Gifts are supernatural abilities that we still do not fully understand. Their origins are a mystery, shrouded in obscure myth and folktale, but the Academy have established a few laws on how they work and develop.
1. Powers are hereditary and can be thought of as a mutation. If one parent is gifted, there is a strong possibility their children will also be gifted. Some powers may skip generations, other people with no gifted DNA at all are born spontaneously with powers. Gifts are not magic and cannot be gained through angels or demons, exposure to radioactivity, or exotic spiders.
2. You can only be born with one power. Gifts are singular in their application. Someone with the gift to manipulate rock could never learn to manipulate lightning. You inherit your parent's abilities. If your parents have two different gifts, you will be born with one or the other, or a new combination of the two, but not both powers simultaneously.
The only way to gain someone else's power or is through a now-forbidden surgical procedure known as splicing. Taking someone else's gift always kills the victim in the process.
3. The gifts to control water, earth (i.e. plant life; not stone), fire, or air are considered rare and auspicious. These gifts are genetically recessive, meaning they always mutate or are passed over when mixed with other gifts, and some old families are known to arrange select marriages or commit incest to preserve these abilities. Meta-powers, such as the ability to disable, sense, or copy other people's powers, are even rarer.
4. Gifts first begin to manifest during puberty. Powers might show as young as 4 or 5 years old, but will not truly surface until adolescence. Gifts are often pitifully weak or completely out of control at first, depending on the child, but discipline and practice will allow the gifted child to harness their own great potential. Others may struggle well into their twenties, or throughout their entire lives. Gifts are most malleable during these teenage years, and this is while they are the most volatile and dangerous.
5. Gifts may be influenced by your emotions, physical condition, mental concentration, or spiritual resolve. Everybody connects to their gift in a different way. Exhaustion, fatigue, and physical, mental, or spiritual trauma are common side-effects of over-exerting your powers, especially at a young age. Being hurt by your own gift is known as "power feedback."
6. The general public do not know about the existence of gifts. Only people deep into conspiracy theories or government projects would be aware of these supernatural phenomena. It is considered a high crime to expose the existence of gifts to anyone who should not know. The only blanks permitted to live among gifted society are the immediate family members of someone who possesses a power.
