Tuner Mages

Description

Tuner Mages are half way between normal people without any affinity to magic and full mages. They are in tune with magic but cannot shape it in its raw form. Consequently, Tuner mages cannot cast spells themselves. However, once the raw magical force has been channeled into an enchantment, then a Tuner Mage would be able to manipulate the enchantment. That is, a Tuner Mage has the ability to increase/ decrease the strength of a spell or an enchanted item as well as changing its properties. The amount of “tuning” that can be done on a spell, though, is limited by the degree of similarity between the original spell and the desired change as well being dependent on the skills of individual Tuner Mages.

Currently, the most sizable group of Tuner Mages resides in the Dragon Empires and is regulated by the School of Tuner Wizardry. There are other Tuner Mages scattered around the world but whether their talents are recognized varies by locales.  

Origin

The father of Tuner Wizardry was a man by the name of Tao Yuan, who was born in the Qi Dynasty. It was recorded that he was originally a mage apprentice who his Master saw much potential in. Having the ability to memorise entire books at a glance and almost instantaneously grasping the most difficult of arcane concepts, he was a favoured apprentice right from the start. Once the focus of their studies turned away from concepts into actual practice, however, things started to go wrong. Specifically, despite the most careful of preparation, Yuan always failed to cast his spells. This was first attributed to a wandering mind as sometimes wont to happen to young mage apprentices who had not yet attained the level of discipline of the mind required. As this persisted, however, suspicions started to form of the other possibility. Whispers started that Yuan might be one of the “Dead Mages”, destined for the awkward social station that is above commoners and yet perpetually ridiculed and sneered upon by actual mages.

Meanwhile, Yuan, being of persistent mind, was determined to prove the rumors wrong. There are no consistent historical records of how long such fruitless toils went on before Yuan’s efforts were awarded. However, details of the event that was the pivot of his life has been clearly documented:

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Tenth Year of *Heaven’s Decree

fellow student cast some spell of a similar vein (eg. one's trying to make a tiny flame, the other tying to make some fireworks etc.) and the spell that he had in mind went off instead.

~ excerpt from A Chronology of Developments in Magic

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*Sidenote: Heaven’s Decree is the name of an era that is attached to the reign of a particular Emperor. In ancient China, Emperors often create special names for the period of time in which they rule over the empire. Also, as background information to this particular submission, note that Heaven’s Decree is a peaceful and prosperous era in which the Dragon Empire is at the forefront in terms of innovation and knowledge in relation to the rest of this world.

The Emperor, ever eager to fund the pursuit of new knowledge, endorsed Yuan’s status as a formal mage. With the full backing of the Emperor, Yuan had made substantial inroads into grasping the potentials and limits of this completely new form of magecraft. He also discovered that many of the “Dead Mages” Eventually he founded his own school to teach a new generation of mages with similar capabilities to himself. In the early days, there was no official name for this unique form of ‘magic’ and the school was known briefly by some obscure name which can no longer be found in records. The term Tuner Wizardry came about from a remark by one of the first students at the school during a theoretical session. It was recorded that this student, also happened to be a cousin to the Emperor, was an accomplished player of the *guzheng and likened the fundamentals of this novel magecraft to the tuning for this instrument.

*guzheng is basically a stringed instrument that belongs to the zither family (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zither for details), also known as Chinese zither.

Selection/Initiation

Tests to distinguish between a full mage and a Tuner Mage are as yet undiscovered. However, Yuan was able to devise a test for whether an individual is attuned to magic. This created a large ripple within the circle of magic as previously there were no reliable test at all for who actually has the capability for practicing magic, hence the large number of “Dead Mages”....  

by referral from full mages; agents travelling throughout the Dragon Empire to observe and recruit students (i.e. a child from the village might show some signs that he is attuned to magic and the agent brings the child back)

The Here and Now

- gets funding from two main sources: partnership with the School of Magic (see the paragraph below for details) and fees charged on inspection and adjustment of enchanted items.

Relationship with the School of Magic

At first,

Some Tuner Mages have teamed up with actual mages to humble mage apprentices who have become arrogant and overconfident of their abilities by secretly making their spells go awry

team up with mages who aren’t very good at their crafts and fix spells gone awry

Plot hooks:
- Spells are going wrong everywhere in the local area/World. A high level Tuner Mage gone rogue? A campaign by the School of Tuner Wizardry to take over the world? Someone masterminding a discredit campaign against Tuner Mages? Or something else entirely?

Roleplaying Notes/Plot hooks
- able to detect and tune cursed items into normal ones
- having a Tuner Mage in the ranks of the PCs’ opponents renders a Mager PC almost useless

*Credit- idea on the humbling of mage apprentices sparked by one of the Forgotten Realms short story in the novel Realms of Mystery and of course, thanks go to various Stronlenatis who have contributed ideas that I’ve incorporated

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