Quote Originally Posted by Ninjadeadbeard View Post
Magic in this setting, it seems to me, is based on finer and finer degrees of control over a given element. I think that would indicate a very likely possibility of a young mage blowing themselves up. It could be that casting magic requires stamina, more than anyone that young can manage without passing out just by charging the spell. Magic is like talking. Rudimentary control can start to appear early, but anything useful won't show up until later.

In short, just make it so that a person's magic is very, very weak until they've physically matured. It seems funny that there should be a legal limit on how young someone can be before they learn magic to defend themselves, or that there should be a legal difference between a murderer child and a normal murderer. A 9 year old's fireball would be like turning the heater up, an earth attack would be nothing more than a loose dirt cloud.

That makes sense. the "awakening" thing basically came out of a train of thought trying to explore how the nuli were under the thumb of the Alabasan nobles for so long (and the answer I came up with was "they were suppressing the magic of the nuli for decades." I'm fairly certain there are simpler answers, but that's what I came up with)