The Journey

In the years after the return of magic, the issue of taking on apprentices and training a new generation of wizards was a particularly thorny one among the surviving human Archmages. After the devastation of the Great Purge it seemed irresponsible and dangerous to train people that might repeat history. The alternative, however, was to allow the vast knowledge and experience of the Great Wizards to be lost. And of course it was entirely possible that given enough time the ways of magic would simply be rediscovered, but without the proper guidance the dangers might be forgotten.
The deliberations on the subject culminated during the meeting that hashed out the Archmage Accords.The final decision was that it would be preferable for the Great Wizards to guide and shape anyone interested in the Way of the Wizard. Most of the details of apprenticeship were left up to the individual master, but a kind of final examination was agreed upon.
That test came to be known as the Journey. Its purpose was twofold. First, to bring the soon to be wizards back in touch with the world after what would often be decades of relative isolation in apprenticeship. Second, to provide an opportunity for them to try out the responsibilities and temptations of wizardly power and for their masters to see how they measure up against them.
By completing the Journey, the students are named Wizards and the restrictions of the Archmage Accords settle on them irrevocably.

History

The tradition of the Journey was theoretically established in 349 AP, as part of the Archmage Accords. Initially, the Great Wizards conceived this particular requirement for their apprentices as a final trial. Indeed, that was the name they actually gave to the practice. This final trial was to be undertaken by all aspiring wizards when their training was complete.
In practice, however, close to three hundred years had to pass before the first Journey was undertaken in 638 AP, mainly due to lack of talented apprentices. Unfortunately, the first Journeyman did not manage to complete his Journey. Instead, he was killed during his fifth year, an event that caused immense grief to his master, Sevanna, and drove her to seclusion. In response to this tragedy, the Great Wizards created the Journeyrunes as a way to mitigate some of the risks of releasing what others might see as a dangerous wizard into their midst.
It was in 653 AP when Casban of Seslad, the second apprentice to undertake the Journey, managed to complete it, thus becoming the first human Wizard after the Purge. This momentous occurrence for the arcane community coincided with the Second Collapse of Magic and the destruction of the Standing Web in a closely related sequence of events. Two years later, Dast, the second Journeyman to complete his trial, brought about the Normalization of Magic. This marked the end of his Journey.
Not every Journey since then has had such a world altering conclusion, but the practice was deemed both necessary and successful enough that it is continued even in later times, when the initial reasons for its creation are all but gone.

Execution

The Journey begins whenever a master judges their apprentice to be of sufficient skill to become a wizard. This differs from master to master, but all require the pupil to have progressed on the Way of the Wizard at least a little beyond the mere cantrips and parlor tricks of Ardor. In most cases the level of Passion is enough, but higher levels are not unheard of. There is nothing forcing a master to send a student on the Journey and many more apprentices have been turned away mid-training, quit, or simply never finished their studies, than have been able to satisfy whatever criteria their master had set.
Releasing a student from apprenticeship on to the Journey is, by custom, signified by the master presenting them with a Journeyrune. There is no standard way or rigid ceremony surrounding the event. Some masters prefer to mark the occasion in some fashion so as to impress the importance of it on their apprentice, while others treat it as nothing special or out of the ordinary.
In either case, all the masters are careful to explain the rules of the Journey one last time. For a period of seven years the Journeyman or Journeywoman is required to travel the land and never settle down. They can of course remain in an area for as long as they need to take care of any unfinished business they may have, but they are prohibited from putting down roots and simply waiting out the seven years. They are also required to abide by the wizard's rules of conduct during this trial. Other than these two stipulations no other restrictions are placed upon the pupil.