In the space of 24 hours I have plotted out a grand total of four chapters. Which has led to research and notes on the town, jot notes on what the characters do for jobs, altering some names and a complete revision of the system of magic used in the setting. Said revision helps explain why magic exists but there are so few magicians.
Long story short: it takes over 10 years to learn magick, ~5 more more to learn anything of real power and, being an alien language, is inherently damaging to the sanity to use. Add in the fact that there are, at best, 100 true magicians in the world and many uses of magic require more than one magician to work successfully (i.e. without the caster dying) and you have a system of power that worked a long time ago and has fallen into disuse.
There are also broad hints that the Gathering have an unofficial job of hiding weird shit from the world and that at least one government agency is involved in that as well. It pretty much exists to answer my major pet peeve with stories that go: "Oh, wait, all these monsters exist but people just don't know. You know? Because ... uh ... they hide really well. Only they somehow don't during this series of stories, but ignore that okay?"
Bird & Jester at least addresses this on some level and there are various plot-secretive reasons why magic faded away that are linked to the families that make up the Gathering. It's not perfect by any stretch, but it's at least not quite as absurd as just hand-waving monsters and such away with disbelief.
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