I felt like The Magicians felt like modern Ars Magica in many ways.
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I think this is (a) not as true as you might think*, and more importantly (b) entirely irrelevant unless you want to rule out an urban fantasy rpg simply because they don't match irl beliefs.
For me, part of the background of a modern ArM game would have to be that all the auras have faded to near-invisibility since the 13th century, but now the mystical tides have turned and supernatural powers are rising again (including growing auras, more people born with the Gift, etc). I could go even trippier and have things like the Hubble telescope starting to send back entirely different, strange images (of the planetary spheres and Outer Heaven) as the cosmos rewrites itself.
*Too much detail for a tangent, but: the majority of humankind is still some kind of religious, and a lot of people believe in "weird supernatural beings" that fit Faerie quite well (aliens, ufos, cryptids, etc). And a not-insignificant number of people do believe in some sort of magic - which may be more subtle and less flashy than Ars Magica magic, but in that respect are little different to real medieval beliefs about magic! Hermetic magic is ahistorical even in the middle ages - no one thought witches were throwing Balls of Abysmal Flame at their neighbours.
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Only because medieval witches were good about leaving no witnesses... 
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I didn't say people nowadays didn't believe, I said they didn't believe like they did 800 years ago, i.e. a lot of people might still believe in the supernatural but from a bit of a different perspective. However I think a big difference is that mysticism isn't institutionalised like it was - you won't find many people in western culture arguing that kings are God's chosen these days, for instance, whereas it was the whole basis of 13th Century government. Furthermore while you have a point about a lot of people having religious faith or belief in magic, there are also lots of people who just don't and they can say that freely without any crusaders or inquisitors getting heavy with them about it.
Anyway - I just saw those sample pages. I need to know how I can get my hands on the Definitive Edition as soon as possible.
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Could we maybe get this image in better resolution? I want to share it with the folks over on the Discord server 
I wanted to keep it a tease, but Ben saw your message and went and made this higher-resolution version for you, so I guess I should share it.
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It doesn't look like it's any higher resolution to me 
The files seem almost the same, aside from the background. I've shared it anyway, thank you!
Because witch hunters were so successful...
It is weird. I definitely see higher resolution in Slack, but when I upload it here it does not seem to be. Maybe there's some kind of built-in downsample. I will look for an alternative approach.
In case there is still downsampling, I put the file on our Google Drive public assets folder. Link: ArMDef Spread Mockup.jpg - Google Drive
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Thanks so much to both! I'm going to draft an 'official' announcement in the server now.
Quite excited to be getting up at 5am NZ time!
Just wondering how long it is likely to take to deliver?
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My guess is a few months at least.
The manuscript is done, but new art is still being created, and how much will depend on stretch goals during the campaign. With manufacturing time, etc., my guess is that we will be fulfilling next summer.
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That also means that once the book is close to being ready to be shipped, there will be a chance to update shipping address, right?
For certain. We may not want to collect shipping/VAT until much closer to the delivery time too.
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It's probably too late for that, but, for what it's worth , I was quite confused by the backerkit page, in that I couldn't figure what each tier included ( I had to click on " back it" to know). I just hope this doesn't detract people from the game 