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Skarnn Wizard Mentors
One of the culture notes of the Wild Lands is that wizards are rare and generally despised, even though literacy is respected and clerics are respected. If you make a mage character in my Skarrna campaign and wonder who your mentor was, I've included a few possibilities on this page. Any "magic academy" or central organization of mages would be in its early days, and player characters would have to go out of their way to help it survive. Remaining possibilities for mentorship are hated mages that are competent but still "wild".
This is meant to be more of a writing prompt for player character backgrounds than an exhaustive list that's set in stone. Mid-level characters seeking new spells may also petition these sorts of people for training.
Some of the most powerful wizards around
- Fyban Elves
- The Fyban forest near Shyff has a community of elves and halflings. Elf communities, according to the hacklopedia, have a 20th level wizard, and have a ~13th-level wizard for every 30 elves.
- Elves work to prevent death and bloodshed. They are against the romanticizing of war, and any of this sort of lionizing.
- Shyff Nobles
- Shyff gets its wealth from shipbuilding. The nobles get their wealth from taxing the people in this community. In return the nobles are obligated to organize and protect the people from orcs, grevans, slenizens, sea monsters, etc.
- The KoK campaign setting specifies a 'Cray' family who trains wizards. One of these mages may mentor a player character, though they would require an oath of fealty.
- Witch
- The character's mentor may be a "witch". "Witch" is a label for one of five things:
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- A hag. Hags are evil sorcerors who magically extend their life through mutilating and torturing children and animals.
- A wizard who has the first aid skill.
- Any person who can communicate directly with angels and devils.
- Someone who is reclusive and an auto-didact.
- Something else.
- Hurrklings
- Wizards who randomly blow up civilian homes and destroy things. Wizards with no regard for life.
- PC wizards who self-train can loot spellbooks from these mages.
- Vrykkar Gnomes
- There are communities of gnomes in the Vrykkar mountains. Some of their militias may use mages. The closest gnomemunnity to Ardarr-Norr is within a 14-hour march.
- Foreign Wizard
- Ardarr-Norr is a city on the ocean in north Reanaaria Bay. Technically, anyone who can get on a boat can get there. If you want a mentor from another culture for your character, you can have one living in the city.
- The Indisputable Sages of the Sparkling Smog
- Agnostic wizards who are so proud of their own learning that they have to be wizards even where wizards are hated. They are extremely weak politically. There is maybe one every hundred miles. If you can't think of a mentor, he or she is an Indisputable Sage of the Sparkling Smog.
- The Sleuthful Diviners of the Unseen Realm
- These are private detectives. Detectives are typically affiliated with the Seekers of Sagacity, the Mule, or the Founder. In contrast, Sleuthful Diviners are not endorsed by any lawful neutral group or police force.
Mentors have a variety of teaching aptitudes and a variety of personalities. They may be cruel or miraculously kind and competent. There is a method of randomly determining mentor quality in "The Spellslinger's Guide to Wurld Domination" (which is 4E), but this can be used as just background guidelines.