Question Mages in the Military

The P in OlymPYC might stand for paranormal but does the WU US military have much use for magic users? The range staffer's attitudes suggest that magic users re looked dow on some.

Oh, of course they do. Show up at a Recruiting station with your registered sorcery license and the recruiters will fall all over themselves trying to get you to sign up. $10,000 sign on bonus, promotion to commissioned officer on completion of Basic Training and OCS, fast track promotions, you name it.

As you can imagine, anyone smart enough to become a licensed sorcerer realizes their earning potential in the private sector dwarfs anything Uncle Sam can promise, so take a wild guess how many are serving.

Now there are individuals trained to recognize artifacts, wards, things like that and they have sign on packages almost as good as it is difficult and time consuming training. The services are very keen to keep retention high as well of these specialists. But it is probably the hardest MOS for the recruiter to fill.

Cool. I had figured that Baselines where unlikely.

Hmmm. Actually I can think of a way...

We have seen one (probably) baseline mage who worked with the military, at Los Alamos in early 2007 , but he was a civilian security consultant (he was the one who gave the preliminary scan of Whisper's 'cocoon', though he definitely seemed out of his element with healing magic). Hoffman was a sort of neo-hippie/New Age mystic, and I had the impression that he was in his late 30s or early 40s.

'Whisper' by Sleethr wrote: “What we need to know is if you have any experience with healing spells?”

He grimaced and shook his head. “Not a lot, but I have done some research into them. Never can tell when being able to heal a nasty paper cut could come in handy, why?”

“We would like for you to examine a patient that we have here and tell us if you can detect any healing spells on him.”

Mr. Hoffman grinned and nodded his head with acceptance. “Oh wow, sure. Would be happy too. Where is he?”

[...]

After what felt like ages to Jennifer, Mr. Hoffman finally opened his eyes again. “Amazing! Simply amazing.”

Dr. Edmundson could not contain his curiosity any longer. “What is amazing Mr. Hoffman?”

“Oh sorry Doc, I’ve just never seen anything so powerful and beautiful before. There is definitely a healing spell at work on her, but the suit is interfering with its work.” Mr. Hoffman said as he continued to look reverently at something that only he could see.

Dr. Edmundson looked confused as Jennifer gripped his arm with panic. “Her? Don’t you mean, him? Mrs. Peters’ son Brian is who is contained in that suit.” Dr. Edmundson asked.

“Sorry Doc, but there is most definitely a girl inside that suit and she would be in much better shape if we could get this suit off of her as soon as possible”[...]

AFAIK, all of the other military mages we've seen have been mutants. I can see a possibility where someone who was Imbued might enlist, but since Imbuements usually come with their own requirements, gessa, and bans (e.g., Brujah's role as Quetzalcoatl's high priestess ) this seems unlikely unless their patron's goals were tightly aligned with those of the DoD for some reason.

Watch out for Part 3 of Scald, you'll meet a military type mage :3

In Hikaru's origin story there is mention of a (sidhe) mage with the british SAS that saves Samurai and Chicken's behind from an X tainted cultist somewhere that sounds suspiciously like Afghanistan.

And in that same origin story, though a different part, we get introduced to a familiar mage character in the employ of uncle sam, introducing herself as the army's resident cyber elf.

But I'd guess that by and large mages feel they have better ways to make a living than risking their lives and sanity on behalf of American corporatism. I mean, the american army.

It depends somewhat on the country. For various reasons you are much more likely to find one in the British Forces than, say the US Forces.

Since I don't write for the United Kingdom I can speak for Ireland however. The Republic maintains active specialist forces mutants especially a cadre of mages. Most if not all of them deal with specific threats in the Republic and are usually part of a multi-department taskforce.

The situation in Eire is I think far closer to that in the UK than it is to the USA. But for different reasons

Astro is correct, The Republican of Ireland would share more similarities in rank and much more with the United Kingdom in the Whately Universe.

One of the biggest differences is that women can and do serve in all branches of the Irish Defence Forces. The join task force I mentioned is made up of more than a few governmental branches.