Broke: Joining the Kirin Tor
Woke: Not joining the Kirin Tor
Bespoke: Joining the Kirin Tor to further your personal agenda and exploit their resources before leaving the place worse off than it was when you found it.
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Literally impossible
Curses, youâve found out my secret plan!
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Many of my recruits do have ended up embracing evil due to IC treatment but as how fel is and its inherent nature of being a sacrificial magic that is fueled by life and souls.
Yet, not all of my gamers if not most of all are just pure evil in fact most of them are what in DnD would be more closely known as Neutral Chaotic or Lawful. Obviously we will do what we have to do to avoid Void to win but that is the point of the guild.
If you want to explore magic as a whole I do not think that there is a guild that I know that focus on just studying it. We here do study fel, fire, shadow and even arcane but to use fel is to fall in consequences.
I do think that if you want to have that experience maybe Kirin Tor Intelligence can be a neat guild, if not I would say the Sunnyglade yet they are mercenaries which wonât probably give you that vibe of a group of scholars.
I do hope that you find what you are looking for.
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I mean⌠you can dislike the faction OOC, but in wowâs internal logic, joining the Kirin Tor is definitely the best decision any self-respecting mage can make
Thatâs where you have the resources, the emulation, the teachings, the opportunities; if not, youâre kind of stuck in your city and your faction in general (Stormwind, Silvermoon, Suramar), youâre rarely among other mages and assume the role of the portal dude, or you become a hedge mage in a hut or something
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I feel like these are poor examples of being âstuckâ. Certainly Silvermoon and Suramar are mage states in their own right and in the case of Suramar perhaps one of the strongest around.
I know Telaryn in particular is a big fan of Stormwind having itâs own magery (Iâve made this word up and I donât care) independent of the Kirin Tor for better or worse.
I donât think itâs fair to say that not being in the Kirin Tor is a significant handicap.
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âMageryâ is a good word
What I meant by âstuckâ is that I imagine the roles you can have as an arcanist are limited to faction structures like the Magisterium or the Nighthold; and that you are rarely exposed (in your learning, not in your day to day) to mages of other cultures and races, which means your perspective and your methods remain somewhat⌠rigid and endogenous?
I am not a complete Kirin Tor groupie despite the guild I founded, they do some shady stuff, but it does stand out in the lore as âthe city of magic and only magicâ
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Thank you.
I follow you. I think I missed the point of the original post somewhat, but I do think that while the Kirin Tor is more diverse in terms of racial representation, to some extent I think itâs probably just as rigid a society as something like the Magesterium.
Signing up to join the Kirin Tor would be signing up to their own set of rules and methodology, much the same as you would expect from any other venue that teaches magical ability. The Kirin Tor have their own slant on how things should be taught and used that is defined that I imagine comes from the top down.
Ultimately what Iâm trying to say is that Elves are evil and probably the real big bad of the setting.
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I quickly dip in to be an insufferable pedant and note, if youâre referring to the blood elven organisation, it is called The Magisters, whereas Magisterium is a purely player-derived term.
I remember that another forum poster (might have been Aerilen) would refer to âthe Terraceâ when speaking of the Magisters, since thatâs the headquarters. Itâs a bit like referring to âthe Spireâ when talking about the Thalassian government.
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Youâre right - but itâs such a good word though, no wonder it stuck
Iâm not going to argue with the rules aspect - in the guild, we RP the Kirin Tor as a bureaucratic inferno where you have to sign tauren-high stacks of paperwork, writs and dispensations every time we have to change the filter of the office coffee machine (itâs pretty funny)
It definitely has its regulations and they are pretty draconic (the in-game books make that clear), but I still think if you want your work emulated and challenged as an ambitious mage, this is where you would go rather than stay in your native city, no matter how magic-oriented
This is why we have Sunreavers, dragons, and shaldorei who almost immediately joined in Legion, despite Silvermoon, the Nexus and Suramar being seats of magical power in their own right
The Last Guardian and to a limited extend Rise of the Lich King showed how they were already losing their grip and became increasingly out of touch. Although Medivh was highly biased, he portrayed some excellent reasons for Kirin Torâs degrading competency as confirmed by Khadgar with an increasing tend of getting too mired in politics and philosophy while neglecting their actual duties. Medivh even went as far as to say that Kirin Torâs teachings of magic are not reflective of reality, as he strongly rejects the idea of magic = math, and demonstrates why that ideology is harmful to teach.
By Rise of the Lich King they sent a single apprentice to investigate the Scourge outbreak of Lordaeron, because they were too shortsighted to think it was worth their time. A fact that ended up with the city massacred.
Thatâs an oversimplification and ignores everything related to mages in those very magical cities by focusing on the most immediately seen NPCs. By the same logic being in Kirin Tor makes you a whacky zaney quest giver who messes up everything.
Like Loras mentioned, this is a player-made concept and not a representative of the factions in lore any more than the portal license mage police players are of Kirin Tor, despite it being a startlingly common trend.
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Iâve always assumed that, rather than magic truly equalling math, itâs simply a means by which to apply conventional logic to the Arcane, to better find ways to wield and mold it. My own characters donât hold to that (none of them are Dalaran-aligned), but itâs an interesting thought to me.
