VDonnut Valley

(A) Evil Glaze of Magic Spellz

This is archival material from previous blog

I have my strong opinions on fantasy magic. I became bored with most popular iterations. It’s reliable, balanced out, popular popcorn magic. There are some more levelless and dangerous versions but I’m not satisfied entirely. Sticking the magic in main system requires some kind of reliability and easy gameability of magic and it sucks out all the mystery and magickness I like in popculture. I liked magic like DCC – not entirely reliable and with dangerous consequences. But after some time it’s becoming very random and gonzo and there is no way you can make that more thematic and serious – in the end due to fireball you grow tentacles from your face. One would need to make different, satisfyingly large random table for each spell.

So read me out – magic system which is not directly connected to other mechanics. No class gets monopoly on magic, most of it is derived from artifacts and rare rituals. And to get the knowledge of such rituals you need to appease spellcaster who know then – so straight way to get hired for adventure and later flex on local faction struggles. And because I like gruesome and culty/secty/gory magic of evil, shadow, rituals, blood I decided to work on something.

I would like to explain myself better. I always liked this notion of magic being something on the verge of sight, hidden in shapes and shadows, somewhat like living being. First magic I lived thematically was in Fate 2nd edition book. I don’t have it anymore but still remember there were examples of magic and one of them was called The Door to Shadow. Basically if you’re mad, unlucky or cursed you know magic is real – and it’s bad. You can make it do whatever you want – create gold coins of thin air, shoot fireballs from your hand and control crowds – but the bigger the effect the harder – or more costly – to cast such spell. And you know magic is evil to it’s core so every time you rely on magic you give it advantage over yourself. And there is no clear way of fighting against it – there is no god, faith or any knowledge that would wipe magic out. Humanity lost, but it will be very slow and gradual decline and the only thing you can do is to slow it down a little. I can’t find Fate 2nd edition anywhere any more, so I’m not sure if everything I wrote here is true.

And there is more recent inspiration. Somehow also coming from Fate, Evil Hat has a knack for evil magicks 😉 You can check it out in generous SRD under https://fate-srd.com/fate-system-toolkit/voidcallers this link. But from me – there is example of magic called Stormcallers – world comes from harmony in eternal struggle of five destructive elements in constant clash. And some people can evoke this destructive elemental magic. But there are Voidcallers, the evil counterpart – something outside of chaotic elements tries to get in. Some alien, kinda eldritch, kinda ephemeral, kinda like Crimson biome from video game https://terraria.org/ And you can summon more or less powerful entities from the undescribed Void. The sample creatures are Wound-Eating Bettle, which eats your wounds and lays eggs and if not “fed” with your wounds it feeds off your cognitive abilities to be able to spread better – it’s an ecological nightmare. Or Mineo Toadstool – just innocent fungus which takes over all your diseases. But the more of these toadstools are in place the stronger are diseases in region around and generally more mold, rot and unhealthiness spreads around. Or my beloved Dapper Gent – just helpful gentleman, easy to summon, always eager to inform where and how to find another rituals used for summoning, basically giving all this magic and power almost for free. Just be careful to keep your mind-control-giving rash in check or else you’ll become something like Stranger Things monster. It’s awesome and brilliant, a little Hellraiser vibes. I strongly recommend.

And recently I saw some article on Berserk manga. I used to read it and I somewhat liked themes of layers of spirit world and the need of some kind of spiritual anchor (like Brand of Sacrifice or presence of elves) for supernatural presence to be visible and that most powerful spirits can manifest only in very specific conditions, usually using environment and other creatures bodies to do so. Also I recall one story about classic DnD and Ravenloft setting in which you are separated from your original plane. And if you are a cleric you cannot contact your god – they’re unable to intervene here. But once you use clerical powers – they still work. So something else, something alien to you grants you blessings of your faith. How awesome is that?

Behold then my take on sorcery – Summoning of Spying Eye.

Casting time: 10 to 20 minutes

Duration: until next full moon

Requirements:

place – location of grand old battle, fresh grave, cemetary, slaughterhouse (place with death and blood memory);

time – full moon or more powerful magical time (solstice, equinox);

ingredients – freshly picked out eye, fetish with reversed spell (crafting test?);

Ritual: draw a circle of the spell with at least three names of Great Observing Spirits [demons? gods?] (crafting, finesse or sleight of hand test?). In the midnight hour throw the eye inside the circle. After a moment weak and hungry spirit should appear – usually looking like a scavenger bird with extra eyes in unusual places or fleshy, tentacly something with an eye on top – and start eating. Then focus on activating the spell (probably will or attune or magic-whatever skill test).

Success: you bind the spirit to the fetish. Anyone holding the item can focus to see what the spirit eyes are seeing and can control it’s moves. It can spy in material and shallow spiritual realities. Once uncontrolled the spirit flies wherever it wants.

Dangers: failure in creation of fetish or circle will result in shorter duration of the binding and for rest of the time spirit can fly freely in material world. Failure in both tests results in failed binding and spirit is free for whole time. On it’s own it is hungry and wants to eat eyes of various creatures – sometimes it is send by deeper spiritual forces to spy and perform othe orders. You can never be sure for whom the spirit spies in their idle time, even when spell is successful. Feral spirit usually starts by attacking casters eyes or other present people. It’s not too durable or strong but it’s fast and can fly – though only at night. Failure in activating spell will cause spirit to eat sacrificial eye and disappear into spirit world behind the circles borders. Using spell frequently will certainly bring attention of deeper spiritual beings.

Research: once you spend downtime on researching ritual better you can choose/roll randomly/GM’s discretion one of improvements:

– permanency – if you use your own eye as a bait and carve reversed spell in eye socket you’ll bind spirit to yourself forever;

– division – you can find patterns of at least two spells within this ritual. With more downtime you can separate it into Circle of Shallow Spiritual Visibility and Control of Spying Eye;

– countermeasure – once very familiar with this spying magic you know how to supress it. Make a circle on the ground and activate it to create blind spot against spying spirits of shallow spirit worlds.

This spell doesn’t make you grow additional arm or doesn’t cause food to spoil in the area. But the spirit can cause damage – it feeds of creatures eyes and so may scare and cripple people and animals. If you go for permanency you end up without an eye – and nowhere it says you may repeat the ritual once your spirit dies. Imagine you have few of such enchantments – no wonder people are afraid of sorcerers and living near them and expect bad things to happen. Also this stuff can be pretty gruesome, what would you do after finding an eye with fleshy tentalcles which drips some bodily fluids under roof of your shed?

So which magic systems do you like? What spells do you like? How would you remake other spells in that style? And how are you feeling about the great unchecked evil hiding in the core of every magical ability?

#archival #worldbuilding