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>

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Types of Practitioners

Practitioners are often categorized depending on their specialty:

• Augur: Diviners the future.
• Chronomancers: Manipulates time and Zeitgeists.
• Dabblers: Users of rudimentary Magic of all kinds.
• Diabolists: Conjurers of Demons.
• Elementalists: Manipulators of the Elements.
  • Pyromancers: Users of Pyromancy.
• Enchanters/Enchantresses: Manipulators of Connections.
• Evangelists: Summoners of Angels.
• Goblin Kings/Queens: Lords of Goblins.
• Illusionists: Users of Illusions.
• Scourges: Scavengers of Bogeymen.
• Shamans: Users of Spirits.
• Sorcerers: Exceptional users of all Magic.
• Valkyries: Masters of Ghosts, Wraiths & Vestiges

References

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