Gin’s Notes #2 Mages/The MBP

Descriptions are always subjective. Saying someone is ‘short’ today is actually tall in the year 2000. Being ‘weak’ today would mean you could easily defeat anyone in the year 2000. However with all the differences between us and our ancestors, there are some things that never change. An example of this would be our dependency on a heart. For some reason, no matter how much we have evolved over the past three thousand years, everyone still has one at least.

The mages have tried, they even created the Mage Breeding Programme (MBP) when the wars started between each other, to create the ultimate being but can you really get rid of something that took millions of years to develop in a mere few centuries? We do, however, have changes to the heart ranging from the massive ones found in aquatic bestial types to the miniature ones of the stealth sub-class of the bestial types.

Edit: Often when referring to their class, you say X Y type or Y X type where X denotes their subclass and Y denotes their main class. Both are interchangeable by the X Y format is more common. For Example you would say Stealth Bestial type but Bestial Stealth type is equally acceptable.

However, one key aspect about mages that differs to manush is that mages could tell whether someone was a mage or not but the manush couldn’t at first glance. Much more relevant in the past than now but it is why others perceive me as strange. Another thing about mages that I am curious about is how they view the world. From a friend’s experience, who knows I am a manush, he describes it as being more aware of everything around him to the smallest of details. He says he can tell how a single cell out of trillions in his body is doing, every single bacteria or virus that enter his systems and to an extent his surroundings. How can you not go insane with all this knowledge, I won’t know. My guess is that it must be unconscious thinking which he can then make conscious like how I don’t notice my breathing but can control it if I concentrate. Understanding Mages is difficult but I would still like to in an attempt to become one, if done artificially.

From my knowledge of the MBP there seems to be two major things the mages running it do. The first is to determine whether an individual is deemed worthy to be picked by the MBP. This is done through how a person performs in their specific job. The best of them are then picked and are assigned a partner.

The second thing Mages do in the MBP is decide which characteristics to choose from both the paternal and maternal sides in order for their child to be able to help evolve magikind to a greater extent. Unlike manush the passing on of genes was and still not random and as a consequence this was possible. As the partners are chosen, the chances are that their child will be even better in terms of abilities than their parents. Side note: The right to have a child does not exist in this day and age, you must be chosen by the MBP. Any evidence of this law being violated can lead to the death of both you and your child.

You are normally chosen near the end of your life (mages don’t seem to suffer from what manush call a ‘menopause’ where the women fail to be able to reproduce.) but there are exceptions.

The early stages of magikind (the term ‘mages’ and ‘magi’ mean the same thing), what I believe is the case, was that at first they became physically stronger; Stronger bones and joint stength, which in turn allowed for humans to have taller physiques, longer lives etc. It isn’t a surprise then that Mages are without disease as a consequence as they could stop incoming diseases before they acted. Later on Mages could develop other traits like being able to manipulate nature along with being capable of being eight feet or taller, living several centuries and having insane recovery times.

It is quite interesting how we categorise ourselves as well, or at least, how they categorise themselves because the mages needed to sort themselves out in order to maximise the potential mages being bred in the MBP. They are firstly sorted out by the three major classes; Elemental, Bestial and Utility. Each major class is then divided into sub-classes such as fire and earth elementals, aquatic and stealth sub-class, as I have mentioned before; farmers and medics in utility (very different to those of the early 3rd millennia). I don’t fit into any category as I am not a mage myself but, if anything, I am close to the utility category.

Edit: One thing I may have failed to mention, or it wasn’t clear enough, was that the MBP basically is, what people of the past might call, a government. Somewhere along the way, they gained control over the world. Strangely there’s an MBP in all three continents, (Eurasia, The Afro-Australian Alliance and The Americas), and all three are the ruling authorities on each of their respective continent. The reason why it happened, I might cover later on but basically what I’m trying to say is that the MBP is both making all the decisions and that they are the creators (through selectively breeding) of new mages.

This selective breeding has gone on for almost two thousand years which is why we see such a vast variety of mages.