Practitioner

A practitioner is a human who has "Awakened" and thus become involved in the world of Others and the supernatural. Doing so enables them to interact with the world in a different manner than normal people can at a cost. The typical means of doing so is a ritual where the person makes a contract with spirits that gives them the ability to tangle with supernatural elements at the cost of being unable to lie freely.

Goblins call practitioners "The Wise" in that they are aware of things.

Differences Between Practitioners and Normal People

Practitioners, due to their awakening, have becoming something close to an Other.<ref>Being a practitioner inevitably meant losing a bit of your humanity and becoming a bit more Other. My new eyesight was a part of that, one step along what could be a long journey. - Excerpt from Damages 2.1</ref> As practitioners aren't completely human anymore they lose the protections that the unaware have, but by sacrificing their ability to lie without consequences they are able to bend or manipulate the world and their karma to a greater extent than a normal person, who would be subjected to their whims but not able to build up a large surplus or negative of it.

Having sacrificed their ability to lie in the Awakening ritual to give their words greater weight in the eyes of the spirits, they suffer Karmic backlash and are weakened for at least a week if they do so, even inadvertently. If they violate an oath, there are more serious consequences and they become Forsworn.<ref>“I promised it I’d keep it warm,” I said.
“Not exactly true, is that?” she asked me.
I frowned.
“I’m fairly well versed in seeing the nuances of karma at work. You’ve come very close to lying a few times in a short span of time, and

you’ve each outright lied at least once in the half hour prior to our arrival.”

“Oh hell,” I said.
“It’s easy to slip, at first,” she said. “In this case, you’re bordering on a lie, but you’re still telling the truth. Rose here promised you’d keep it warm. Your promise was implicit, and because Rose is an extension of you…”
“It’s borderline,” I said.
“Being more honest means you stock up more goodwill with the universe

and any others you meet. Borderline dishonesty is useful, lying by 

omission is better yet, and unvarnished honesty is better still. I can’t quite interpret it, but perhaps you were joking? Sarcasm?”
I thought back.
“Shit,” I said. “So… what? I lose my power?”
“You lose some. And a mere ghost gains more influence over you, even through a circle, or when bound into an object. It’ll take at least a week to wear off. Luckily, there aren’t many things in this house to hear, hm?”
“And me?” Rose asked.
“It matters for you too,” Ms. Lewis said. “For the time being, you are connected to Blake. Tell me, Blake, did you feel weaker? More vulnerable?”
“I felt tired,” I said. “I wondered for a moment if Rose had done something.”
“A vestige is fragile. Defy the natural order, and the vestige suffers.”
“And a damaged vestige drains energy,” I said, glancing at Rose.
“Just so.”
“I’d kind of expected a… clap of thunder?” I said.
“Barring the exceptional moments of idiocy, such as the breaking of an oath, you typically only discover what you’ve done when you reach for power and find it gone.”

- excerpt from Damages 2.4 </ref>

Practitioners can also interact with the Spirit World and see things with Sight that others can't perceive. They can manipulate connections as well as use different arts found in the world. Every act a practitioner does is monitored by Spirits and Others, thus symbolism and flair during actions will have a greater power, things like promises making normal people more inclined to go along with a line of suggestion or belief. Practitioners can learn to intuit other things, often relating to their practice, such as predicting death. 

Isadora has also stated that those who often reigned in the past and possessed divine blood or the blood of kings were similar to practitioners and thus had the ability to change the world.

They do not necessarily have the same loyalty to their country that other people do; they would still serve in the armed forces or government if something conflicts with their families interests or prior oaths then their loyalty is questionable.<ref>The way I would approach it-

The war is a backdrop. The battlefield is too volatile and doesn't lend itself to practice, and if practitioners help, it's either in negating the negative influences (Others in the trenches, the big efforts of opposing practitioners) or it's negated by the same.

