Picture a pyramid, then take an identical pyramid, turn it upside down, and stick them together. Or, for those geeks out there, just picture a D8.

Four of the points are the "traditional" elements of Earth, Water, Fire and Air, let's say they occupy the "ground level" of the pyramids. Now, imagine the top point of the pyramid is the elemental force of Creation, while the bottom point is the elemental force of Negation.

For a total of six elements, what are known as the Prime Aspects. Is this starting to sound a little like Age of Wonders, yet? No surprise there.

Now picture a line between each element and its neighbors. Each of those lines is one of the Border Aspects, sharing elements with its "parent" Aspects, but also possessing its own unique properties. There is a total of twelve Border Aspects, for 18 overall aspects.

It also forms a total of 3 "rings", each with a total of 8 aspects within. I'll be explaining the aspects using those rings, for what I hope is easier visualization.

FUNDAMENTAL: Thaumaturge, Enchanter

Fundamental isn't considered an aspect, it's the energy that all things have natural access to. A "neutral" magic, as it were. Fundamental magic covers building complex magical structures (including potions and magic items), detecting the flow of magical energy, and identifying the nature of spells and constructs that are being used. Thaumaturges also develop talents to tear down and destroy other enchantments, or reprogram them to suit other purposes. On the battlefield, thaumaturges are often deployed to "counterspell spam" enemy mages.

Fundamental magic is exceedingly complicated compared to most mage styles, since it works with deeper forces rather than the more abundant and easily manipulated forces of Aspect magic. As such, few other than devoted scholars pursue the art.

Career options: dispelling curses, inflicting curses, crafting potions, constructing magical devices, reshaping sarite shards, and teaching other mages to better harness their abilities.

Master Fundamental mages are often called Archmages or Artificers.

ELEMENTAL RING:

The traditional four elements form the elemental ring, which share in common the nature of directly altering the physical materials of the universe. They do not create nor destroy, they merely manipulate or alter what is already there.

The elemental ring goes as follows: Earth - Plant - Water - Mist - Air - Desert - Fire - Forge - Earth

EARTH: (Geomancer, Terramancer)

Earth mages work with rock, soil, and minerals. In terms of resilience, they are second to none, though they lack ranged offensive options. Most of their magic works slowly, reshaping the environment around them and establishing battlefield control.

While considered too slow to be effective in direct combat, Terramancers have their place as walking siege weapons, Given time, they can devastate enemy defenses, bringing down even the toughest fortifications with their ability to manipulate the ground. In addition, they make excellent frontline warriors with their superhuman durability and strength magics.

Career options: Construction, demolition, infrastructure planning, finding rare minerals, and maintenance.

Opposite: Air

PLANT: (Botanical Mage, Mud Mage, Shaman)

Shamans mostly work with plantlife. Their main tricks revolve around reshaping the living environment to their needs, not unlike geomancers, but they can work their magic faster than any geomancer of equivalent skill. Some will also work with mud and quicksand, when the opportunity arises. In addition, plants have any number of useful properties, which shamans often have magic to identify and exploit.

On the battlefield, they have most of the durability of a geomancer, but more maneuverability options and the ability to hamper the movement of their opponents, making them frustrating foes.

Career Options: nonmagical poultices, pain relievers, and poisons, farming, floral arrangements.

Opposite: Desert

WATER: (Aquamancer)

Aquamancers are infamous for their ability to change to circumstances and surprise their enemies. Adaptive, swift, and deceptively lethal, they excel at evading and confounding enemies before coming in for the kill against an exhausted and disoriented foe. They make effective assassins, but still are rather lacking in ranged offensive options. Unlike the geomancer and shaman, aquamancers can usually use their battlefield control magic. In non-combat situations, their adaptability lets them adjust to situations as needed, and most can summon or cleanse water so that it's safe to drink, or breathe underwater.

Some Aquamancers focus their power on the small scale, crafting some illusions and cosmetic alterations of bodies. Some rare water mages are talented shapeshifters.

Career Options: summon rain, or reduce the power of floods, clean poisons, provide drinking water, plastic surgeon.

Opposite: Fire

MIST: (Atmokinetic, Illusionist)

Sometimes called illusion or storm mages, they combine the confounding power of the water mage with the swift ever-mutable nature of air magic. Storm magic tends to have less forceful but wider scale magic than their water counterparts, and focus mainly on the deceptive and illusory options that their more offensively oriented counterparts lack the finesse to accomplish. Very little an Atmokinetic does has any permanency, but their range in both distance and versatility is not to be underestimated.

