Thinking about different saga styles, it occurred to me to wonder how folks handle auras.
In my saga, even inch of Mythic Europe is covered by some sort of aura. Every town, village and field has a Divine aura. Every wood, hill, mountain and bit of wild land beyond village and field has a Magic/Faerie aura. Massacre sites, places of great or persistent sin and other sites of evil reputation may have an Infernal aura (by far the rarest in my saga's actually). An interesting thought I had is that the often traveled paths through wild places have a weak Divine aura... leading to the old warning of "don't stray off the path" in the dark woods, because only once you leave the path are you actually in a Magic/Faerie aura. Basically, I envision Mythic Europe as a huge network of Divine auras, surrounded by wilder Magic/Faerie places and pock-marked by Infernal sites.
So I wondered, how do other people envision auras? Do you have purely mundane places where there is no aura? Are different auras more prevalent in your saga than others?
Not everything has an aura. Auras cover special locations, and in some cases spill over the surrounding area (ie: church bells area of effect, even if we tend to limit it to the approximate borders of the village). But a field far from the village will not have an aura, but neither is it special enough to get another kind of aura. it is just plouged earth.
We have different aura rules, all is magic, and if the aura is very low, you can't even cast moderate spells. Without aura you can't cast any spells.
Almost every place has an aura. there were a few nasty christian magi who focussed the aura in churches, but they are far from our backyard at the moment. There are places that have a very limited general aura, but for instance a high aquam aura. I think the aura is strongest where you still have a sense of mystery. My character's vision is that these are lingering shards of the magic God used to create the earth.
This information is probably of no use at all to you.
Hmmmm.... So you can cast up to 5 levels of magic per point of aura. That would be neat. An aura 1, level 5 spells. Aura 4, level 20 spells. That could be an idea...
In my saga, there are extensive tracts of wilderness that have no aura with small pockets of natural magic/faerie/infernal/divine formed around sites of natural beauty, massacres, sites of martydom, etc.
In all of Mythic Europe, Divine is certainly the most common, as practically every inhabited area has a Divine aura. Unless it is a rare place inhabited by pagans, or there is a stronger aura of another flavour. Although having said that, isolated villages that are too small to have a church/chapel and are not within earshot of the nearest church bells don't usually have a Divine aura.
Magic/faerie/infernal are all pretty much equally common, and quite rare.
Of course, the places that the PCs actually travel to usually do have magic/faerie/infernal auras!
Likewise, in my Mythic Europe there are many areas without any aura, and with the exception of Divine, which sprouts from the expansion of the Church and seems to spread as Christians settle and build, the others are connected either to events in the area's past or lack thereof (Magic auras tend to be pristine, primeval places).
Of course, this varies from saga to saga, although generally following the same rough guidelines. In our main saga ATM there are lots and lots of Faerie Aura pouches sprouting and all Auras are slowly mixing as the 4 Realms degrade and return to the One they were in times beyond memory...
Remember when you were a kid, there were forests where you would not want to stray from the path because it was dark en twisted, and you imagined large shapes running there? The forest certainly has an aura (magic or fairy in regular system, Base1, Animal and Herbam 3 in ours, strengthening at nightfall), the path would have a lower one (just base 1 or 2)
A field where a large battle took place and where mists billow and twist to make the thin birches seem like more that they should be would be base 1 when there is no mist, going stronger to two with a mentem and imaginem specialty of about four when the mists are strong (maybe one extra at twilight or in moonlight), and when the mists are strong on the day of the year the battle was, and the full moon shines across the twisted birches that sway rhitmically as if marching, it might be quite strong.
The issue for magi is not to find strong aura's to live in, the issue is they need aura's that are somewhat consistent to be of any value.