Magic in the world

"As you all know, being wise enough to select studying magic over brawling around in the dust like the so-called 'knights', magic is a strange and curious force in the world. Most people take it for granted, and indeed, magic is granted to every person in the world, in a unique form. No two people are the same, and so too can no two people possess the exact same magic ability. We teach many ways of twisting magic to your own will, but no matter how eagerly you study spells, your own magic will remain with you. The only ones who have managed to remove their own magic are the Holy Knights, by virtue of them needing blind faith in order to develop their skills."

"Now, even an experienced wizard such as myself cannot cast a spell conflicting with my own natural magic. The most effective wizards study spells that can be augmented by their own magic, or used in combinations. For instance, if I try casting a spell meant to direct others' attention away from me, it will conflict with my own magic, which draws others' attention to me or something I make, and the two magics negate each other. However, if I use my own magic on someone, and cast Ignite on that someone, they will be unable to ignore the pain of the Ignite spell, and suffer a particularly gruesome death as they stand transfixed, unable to do anything but feel the fire burn them."

"That is the basics of what we can do with magic. Now, to something else, namely what magic can do to us. Magic, despite being a source of energy and not a sentient being, seems to do things by its own volition. Among other things, this involves causing the storms of magic in the wilderness, which are inhospitable due to magic being unchecked. Here, magic can rip apart the land and send massive boulders flying into the air, creating floating islands, deep ravines that can open under your feet and eat you alive, not to mention threaten any person going there with causing terrible mutations, ripping them in many tiny pieces or warp someone's mind completely. It's advised to not stay in those regions for a long time."

"In order to prevent magic doing all these beautifully nasty things to us, we have raised magical focus points all around our civilised lands. These draw rampant magics to them and conduct them into ley lines, creating a network of ley lines around our lands, and keeping the magic from doing what it usually does. That is how we as humans were able to settle down and live safely from anything save our own stupidity. Oh, and on the subject of focus points, they exist both artificially and naturally. Several strange monuments, clearly not built by a sentient race, serve the same purpose as the focus points we have built around the world. How these came to exist still remains a mystery, but they are more reliable than our artifical focus points, which occasionally warp a little bit because of the magic they handle."

"What happens to all the excess magic gathered by the focus points? That's something handled by stronger and more potent focus points. These are exclusively artifical, built by sentient races, and called nexus points. They gather several magical ley lines to themselves, and while there are few nexus points, they are strong enough to send much of the excess magic off into the heavens. The rest might be used by powerful wizards residing within these nexus points, or simply gathered up and stored away. How focus points and nexus points function can be studied in your own free time, as that's not something most wizards or apprentices need to know. That's it for today; class dismissed."