Magic in Albion exists on a spectrum - or rather a series of spectrums, including raw capacity, training, natural inclination, and of course the way that their lives to a particular point have shaped their experience of magic. In terms of capacity, people fall into one of three groups: lightly magical, competent, and high capacity.
The majority of people with magic in Albion (about 50%) are what might be called lightly magical. They have enough magical ability or natural talent to be recognised as magical and make their oath under
the Pact, choosing to live in magical society (or in a mix of magical and non-magical, if they prefer). They may use magic for smaller, easier to sustain tasks, like lighting charms, but may not have enough oomph for, say, a complicated working that will create long-standing wards.
Mostly, the way they use magic in their lives is fairly simple. It's about keeping the milk sweet a little longer, or fueling some labour-saving or otherwise helpful magical household devices like stoves and keep-cool boxes. The salves they make for scrapes and cuts do a little better at preventing infections. Their anti-pest charms keep a number of kinds of disease at least somewhat at bay.
These are relatively small things on one hand, but on the other, give a certain amount of quiet advantage, especially over time. They certainly improve the quality of life overall, and that's a good thing!
Many of these folks are working in agricultural settings, fishing, simple crafting, or other kinds of employment where magic isn't terribly relevant, but there's a wide range of occupations where they can find a place, depending on interests, other training, and the opportunities they have or seek out.
Most of my characters are somewhere in the 'moderate and higher' range, but a couple of my characters fit into this category:
Ferry (who eventually learns to use her rather delicate magic to a much greater benefit), or Thalia in
Mistress of Birds.
On the other end of the scale, about 13% of the population is very strongly magical, inherently. Strong magic can present risks if it's untrained, so it's to Albion's advantage to identify these people, and make sure they get at least enough training that their magic won't put other people near them at risk.
This works better for some people than others:
Rufus Pride was identified as strongly magical, but the War interfered with his training (and his social background pushed him into a kind of training that didn't as much use of his strength of magic as it could have.)
Lists here are complicated by the fact that at the highly specialised end of the magical pool, it can be hard to distinguish between strength of magic (capacity), skill in using it (how good someone is at managing their magic), and range of knowledge (how many things someone has learned to do with their magic.)
Gabe and
Mason, like all their fellow
Penelopes, tend to be strongly magical (essential, in their line of work), but they're also all fundamentally magpies about picking up new magical skills. Their job, after all, is to figure out what's going on magically so they can undo it or mitigate it as needed.
Council Members (
Cyrus,
Mabyn, and
Alexander, for example) are fundamentally, both very strong magically and experts with their chosen forms of magic. But they may have other areas of magic that they largely ignore. (See most all of them ignoring astronomy and its magical implications, unless they happen to need that skill.) While a number of the Council are skilled duellists, at least a third of them aren't.
Finally, there are people somewhere in the middle (37% or so). They may have an overall lower capacity for magic than the highly magical, or they may have funnelled their knowledge into different directions.
Thesan (in
Eclipse and
Chasing Legends) is a good example here: her beloved
astronomy is very useful in magic, and she's quite familiar with both chronological and locatational magic. But she hasn't built up the stamina for long-term workings, an extended duel, or something of that kind, and most of her classwork relies on a relatively small set of charms for indexing, filing, marking assignments, and keeping track of who is lurking around the Astronomy platform.
In contrast, the
Portal Keepers like
Rathna and
Avigail in
The Fossil Door have a particular kind of magical inclination (think of it something like being an amazing singer, or excellent at a specific sport). Their gift isn't so dependent on raw power or capacity, but in how they can channel and direct the energies of the earth beneath their feet, modulated by the type of portal, into something that allows a particular magical potential to grow in a place. Sometimes raw strength just isn't that important.
Finally, some positions require particular kinds of magical ability, and again, strength is only part of that equation.
Lords and Ladies, those who directly uphold the land magic obligations must be able to channel the magic of the land rites properly - this usually takes both some degree of inherent talent and inclination, and also some training. (
The Hare and the Oak looks at this in the greatest detail.) If the land is tended well, and they have a solid connection to their land, they can draw on the land's strength and capacity, especially when seeing to things like the application of justice or dealing with some emergency.
It is possible for someone's landsense to be broken or shattered, and sometimes to repair it, but someone who is cut off from their sense of the land is not able to sustain the land magics. (Again, see
The Hare and the Oak )
Magistrates need to be of moderately strong magical capacity (not deft with it, just a certain amount of raw capability), who can anchor the necessary local judicial magics. (They often include at least some of the local Lords or Ladies.) However, they do not need to be particularly skilled at any particular type of magic, just able to follow the standard ritual formats for calling that judicial magic.
Judges, and anyone who is a Captain in the
Guard (or who aspires to be one...) needs a fairly strong magical strength and capacity. Judges normally serve in the courtrooms in Trellech, which were built with the judicial magics in mind, but can be called out for local courts, questioning, or other duties. Captains and Majors in the Guard can also take on that role.
