Magicians, Sorcerers and Wizards
Revamp of my original wizard post and inspired by Weird Writer’s wizard post and further wizard posts.
In the universe, where Chaos warps and alters the very fabric of space, there are many magicians, a lot of sorcerers and few wizards.
In the simplest terms, a magician is someone with any ounce of knowledge of that alien thing called Magic. This term can be pasted onto anyone who studies The Art of Doing As Thou Wilt: Cult Initiates? Magicians. Folk Healers? Magicians. There’s a lot of magic out there and people are gonna find ways to use it in their daily lives.
It takes some freakish obsession to become a Sorcerer. You seclude yourself from the world, in your tower of scrolls and tomes, to devote your entire being to the Magnum Opus. Your existence is defined by the fact that you can bend the world to the whims of you of your master. A folk healer can leave her hut and pick up a scythe to become a farmer just like any other woman of the village, the cult initiate may pick up a sword and go to war and die with their brothers. But the Sorcerer, no matter where they travel, no matter whose face they wear, still reek of octarine and burning flesh. Doesn’t help that they bear horrible warnings on their flesh, whether from the boons of their masters or marks of their hubris.
At some point, the sorcerer completes the first step of the magnum opus, the blackening, and becomes a Wizard: absorbing all possible knowledge of their tradition. At this point the solipsism does horrible things to their brain. They start getting Ideas: “Maybe I’m stronger than my god, maybe I’m a god, maybe I deserve their spot in heaven!”. And so they build towers, birth homunculi, dedicate cults and seek knowledge beyond their old paradigm to awaken something horrible.
Anyone stronger than a wizard is enlightened and does not care for names.