Career Options: illusionists, entertainers, assassins, full army support

Opposite: Forge

AIR: (Aeromancer)

Aeromancers are infamous for having the longest range, and least directly powerful, magic. Air mages tend to be fragile, relying on agility to keep themselves alive while they kick up windstorms to blind their foes and prevent ranged attacks. Particularly strong air mages can generate hurricane force winds, able to ruin an enemy force with their power. Many air mages can use their magic to hear from great distances or send magical messages on the breeze.

Career Options: Messenger, Spy, Scout

Opposite: Earth

DESERT:

Also known as dust mages, sand mages, lightning mages, and dessication mages, the desert mage has many options to combine the speed and range of air magic with the destructive power of the fire mage. The desert mage is infamous for indiscriminate harm they can inflict not just upon their foes, but upon every living thing near that foe. Even lightning, one of their most focused abilities, has a bad habit of missing or hitting multiple targets that may not be what the mage intended. As such, they are often disparagingly referred to as "collateral damage" mages.

Career Options: Climate control for libraries, killing people in horrific ways

Opposite: Plant

FIRE MAGE: (Pyromancer)

Pyromancers are perhaps the most vulnerable of all mages. Lacking the durability of the Earth mage, the adaptability of the water mage, or the speed of the air mage, the pyromancer's magic is almost completely offensive in nature. Their spells are fast, controllable, and have a solid range, giving the pyromancer freedom to focus on raw, destructive, potential. Their main vulnerabilities are their lack of defenses and sensory magic, making them exceedingly vulnerable to water mages. They can also use their magic to inspire passion and confidence, though those talents are more common amongst the neighboring 'blood' and 'madness' aspects.

Career Options: If it burns, we can kill it... also great way to warm your house.

Opposite: Water

FORGE MAGE: (Volcanist)

Often considered the ultimate war mages, a forge mage specializes in concentrating raw power and defensive ability into pinpoint accurate death. While possessing less resiliency than a pure earth mage, or the ranged offensive power of the fire mage, the volcanist has devastating front line combat ability, and often favors use of heavy weapons and armor to augment their combative style. Their lack of mobility tends to hinder them in combat, however.

Career Options: Everything you want from a main battle tank

Opposite: Mist

SPIRITUAL RING:

The spirit ring, sometimes known as the cycle of life and the metamorphic ring, are the Aspects which guide the nature of life and death. These aspects are about life, death, rebirth, and the fundamental truth that nothing remains forever.

The elemental ring goes as follows: Creation - Peace - Water - Ice - Negation - Madness - Fire - Blood - Creation

CREATION: (Manifester)

Sometimes mistakenly called Life magic, Creation is a much more fundamental concept than life and death. It is the binding force that allows existence to exist, and maintains the dynamic nature of the universe. While all forms of magic manipulate or alter matter and energy in some way, Creation magic is the magic that brings things into being in the first place.

Manifesters build from nothing, creating energy and even matter without any discernible source. Strong manifesters can create weapons, armor, forcefields, and even golems from pure magic, assembled into ever more complex forms. Many believe that creation-aspect gods can manifest spirits and even living things using their power, and that it was from this that all live originated. Creation mages also have a natural tendency to develop precognitive abilities, and are the only bloodline which can use Resurrection magic.

Career Options: Even weak manifesters can find eager employers amongst other mages who benefit from having a natural font of magical energy nearby. Strong manifesters are necessary to power certain magical constructs without resorting to such tactics as human sacrifice.

PEACE: (Healer, Peace Mage)

Combining the infusion of power abilities of Creation with the metamorphic nature of water, healers represent peace, tranquility, and a soul at rest. They possess a strong sense of self, and while amongst the least effective warriors of any path of magic, they are amongst the most valuable to the soldiers who survive the battle. Their ability to cleanse mental wounds as well as physical make them indispensable. If forced into combat, they can often calm the enemy and convince them to lay down their arms.

Opposite: Madness

WATER (See above)

ICE: (Frost mage, Hypothermia mage)

Ice is the aspect of the slow but steady loss of strength, the entropy of running out of strength. Ice mages represent the spiritual decay brought on by age, and are known for using pneumonia, darkness, lethargy, weakness, and frostbite to bring down their enemies. Some ice mages also learn to exploit the defensive and offensive options available in the form of using actual ice, but the majority prefer to rely upon their more subtle powers.

