Mage Tomes
The Tomes
All members of The Coven have a tome, a magical record passed down from their magus. These books range in size, colour, and construction. When someone outside the Coven sees a tome for the first time it can be a shock as the pages never seem to end no matter how much a mage flips through them, and the pages look blank until they are accepted as a student. Other Mages are able to read eachother's tomes but can't copy information without first having a clear and proper understanding of the contents they are attempting to add into their own tome.
Shifting Covers
Tomes will usually reflect the personality of their Mage and their appearance can change as a Mage grows and learns and adds to them. Students of the same Magus will generally start with similar looking tomes that strongly reflect the style of the their teachers and slowly these tomes will change and differentiate. Some parts will always linger and remain the same, indicating a lineage that can be traced back to the founding members of the Coven in the form of subtle but recognizable symbols among the Mages.
Within The Pages
Tomes contain incredible amounts of knowledge and truth about magic and mana. There are guides to runes, alchemical mixtures, how to calculate the amount of mana that a living creature captures from the atmosphere, and even mundane information about herbs and plants that aren't necessarily suited for alchemy but can be used by regular people for medicinal purposes. Information will appear to a student as they learn and expand their understanding of magic, giving them as much as they can handle and learn. No mage in the Coven's recent history has ever learned all the contents of their tome, and the feat was last recorded to have happened over 200 years ago.
It is theorized that this method of learning was instated to help protect young mages from over reaching or trying things they didn't fully understand. Dispite these safeguards there are still mages who find ways to overstep the bounds of their knowledge and end up paying the price, however no great disaster sites have been created since this system began.
A Single Collection Connected
While all tomes may look slightly different and contain a few singularities passed down through specific teaching lines, all the information in respect to understanding magic is connected and appears in every tome. There are suspiscions and rumours of a Master Tome, but no mage has been able to confirm its existence, despite great efforts to find it.
The most respected line of mages are those from Grand Magus Alferno. Alferno's legacy as the last Grand Magus gives a degree of awe and respect to his successors. These mages tend to be the most secretive about showing their tomes to other mages.
Growing Together
As mages add to their pages they add to the pages of other mages as well, unless they have the ability to block the knowledge transfer. As such the tomes are constantly expanding and growing, but their general size when held remains the same. Flipping the endless pages produces the information that a mage is seeking, and there never seems to be a last page to turn.
The tomes carry all the history of magic humans have. I'd say they need to be guarded and kept safe, but they seem to do that on their own.
I know there's neat stuff in there that isn't shared across the tomes! Come on, share a little with me!
Protected Pages
The tomes seem indestructable. Not that a mage would intentionally attempt to destroy their tome, but they may try to destroy a rival's. Even in destructive accidents the tomes seem unscathed, and unbothered. It has led to some mages actually testing different processes on the pages. This branch of research actually helped develop several spells now used for the preservation of historic documents and food.
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