Psi-Wars Lightning Round: the Rage of Mages

I woke up this morning to a blizzard of questions from what looks like a new Psi-Wars fan.  My community on Discord had already taken to answering him and he seems relatively satisfied, but I wanted to take the opportunity to address some of them here on the blog, because they're good questions, ones that I think other people might have too, so it might be useful to have them here.

Before we begin, I want to add that I'm not the boss of you.  If you see something you don't like in Psi-Wars, change it.  I'm sure Lord Buss understands that, but it's something I want to underline.  I'm just one guy putting together a setting that a lot of people seem to find interesting and useful.  What will follow is not a defense of my choices, but an explanation of my reasoning so  you can decide for yourself if you want to stick with what I did, or branch out in a new direction.