ROGUE ENGINEERS

Rogue, non-bonded engineers are on their own, and thus must acquire the energy however they can, either on credit or purchased outright with cash. But many rogues steal what they need, giving them a bad reputation in small villages. Unlike a school engineer, they cannot easily replenish their magical/psychic energy stores whenever they run out by visiting a nearby banker. They typically walk a dangerous path, because the wards and spells they use keep them alive in some aspect, and sucking their reserves dry will de-activate these spells, exposing them to harm. For example, a wizard could surround himself with a psychic shield barrier, protecting him from physical and even mental attack. But this barrier requires large amounts of energy to maintain, and since even "sleep" requires energy to perform, the wizard cannot rest if their stocks run low.

Because this wizard does not enjoy the protection and patronage of a school, he has no protection from entities that are after him for debts or legal woes he has usually incurred acting as a mercenary and tried to escape from, and sometimes these magical shields and wards and alarms are all he has keeping himself one step ahead of his enemies. One of the easiest magical spells/ability is scrying or remote-viewing, and allows authorities to locate/track/monitor an individual. It's possible to counter this with a hiding move, and any rogue wizard worth his salt has this elantic cloak about himself at all times. Losing the cloak exposes his location and activities, and being out of all magic ammo, makes him easy to kill or capture.

THerefore a rogue wizard will typically travel the road and offer his services as an engineer to whatever poor, dim settlement needs him, and receive payment in order to replenish his stock of energy, leaving little if nothing else for food or shelter. He barely keeps himself alive, and he might be doing it purely for the love of his art. They are as a result far more resourceful, battle tested, hardy, wily, clever, cunning, and darkly comic than their school cousins.

Additionally, school parasites are bred for the task of working elan and devoted to a specific type of engineering, restricting the mage to just one or at maximum two schools of elan. A rogue engineer is typically infected by a wild undomesticated parasite, and thus the magic they possess is similarly unpredictable and wild, like splashes of color on a big canvas.

ADDITIONALLY, some forms of magic are debilitative. Especially if they are not one of the primary forms of magic. Bio-magic, for instance, is wildly debilitative. Thus, healers and magical medics do not live long, and are rapidly consumed by disease. Generally, the riskier the school of magic, the higher the potential feats and miracles of magic are possible. A bio-mage might, for instance, discover the key to living forever, and most Liches and undead are or were master bio-engineers who discovered the way to keep from dying of natural causes, though at some horrible cost.