Essence ofJDG's Wizard

By drinking this colorful and sweet, salty, sour, bitter, hot, astringent, menthol-like, and also umami tasting Essence. you become a wizard!

• Wizard Body: There are only two constants for a wizard to be a wizard. That they are male and that they have white hair. Their age does not matter as wizards do not age unless they want to, though due to their hair color most tend to go for that wizened old wizard look rather than the freaky albino kid look. All wizards also tend to have an innate ability to subconsciously manipulate their form to their liking, for most it won't do anything but remove acnes, repel dirt and body odor, prevent hair loss, or let their body heal of any wounds without scars but if there is something they deeply desire to change then they will find their body shifting over time. A major bodily change like shifting from a one meter short mousy brat to a two meter tall hulking behemoth of a guy will take a couple of years if the wizard doesn't do anything like exercise or magic to supplement that change.

• Magical Core: The third constant of a wizard is the fact that inside their soul each and every one of them have a magical core that they can draw mana from to fuel their spells. Through spells a wizard can mess with reality as they wish and through mana they make the spells work. The bigger the spell the more mana it will cost, and should they ever be out of mana a wizard is as useful as a normal guy, assuming they did not enhance their body previously. Every bit of mana they draw from their magical core will make it grow, by around 0.001% of the mana drawn. So a wizard with 100 mana would need to spend all their mana a thousand times to increase their mana to 101 mana. Even simply channeling mana through their body without actively using it feels invigorating and refreshing, if you just woke up simply channeling mana might give you the same burst of energy and alertness as drinking a cup of espresso without the heart problems, if you feel too hot on a hot desert you can simply channel mana to cool off, or if you feel like you are trapped in an illusion simply channeling mana will free you and dispel the enemy magic on your mind. Even poisoning can be resisted greatly with mana channeling. For being a wizard is to manipulate the state of reality, thus through sufficient study, contemplation, or time, a wizard is able to create spells capable of accomplishing any feat they wish. Though the grander the feat the more of the three it will take and knowing the spell for something and being capable of casting it are two entirely different things. You might invent a spell capable of ending the world or saving it but if you only have the mana capacity to slightly bend a tea spoon then that won't really mean much, will it? So get to casting wizard!

• Magical Dreams: Magic is often called dream made manifest and connects all creatures. Every time you sleep your dreams will pull you into planes of magic and emotion, into never before seen wonders and mystical adventures, and you will grow as a person through these events only to then wake up and remember just the barest of emotions or hard to understand recollections of whatever you just went through. Do not worry for a wizard dreaming is a perfectly safe and healthy thing. It is supernaturally restorative action(restoring your mana and health to full, bringing a wizard from dying to healthy state in less than 4 hours), and does not even give away your information to those you wouldn't want to know, in fact dreaming might let you find your soul mate, guide you towards friends you would get along with like a house on fire in the waking world, and might add even more magic to your journeys in the waking world than there would've been. Mainly through indescribable nostalgic gut feelings leading you to reacting to things before they happen, the actions of a passerby reminding you a scene from your dream, or the other people on your journey being far more open minded to the idea of you being able to help them with their problems than they would've been normally. The truth is magic is a mystery, and deciphering that mystery is a wizard's mission, so the whole thing is an endless circle of wizard finding the answers and magic creating new questions to annoy its best friend the wizard before he gets arrogant and thinks he knows everything. Should you master lucid dreaming you will learn to guide your dreams to wherever you wish, learning how to astral project yourself into the waking world is easy, invading the dreams of the people around you is a bit harder, finding the dreams of your long dead friends is incredibly difficult, but the most difficult will be reaching into other planes of existence that most consider fiction. There is also the fact that learning to control your dream means taking responsibility for your own safety while dreaming, so in a world where dream demons or similar beings are common it is better off not learning such a skill as magic itself and your subconscious will combine into a rabid eldritch guard mama bear of unimaginable proportions that will thoroughly traumatize, reeducate, or end all who would dare prey upon the poor defenseless sleeping wizard.

• Wizard's Punctuality: For wizards time has a habit of bending over backwards. Whenever you have an arrangement you will be exactly on time, not a moment too late or too early, exactly as you would like it, even if normally you should be late by half a day you'll still find yourself right on the spot you needed to be at in the time you needed to be in. This perk also lends to leading you towards situations where you can interfere in the events depending on your alignment. If you are a necromancer maybe you will find a fallen brave warrior who died with regret and if you gave them closure they would be your loyal servant in death, or if you are the heroic sort maybe you'll encounter the warrior before their death and can heal them and help them on their quest for vengeance, guiding them away from the corruption of hatred that seeks to overwhelm their values. Or maybe you will encounter small tragedies before they happen like people falling down the stairs or children losing their balloon or kittens getting stuck on trees, allowing you to save the day and find hospitality in a place that is rather hostile towards strange wizards like you.

