Several different flavors of sponsored magic might be available from the Greek Gods. In this specific case, Athena and Hermes sponsored the set of abilities below. I can only take credit for a bit of the initial flavor. Fred was kind enough to work out almost all of the mechanical details.
http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/FateRPG/message/18881Sponsored Magic: Athenohermetic Magic [-4 refresh; normal discounts with full Evocaiton and/or Thaumaturgy]
Allows, with evocation's methods and speed:
- Spells that supercharge the character for a single action:
+ "Melee" combat evocations where you smite someone with the muscles of Hercules. You get a wide range of effects, but the restriction this places is that you have to be the personal, heroic actor manifesting the spell effect rather than hurling fireballs from a distance. Make this an up-in-their-face evocator.
+ "Speed" evocations that let you use your evocation spell to produce a sprint action that ignores (most) zone borders, perhaps even allowing short-term-must-come-to-a-landing flight (which would look like a hell of a super-leap).
+ "Inspiration" evocations that allow you to cast spells with relevance to social-conflict situations.
+ Shield spells that manifest as an aethereal shield-of-Athena, etc; or other defensive effects explained, instead, as speed-of-Hermes style dodging.
Ritualized (thaumaturgic method) spells would involve things that the Biomancy (craft the body of a hero), Infomancy (send and receive messages, tap into humanity's collective belief in legendary heroes, see below), and Warding (shield-of-Athena) schools can acomplish.
Sponsor debt should revolve around the hero's burden, making the character a danger-magnet at the worst of times, demanding hard and regular sacrifices of his/her personal wants/needs in the face of serving others. Also around carrying the "message" of the Greek heroes, spreading appreciation of the ancient myths (and their modern counterparts) and the heroic values they espouse. The sponsor may sometimes push the character to not only act heroically, but to be seen acting heroically.
Infomancy: A thematic category for thaumaturgy. It covers certain types of divination, limited to information that is deliberately created with the intention of being communicated to others, or retrieved by the creator at a later time. It also excels at sending information to others, and retrieving communications deliberately intended for the practitioner.
Infomancy cannot be used to learn about the world directly, but it can access information that others have recorded. Need remote viewing of a location, tough luck. Want the verbal report or written notes of someone else staking out the site? That should work fine. More like the NSA's approach than the CIA's.
Analysis and manipulation of information are also within the discipline of infomancy. This includes encryption and decryption, and an understanding of the deeper patterns that underlie certain categories of information. Ideas and themes that pervade widely known bodies of work, such as mythology, folk tales, or popular works of fiction, are accessible to an infomancer. This understanding can help an infomancer you communicate more effectively or persuasively. It may be possible to channel the essence characters from stories, tapping into certain parts of what Jung called the collective unconscious, and Campbell called the monomyth.
Much like The Archive, mortal infomancy has little or no ability to access information that is stored only in electronic form. The reason for this is not understood, but the similarities of these limitations have led some to speculate that The Archive is the result of the most powerful and sophisticated infomantic ritual ever performed. Others contend that infomancy was created as a sort of side effect in the process that brought The Archive into existence.