Thatâs the exact reason why Medivh thinks itâs dangerous. As he explains it, thereâs nothing logical about magic. By its very definition, magic actively defies the rational and trying to apply logic as though itâs math or some other equation will only lead to you reasoning yourself to a logical dead end. A paradox. Basing your studies around this model will actively cripple you, because mages do not and cannot know the true secrets of magic. At best they can make educated guesses based on what doesnât work. Even the internal mechanics of how fire is conjured is a heated topic because nobody can settle on an objective answer (though Medivh asserts that his belief is Always Objecive and Kirin Tor can suck it)
He then uses an analogy to portray this by asking Khadgar to define time, and he says itâs a steady progression of instants, like a clock. But Medivh proposes that time is more like an hourglass; you know that the sands will fall from the top to bottom predictably every single time, but you have no way of predicting in which order the grains of sand fall. You could repeat it an infinite amount of times, and the order will always be different in some invariable way that you cannot explain, no matter how predictable the outcome. The mechanics will always elude you.
Thatâs the true nature of magic according to Medivh. Unknowable, unpredictable, and unreasonable. And sooner mages accept and embrace this mystery as a fact of its being rather than trying to categorise it, the better theyâll be able to understand it in a very paradoxical way. And subsequently why he thinks Kirin Tor is driving itself to the ground teaching an overtly simplified âmagic = mathâ model that doesnât reflect what magic truly is.
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Having roleplayed mages since time immemorial, Iâve actually never known about or seen the Kirin Tor from this perspective (thatâs what I get for not reading the novels I suppose) - and I must say I like it a lot.
Roleplaying in a dysfunctional system sounds like it could lead to a lot of really fun and interesting scenarios as opposed to constantly pretending to be among the pinnacle of magi.
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A heavy disclaimer is that Medivh - despite disguising himself as an objective narrator - is heavily biased in his hatred of the Kirin Tor. But Khadgar, a Kirin Tor trained apprentice, does end up seeing the same flaws in the system that Medivh does which gives some credence to his critique. But unlike Medivh, he feels he can change the broken system instead of trying to tear it down.
Thereâs definitely a lot of pushback and rivalry between Kirin Tor and other mage institutions of the world though. The one thing they all agree on is that hedge mages are dangerous if not trained properly.
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Thatâs fair, but itâs his point of view, and he has reasons to be biased against the Kirin Tor like Telaryn said. And given that as the son of Guardian Aegwynn, he inherited vast powers by virtue of birth, heâs hardly unbiased in this matter. He can probably manipulate intuitively what other mages need math to even comprehend and formalize.
Iâm certain that a Kirin Tor mage worth their salt could find plenty of counterarguments to the points Medivh is raising. So could I, but these margins are too small for the extended argument, so Iâll be brief.
In reality, the equations used by physicists to describe how the universe works arenât ontologically real. There isnât a Stone Tablet of Physical Laws that says that lo, gravity shalt work in accordance to Einsteinâs general relativity; itâs simply our best guess at the moment, and we know it isnât perfect. Similarly, other physical laws are also approximations to the real state of affairs, which, for whatever reason, just is, not needing, unlike humans, to conceive of math to operate.
This doesnât mean math isnât the best way to do physics, chemistry, and engineering that is ultimately based on physics and chemistry.
A person who could just intuitively manipulate physical objects and fields at will, without having to conceive of the rules by which they operate, would have no need for math. But for people who canât (which is all of them) and for any useful predictions about the surrounding world, and for the manufacturing of objects used in our everyday life, math is the best available tool because it is a very concise language for manipulating abstractions and making far-reaching logical conclusions from first principles.
Similarly, I would presume that formal mage education is rooted in math because math is a useful tool for building models of the world in general, not because there is something about arcane magic specifically that cares about math more than the rest of the laws of nature. It helps with the understanding of consistent, reproducible phenomena by people who donât have the fortune to be born Guardians and have to learn magic the hard way.
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You can still use Dalaran, it would be more proper to use the Underbelly (Which I am a big fan of) but sadly you can get griefed hard there.
I donât do Underbelly RP, but if I did, using the Underbelly of Northrend Dalaran would seem like a better choice.
A very good post and I agree with most of it, though to add to this point the novel does point out that one doesnât need to be a Guardian to be a born mage. There are mage dynasties of natural born sorcerers who are common enough that people thought âAegwynnâ was the name of just another (but also particularly powerful) dynasty of mage women, because despite mages living for approx. 200 years on average, this Aegwynn figure living for 800 was so unheard of that the most logical explanation was a mage dynasty.
But the novel also portrays Khadgar as the stand in for the average mage. As an apprentice he was pretty unimpressive when it came to magical potential, but Medivh picked him over all the other candidates because he can always teach someone to become a mage but he canât teach them to be intelligent. Khadgar impressed him with his work ethic and refusal to give up, overcoming odds with hard work and dedication into the Archmage he is today.
Medivhâs teachings - as unorthodox as they were according to Kirin Torâs magical theory - shaped Khadgar into who he is, and he benefited a great deal under his wing. It was implied that he would one day go on to share Medivhâs teachings and change the broken system, but come recent years we see Kalecgos as part of the Council of Six going âyeah nah magic is literally mathâ 
Point being that natural sorcerers exist, but also normies like Khadgar benefited from Medivhâs theory of magic without being a natural born mage. Medivh prioritised willpower above all else.
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