Avishraa Reloaded

Every Chosen in Thuban has a 'mana organ', something nestled against the inside curve of their spine immediately below the ribcage, that serves as a creation point and storage for mana.

Mana is a blue substance that's created by a Chosen's body quite naturally, like blood cells, and is a potent substance that, to put it 'simply', exists outside of entropy and the rules of thermodynamics. It courses through a Chosen's body along a few select artery-like passages, branching out into fine complexity at certain points - the back of the head, behind the eyes, at each wrist and at the tip of each forepaw's central digit.

It's toxic when ingested directly, even in fairly small amounts (though trace amounts are 'safe' to ingest and just cause a pretty awful case of indigestion) and tingles a bit like pins and needles crossed with a sensation of the lightest possible perceptible acid burn when it contaminates an open wound (but poses no danger there). Its blue colour is rather intense and will stain much like the red of blood.

Precisely how it works and is depleted during magic use has yet to be hand-waved into existence, mind.

Mana in majority is Order/Chaos-neutral up until the point of the Second Manifestation, which is to say it has a 50/50 Order/Chaos potential.

Mana, like blood in human beings, tends to come in different types that are not interchangeable. These types have nothing to do with an Order- or Chaos-bias, much like the blood type in humans would not have a 'strength of the immune system' bias. There are four different mana types, which cannot be macroscopically told apart, yet nonetheless carry the names Cerulean, Sapphire, Indigo and Violet.

These were distributed as follows prior to the Culling: 25% Cerulean, 40% Sapphire, 15% Indigo, 20% Violet.

While the mana flavour itself does not bias the Chosen in any one way, they are passed down from parents to children, and so the allegiance decision of the initial Chosen has caused differences in Kaean and Srian distribution:

• Kaeans: 42% Cerulean, 20% Sapphire, 6% Indigo, 32% Violet
• Srians: 8% Cerulean, 60% Sapphire, 24% Indigo, 8% Violet

The distinction is only interesting for medical compatibility - and whenever you want to screw around with Chosen physiology in general, in ways it wasn't designed to be screwed around with. The flavours interact differently with the body they course through, and the mana in a Cerulean will react differently to outside influences than the mana in an Indigo. It's possible the mana flavour also comes with a bias toward the sort of magic a Chosen is likely to be skilled in, though while there is a weak correlation, any sort of causation is thus far unproven and may be more the manifestation of the Kaean/Srian divide of interests mapped to their different mana flavour distribution, e.g. a Srian penchant for Mind, culturally passed on within families, could easily explain an observed Sapphire-Mind correlation without that the flavour itself would have played a part in the skill's manifestation.

A Chosen's Second Manifestation in Thuban is achieved when hormonal tendencies (in turn typically a manifestation of psychological and cultural tendencies as well as environmental circumstances) in the Chosen have 'primed' their Mana in the one or other way to a point where a certain Mana alignment begins to win over. The Second Manifestation marks a point of no return - like a collection of magnets and unmagnetised metal with magnetic potential, eventually the process simply feeds itself. After the Second Manifestation, magical potential climbs steeply until it hits the point of maximum potential the individual can achieve.