to the Dalmascan god Ytias, the god of light, and Oanke, the goddess of creation, may also do the same thing, if they find a particularly knowledgeable seer, that is capable of making sense of his or her visions in short order. Such orders that do so are often quite fanatical, however.
Prescience, as with all magic, comes with a drawback. Magi and empaths lose their minds, and seers, "blessed" with the "Eyes of Oanke," live very short lives, rarely making it past twenty years of age, and never beyond twenty five, as each vision takes some more of their life force. Having them thus slowly whittles away their lifespan, and the closer they come to their set death, the harder those visions become on them. Often, they'll die on the spot after their last vision, and thus far, none have been able to save a seer whose time is up. They know, most of the time, the day they will die, and also understand that time is a tricky thing to mess with, and even if one could be saved, it may cause unintended, disastrous side-effects.
Curiously, two seers, in close proximity of one another, will suppress one another's visions. They do not stop entirely, but slow in frequency enough, if they remain in general vicinity of one another for an extended period of time, may extend their lifespan. There are no instances of this happening in Azaleon, and so in-character, none are aware of this. In recent years, many seers have stopped having visions at all, while others still get them occasionally, but never see anything beyond the time when the Messiah is meant to unleash his aurora. Seers know these points, these major events that must happen, as fixed points, which cannot be changed, and the timeline seemingly stopping on one is an indicator that it will change, severely impacting the course of time after it.
Auratech
Spearheaded by the Free Cities of Haradi and Saqqara, and the ilim of Galace, auratech is a new technological movement, still somewhat foreign to much of Azaleon, in which the effects of aura manipulation are combined with man-made machinery. Often, auratech is more stable than technology by itself, and the use of it doesn't have the same effects on humes as direct aura manipulation and sorcery. It is unknown if it ever will, and top auratech engineers admit it may be delayed.
Agricultural and textile efforts are often now aided by auratech, in regions it is used in. Thermal engines have been created by generating an aura cycle of hot and cold. Varying household items can also be imbued with aura, and in some cases, auratech works instead like what the modern real-world knows as a program, essentially an infinitely looped effect. Lights and electrical power is possible, powered by aura, in large cities, and tall crystal pillars and chandeliers have been created which burn off loose aura in the atmosphere. Aura lights naturally dim at night, and particularly large, aura-powered machinery, which require large amounts of aura, will stop working at night, and not work at all in sparsely populated areas. In the Free Cities, aura-powered airships, cannons, and firearms, are becoming more common, and Saqqara and Haradi both now boast aura-powered sentry towers.
The Galacese have gone a slightly different route, developing weapons and armour items that channel aura into specially-crafted designs, to produce specific effects. The aura bow, and the aura shield, will generate the seemingly missing pieces of themselves, and the bow fires aura bolts. Some weaponry, such as swords and gauntlets, may perform unique tricks, such as releasing extra features, claws on a set of gauntlets, when the aura lines are tripped, or pooling loose aura into offensive, low level aura bolts.
Each country, and its leaders, have differing ideas about how inherently dangerous, and thereby how legal, auratech usage should be. Different kinds of auratech also have differing levels of legality, thereby how common, and how advanced, the auratech in a specific region is, varies wildly. Dalmasca, for instance, are fine with aura lights, but anything more complicated is technically illegal, whereas Galace, and several of the Free Cities, use auratech in nearly any application they can find an excuse to.
Mage Insanity
Hume mages, up until recently, have consistently fallen into a state of insanity. This is really more like an intense confusion, borne of being overwhelmed, making it difficult to remember things, and tell one thing from another. It also tends to make them very paranoid. Despite the tales, mage insanity does not always manifest as extreme violence, just often enough that other humes are quite terrified of it happening.
This insanity is caused by the sudden reconnection to the natural world that hume mages experience. While only the ilim and perhaps a few of the older, experienced weres, may be able to identify what causes this, humes generally do not know, and do not care to know. This reconnection with the natural world allows humes to sense the cycle of life and death, the constant shifts in the balance of aura flow, and this sudden awareness, without time to acclimate to that awareness, becomes overwhelming eventually, without proper guidance. The ilim and weres have almost always sensed this flow of energy, and thus do not suddenly fall to madness from being overwhelmed.
Because humes do not understand what causes it, they tend to take shortcuts. In Dalmasca and Jihon, and in most of southern Macenia, they simply end a mage's life when they reach the point of being overwhelmed. In the Free Cities, Galace, and northern Macenia, however, effort is made to mitigate, or outright prevent, such an occurrence. This is why mages tend to do better in the Free Cities than Dalmasca or Jihon, and depending on which tribe they're near in Macenia, may do better or not.