Welcome to another installment of the project that never ends. I've decided to change my organization style a little bit to take on "magicians" all at once instead of spread out over Magic of the Lower Air and Magic of the Underworld. For one thing, I realized there was still more Magic of the Land that didn't quite fit the mold of the earlier article. For another thing, I'm hideously disorganized, so that's just the way I roll.
The Land provides power to kings. The Stars provide destiny to Men. But there are other powers and principalities in Creation, and those who learn their secrets can become powerful, or go mad. Men call them wizards and witches, sorcerers and shamans, or sometimes darker names.
Wizards, by whatever name, are set apart from other men by knowledge. They know secrets, both arcane and mundane. They seek out knowledge known to no other. Their knowledge is their power and often their downfall, because there are things Man should not ken.
Not all wizards have the same secrets, and not all men who know any secrets would choose to call themselves wizards. The smith who sings the songs of fire and iron and blood as he hammers ore into a blade has found a secret, likely taught to him by his master long ago, but he may very well know no others and would never think to learn them.
The bow bends as your back must bend.The string holds, as your will must hold.The shaft is straight, as your sight must see.The fletchings are of falcon's feather, better to hunt.The falcon strikes not where the rabbit is, but where he will be.You do also.-- A huntsman's rhyme.
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Gamespeak: Common magic is just skills, at least at the beginning. There will be some sort of mechanism for really magical uses of skills. A normal smith can make a sword. A magical smith (or a wizard) can make a sword that can slay a dragon.
When we talk about the Starborn later on, we'll see something similar with them, I think.
The main thing for now is to get the idea that the way this world works is that spirits are part of everything. A fish really does participate in the category of "fish," as Socrates would have said. So when people manipulate their environment, they're doing "magic" in a small sense.-----------------------
Somewhere near every village is a hermit's hut or a witch's cottage. Here, the small folk may go to intercede for help with the spirit world. So-called "hedge wizards" are often not very powerful, as the mighty masters of magic reckon such things, but they can heal simple hurts and prepare minor charms and potions.
Hedge magic is often drawn from local Spirits of the Land rather than any spirits of the lower Air. It is sometimes drawn from no spirits at all. A wise old woman can dispense advice that seems supernatural, but is really nothing more than the benefit of years of experience. That same woman probably knows every plant in the nearby forest, and which will cure a fever or cause a pox.
Most often, hedge wizards have no power to compel spirits. They can bargain with those they can see, and they know what those spirits want and what they fear. Some of this knowledge is useful everywhere, but much of it is strictly local. As such, hedge wizards are often rooted to one spot, a locus of power where they have struck pacts with local powers and learned the simple secrets of the people around them.
The Hedge Wizard's tricks:- Healing craft and herb lore, and natural knowledge.- Gossip: Often, Hedge wizards have spirits of one sort or another to collect intelligence for them. This is generally passive watching, rather than active spying. Besides that, the hedge wizard is often someone respected for wisdom, so people tell him things.- Spiritual favors: Anyone can learn to bargain with the local Spirits of the Land, and most people at least learn to live with them. Hedge magicians learn their habits and manners, and can interact with them more easily than other people. This primarily involves learning what minor Spirits want, what they fear, and where they can be found. If the local mischievous sprites can't abide the presence of iron, then a Hedge magician who knows this fact can ward his home against the faeries for the price of a sack of old nails. If he knows they can be trapped in wicker baskets when they're drunk, and that they can't resist the lure of honey mead, then he has a way to force them to do his bidding. That could be dangerous, but useful. Bribery can also be efficacious.- Minor powers: In their truck with Spirits of the Land, some hedge wizards earn or buy supernatural abilities. These will vary widely depending on what the local Spirits of the Land have to offer.- Speech with the dead: Hedge wizards probably pick up a little about how to deal with Spirits of the Underworld, particularly those that manifest without being summoned.
---------------------------Gamespeak: Hedge magic is minor magic that just about anyone might know a little bit of. In fact, the real keys are perfectly mundane skills with supernatural, or seemingly supernatural, applications. A hedge wizard is likely to use his Etiquette (Barrowmen) skill to do stuff like bargain with the Barrowmen to find lost sheep or to fight enemies. Anybody else in the village could do the same thing, but they're prevented because (a) they're afraid of the Barrowmen, or (b) they don't know what they can use to curry the Barrowmen's favor. Mechanically, this isn't stuff the hedge wizard has on his sheet, but to any superstitious peasant, it's plenty magic enough.
