[@Rhiven Knight] Yes! You can absolutely be a mage-knight. While human mages are rare, they still exist, and our crack team of knights could definitely use one. There are a few bits of info you'll need to know about spellcasting, though.

* Magic possesses no inherent symbology. That was established a thousand years ago by a team of expert mage-programmers, and their spell-parsers are written in stone within the five Haven towers. The parsers can understand simple American English, no contractions, and runic engravings. They can recognize spoken words, weitten words, hand signs, dances, and certain symbols. Additionally, the mages created a vast library of predefined spells so that, for most spellcasting, all you need is a rough idea of what spell you want and its associated activation requirements.

In short: spellcasting is fairly simple. The hard part that you go to university for is picking the right spell components for the right situations by instinct. You don't need a tome unless 1) you're a noob or 2) you're getting crazy creative and need a place to keep your custom spells.