Cursed and blessed from something indescribable a long time ago and living with it for what feels like longer, Hagbloods live with a constant stream of magic flowing through their bodies and leaking into the world around them, bending it in mysterious ways even the wisest have trouble grasping at times.

The Hagblood's connection with things others can't see positions them easily in research, humanities, and science. Beyond magic, they often do well as academics and mathematicians, and discover realms of possibilities.

With a weird connection to the world and what they can bring upon it, Hagbloods believe that what goes around comes around eventually. They are superstitious to a fault, refusing to step on cracks or under ladders, and happy to pet passing black cats. As such, they take great care in remembering what they've done for people, and what people have done to them.

If something vile is done to a Hagblood or their family which seems senseless or random, the world will find a way to make the perpetrator's life an ironic hell. The most furious and driven of them can do terrible things with a drop of the target's blood, a few strands of hair, and a photograph.

The family life of a Hagblood is very close knit, with the parents teaching their children all they can about the world as they understand it before going into formal education. In school, Hagbloods usually find themselves working to discover more about the world their parents didn't teach them, finding like-blooded partners to form covens and cabals with, and with them, lifetime friendships.

Later in life, they drift apart from their friends and families, delving into long bouts of research. Often, they look for answers to questions, or for worldly secrets and strange truths. Otherwise, they just like the solitude and remain in touch with their friends and family throughout life.

There are two identifiable schools of swagger for Hagbloods: the scholarly and the eclectic. Scholarly Hagbloods cater to an image of wizened and well-studied curators, evoking images of archetypal witches and wizards. The eclectic Hagbloods are a little more fanciful, mimicking the look of stage magicians, performers, mountebanks, and tricksters.

Hair wise, Hagbloods like their hair long and flowing, and beards longer if they can grow one. Often, their hair sports braids or decorations, and can run the gamut of colours from natural to plain strange.

With repeated uses of magic, a pattern slowly burns into their skin, a noticeably differently coloured shade of alien-looking geometrics. It is first visible at the fingertips, then spreading up the limbs and towards the body, stopping short of the neck and torso. Some display this mage's brand with pride, others take steps to hide it.

In extreme evocations or payments for pacts, Hagbloods can have their bodies shaped by the forces that lend them power, leading to sometimes inconvenient, novel, or even monstrous looking appearances. In spite of this, they are still human biologically, but whether they retain their humanity is another issue.

Hagbloods like the feel of natural fabrics and textiles, and much of their clothing is (or appears to be) hand made. Often, scholarly Hagbloods are seen wearing robes, cloaks, mantles, and gowns, often reaching the floor and flowing free. Eclectics prefer wearing suit shirts, vests, duster jackets, and fancying the use of hanging baubles, particularly hand watches¹⁾ and other fobs.

Embroidery, inlaying, and elaborately woven patterns are common amongst all Hagbloods, along with accessories such as scarves, glasses, gloves, hats of all sorts (with cone shapes, top hats or bowlers being popular), and walking sticks. Gemstones, jewellery, and crystals are also common decorations, as they are thought to enhance spellcasting ability.

With their connection to the world around them, Hagbloods like the rustic look of wood, stone, and wrought iron. Their houses often incorporate natural trees and rocks, or other greenery. It isn't uncommon to see a tree growing through the middle of a house and providing structural support. Fireplaces are also a common feature, along with thick rugs, tablecloths, and shelves brimming with unexplained vials and jars of things the Hagblood and their family may need one day. The construction of their houses incorporates little visible metal or plastic, with the exception of modern amenities like electricity, running water, and sanitation.

They place a lot of emphasis on their bedrooms - which also do double duty as a Hagblood's laboratory and/or study. Often, these studies are a Hagblood's private domain, and only close friends and family are allowed in. Here, they can stay for hours working away at something, often forgetting to eat or sleep. Older Hagbloods who need solitude to study and read, or who feel shunned by the world around them often retreat to cabins out in remote areas, usually deep in forests or up in mountains.

Hagblood created objects commonly incorporate wrought iron, wood, bone, fabric, and crystal. They evoke images of fantastic relics of a bygone age. Decorations such as hanging baubles, etched sigils, and wax-sealed bits of scripture are common.

When creating technology, they often find a way to incorporate magic into it and make the two different forces work together. To this end, most of their technology incorporates some form of focus item for the user to direct their own magic into the item to power it, or enhance its capabilities. For technological problems they can't get around using magic, they enlist the help of a local Greaseheart or Maidenhand.

In addition, Hagbloods are renowned for their focus and development of traditional mediums of artwork and construction, such as painting, engraving, masonry, carving and whittling, herbal medicines, smithing, and other archaic arts and crafts. Contemporary Hagblood technology can be mistaken for museum pieces due to how decorative they are, or how hand-involved the creation process is, setting it aside from mass-produced peers.

The Hagblood's bread and butter. Magic comes naturally to each Hagblood, and they are happy to ply it in any number of ways to make their life easier. Hagblood magic can be subtle as a few whispers and a hand gesture to woo someone, or a roaring violent body motion that sends a fireball crashing down on someone. Magic can leap out of something they wrote down, come from rote learning, come at their call because they will it so, or just leap out of them spontaneously when provoked.