Hedge wizards are likely to have hit up any local spirits for supernatural abilities, if such things are available. For instance, if there were a Spirit of the Land who could convey the power of true seeing by kissing one's eyes, a hedge wizard is the person in the area who's likely to know that, and know how to ask the Spirit for the power without getting cursed or killed for his trouble.
Those powers will probably be some kind of Advantages/Disadvantages with pretty straight-forward rules, and would be available to anyone who took the correct actions. It's just that a hedge wizard is more likely than anyone else to know what the correct actions are.-----------------------------
In the neighboring valley, there was a king who's daughter had come under a curse, and together with her the whole valley. Everyone slept in endless sleep, circled round by great thorn vines. Thus it had been for all of Jared's life. And practically every young man tried his luck to enter the enchanted wood to free the princess. But no matter how strong their arms or sharp their eyes or swords, no matter how tireless their limbs or their courage, they could not pass the thorns.
After Jared Dun was named, he took up his staff with a bundle of his meager possessions and assayed the dark wood. Although there was little movement, he could hear the songs of birds, and Jared Dun reasoned that if the birds could move through sleep and thorny vines, might he not as well? Whistling the song of the birds, he entered the wood, which parted before him.
There came he to the castle gates, which were locked. But Jared Dun reasoned that all locks opened with a key, and if he had one key, might it not be persuaded to open many locks? He took an old iron key from his pack and whispered to it "Open," and the key opened the ancient lock.
Onward, Jared Dun walked, whistling his birdsong, and the vines parted before him. Where they parted, they revealed rich hangings, piles of coin, and the possessions of a wealthy king. At last, Jared found the princess, who slept on in a bower, perfectly preserved except for a wound on her finger where she'd pricked it on a spindle. Jared reasoned that the wound was magical, and if it were treated, she might awaken, and with her all the others.
But then did Jared Dun reason further. He knew this magical wood must have been the work of a powerful Lord or Lady of the Fey, who would likely be offended to see his work undone. So Jared Dun left the princess to sleep, with naught but a kiss. He filled his pack with coins and jewels and returned from whence he came, and at the edge of the wood, he buried three coins as payment to the lord of the wood.
So-called "High Wizardry" is only a few short steps from simpler hedge wizardry. They are steps that few people take, though. Much that magic can accomplish can be accomplished more easily by strength or human cunning. The rewards of wizardry are long in coming. "Wizardry" itself is a difficult term to pin down. Wizards learn to deal with all manner of spirits, and thus no single wizard knows more than a fraction of all the possibilities.
Spirits of the Lower Air: Wizards who learn the secrets of the Lower Air master the powers of the physical world. They can call down fire, dissolve into clouds, heal wounds, and the like. This is accomplished through knowledge, rather than supernatural will. A wizard learns the ways of different spirits, and ultimately their special languages, which he may divine through meditation, study of ancient texts and natural philosophy, and the revelations of the stars. At the last, a wizard transcends mere mortal knowledge and can understand things as the spirits do. Then, he can call upon spirits, compel them, bind them, and use them for his own ends.
Such arts have limits. A spirit can not be summoned where none exist. Nor can one be commanded to do things beyond its personal ken. Thus, a wizard of fire might need a raging bonfire o're which to work his arts, and he could bend a spirit of flame to the task of burning something, but not to the task of knitting wool into cloth. If a true example of a Spirit's bailiwick cannot be produced, a symbolic representation will suffice, but the true thing is almost always to be preferred.
A wizard can command a spirit in almost any way inside these limits. Classically, the commands wizards give fall into these groups:- Banishment: forcing a spirit to leave an area. Banishing a spirit ends that spirit's influence. If the Spirit of a fire is banished, the fire will flicker and die, although it might catch again and have a new spirit. If the Spirit of a city is somehow banished (no easy feat), then the city would die. In time, no stone would be stacked upon another. Although it is far more likely that the banishment would end before the city fell. For a banishment to be permanent, the wizard would have to find some way to make his pronouncement permanent as well.- Binding: trapping a spirit in a place, person, or object. Spirits do not always object to this treatment. Binding by itself is a useful way to trap a spirit that has become hostile or dangerous, but it is more often used in the creation of magical tools. Spirits can be most easily bound into objects similar to their own natures. Thus, a fire spirit might be bound into a lamp easily, an iron sword with a bit more effort, but only into a milk pail with the greatest of difficulties.- Service: forcing a spirit to do something. A spirit can exert influence directly over its bailiwick. It can control, aid, change, or harm that bailiwick. Powerful spirits can create or destroy their bailiwicks. Spirits can also scry on things at a distance, after a fashion. They are only really aware of their environments in the most basic ways, though. A cloud spirit can see all the Land beneath its cloud, but it doesn't really /recognize/ that land in the way a human would, so asking a cloud spirit to describe what it sees is like to be an exercise in frustration.- Summoning: Calls a spirit to the fore. Normally, spirits of the Lower Air are content to follow their functions without notice of human activity. A spirit must be Summoned before it can be interacted with in any other way.- Warding: Warding prevents spirits of a given kind from entering an area, person, or object. Warding is a useful way to provide defense. However, Wards have limited strength. A wizard would have to expend great effort to ward the bottom of a lake against water, likely far more than any one wizard (or even a dozen) could muster.
