"Well, the group we're visiting sent out one of the wizards' wives to meet us. Some wizard magical principles can be used by anybody - like me - but in its pure form it only works for boys with wizard fathers. They usually marry each other's daughters but sometimes they're more exogamous about it. They don't mix in a family way with practitioners of other kinds of magic - a few magicians have married them to get an in, but they have to pretend not to know any magic to get any wizards interested. They have a general philosophy that wouldn't make that particularly compatible with the stealing their staffs do. Which is usually automatic, but when I looked last time, all the wizards there had suppressed the absorption. Wizards - at least usual wizards, I'm not sure about these ones - don't think there is a better use for magic than sitting in a staff ready to power a spell a wizard wants to cast. They're kind of paranoid and self-important."