The Affairs of Wizards

I am not interested in 5E because it is inextricably linked to the contemporary fantasy aesthetic. This also happens to be the secondary reason why I hated the Hobbit films. I realise I have exiled myself to a barren peninsula of my own eccentricity here but the fact remains that the aesthetic essence of the thing (i.e. its "style") matters far more to me that playability, accessibility or innovation. If 5E pursued a Weird aesthetic and rolled out Ian Miller, Russ Nicholson and John Blanche to illustrate it I'd be sold, no matter what goofy mechanics it might have.

Conversely, Oleg Denysenko, Denis Forkas Kostromitin and Vania Zouraliov could do it. Contemporary Russian illustrators are bloody marvelous.

I know the world shall continue to recede from the ideal I carry in my head. It matters not.

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So D&D magic is decidedly not magical. This galls me. There is such potential for intriguing and evocative as well as conducive to the initiation of self-perpetuating action-in-the-game-world stuff in magic but I don't see it used much.

Firstly and importantly, given my long-time obsession with reward mechanics, I believe that neglecting to foreground the accumulation of spells as an important part of the magic-user's progression is missing out on part of the fun of playing that role. If a magic-user has no particular relationship with their spellbook and no motivating desire to go forth and pilfer the spellbooks of others for mystick puissance and abominable mysteries then they are functionally, in terms of relationship to the campaign setting, not so much differentiated from the other character classes.

Of course the universal focus of the bloodstained gold reward system is valuable for tying together the party's major pursuit (plunder) but there is a beauty in individually differentiated class rewards. Magic items offer this to an extent, creating a dynamic where there is an understanding that beyond the typically slow and linear creep up through the levels there will be little bonuses here and there that will create sudden flashes and leaps of extra power, magic swords and wands and rings and the like, which constitute an extra, parallel reward system. In addition to this there is another, similarly underdeveloped reward system composed of more mundane items, purchasables like hirelings and retainers and ships and castles. All are means of augmenting agency within the gameworld and all are awarded by the GM to PCs whose actions have been sufficiently entertainingly ingenious and intrepid.

-As an aside there is another intriguingly under-investigated social-aesthetic dynamic that goes on where the GM invests a portion of their effort and pride and love and care into the setting as an aesthetic object and the players petition with their interest and their care to be allowed to have agency within the gameworld. It is only through being an exceptionally good audience to and collaborators with the performative efforts of the GM that the secrets of the world reveal themselves and it is only through playing along with this fantasy, making at least the appearance of being enthralled by the GM's aesthetic virtuosity that the greatest secrets are uncovered. There is a thing about hospitality and flattery and communal aesthetic experience here that I shan't be pursuing further. Suffice to say: listen well and play along and ye shall be rewarded-

Carcosa has a very interesting and deeply integrated-and-conducive-to-action magic system. I refuse to believe that there was never any intent that the players were never supposed to be sorcerors. While I acknowledge that the rituals involving the raping and murdering of children are too abhorrent for people to enjoy playing out and are actually much more effective as means of defining who the bad guys are and defining what the hitherto evocatively defined as unspeakably blasphemous rites actually consist of, the fact that the magic system and hexcrawl are so interlinked is brilliant. The map is fairly festering with Macguffins. Aside from the obvious unpleasantnesses, playing a sorceror in Carcosa would be cool, you've got places to go and people to see from the get go. Additionally, assuming the antagonists are probably sorcerors, they've got things to do also. Given a little inside knowledge it becomes obvious that the sorceror or his minions are trying to get the Radioactive Purple Crystal from Hex 0121 to the Seething Chasm of Indeterminate Depth in Hex 9982  to summon the Quaking Eidolon of Thrausaath-Glybbe (or whatever) and there you have a clear set of objectives and something to do while sitting around the table with your friends.

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So, in this conception, magic spells are unlocked from the mysterious cosmos by the performance of particular rites. This gives the initiate access to the arcane mysteries which may then be inscribed in their grimoire and "memorised" daily, as normal. The written version is essentially enchanted, it functions as a magical scroll and may be destructively invoked in a similar manner, over and above its normal spellbook function. Once a spell is thus lost from the grimoire it is necessary to go through the whole process of ritual to regain the spell. Spells stolen from other magic-users may (after unlocking with Read Magic) be "burnt" as scrolls, additionally all written versions of spells of necessity contain the instructions for performance of the rite that unlocks the mystery.