In reality, the true battle is one of ideology, allegiance, and secrecy. Practitioners are clandestine and they don't work that well together at the best of times, being ready to stab each other in the back, or having long-standing oaths or agreements that complicate their intervention. It's a fight to even reach the point where humanity can handle this on its own and expectations are low - your focus isn't on winning the war, it's on taking what feels like it might be an inevitable loss and keeping the real monsters out there from making it worse, exposing practitioners and/or opening the floodgates for horrible things to unfold.

It's a fight for ideology, against a backdrop where tens of millions of lives are being lost. The various factions disagree on how this should be handled, can in no way even trust other American practitioners or Canadian practitioners, and these are the waters that must be navigated. If you tell the President that practice exists and hand him the keys to practice... maybe the augurs read the bird guts and they figure out that if this happens, the other side will do much the same, only they have a diabolist hidden among their secret societies and groups. - Wildbow on Reddit</ref>

Types

There are many systems of classifying Practitioners, but these are some of the broader ones:<ref name=":0">The final school we will discuss here (though there are a variety of other ways of classifying practices by school, including combat practices, material, immaterial, and those focused on greater powers), the Schools of Wages are those practices that bear the highest costs or risks. The practices of the Heartless, the Host, of Sacrifice and Blood, and those that channel power from sources that would devour them with but one mistake, such as the Harbinger or Cultist, fall within the scope of this category. - excerpt from Demesnes, quoted in Bonus Material: Demesnes Text</ref>

Conjuration/Excorporate

Deal in practices which are relatively easy to evoke, with little needed but power,<ref>It is an excorporate school of practice. What does that mean, Solisse?”
“Makes stuff [...] The schools that can take power and make stuff.”
“There are a lot of schools that can take power and make stuff. How is it different from enchanting objects, or creating a ward?”
“Out of thin air.”
“Yes. Out of thin air. Or, more technically, from us, our bodies, our power. Excorporate forces include elemental, echoes, and celestial bodies. They’re easiest to bind, banish, and create, when we have a mind to." - excerpt from Vanishing Points 8.4</ref> but fragile or easy to taint.<ref name=":7" /> Includes the Elementalist, Shaman, Echoist, Necromancer, Evangelist,<ref name=":7">In the Schools Excorporate, also known as conjuration schools, we count those practices which deal in those forces both flighty and fundamental, which may be banished, brought, wrought, and bound most easily. The elementalist, shamanism, echoist, necromancer, and evangelist schools can be counted in this number, all with some ready ability to translate power to the apparent Other or that Other’s actions.
[...]
The greatest difficulties for these practices are the point of expenditure where they must pay the cost of bringing their creations and

effects through, and the relative fragility of their creations and 

effects, with a propensity toward taint and outside influence. These may be mediated with the practice. - excerpt from Demesnes, quoted in Bonus Material: Demesnes Text</ref><ref>These are other excorporate Others, vestiges, echoes, spirits, and even a cracked cherubim. - excerpt from Vanishing Points 8.4</ref> War Magic, and Summoner.<ref name=":1">Pact Dice</ref>

Divine

Main article: Greater Powers

Schools which deal with the greatest powers of this world. Especially effective at breaking rules or creating life.<ref name=":4">Most often, however, one will want to put a small amount of power into the Demesne to have the objects take shape. This is initially a fragile process, discussed in more depth in chapter nine, but suffices to add basic features. The nature of the power employed will determine a great deal about what comes about; visceral practices, Others, and realms fuel the tangible first with art coming second. The immaterial may provide the artistic elements, or ambient changes such as mood, warmth, or weather. Divine practices and those from greater powers are better for the changes to the rules, and for those who wish to create life, the divine breath is adept at doing so. - excerpt from Demesnes, quoted in Bonus Material: Demesnes Text</ref>

Wages/Prices

The most costly or risky Practices, but with concomitant rewards. Include Heartless, Host, Blood Magic, Harbinger, and Cultist schools.<ref name=":0" />