The practice of the magic of the Lower Air always requires at least speaking, and sometimes a great deal more. The more complex or powerful a command, the more difficult it is to communicate. Thus, a wizard who wanted to create a castle out of empty air might need to appeal to spirits of stone through a lengthy ritual in which he invokes symbols, makes sacrifices, dances, and chants for days. The duration of a spirit's command depends on how permanently it is invoked. Spoken words will compel weak spirits for days and strong ones for only hours or minutes. Written runes last longer, and carving in stone or metal lasts longer yet. Wizards of different lands use different methods and trappings, but the end effects are generally the same.
------------------------Gamespeak: This is the bones of a freeform magic system. I am very fond of the one from Buffy, and if I end up building this, mine will be similar. A wizard can generate any effect he can think of, but he'll need three things.
- He'll have to know the right language. In a system with a lot of skills, each kind of spirit could have a different language skill. In a lighter system, there will still have to be some kind of limit for that.- He'll have to have the time and resources to do the necessary spell. The bigger, more powerful, or more complex the effect, the more effort it will take to "explain" to the spirit.- He'll have to be able to scribe the spell in a way that will last long enough. There are some options here: carving in stone, repeating endlessly, etc... For simple, quick effects, just a few words and a gesture will be enough anyway.
A few classics:- Fireball: Pretty simple. Get a fire spirit and tell it to blow something up.- Flight: A wind spirit can make you fly on the winds.- Transmutation: A spirit of whatever you want to transform something into can, with great effort, transform it. The further removed the target state is from the original state, the harder it is. Turning a prince into a frog until a princess kisses him is a massive effort. The wizard who can do such a thing is not to be trifled with.- Scrying: essentially involves communication with a spirit who can go where you want to see. Sympathetic links help you scry on specific people.- Invisibility: Pretty hard for the magic of the Lower Air. Spirits of darkness or fog could conceal you under limited circumstances. Wizards who can do this might be using different magics. Spirits of the Land can turn invisible, and might grant that power in return for some sort of favor. Spirits of the Underworld can probably also turn invisible, or at least make people not want to notice them.- Cursing: A curse brought about by a Wizard probably involves placing some sort of spirit mark on the subject so that one or more classes of spirits are hostile to him. A sufficiently vexed Wizard could blight a town's crops, make it so that a warrior's sword writhed in his hands unless he fought for true love, or something similar. A really powerful one might level all sorts of difficulties, just making every Spirit in the area somewhat hostile to the target.
The system for Spirits of the Underworld will probably be somewhat similar. There are just different things Spirits of the Underworld can do.---------------------------
The Underworld is the echo of the Lower Air. While the Lower Air contains what is, the Underworld contains what was. Those who learn its secrets are more often concerned with the past than the present. The Underworld is not inherently evil, but it is a place of darkness. Necromancers aren't evil by definition, either, but those who delve to the deeps of the Underworld are certainly drawn in that direction. After all, the Underworld is between the Land and the Deep.
In some ways, Spirits of the Underworld are easier to treat with than Spirits of the Lower Air. Human dead are still fundamentally human, and can be appealed to through human reason or human vanity. They often retain some of the goals they held in life, and can be induced to cooperate by one who will advance those goals. Besides, Necromancers have the most potent currency of all, the ability to bridge the gulf between the Underworld and the Land, however briefly.
That ability is the key to Necromancy. Every person who treats with the Underworld has touched its dark shores in some fashion. A child born with a dead twin, it is said, will be able to see ghosts all his life. A man who dies and returns from the dead will hear the whispers of the dead. The only survivor of a village wiped out by plague, or one who lived through a battle because a wound made him seem dead, might find that some part of himself was left in stygian realms. Some pursue this path deliberately, through self-mutilation or the drinking of poisons, or through mass sacrifices to attract the attention of the Underworld. There are, it is said, even less savory ways to draw up the voices of the dead.
