Editing Quest:Heir of the Arends (section)

==Setting==

The quest starts off on the eve of the December 22nd 2015, the date of the winter solstice. For many years, the reigning patriarch Thaddeus Cain Arend, has called the family together on this one day to address them and to potentially announce an heir. The only eligible heirs are those with Power -- the ability to use magic. Magic in the setting is formulaic but nuanced and mysterious. It is reproducible and is a matter of memorization, but this knowledge recorded in Tomes of Lore is jealously hoarded by those who are capable of using it. By tradition or decree, all those capable of using magic in the Arend family are apprenticed by the patriarch for four years from the age of twelve. Apprentices learn the basics of magic and magical creatures.

There is a small number of established lines of mages, and each one tends to focus on a single school. The Arend family are generalists with enough lore to focus on any of the schools. There are seven other mage families in the New World (the Americas), and an unknown number of families in the Old World (Europe). The ability to use power is somewhat hereditary, but can also be spontaneously awakened in wild mages. The differences between wild and established lineages is somehow connected to the ability to have children with Power. While the reasons for it are unclear, wild mages have difficulty siring children with Power.

Other than the addition of magic, the setting is standard modern-day. Magical creatures have tended to be of the European folklore kind. Alchemy has also tended to be European. When in doubt think [[Roman Empire|Rome]], not [[China]]. It is unclear if "Old World" includes Asia or Africa.

The creation myth told in a tome is that this world (Earth or the entire universe, it was unclear) was created as a result of the endless battle for power and dominance in the Outside. A powerful entity named Avar managed to convince many beings of the Outside to invest their power in it. The world itself is a huge power sink to the Outside, so only the less powerful and more instinctive creatures of the Outside can be close to it. This world was intended to be a place of abundance and without the endless conflicts of the Outside, but when it was finally created, less than one percent of beings from the Outside were permitted to enter. While the nature of this world rejected some of those entities, they kept trying to find new ways in, and a Great War was fought (over Earth or the universe itself is unclear). Humans arose naturally in the world, and they came to possess the power of Sapiency which would drive away all the creatures of the Outside. Avar invested power in the humans and caused them to grow and multiply and become the shield of the world from the creatures of the Outside. Mages themselves are an anomaly in an anomaly, having access to Power like a creature of the Outside would.