Security/Protection

Schools which excell at warding off harm, whether passively or actively. Can include Ogre Mages, many Incarnate practices, Law Magus,<ref>The Schools of SecurityThose schools of practice that deal in warding off harm are second only to the Realms practices in their relationship to the Demesne. These means of warding off harm can vary from the martial to the passive, deflection to avoiding the circumstances or consequence of harm

entirely. Practices of warding; rhythm, chant, and mantra mages; many 

Incarnate practices, and the practices focusing on karmic law fall into this category. - excerpt from Demesnes, quoted in Bonus Material: Demesnes Text </ref> Sealing, Warding, and Chronomancy.<ref name=":1" />

Contrivance/Tools

These schools focus on Magic Items. Includes Item enchantment, Collection, and textual magic; as well as some vodun, Sympathetic practices, Chosen, Goblin Kings, Faerie Magic,<ref>The Schools of ContrivanceIn schools of this heading, the practice is dependent or focused on the physical object, wielded, honed, or made the focus or endpoint of the practice itself. Enchantment, collection, textual, some vodun

and sympathetic practices can be counted in this broad category of 

schools, as may the practices of those chosen by a greater power, or those who negotiate with Others such as goblins or Faerie for magic items and tools. - excerpt from Demesnes, quoted in Bonus Material: Demesnes Text </ref> and Luck magic.<ref name=":1" />

Material/Visceral

Main Article: Visceral

Practices that deal with physical beings. Tends toward the brutal. Includes Scourges, Goblin Kings,<ref>The church, if the church was abandoned for two hundred years. Wind

blew through broken windows and carried choking dust. Something lay dying and twitching on the broken glass of bodies. “The visceral. Physical power. Brutal, unforgiving, often with a way of biting the hand that would use it… sometimes as an always thing, sometimes it waits for the chance. The price is that it will take chunks out of you, or your lifeblood. In goblin practice, it may poison

you after it pricks your flesh. In the Abyssal, it may cut you deeper,
longer to heal.” - excerpt from Leaving a Mark 4.6</ref> Alchemy,<ref name=":12">Visceral Practices

–Material Fundamentals – Basics on Others and practices dealing in the physical.
–Once Human – Peri-, periodic, and post-human Others, practices, diseases.
–Dark Locales – Twisted and Othered locations on Earth, urban and rural.
–Goblins – Goblin summoning, practice, tools, binding, and extermination.
–The Warrens – Goblin realm, day trips, non-Goblin denizens of the Warrens.
–Scourging – Horrors, Scratchings, Bogeymen, and related dark practices.
–Self Defense – Offensive practices, dealing with hostile Others, practitioners.
–Alchemy – Creating Visceral Others and Things through Material practice. - 4.1 Bonus Material: BHI Information Packet </ref><ref name=":2"> Schools: Halflight (Heartless var., Visceral) [...] A man dons an animal skin and stalks a forest trail. Another drinks an alchemical admixture, and becomes a beast of another sort. A feral thing wears his victim’s skin and goes to the man’s home to eat a dinner, his family unnerved but unable to say exactly why. A gossamer wisp of a creature dresses itself up as a babe using clay by the riverbed and the flesh from a dug-up corpse. Then it wails, and a woman finds it. The corpse it dug up was that of her baby, recently lost, and she is stunned to long silence by how it resembles her child. 

She brings it into her home.

Walls separate man and monster. Artfully addressed, halflight practices aim to capture the best of both at once. Once we begin the journey, however, the way back to normalcy is hard, if not impossible. - Quasi, quoted in Bonus Material: Bedtime Reading. </ref> some ("Halflight") Heartless,<ref name=":2" /> among others.

In PactDice, the Material practices are Alchemy, Elementalism, Blood Mage, Collector, Technomancer, Item Crafting, Warding.<ref name=":1" />

Lore

Practices which focus on gathering information. Tend to require a lot of effort building up knowledge. Include Augury, Heroic and Historic practices, Crossways, Alchemy, some Binding, and the Devout.<ref>Schools of Lore dwell on collected and collecting information, on Sight,

and the associated forms of awareness. Augury, Heroic and Historic 

practices, Crossways practices, Alchemy, some Binding, and practices of the Devout can fall into this field.

