Artificial Intelligences: These are extremely difficult to create, but the implications are fairly widespread. While Mind is the most obvious choice for this, Entropy is a cheaper method of accomplishing the simplest “intelligent” devices – walls of stone that don’t actually prevent the passage of living things (Entropy 4 / Life 1 / Matter 2), for example, or which do not block light (Entropy 3 / Forces 1 / Matter 2).
Capture: While capturing a mage and holding him or her prisoner is rarely easy, magic can certainly simplify the process. Forces 2 or 3 might be sufficient for physically powerful victims. Mind 3 or Forces 3 / Mind 2 can quietly immobilize an enemy. Correspondence 3 and Spirit 3 can prevent escape. Perhaps the most effective method of trapping a mage is by creating a Ban with Correspondence 3 in conjunction with Life, Matter, or mind, generating a prison with no walls.
Climate Control: This is much more difficult, since the amount of magical knowledge required to control weather patterns is pretty huge. All the same, in areas populated with an unusually large concentration of Forces mages, catastrophic droughts probably don’t happen. Weather can be a potent weapon, however, especially in areas where Life mages are few and far between – striking down the crops in an area to cause a food shortage at harvest time. Mages who would resort to such brutal means are advised that this is a fairly sure-fire way to guarantee the local rulers will want to bring the crop-killer to justice.
Concealment: There are many ways to hide oneself. The simplest ones (Forces 2 invisibility or stepping sideways with Spirit 3, for example) do little to prevent magical detection. More advanced methods of hiding individuals, objects, and even places include pocket dimensions (Correspondence 4), concealment elsewhere in Time (Time 5), and placement deep in the Umbra (Mind 4 or Spirit 5). More unusual methods are also available, such as transforming the contents of one’s library into stone to prevent unauthorized reading (Matter 4).
Conservation of Mass: With a Pattern Sphere and a bit of Prime, it is not too difficult to create objects and life forms out of thin air. In a world where a few dozen Druanae can create a forest in a matter of months, deforestation is not a problem. Most other natural resources are likewise unlimited, and even more complex devices are within the realm of possibility for those with enough strength in Pattern Spheres. This even applies to the generation of animals, though any intelligent beings will require a vast knowledge of Mind and Spirit to produce.
Customs and Paperwork: While the average government is not likely to worry about the movement of Sleepers into and out of the country, mages are likely tracked constantly, since, by their very natures, they have an agenda and the equipment to pursue it. Magical items of all kinds are likely to be carefully noted by the local authorities. Unusually paranoid governments might even require blood and hair samples of mages entering the country in order to facilitate scrying and law enforcement efforts.
Divining the Future: While prophecies tend to be vague and sometimes even dead wrong, divining the future is certainly a useful practice. With the right Spheres, a lot of unpleasant surprises can be prevented – from crimes to assassinations to invasions.
Energy Conversion: With a little knowledge of Forces, all forms of energy are the same. Forces Effects can run on just about any energy form - sunlight, bioelectrical impulses, water wheels, windmills, and so forth. With other Pattern Spheres, you can power a flying machine on wood (Life), stone (Matter), or even orgies (Mind). This sort of transmutation of one Pattern into another has an incredible number of potential applications, if approached creatively. Imagine immobilizing someone by using Forces 3 and Mind 2 to convert all their surface thoughts into light, making it impossible for them to invent a way to escape.
Health and Medicine: Your regular bugs really don’t stand a chance, if you think about it. This doesn’t mean that everyone has perfect health, 20/20 vision, and straight teeth, but any serious threat to public health is going to be quashed pretty quickly by mages interested in keeping the local Sleepers alive. Any mage who employs biological weapons is going to produce deadly diseases that kill almost instantly (a la the opening chapters of the Andromeda Strain) or ones that seem like a minor ailment for long enough to infect others before suddenly becoming active and rapidly killing their hosts (much like the Super Flu in The Stand). And if the mages can’t handle a particular plague, keep in mind that most of the gods are unlikely to allow the wholesale slaughter of their followers.
Information Gathering: Scrying is easy and extremely useful. Only a fool or a Sleeper would not use it. Privacy can only be assured with Wards. Certainly, no one knows everything, but almost nothing escapes everyone’s notice, either.
Justice: Few mages are willing to waste all their time investigating crimes and their suspects, but any crime that affects a mage with access to Entropy, Mind, or Time is certainly likely to employ magical scrutiny.
Money: A minor mage would have little trouble turning base metals into gold, so an economic system will not be based on precious metals by weight. A more advanced, coin-based monetary system will, of necessity, quickly develop in a high-magic world. Coins are stamped with intricate images to discourage counterfeiting, and certain large denominations might actually be infused with a point of Quintessence to mark them as authentic, and also to maintain their value on the market.
Networking: Magical organizations will find ways to pass information between themselves. Correspondence and Mind networks can maintain almost constant and direct communication, while even Life and Spirit might employ intermediaries to carry messages to servants and superiors. Even knowing an ally is watching with Correspondence 2 makes it possible to send messages by merely writing a letter in plain sight of the scrying. Advanced networks might even imitate the early internet – passing information on various subjects either up the hierarchy or to other members of the network.
Nodes: Quintessence is one of the building blocks of magical power, and any viable source will be tapped and harnessed whenever possible. Cartographers will include them on maps. Magocrats will watch them carefully, and might even levy a tax on Quintessence taken from Nodes. Any city built around a mage’s Sanctum probably sits on a Node, and only a few remote or minor Nodes are left to themselves. Those few powerful Nodes that have not been tapped are likely those Awakened Nodes dangerous enough to defend their Quintessence from harvesters.
Rapid Transit: Adepts of Correspondence or Spirit are not as common as Disciples of those Spheres, but a few might offer rapid transit, whether in the service of their Traditions’ or personal interests or for a price. Even low-altitude flight can provide a viable alternative to overland travel, and this is certainly easier to manage than instantaneous travel. It is conceivable that influential Covenants will have networks of Hermes Portals between Chantry Houses. Even a mage with Time 3 could shorten the apparent length of trips, with enough successes.
Slavery: It doesn’t take a genius to realize how easily Mind magic can be applied to the enslavement of Sleepers, or even unlucky mages. Even Mind 2 can sway the emotions, making for Sleeper peasants who take delight in back breaking labor, and Mind 4 can turn a sworn enemy into an obedient thrall. Even without mind control, a mage can certainly frighten a Sleeper into submission with threats of physical punishment. After all, wouldn’t you think twice about running away if you knew your master could scry upon and kill you no matter where you went?
Spirit Trafficking: The world of spirits is alive, and many mages will have Umbral contacts and allies who can find information, send messages, or aid them more directly. Powerful Spirit mages might even have sanctums or other retreats on the other side of the Gauntlet.
Super Materials: While mechanical owls and arrows that can pass through stone are extremely rare, requiring considerable knowledge of Matter, they exist and can throw a proverbial wrench into some of the most well thought out plans.
Time Travel: This Sphere is only for the most single-minded mages. There is probably not an experienced gamer who has not pondered the problems created by time paradoxes. On Malakai, though, time travel does not actually affect the movement of time at all. Rather, it pulls the mage into an alternate universe where events have gone a different direction. This neatly avoids all kinds of paradox problems. All the same, this is not a perfect process, and inconsistencies will certainly pop up that have no real connection to the travel through time. Half the fun of switching parallel universes via Time is trying to figure out what else has changed besides the date ...
Warding: There is going to be a lot of this. No one with any common sense is going to let an assassin teleport or step sideways into his bedchamber while he’s asleep. A rather low level of Correspondence and Spirit can prevent both unauthorized intrusion and spying.