Mind Tamers

_{Reviled or revered, describe a profession that causes strong reactions in a culture.}

NECESSARY CONTEXT

   People of Sharitarn do love magic, and magic users. Except for Sailor Castes, and even these people only don't want to have anything to do whit magic when they are working, on dry land sailors like sigraxes and mages as much as anyone else. 
     Magic Universities are the higher pride of each nation where one exists, to the point that common folk dress their bodies and their homes in their symbols with the same pride and love they do the same with the symbols of their city. And the statues and portraits of their kings, in the nation where Noble Caste exists. 
      Where no Magic University exists people talk with pride about their local Colleges of wild sigraxes. Or the lineages of wild sigraxes if the nation does not have a College. Or even their one resident sigrax. Or the warlock, shaman, witch, fortune teller, whatever professional of magic they have locally or the closest best thing.  
    Where they exist mages stay home. They need special permission from their Cities to step beyond national walls, and those permissions are seldom given because mages are far too precious. Sigraxes on the contrary can travel as they please, and rent their services anywhere they go just like Warrior Castes or any other men (goes without saying that they are not supposed to sell their services to nations that are at war with their own). 
       A fair number of sigraxes do travel, and their magic gives them a better chance to survive the dangers of wild lands. 
         Where they go, people have job for them. Since magic is powerful and rare, few are born with potential for magic and even fewer develop this potential successfully. Besides, there is many Ways of Magic, and each one only offers the most basic powers to generalists. For anything else, you must follow the Way. And each magic user can follow only one Way in his life. 
         Whether you are a Healer or a Soothsayer, a Illusionist or a Enchanter, a Creator or a Necromancer, chances are that you will pass through communities where no one ever saw the kind of magic you have mastered. And they will certainly want to see it, hear more about, and have it applied to improve their lives or solve their problems in all conceivable ways. People cheating their business partners and corrupt tax collectors may be worried about your Divination spells if you are a Soothsayer, as furtive murders will, but they will avoid to make their concerns too obvious because they are hard to justify. 
        Shock Earthling iis to see that, but even Necromancers are fairly welcomed in most places. 
        Solitary sigrax Necromancers seldom carry with them the power to create high undeads and free their clients from the chains of ephemerality but they are fully capable to create tireless low dead workers that will repeat a set of basic tasks for centuries before rot down. For a higher price they can create a soldier that will obey the commands of any alchemist wearing the ring connected to the creation ritual. Those servants are very hard to damage, and the soldiers even more resilient. Necromancy also can create light, ghostly spectral flames that are cold and last virtually for ever: is a secondary effect of some spells of the Way, but you would be surprise to know how often people ask for just that. Creepy or not the undead hand surrounded by light green flames do illuminates the entire room when you take in from the box, and sometimes all you want is to have light that consumes no fuel and brings no smoke or risk of set the curtains on fire. 

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The Two Magical Ways of Mind

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   So yes, NECROMANCERS are welcome where they go. 
    Mind Mages, oh, well... 
    They gives the creeps on people. Not in a good way. 
     We cannot say they are not useful, mind you. There is powerful spells in both Mind Ways, and among those spells are the most effective ways to protect yourself against Mind Spells. So you should not throw the proverbial baby away with the water of this bathtub. No denying it: it is a scary enough bathtub for most people at least feel tempted to forget the dam cursed baby inside it. 
    I'm talking about feelings here, general representations, collective bigotries of sort. 
     Where you to ask me if there is something concrete, objective, to justify those feeling. Honestly, I would have to admit that I can't say for sure. 
      So, for the sake of fairness, allow me to explain briefly what is Mind Magic. Leaving the technical metamagical details aside, for another text. There is two well know Ways, most common men can't see the line between them all that well, but they know some line exists. 
      MIND CARVER deals with the mind using slower and deeper tools, able to drastically change the anatomy of the brain even.                 A Mind Carver sigrax can eliminate your desire for smoke cigars, change your tastes in food from fat and salty pork to healthy salads, and give you a compulsion to expend at least 1 hour a day working out: he can make that in a way that you will like it! They have spells to erase memory, and to create memory. They can transfer condensed knowledge, allowing you to benefit from years of study you didn't made (does not work for magical knowledge, sadly). And they can change people's intelligence, even improve it in some extent.             
      Given enough time and a comfortable room to work and a mind carver can entirely erase you, as a person, loves, hates and loyalties included, to write a completely different individual in your body. It is likely to be a somewhat strange person, artificial in some way; less complex and interesting than that broken self-contradictory self or yours is. Still, a passable version of a possible person.  