[...]

The weaknesses inherent in Lore practices are often relatively straightforward, with a high initial knowledge base required, the years required for many of the workings, and less applicability to combat and direct confrontation. These things, however, are not easily amended by the Demesne, and so the Lore practices often lean more heavily in the direction of executing the strengths of the practice more effectively. - excerpt from Demesnes, quoted in Bonus Material: Demesnes Text </ref> A common practice in this field is the ability to look at recent past with a minor ritual.<ref name=":1" />

Relation/Interaction

These schools deal with connections, misdirection, and interpersonal interaction, including powers that must be constantly negotiated with. Include Illusion, Oni Magic, Faerie Magic, Enchantresses, Shamans and Finders.<ref>Relation practices are those which dwell on connection or the interaction of practitioner and another. Practices of illusion, deception, misdirection, and those practices where the power is drawn from sources that must be negotiated with each time they are used will fall in this field. The Oni and Faerie practices can be both, while Enchantresses and Enchantment may lean into the former, and Shamans or Finders the latter.
[...]
Relation practices are focused on other individuals and when taken to a Demesne, are almost always a place to invite Others to. The space can be customized and part of that customization may be to make it more hospitable or comfortable. In other cases, it may be a lens to work through. - excerpt from Demesnes, quoted in Bonus Material: Demesnes Text </ref><ref name=":1" />

Realms

Practices which are focused on a particular place. They are especially adept with Demesnes.<ref name=":3">Those schools of practice that dwell on realms are interested in travel and in places both mundane and esoteric. Virtually all practices

draw power from Other realms and Other influences, and the Realms 

practitioner often travels to or through these sources, such as the Scourge, the Fae Walker, the Warren Runner, and the Dreamer of Paths or Chaos Mage. In other cases, they remain rooted, but bring importance to

areas, such as the the macro-scale practitioner or Astrologer, the 

Technomancer, the Nomad Shaman, or the Draoidhe Caller.
Realms practices have some unique interactions with the Demesne, and as such, are given special focus in chapter three. For the time being, we will save the examples for more discussion there, and simply state that any and all of these practices can have special applications or benefits from the Demesne.
[...]
In each of these cases, the rules and default assumptions of the Demesne are looser. It is, for Trinette, an escape hatch, always within

reach but with its price of time. For Ivan, it is a means of travel. 

For Titface, it is something that moves, extending at the ‘head’ and crumbling at the tail.
None of these aspects are tied explicitly to their practices. A walker of the Faerie realms could use the escape hatch, and a Finder could make their Demesne a perpetual additional room or space adjacent to whatever region of the Dream they are traveling, one they understand and have a connection to.
[...]
The practices that affect wide areas and regions, including Astrologers and Callers, can benefit from their own unique rules and relationships to the Demesne. For Langley, the Demesne can reach out to

adjacent areas and influence them. For a Caller, it may be a way to 

transform the effect as a great power is called on to flood an area.
- excerpt from Demesnes, quoted in Bonus Material: Demesnes Text </ref> Common practices include the ability to open doors. Include Scourge, Finder, Astrologer, Technomancer, Nomad Shaman, Draoidhe,<ref name=":1" /> Fae Walker and Warren Runner.<ref name=":3" />

Realms Practitioners can be further subdivided into two types. There are those who deal with other planes - Scourge, Finder, Fae Walker, and Warren Runner - who can modify their Demesne to interact with those places. Then there are those who enhance a place in the real world - Astrologer, Technomancer, Nomad Shaman, Draoidhe - who can often extend the power of their Demesne out across an area.<ref name=":3" />

Immaterial

Practices which deal with more abstract, less solid forces, like Spirits and Incarnations. Include Augurs, Necromancer, Heartless, Luck Mage, Astrology, Finders, Chronomancy.<ref name=":1" /> Tend to lend artistic or ambient effects to a Demesne.<ref name=":4" />