Not all methods need to be so dire, however. Some Necromancers, particularly those who are satisfied with lesser power, began with a very weak thread tying them to the realms of the Dead and strengthened it through study and practice. Wizards who dabble in Necromancy are often so empowered, and might be better prepared than some to resist the call of deeper and deeper power.
--------------------------Gamespeak: Necromancers aren't just Goth wizards. They're intimately connected to Death, and draw power through that connection. Necromancy is all about feeding energy into that connection and taking power out of it. Spirits of the Dead can't normally exist in the Land. When they do, it's unnatural, and probably bad. Necromancers are able to give Spirits of the Dead, even corporeal ones, access to the Land. That power can be used responsibly and well, but it can easily be abused.
An early thought is that a Necromancer's power will be largely measured in how strong his connection to the Underworld is and how deep he's willing to go into it. A simple medium who only talks to ghosts and never even channels them into herself doesn't need much of a connection and doesn't have to feed much energy into it - her own personal strength is probably enough. A terrible Dark Lord who wants to raise an army of rotting corpses to smite his enemies probably has a very strong connection to the Underworld - to the point that he might look like a corpse himself - and he's going to need a lot of energy. He might get it from ritually killing people, or from killing a powerful being like the local Genius Locus. Or he might have some kind of magical artifact that gives him the power. (A black cauldron, maybe...)------------------------------
Liuz was born with a dead eye. That milky white orb saw things no one else could see, and her ears heard things no one else could hear. The people of the village feared the girl, but they feared more to kill her and be haunted by her shade, so instead they drove her from the village. Children would fling stones at her, and merchants would sell her only shoddy goods at too high prices. Everyone called her names behind her back. The cruel spoke them to her face. And the cruelest spat on her shadow when she passed in the street.
Her mother and father protected her as well as they could. They told her that even though the villagers were her cruel and ignorant, they were her kin and she should try to love them.
But in time, the old couple died, leaving Liuz alone. Of course the people of the village began to whisper that the girl with the dead eye was somehow responsible, even though both of them had been old when their daughter was born. Soon, Liuz found life in the village intolerable and she fled into the darkenvold, where none of the villagers would go at night, and few even in the daytime.
There were faeries in the darkenvold, but they avoided Liuz, all except Master Wolf. He told Liuz that he hated the villagers as much as she did, because they hunted his children and denied them their rightful food with fence and spear. He told Liuz she would be his bride, although she always refused him. She said she was of the human world, not of the Spirit world, and would not leave her kin even though they bore her no love.
One day, black ships sailed up to the village, and warriors with black armor and black swords spilled forth to raid and slay, to plunder and steal.
Liuz watched from the shadows of the darkenvold, and Master Wolf watched with her.
"All your kin are dead now," he said. "Come be my bride."
"I will come to your bed," she said.
When the Wolf was sated from their lovemaking, she took her father's gutting knife and gutted him as easily as she would a fish. Then, still naked and wet with the Wolf's blood, she took up her cloak and went back to the village. Through her living eye, she saw the black raiders as they took their pleasures from the few survivors. Through her dead eye, she saw the pitiful spirits of the villagers.
And with a voice long dead to human words, she bade them rise up and have their revenge.
The black-clad men were slain, and their dead rose up likewise until nothing but Liuz stood in the village, and only crows and flies lived there.
She still had her kin, but now she had shed her last connection to the world of men. She took her people into their fishing boats and the ships of the raiders, and now she sails the seas, looking for the land of the men in black ships. Her kin are hungry, and only the flesh of Men will feed them. They waylay such sailors as they find, and leave the ships stripped of life, but otherwise untouched, because Liuz is not a thief. Or so say the tales.
A Necromancer's power is proportional to his connection to the Underworld and the energies he can bring into play.
The least power is the ability to hear or see Spirits of the Underworld that have the power to reach the Land on their own, either by being bound to a fetter or having found some sort of fissure up from the Underworld. With this power, the Necromancer can interact with Spirits, but has no power but his charisma and wits with which to compel them. Even this is more than most can do, and some Spirits can be turned from harmful courses with the right words. Further, if a Necromancer of even this minimal power has the fortune to bend a few Spirits into allies, he can listen to their counsel and sometimes benefit from their powers.