• Call To Adventure: Despite the thought that wizards are nerds that do not leave their towers and only study dusty old books the truth is actually far different. The magic itself chaffs under such conditions. Thus when it becomes too much the wizard will feel their magic demanding adventure. Depending on their expertise how this demand manifests differs wildly. A wizard focused on druidic magic might find animals and trees speaking of skirmishes, of fires, of strange acts of man, of strong animals with uncommon ferocity, and each will lead to different direction, allowing the wizard to choose their adventure and prepare accordingly. A wizard focused on eromancy might experience wet dreams leading them to new conquests or read the pasts of their partners on their skin and find great wrongs they must right, like a newly founded religion focused on abstinence before marriage. Either way the wizard will find reason to leave their tower and venture towards adventure and once they return they will find their magic stronger, maybe there will be some additional rewards but magic doesn't really care about that part overly much as long as it gets its walk.

• Freedom of Magic: A wizard cannot be held captive or hostage, should someone manage to do so then fate and magic itself shall come together to free the wizard. It might be through gathering a group of plucky adventurers to save him from his prison if he cannot use his magic to escape for one reason or another, or the wizard will simply think up a new magic that will take himself to safety. There isn't any way to cheat this. The only exception to this is when the wizard himself is guilty of something, however the guilt will be judged by magic itself so the wizard's emotions does not matter, even if they feel crippled by guilt and refuse to leave their prison the magic and fate will drag them kicking and screaming into living their life as they should! Perhaps a group compromising of a no good thief, an uneducated barbarian, and a shameless playboy will encounter the wizard in his self imposed solitude in his tower, thinking there would be enchanted goodies but finding nothing but a wizard throwing a pity party the thief will slap that slave collar he stole from the bandits they encountered along the way to the wizard' neck and the group will keep journeying onwards with an enslaved depressed wizard who will be forced to brighten the fuck up over time.

• Grimoire: A wizard without a large book to carry around doesn't look very wizard-like! So you get an indestructible soul bound book which records all your magical knowledge and even thinks of your magic calculation for you whenever needed. You always know where the book is and you can even use it to cast magic remotely but holding it and using it as a focus for your spells will make the costs far lesser. Anyone else trying to read your grimoire will see some no sense doodling, and the more they try to decode it the more they will feel like they are at the edge of cracking a code that simply isn't there, slowly falling further and further into insanity. Any spells trying to affect your grimoire will be harmlessly absorbed and get recorded into the Grimoire except for sympathetic spells which will find purchase on you much easier, as if they had your heart in their hands. Any spell recorded by the grimoire will be crystal clean in your mind, forever. It is possible to transform the book into an animal or a staff, but you would need to study a lot into transformation magic and learn to transform yourself first.

• Wizard's Tower: The classical home of the wizard. Any wizard worth their title has a tower of their own! Yours will start out simple, a gray tower of rock and cement that can be placed wherever you wish. Depending on your magic it will take on different coloring and the surroundings will change subtly to match you. A potion focused wizard might find their surroundings filled with useful flowers or swamps, or both, while a wizard who focuses on animation and biomancy might find the surrounding forests coming alive at night and the local animals growing to unusual sizes. Of course with these changes coming from the ambient magic you and your tower releases they will go feral at the sight of your enemies while being docile with you and your allies unless you are hunting them. If the place you plant your tower has unowned lands around it like a forest or a plain that isn't being farmed or grazed then you will become their owner legally, however don't worry about bills, fees, or tax returns, as a wizard's tower those problems common to everyday people aren't applicable to you. Things such as Jehovah's witnesses, the floor being too chilly on your bare feet in the morning, the fridge being empty of your favorite ingredients, or cleaning in general and far more aren't things you'll need to ever worry about in your tower. Except for the dust. Magic does not seem to affect it passively regardless of what you do thus you will need to actively clean it whether by hand or spells. If you don't clean the dust regularly then the ambient magic will animate them into dust bunnies which will hop all over your favorite items and cover them in dusty bunny footprints. If you ever leave your tower for an extended period of time make sure to turn off the magics you don't use as the stored magic in the tower will get used up to keep the tower in working condition even while you are away, and once empty of magic the tower itself will be vulnerable to the ravages of time or squatters. Should you return to a ruined tower you can easily restore it to its original glory and even better far easier than you can any other building. Destroyed or not your tower amplifies all your magic, a simple telekinesis that is only strong enough to lift pebbles will lift boulders while in your lands, and even your control over mana will be better, unwanted spikes in mana becoming smaller while desired effects becoming explosively powerful if their boost would result in a better outcome. Adding further enchantments to your tower is very easy for you to do, you almost don't need to structure them into spells, intent and willpower and a tiny bit of mana taking you far further than you'd expect. Should you wish to relocate your tower then you will need to destroy your old tower or leave it for long enough to have its stored magic exhaust itself, you can use the latter method to have multiple towers, once the connection with your old tower is cut you will need to build your new tower from scratch and then bond with it by living inside it for a few years.