Combat/Conflict

Mentioned in Demesnes.<ref name=":0" /> In PactDice, the Conflict practices include War Magic, Harbinger, Goblin King, Scourge, Oni Mage, Heroics, and Ogre Mage.<ref name=":1" />

Structural

Practices which deal with the forces giving structure to the universe, such as Deities.<ref>“The morning’s topic is an elementary lesson in healing,” Durocher said. “A springboard to discussion of structural practices, which, I’ll note, are different from realms practices.”
[...]
“Sure thing. Right now, those of us who are canny enough are changing roles. Used to be we provided definition and structure. Now your species is doing that for itself. We’re smaller, we keep more to our own selves and family branches, and we game the systems if we’re smart.”
“Structure, you said?” she asked. “We put gods under the broad umbrella of structural practices.”
“Your call. It works.”
“Why does it work?”
“Because we build, we create from raw clay, beams of light, and from ourselves. [...] Blow a bit of life into a vessel, doesn’t matter if they’re a man or a clay dog. Or do a bit of repair to their fundamental structure, patch a hole, carve something out. Most gods get to be gods because they have that faith backing them and they have the tools to do that creating. Sometimes it’s one and the other follows, other times? We’re like this, right out of the tin. Grown and gorgeous.”
- excerpt from Vanishing Points 8.1</ref>

Deals

Include Summoner, Host, Sympath, City Mage, Faerie Magic, Binding, Sealing. Only known from PactDice rules.<ref name=":1" />

History

Practitioners of a sort have existed for millenia; they predate recorded history, and seemingly even human colonization of North America.<ref>“The town will fall, just as it rose, two hundred and fifteen years ago. Before that, I was here. I watched people come and go. Settlements rose and fell. Not many, not large, but a number. Before that, I was here.”
“Been here a while,” I said.
Her eyes narrowed. “The man and woman who brought me into this world

came to this place on a raft of reeds, and I was so small I had to be 

carried. We traveled from the west to here over my lifetime, following the deer and the hunt. When my parents passed, I stayed. I was one of the first to lay claim here, and I have never given it up.”
“Over the water to the west?” Peter murmured. “The lake?”
“Ocean,” Tiff said, her voice almost a whisper.
“I nurtured those who followed after me or passed through, offered them my hand and my amassed knowledge, so they could be communities, a people. Many are mine. Hundreds of years of work. I saw things follow in our wake, things stirred into existence by our being. 

Your Others, echoing our intelligence, echoing our pride and fear and 

pain, to join those Others that were here before the first people. I am

familiar with them all. I know what man is, and I know that your love and law and fairness are invention. Invention younger than I am." 

[...]
“You know the power of your repetition. Three times, you do something. Three times you bind it to make it so. Agreed?”
“That’s the gist of it.”
“Invention. But at the core, there is truth. I have not counted, but I can still be utterly confident in saying that I have woken up in the same place for more than nine million of your days. I have gathered, hunted, cooked and eaten the same foods on those same days. I have been born, bled for the first time, and been reborn on more than one thousand occasions. The wheel of life and death turns forward and I am an indelible part of it, especially here. This is a pattern, this is my ritual. Now tell me, what is the truth of this. What does it make me?” - excerpt from Sine Die 14.6</ref><ref>There are ways of being inducted into the practices, those esoteric traditions that predate computers, cell phones, the engines industry, and even paper and bronze. [...] One of the common ways is to be born to it. [...] The second way is to stumble onto it. To find a book hidden in a library, or an object both strange and powerful at a crime scene where the deceased was killed by something not human nor animal. [...] The last way, the old way? The road we’re going down? To make that deal directly. Find or be found by the fey things, the goblin things, the things that used to be ghosts and became something more, the things that used to be human and became something less. Strike those deals. Make those compacts. Those strange Others can give up shares of their power and teach their secret knowledge. - Pale: About</ref> In past eras, before the Seal of Solomon, Wild Practitioners serving Other patrons were the norm.<ref name=":5">“Alexander,” Mrs. Durocher said. “You do know where they come from? I’m not the only one who’s put it together?”