With greater power, a Necromancer can call up Spirits from the Underworld. He still cannot command them, and more powerful spirits can refuse to answer. This is a dangerous power, since hostile spirits can answer a call if it is not sufficiently specific.
Many Necromancers develop the ability to command the dead in limited ways. One might have the ability to shroud himself from their senses. Another could make them flee his presence. Still another might learn to trace runes that will turn the dead away from a living dwelling.
Others learn to borrow power from the Dead if the Dead are willing. The spirits of the Underworld hold the sum of the past, and some have supernatural powers as well. Without some sort of external energy source, a Necromancer must allow the Spirit to enter his own body, or the body of another. This is a dangerous game, since the Spirit might not be willing to leave, and his presence exacts a toll that will eventually be fatal.
Beyond this level, a Necromancer's own personal energies are likely insufficient to bridge the gulf between worlds further. He needs sacrifices, gifts of power, or some other means of supplying his Spirits.
The greatest Necromancers can summon and command more powerful spirits. They can force Spirits into dead bodies to animate them, or fetter Spirits into specially prepared vessels. They can call forth armies of shadow creatures, and they can wield the powers of the Dead. A Necromancer of this puissance needs external sources of power, and by channeling so much of the darkness of the Underworld begins to become like a Spirit of the Underworld himself. In fact, the ultimate fate of all who pursue the powers of darkness for too long is to become indistinguishable from a dead thing.
----------------------Gamespeak: Necromancers have abilities similar to Wizards, but rather than needing a huge breadth of knowledge, they need a depth of power to pull off the most amazing feats. The powers a Necromancer can use fall into a hierarchy, with greater ones requiring both a higher "Necromancy Score" and more "Fuel."
It might seem that Wizards have a better deal, and indeed they do in some ways, but Necromancers make out well on the low end. At least some Spirits of the Underworld understand human language and desires, and can be appealed to on that basis. And some Necromantic powers are passive. Everything a Wizard can do requires conscious effort. He has to project his psychic senses "upwards" where a Necromancer's naturally draw "downward."
The energy requirement is the reverse, of course. Energy naturally cascades downward, so Wizards can call on massive power, whereas Necromancers have to find fuel for the more outrageous things they want to do.
Will it all be balanced in practice? Who knows. I'm still not making up real rules yet.-------------------------
And that covers the two "middle realms" in the great club sandwich that is this setting. Next up is the Magic of the Greater Air, and possibly the Magic of the Deep, since I'm not really sure how much of that I want to go into. Given my attempts at symmetry so far, there should be ways that people can call on/be seduced by the Spirits of the Deep, and special people who are their personal champions. Which is a sort of scary thought. I'm reminded of Ashitaka in Princess Mononoke. He might have been touched by the Deep and is now a "champion" against his will, slowly being overcome by it even as he's forced to use it.
Cool.
More generally, I've been thinking about Magic and how one of the great complaints of many games is that it's not very "magical." When a guy in a robe and a pointed hat levels his staff at you and shoots out a ball of flame, you don't think "Amazing! That man can call flames from nothing! We're doomed!!!" You think "He's got at least 3rd level spells. Could be a problem."
Some games try to get around this by making magic really freeform, but that doesn't really solve the problem. In a system like Ars Magica, you can still narrow down what the wizard did, so the mystery is gone. In a really loose system, you just get a host of problems relating to exactly how much the wizard SHOULD be able to do.
You could try to conceal the inner workings from the players, but that presents another problem - the players need to know what their characters can do so they can properly play their characters. The guy in the funny hat isn't going to point his stick at a hostile force unless he's pretty damn sure a ball of fire is going to shoot out.
So I've been musing on the idea that what magic can do at any given moment may change, but the players can see how it changes. Castle Falkenstein's magic deck is like this in a way. You can see how much "juice" is available within 100 miles or so, and that's all there is.
I wonder if I can think of something similar. It might not be too hard. A Wizard's training would tell him what spirits are in the neighborhood, and he'd know generally what he can tell spirits to do. To add a layer of mystery, there might be some kind of arbitrary restrictions on spirits' behavior that are based on local conditions. The Wizard is trained to be able to figure out what these conditions are and how they affect his powers. To other people, they seem mysterious.
But that could just be a useless layer of rules and complications.
I DO want magic to be mysterious in this world. This is a world of mysteries where Men face things beyond their ken (and generally stab those things with swords). We'll have to see.
It's also about time to start thinking about a system, if I'm ever going to use one. If I just decide to use this setting for my writing, I don't really need rules.
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