The Fountain

There is a source of power called The Fountain. It has always existed. It is metaphorical and literal, a font of pure water and light in the literal center of the universe. All things flow from it and all things return to its source. There were those born attuned to it, by their blood, by luck, by some other means, who can conjure its light as “spells” and bend the world to their whim. Later, mortals and spirits alike learned to conjure effects of the Fountain’s power by way of incantation and intense study - one might devote ones life to thieving power from the Fountain and using it against the world. This path is hard, and requires a will most lack. So instead, humanity taught themselves a new trick - religion. Instead of devotion to the self, and mastery through that, devotion to an ideal became a means to bend and mutilate the magic of the fountain. Through labour and time, as the Four Courts were formed, so too came the Arcana, the great strange path of birth, death, reincarnation and enlightenment broken and battered into easier shapes. Twenty-two steps to Nirvana. Those devoted to a certain stage became priests, whose devotion to a tiny facet of the Great Wheel game them a kind of power - limited not by their own will (as with Sorcerers and Wizards) but by their limitations - by the ideological shackles they place on themselves. There are rumors of magic of another kind. Those who bind themselves to other sources than the Fountain, but this is blasphemy most foul.