[...]

“They’re wild practitioners.”

“Hm.”

“What’s that?” Zed asked.

“Practitioners of old ways, Zed. Patron Others and practitioners who

are tied to them. The way things were done before Solomon, when they 

were formalized. Which leads to questions about who and what spearheaded the organization of this little triad of practitioners.”

[...]

Alexander smiled. “Knowing that you’re wild practitioners with multiple patrons helps me to make sense of you. It tells me you’re probably strong, with a wide base of power. It means I can expect you to be… interesting students.”

“Unruly and interesting,” Mrs. Durocher amended.

- excerpt from Leaving a Mark 4.4 </ref> As humans grew more powerful, many Others tried to bargain with or exploit them, but were concerned by their tendency to twist even the most formal deals and concessions to their advantage.<ref name=":6">“To try to formalize deals. To hitch their wagons to that of humanity, by striking deals that would establish them as Patrons. They teach their secret knowledge and ways of manipulating the world, in exchange for servitude… until mankind begins sharing that knowledge in ways few Others can stay ahead of, on paper and in tomes. Knowledge, instead of being taught from patron Other to Practitioner, becomes something kept in families. Others try to formalize a kind of equality, such as the familiar bond, and to make firm agreements about oaths, lies, and declarations, out of fear of being tricked again. But these things become their own weapon that humans wield. Humans sprawl, they work with concerted effort, and they establish and mutate patterns. [...] The Seal of Solomon, as it exists now, was essentially intended as one last concession. Or it was meant to be the last. A binding that would not be mutated further, that would be universal enough that it could be trusted by the Other, instead of having hooks and more traps attached to it. And as part of it, there was a deal that practitioners would manage the affairs of Others but select, powerful Others would have some say over the movements and dealings of Practitioners. Lords and judges. Roles above all other things.” - excerpt from Back Away 5.d</ref>

With the creation of the Seal of Solomon, the modern Awakening ritual was established as the means of going from Innocent human to Practitioner<ref>“Suleiman Bin Daoud took the first steps to establishing a new relationship between human and Other,” Miss said. “A lasting compact between human and Other. There are forms of this ritual where we recite

old words in your language and in Suleiman’s. There are forms where we
conduct old traditions. At the heart of it, however, lies an 

invitation. For you to join our world, and for us to cooperate with you

in interacting with the world of man. Would you invite us in, Verona, 

Avery, and Lucy?” - excerpt from Lost for Words 1.2</ref> and Practitioners agreed to accept usually-Other Judges and Lords.<ref name=":6" /> With the new relationship established, the once-standard Wild Practitioners became rare and increasingly little-known.<ref name=":5" /><ref>Mr. Belanger said you’re wild practitioners. And I had to go look that up. - excerpt from Cutting Class 6.3</ref>

Post-Solomon Practitioners and humans generally tended to view the world as a chain of being: God was above King, who was above Lord, who was above Man, who was above Animals, who were above Others. This may be the origin of familiars taking on animal forms, as they grow "closer" to human and are "raised up" to a more trusted status.<ref>In old traditions, in the post-Solomon reformations, God was arranged above king, who was arranged above lord, above man, who ruled over animal, who were declared above Other. We know this redefinition of the

anno Domini provenance was in part an effort to redefine the realm of 

man and mark out borders on a cultural and linguistic front. Put in simpler words, mankind, in order to both survive and thrive, declared a new order of things and placed Other at the lowest point. The familiar relationship originated in an era where this was the common mindset among men both practitioner and innocent, and the traditions established

then include the translation of Other to the nearest step in the chain,
in what was often viewed as ‘raising them up’ to be animals, close but 

still subservient to man. In this, the tradition of giving them mortality through animal forms was established early on.

- Excerpt from Famulus, quoted in Bonus Material: Famulus Text </ref>

References

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