Strictly speaking, this might not be Strange’s problem — not his circus, not his monkeys — but no one here’s going to care much about the technicalities of the difference between a sorcerer and a mage, and if it weren’t for that shard in his palm, he’d be considered one just the same. And people look at rifters with much the same dubious mistrust; he’d heard some of the arguments for giving them the same treatingment after the war. Their fates might be more intertwined than he’d like.

It’s no surprise, then, that he identifies as a mage himself, and finds himself invested in the problem. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck…

“The other risk,” Strange says, “is that you wouldn’t want to accidentally recreate the Circles all over again, just under a different name. History repeating itself. One would want it to be better than what came before. We might have too much on our plate already to tackle this too, but we’re also uniquely-situated by having so many free mages publicly organised under one roof, and so we might be positioned to think about alternatives. And presumably having some option available somewhere on the continent is better than having no options at all: staying at home or being turned out on the street.”

Or worse. He wonders how bad it gets in the even less tolerant villages, finding a child’s manifested as a mage.

Probably bad. Let’s not ask.