Editing Magipunk:Magic (section)

= Magical Power =

The common availability of magical power has wrought immense changes on the world. Where one hundred years ago, priests prayed to their gods for magical power, and secular sorcerors concentrated on their own life field, today a busy urbanite can simply deposit a few Royals in the donations box of one of the Prayer-Mills, and receive in return a ring filled with divine energy, precisely regulated by the overseers of the Mill. 

With magical power now an order of magnitude more prevalent than it was a few generations ago, and, most importantly, requiring nothing more than money to access, the field of sorcery has opened up remarkably, and startling advances are made on an almost daily basis. 

Of course, not everyone can afford the prices of the Prayer Mills, even reduced as they are. In the poorer parts of town, the ancient practice of Blood Magic has grown common as more and more commoners learn something of magic, but lack the resources to buy the holy tokens which literally power the legitimate economy. A dram of blood can serve the same purpose as a church token, though its potency lasts not as long and its messier to work with, and each morning you can see a line of pale youngsters lining up at the barber-shop, being paid for their life essence. 

Pseudo Game-rules: A "standard" power token bought from the church-mills would have 20 mana points in it. It's possible to buy 50 or 100 point tokens, too. Most people can generate 1 point of mana on their own, without using their blood or anything. This regenerates fully after a day. It's possible to raise this amount, but it's very difficult (read: costs a lot of XP, and on some kind of geometric scale). A vial of blood will generally have 5 to 15 mana points in it, depending on the quality of blood. One pint of blood (the amount that real-world blood donor programs take) gives two vials of blood. Giving more than that per month is likely to have health consequences. 

Mana tokens from the church generally cost about the modern day equivalent of $2 per mana point (so a standard 20 point mana token costs the equivalent of $40, and a mondo 100 point mana token costs the equivalent of $200). Blood from the barbers usually costs more like $1 per mana point (though it fluctuates more, and getting the higher-efficiency vials causes the cost to creep up to more like $1.50 per mana point). In general, barbers do a 100% mark-up on the cost that they pay their donors. So if a pint of your blood generates two 10 point vials, the barbers will usually pay you roughly $10 for it.