Hello, this is my first Pandaren, and I have a few questions and ideas I need feedback on. She’s a mage, and I think I want her to be born in Pandaria and not the Wandering Isle. I really have two ways I think about going with this.
A “regular” mage. Would it make sense that she learned it from someone there, do Pandaren have mages or is it the “learned by the ones in their faction” situation? Can she have found old scrolls or books and learned from them or would that be strange? Would Pandaren differ from other mages in their view of the arcane or something?
.
I also toy with the thought of not being a regular mage but maybe a “hydromancer” or “waterweaver” or something similar. More shaman-like but to the element of water only
In Pandaria, we primarily see arcane magic be used by two organisations: The Shado-Pan, whose Omnia division includes magic-users and heavily features mages, and the Jade Temple, whose adepts can be seen using arcane magic in the temple grounds.
Furthermore, there are wandering wizards in Pandaria that your character could have learned from, a famous example being Nguyen and his four compatriots:
https://wow.gamepedia.com/Master_Nguyen
As indicated by Nguyen, the pandaren have known sorcery since at least the age of Lei Shen, meaning that you have plenty of room to devise a backstory - and since the game world only portrays a very limited view of the world, you could probably get away with inventing a master or even a mage school as the source of your character’s abilities.
Magic, however, has a fairly limited role in the larger pandaren society, which is why we have little in the way of details on the lore. Starting with the basic mage toolkit and looking from there is a good idea.
Thanks to you both! Very good information, maybe I’ll have her being a former member of the Omni division or a student at the Jade temple I guess the character would be quite different depending on what background she has of those two, will think a little about it… Atm I’m trying to decide what faction to choose
I’d recommend against this; joining the Shado-Pan is an -extremely- serious commitment. We don’t know anyone who leaves other than retirement, and the only way to join is to go through some lethal trials as a child.
Unless you want to RP a Shado-Pan (which is difficult, as they are seclusive and their RP community is very small) I suggest just RPing an adept from the temple or someone taught by a wandering sorcerer instead.
There are two things you should know:
Alliance is about twice as large as Horde in terms of player count (but this does not itself make Horde a bad choice)
And 2. There are to my knowledge only two pandaren-centric guilds active on AD, one of which is Ronin on Horde which is a Huojin pandaren guild, and the other is the Fallen Leaf which is on Alliance-side OOC but serves Pandaria alone IC.
Usually I would think that pandaren mages are akin to scribes, lorewalkers. They research more and it would be no surprise that many in their ranks are gifted in arcane from their studies.
I guessed something like that, as fun as Shado-Pan sounds I think it’d be lonesome in the long run.
Yeah I searched the forum a bit and it seems like they are the most prominent Pandaren focused guilds, found one called the shrouded serpent on Alliance also
That could be something, been thinking if I should pick up a profession like inscription or enchanting
Is nobody gonna share the story about the time when the Pandaren empire sent a gift chest to the then dominant Highborne Empire pre-sundering, with the chest’s description reading that it contained all the arcane magic they’d ever need.
Even if arcane is not a big part of their culture as seen above there are mages/sorcerers of sorts in Pandaren ranks and society, much have happened since the sundering.
I guess the character would be quite different depending on what background she has of those two, will think a little about it… Atm I’m trying to decide what faction to choose 
