There we go! This is exaclty the sort of thing we need to differentiate. Anvildude 22:54, April 2, 2010 (UTC)
Rankings[]
"The next most powerful mage on campus is probably Circe, a goddess in her own right, followed by Eliza Grimes. Majestic (Wiz-4) is probably the next most powerful student."
Do we have a source for this? As it stands, it is more or less guess work based on incomplete information. Nothing I've read confirms Circe is really a Goddess, we only know some people thousands of years ago though she. And really, even then, its not saying much. J.G. in the canon forum said 'A 4 means a clear, definable power in their own right. Anyone with a 4 would have been worshipped as a God in less modern times.' I can't remember anything that gives Grimes the number two spot. And I have no idea why you're placing Majestic next(there are numerous other teacher who could be considered and some students do out rank her, Charmer for instance is a Mage 5). And all that says nothing of there being students we are yet to hear of (we only know the powers and abilities of a fraction of Whateley's student body after all).
Also how are you defining 'powerful' in this ranking? Is it skill (with sufficient prep time, skill the all that matters in theory if not entirely in practice)? Is the amount of essence they have available? Is it a function of both? If so, how are you dealing with multiple skills in different areas (healing vs blowing stuff up for example. Which makes a wizard more powerful?)
Really, if we are righting a wiki based on canon, we should avoid guess work like this. Unless a canon author would be kind enough to confirm it of course. --Glimmervoid 18:43, April 16, 2010 (UTC)
Whether or not Circe is a goddess has been discussed, in particular several views of her parentage as the daughter of Helios, etc. This might be questionable, but the New Olympians certainly seem to think so, and since she's part of their pantheon, they ought to know.
Grimes is questionable, but I specifically said student for Majestic, not teacher, and I said it for exactly that reason. There might be a student who's between Majestic and Fey, but if so, it hasn't come up.
Powerful is a slippery concept. Kristen Darken's discussion of Wiz rankings specifically says that they have to do with the amount of essence someone can hold and how well they recharge from energy around them. That's one way of defining power, and since it's measurable it's a way that a researcher would find useful, so that's what the rankings indicate. Other ways of defining power have more to do with skill and, at least in some cases, sheer bloody-minded determination to make anyone standing in their way regret it. XaltatunOfAcheron 20:35, April 16, 2010 (UTC)
You seem to have missed my point. I was not so much asking for answers to those question as saying that we 'dont have real answers. I think we should remove that list, since it has very little basis in canon. Trying to rank character is something best left to canon authors and point of view statements in story. As you said yourself Powerful is a slippery concept, so why are we trying to make guesses about it? --Glimmervoid 20:45, April 16, 2010 (UTC)
If you want to remove the list of power levels, go ahead. It's known to be wrong even though it was copied directly from a canon author's post, so it's WOG. All that is in the discussion with Kristen on the forum that I've asked several times for someone to locate. IIRC, Kristen gave the correct list, from the Canon Bible, in that discussion.
In fact, we do have real answers to a lot of those questions. It's just that many of them are in the heads of people who have read all the stories and all the discussions on the forums at they happened, and who have good enough memories to usually get them right.
XaltatunOfAcheron 21:03, April 16, 2010 (UTC)
Do you mean this: "The next most powerful mage on campus is probably Circe, a goddess in her own right, followed by Eliza Grimes. Majestic (Wiz-4) is probably the next most powerful student." is from Kristen post? Because if you do then I'm sorry. I though that was you just guessing. --Glimmervoid 21:09, April 16, 2010 (UTC)
I just searched the forums using the search term wiz, which will pull up anything starting with those three letters. 365 hits. Looked at all of them that were posts by canon authors. There's Maggie's post, which is on the subject page, but no post by Kristin updating it. Searched for mag, got 23 hits; people just don't use the word magic, I guess. No relevant post. Searching for circe didn't present me with any posts giving relative rankings. There you have it. JohnBobMead 21:04, October 31, 2010 (UTC)
Same search procedure, Majestic, then Grimes. Nothing relevant. Of course, we have the problem of how thorough is the search function? Does it really search all the forum posts? Does it really pull up all the matching terms? JohnBobMead 21:55, December 20, 2010 (UTC)
The rankings[]
Does anyone else think we should just bite the bullet and remove the Wiz 0 through 7 table, given we know it no longer conforms to canon? Also the Wiz-0 definition seems to be wrong too. Going by the WOG here (original lost in crash) a Wiz-0 rank implies a 'inclination towards it' (it presumably being magic and the example given is Phase seeing magic). The 'There is no classification for someone with baseline level talents for it' part of the quote seems to directly contradict the current definition. Glimmervoid 14:12, May 20, 2012 (UTC)
It's actually still helpful even though it ranks levels of control/understanding the magic a person uses more than it does the rate at which the user recharges their Well while at rest. The amount of Essence available to a user is only limited by the sum of how much their Well can hold, how much they have stored in reliqueries, how much they can pull in, and how much of what they're willing to sacrifice to get more. Null0Trooper (talk) 21:13, January 23, 2019 (UTC)
Possible rewrite bits[]
A mutant with the Wizard Trait is likely to have innate ways of drawing in Essence without having to work for it. Some also have access to ‘tricks’, additional magical abilities which give them an edge in a magical contest. The Trait does not, however, provide an advantage in knowing, learning or preforming spells, though individual mutants may have such an advantage from another source (Fey’s relationship with Aunghadhail for example). Likewise, it does not grant an instinctive feel for one or more general categories of magic. - http://www.crystalhall.org/Ayla09Ch10.html
Even though the Wizard Trait provides a steady stream of Essence that does not mean that Essence is always available. Essence is constantly lost though a host of mundane activates: gambling, praying, wishing, interaction with probability and reality Warpers etc. Indeed, wizards ranked below a 2 or 3 who circum to carelessness or inattentiveness can waste Essence far easier than they can gather it up. - http://www.crystalhall.org/Ayla09Ch18.html --Glimmervoid (talk) 16:54, November 28, 2012 (UTC)