Hagbloods usually stick with what their family teaches them, or coven. Generations of families have carried magical traditions in various ways. With examples in relation to pulling a rabbit out of a hat, commonly used schools of magic include:

• Illusions - Creates an image of the rabbit to pull out of the hat. Minimal time, preparation, and effort are needed, but more complex images and additional sensations, such as the touch of a rabbit's fur, their smell, and the pain inflicted by a bite require more effort.
• Enchantments - Manipulates the rabbit to stay docile until commanded to emerge from the hat, by using incantations which manipulate their will. A good idea of what can be used to coax the rabbit is required to make the enchantment more effective.
• Witchcraft - Places a hex on the hat in advance which render anything placed inside of it sleepy, by binding the will of a Soma spirit to it. The hat is potent enough to make anyone who wears it fall asleep too. The hat must also be a suitably decorated vessel to coax the spirit's power into it. Requires preparation, handicraft, and bargaining with otherworldly things.
• Trickster - By grasping strings of probability and weaving ambient magic forces and willpower into them, this makes a rabbit more probable to come out of the hat. This effectively changes reality in the hat, to conform to the will of the trickster. This requires the most investment of the magical schools, and results can be dangerous if the will wavers.
• Conjuring - The magician creates the rabbit from scratch, changing air to water, water into blood, blood into flesh, and flesh into bone, and a rabbit is created. This requires the conjurer to have a good idea of what a rabbit looks like, how it is put together and a working knowledge of mammal anatomy.
• Wizarding/Magery - By linking quantum-string points through the creation of a 'bridge', a tunnel can be created between two points. When performed by a wizard/mage, point A is the interior of the hat, while point B is a rabbit burrow, or a cage with a rabbit in it set up in advance. The wizard/mage puts their hand through the bridge, and grabs the rabbit.
• Elementalism - By manipulating the physical elements of nature, the elementalist wills the water and air of the rabbit to turn into stone. This stone rabbit is placed inside of the hat, then later returned to water and air when retrieved.
• Animism - Using a crafted facsimile of a rabbit, the animist places it into the hat. With a later application of will, they animate the analogue rabbit with a temporary burst of life force. The more convincing the doll, the longer they will live. Effigies can be sustained with ongoing sources of power too.

Above all else, knowledge is power in magery. What separates a good magician from a great one is a great deal of preparation - but quick wits and improvisation separates the best casters from the great ones.

Hagbloods can be sensitive to psionic phenomena, but they don't give it much attention as magic comes easier, naturally. Hagbloods who can harness both magic and psionics effectively are commonly referred to theurges.

Theurges are very rare, given the Hagblood's overbalanced inclination towards magic, and a friendly rivalry against Mindeyes discouraging the study and practice of psionics further. Theurges are often feared for their disproportionate power and mastery, and often they're urged not to stay in one place for too long.

Due to Hagblood architecture having a fondness for truly living spaces, living wood is often a part of the design. Trees are often given a magically accelerated growth and ongoing maintenance. They enjoy growing deciduous and coniferous trees alike, so long as they do not cause mess in the house.

Hagbloods also enjoy growing berry bushes around their living spaces for snacks on the go or for spell materials. They have an aversion to disturbing natural land, letting whatever grows on it grow within reason. The backyard space has a little more control, where it isn't uncommon for Hagbloods to create pleasingly natural looking scenery, with stony bonfire pits being a common addition for some rituals or winter warmth.

Hagbloods often keep pets, and the pet can be a representative or familiar for a supernatural being the Hagblood can bargain with. Otherwise, they are known to be fond of birds, rabbits, cats, foxes, mustelids, and reptiles.

In addition, Hagbloods are also known to run large, open-plained farms raising herbivore species such as cows, sheep, pigs, and goats for milk, meats, wool, and leather. Running the farm is usually assisted by bound spirits, and animated vessels.

Being fond of 'old ways', most Hagblood cooking comes from cast iron cookware, campfires, and wood-fuelled stoves and ovens. This gives Hagblood food a very distinctly smoky and aged taste without being offensively woody or oily. It isn't uncommon for the cooking process of some Hagblood food to spend a day stewing, being smoked, or in the case of some meats preserved in salts and hung up to dry.

They are known for making meat and vegetable stews with barley and corn, baking nutty and seed-peppered breads, and saccharine desserts and cakes. This makes the average Hagblood diet very high in carbohydrates and starches, leaving stomachs feeling 'very full'. Diet is shown to have an impact on spellcasting, with well-nourished casters performing better than malnourished or poor dieting casters.

What is the commonly shared belief system through the species?

The main focus of the religion.

Are there any sort of rituals the culture goes through to celebrate the advancement of one through life and religion?

What are common traditions the culture holds? Is it annual, or based on some celestial alignment, or based on weather conditions, and so on.

How do they celebrate birth? Do they mourn the dead? Etc.

The School of Dreaming is a particularly ancient breed of magic that traces its history even to Old Earth, claiming root ancestry from tales such as the Lady of the Lake or the witches of Sleepy Hollow. This school is based around female practitioners who are a loose cult of predestination, believing that witches are present to help the heroes of history they see their role as to be secondary characters enabling world changing events.

Although the witches version of these romantic tales tends to involve a lot more illegitimate daughters sired by said heroes, stormy romances, and rather more bloodshed and dark deeds. Many practitioners both worship and fear a Weald entity known as the Lord of Dreams who appears most often in their rites of passage, as such many in this school tread the Weald willingly, but with a strong dose of caution that perhaps the Weald will make use of them, too.

Recently this school has undergone a mild schism between a traditionalist and modernist alliances of covens, although the exact nature of witch politics and the dealings of the covens is murky and ever-changing that only they can often read them clearly. Hagbloods rarely settle these things with force, and witches from these different branches are still often seen working together if needs must.

Dreaming magic rarely uses divinity to channel its will, instead relying more often upon Weald and dimensional mastery, common enchantments, and the magical energy produced by human thought and places of power. Dreamers are particular good at charms and influencing others, as well as enchanting magical items as well as some skill at divination. Dreamers tend to be weaker in divine magic, destruction, and purely elemental magic.