Magicians is the term used for typically the weakest form of magic users (although this is not always the case). The most amateur magicians may combining slight of hand with a only a few stock low-level spells.
Background
Many magicians roamed the world. Some were good and helpful, some malevolent beyond any understanding. Some were mighty enough to do almost anything they wished--alter their shapes, fly through the air, command the elements of nature, conjure up cunning demons to do their bidding. Others could wield only a few weak and imperfect spells. The worst sort of magicians were wicked and powerful.[1]
Magicians are often smug, a certain picture of themselves surrounded by their paraphernalia, their flasks and resorts and glass tubes and jars of dried esoterica. They wave their wands and invoke all of the powers they can command while those tools and supplies of their Craft look on without comment, silent acolytes at the altar of Magic. They take their time, make their gestures, cast the spell that they will, and then return their books or their cups. In their particular liturgy, they control the they take, and not the opposite.[2]
To be a magician, one must know how to read. To practice the Craft of Magic, it is not enough to be careful, to follow directions perfectly and to keep ones magic wand fully charged. In Magic, a missed or misread direction might easily turn the spellcaster into a cat, leave them dead, or much worse. There are three kinds of magicians; Magicians, dead magicians, and magicians who wish most heartedly they were dead.[3]
Many magicians train at the Magicians' Academy and are members of the Magicians' Guild. As magicians become powerful enough to be considered sorcerers, necromancers or thamaturgists, they tend to leave the guild, thereby amplifying the notion that the guild is just a collection of amateurs.
The contents of certain magical volumes are so powerful that they remain secret to even the majority of serious magicians. These books themselves are often magical in their own right, and are so rare that their very existence are doubted by the very few that have heard of them in whispered fable. These included the near-legendary Necronomicon penned by the magician Abdul Alhazred, and other tomes, which few copies, if any remain, or even exist at all.[4]
Magicians
- Abdul Alhazred
- Olkiphon
- Owen
- Telgrin
- Merlin
- Alexander-Gwydion
- Derek Karlavaegen
- The Sorcerer (aka The Enchanter)
Behind the scenes
The term is sometimes used a general term for magic users in certain sources to give variety, so that a magic user isn't described the same way every time he or she is mentioned.