Career Options: Assassins, saboteurs, battlefield debuffs galore

Opposite: Blood

NEGATION: (Necromancer, Exorcist)

As with Creation, Negation goes far deeper than mere death. It is also wrongly interpreted as destruction magic. All magic can be destructive, but destruction does not cause a thing to cease to exist, merely changes its state. When a forest burns, trees cease to be trees, but they still exist as ash and smoke. When water freezes or evaporates, it changes form, but it still fundamentally exists. Negation magic is the true end of existence, leaving nothing behind. They are the only source of true, complete, death.

Necromancers deal with death and that which lingers after death. Much life pyromancers, necromancers have few if any defensive abilities, but they do tend to possess a natural talent for detecting energy. While all but helpless against Creation mages, a Negation mage has a natural advantage against all other forms of magic.

Career Options: Killing monsters, killing people, killing infectious diseases, killing the dead, killing the undead, killing magic, killing basically everything else

MADNESS: (Scourge, Hate Mage)

The scourge strips the sense of peace and tranquility from their victims, leaving only anger and if pushed far enough, violent insanity. Their magic inspires paranoia, rage, antisocial behavior, and obsessive fervor. It can be used to inspire armies before battle, or to drive foes to slaughter their own comrades in fits of jealousy and resentment.

Career Options: Not great as spies, per se, but damn can they mess with an opponent battle plan.

Opposite: Peace

FIRE: See Above

BLOOD: (Sanguimancer, Passion Mage, "Love" Mage)

Cousin of the hate mage, the passion mage inspires great bursts of confidence and focus. On the battlefield, they can drive soldiers to superhuman prowess, and off the battlefield, they are loved for their ability to liven any party. Some blood mages can also temporarily take control of another's magic, but that technique is a closely guarded secret.

Career Options: Anything booze can do, you can do better.

Opposite: Ice

MATERIAL RING:

The material band is one of the physical properties and reality. Material forces tend not to be static, dealing with hard reality and absolute truths with no concern for those who live within their system.

The elemental ring goes as follows: Creation - Mind - Air - Miama - Negation - Time - Earth - Nature - Creation.

CREATION: See above

MIND: (Inquisitor, Esper, Truth mage)

Mind mages are ones who manipulate the thought process and knowledge of others. They do not possess illusions or mind clouding abilities, but most have little or no trouble seeing through the illusions of others. Many are prone to supernatural bursts of inspiration and knowledge that comes seemingly from nowhere, a trait inherited from their creation aspect neighbor. They are highly resistant to mind altering magics.

Career Opportunities: Best Truthsayers, reading minds, being inhumanly intelligent

Opposite: Time

AIR: See Above

MIASMA: (Poison mage, Miasma mage, Plague mage)

Plague mages combine air's natural blanketing features with Negation's theft of life, making them terrifying on the battlefield for much the same reasons as desert mages. Their brand of offense is poison of the air, slowly killing all within every time they take a breath. Asphyxiation, hallucinations, and stealth magic define this bloodline.

Career Path: Nothing friendly, I assure you.

Opposite: Nature

NEGATION: See Above

TIME: (Chronomancer)

Also known as 'erosion magic', time mages play with perhaps the most self-destructive of all magical forces, the inexorable power of time to grind all things to dust. In time, mountains fall to sand and even the gods face their demise.

Time mages couple the patient resilience of Earth with the cold inevitability of Negation. Time mages can pull information from the past, inflict fragility upon objects, animals, and people, and strip away strength and knowledge with their magic. More than any other Negation related path, Time excels at inflicting damage upon nonliving targets.

For those willing to take risks and sacrifice everything for the cause, time mages can accelerate someone, allowing them to get minutes of activity or years of healing done in mere seconds, at the expense of exhaustion and possibly death by heart attack.

Career Options: Remarkable talent for forgeries, investigating lost secrets, making sure secrets stay lost, and frustrating mind mages

Opposite: Mind (Time makes fools of us all, you know)

EARTH: See Above

NATURE: (Ecomancer)

Nature magic mostly deals with the animals of the wild and the power of the physical body. Strength, stability, and the laws of kill or be killed define this path of improvement of life by constant warfare. Nature mages sometimes control animals, but most prefer to take the traits of animals upon themselves, granting themselves the power of beasts rather than lowering themselves to enslaving others.

Nature mages also have some access to healing magic, though they're much better at healing themselves than others.

Career Options: backup healer, deadly warrior, friend of animals

Opposite: Miasma