        Mind Carver magic is the definitive too to eliminate the effects of Classic Method in tamed and trained slave-girls who by some reason ended seem themselves as free women. Again, or for the first time ever. It can erase any trauma from the mind. Can erase secrets as well, making unnecessary to kill people in some cases (where you may not want to).
        You judge if that is creepy or not. I would rater not to share my own opinion in this subject. 
         Sharitarnes see something dishonest in Mind Carving spells. They may go as far as admit it for training non-talking animals, perhaps male slaves who will expend their lives doing heavy labor in the dark where no free person will see them and most will forgot they exist. Still, in all possible cases it is distasteful and unfashionably.      
            Self improvement is nice, but if you do that in that Way it kind does not count as much. Of course, objectively speaking it does, but they feel that way. 
            MIND WHISPERERS have spells that change softly the surface of people's minds. 
            Nine in them Earthlings consider that to be less invasive, and therefore less scary. If scary at all. 
             And still, those are the guys people have nightmares about on Sharitarn. They make the followers of Mind Magic unwelcome by common folk, not the Carvers. Perhaps if was not for them Mind Carving would not endure such heavy stigma. 
             "Why are those irrational people so unfair?" you ask me.
              Because Mind Carver spells in general demand time, attention, and more often than not physic contact. 
               While Mind Whispers are your classic Earthling telepath for Earthling pseudo-science Para-psychology and XX century comic books. The Whisper sigrax can sit calmly in his room in the center of a small village or large Feudal Fortress and hear every single mind in the community. Find out who has committed each crime, who holds grudges against the Mayor, who fears what. And, far worse, they can whisper in the minds of those people. Plant ideas in one mind, or in all minds at same time. Seeds that will sprout after days or after decades, and may not destroy minds or produce a specific result but will certainly affect the minds and produce, ...something.   
             Half of what Mind Whispers can do is also achieved by Divination, and Soothsayers have the advantage of being able to uncover objective trues that no person in reach knows about. No one seems to realize that, however. At least no one outside Mage Caste. 
             The Mind Whispers are the ones framed as tools for tyranny. 
             They can torture people, placing pain and suffering in their minds directly, but Illusionists are far more capable to do that. The best tortures, without a doubt, are Illusionists. Yet, the Mind Whispers are the ones called "Ghost Whips" and "Mind Tamers" by the commoners. 
              Secret service, political police, spies. They may not necessarily fit that profile but that is the family of ideas their image evoke. 
                Mind Mages usually dress in Blue and Violet. The first being the color of Scholar Caste in most parts of Civilization, and the second the Universal color of Xar (magic). What is and isn't a convention, because Xar is in fact not visible, normally, but when followers of many different magic traditions try to describe "generic" magical energy with enough colors to choose from they converge to violet fast enough.        
                 When isn't practical to use those colors the Mind mages will carry a detail, a jewelry perhaps, that identify their Way. Unless they don't wish to be identified, in which case they will probably wear green and violet, and pretend to be healers. Or violet silver and gold, and pretend to be Illusionists. 
                  However, pretend to be what you are not isn't a thing people do lightly on Sharitarn. Because people do take offense in this if they catch you lying. 
        
           

Type

Administration / Management