The individual spells in the magic user spell list are divided between a number of different factions in the setting (with a considerable degree of overlap). Each jealously guards its secrets and the rites that allow their revelation. It is only possible to achieve the ability to cast every spell by begging, borrowing or stealing from a number of different sources.

Finally, language is the key to unlocking the knowledge, many languages within the setting have an association with a particular set of mysteries, knowing the language means knowing the mysteries. The languages and their associated magical disciplines are as follows;

Five Paths of Lesser Sorcery

1. Elder Druideacht - Language of Birds
2. Bastard Alchemy- Alchemists' Cant
3. Lowlander Spae-craft - Meagre Tongue (i.e. "Common")
4. Mantic Disciplines of the Old Imperium - Diviners' Cipher
5. Heathenish Witchery - Heathen Tongue
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Exempli Gratia: Elder Druideacht

The degraded rites of Low Druidry are relicts of the blasphemies of the north. The fell Druideacht of the northern heathens bound together their tribes in ties of blood and law and sacrifice. Theirs was an elder pact with the powers of the wicked earth personified in primordial gods of field and fen and unquiet ancestors craving sacrifice from the darkness beyond.

There are six first level spells in the druidry spell list, a beginning initiate will have already performed three of the rites but will know the rites to access the others

-The Willing Sacrifice (Charm Person) A pristine entity (white calf with red ears,  blind foal, seven-day-old kid born in the new moon's dark)  is bathed in milk and crowned with a wreath of mistletoe cut with a silver sickle. Songs are sung over it of Ancient Law. Eating of its heart will reveal the mystery

-Ordeal of the Hodimadod (Detect Magic) At one of the known junctions of cosmic alignment between nexi of the embodiment of ancient lore (henges, raths, cromlech-graves, sacred groves and pools) the initiate must spend the night alone in a circle of seven knives and ritualistically strangle themselves seven times with a rope of their own hair that they swoon and fall. In the half-world between oblivion and wakefulness the mystery will be glimpsed.

-Walk Untouchable (Protection from Evil) All sprinkled with gold dust, glimmering naked and drunk on tainted mead, the initiate must enter the opened tomb of a hallowed ancestor and lay together upon the slab, eat of its fingernails and hair and plead and beg the answer to the riddles of death and life .

- Assimilation of Ink (Read Languages) From the mingled blood of a dozen initiates and the gall of a blasted oak and the venom of a murtherous humbledrum an ink must be brewed and the flayed skin of an ancient scholar adorned with the ciphered runes and the hundred forms of ogam and all the abecedaries of the Old Imperium and glyphs and ancient scripts forgotten by time. This skin must be slowly eaten and the initiate stricken with the poison for seven nights.  On the eighth day the initiate rises with ink in their veins.

- Vigil of the Grey Horizon (Sleep) The initiate undergoes mystical incubation wrapped in the flayed hide of a walrus, nettle-crowned and covered in bone-soot. The initiate must hold wakeful vigil for seven nights upon a shore between earth and restless ocean until oblivion beckons in the voice of a gull. In that voice can be heard the mystery.

-Blinding the Cipher  (Read Magic) Skyclad and fasted upon the dawn of Midsummer's Day the initiate must gaze into the rising sun until the world goes out of their eyes . Thereafter, they are led into a grove where ogam-staves and runestones and grimoires of mystick writings are kept and made to look upon them as their sight returns. In the dim light of returning vision the secret will glimmer among the glyphs.

et cetera

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As the character progresses through the levels it will become necessary to collude with other magicians to perform the rites necessary to unlock new forms of magical power. The different paths will have entirely different ways of gaining access to essentially the same spell - spae-wives  will brew philtres of love to gain the ability to charm (instead of eating the heart of an innocent sacrifice) and other paths will pursue other means. In addition to this there is always the possibility that some kind of fraternisation with elves might be possible (though unwise).

Love is a kind of ancient lightning

Though the thing begins in a manner more turgid and noxiously empurpled than usual I think there is some kind of metaphor here which is pleasantly ineffable. Magicians are fucked-up Ahabs and there are a thousand ways to be immortal and zero ways for it to be satisfying and the pursuit of what we desire will destroy what we love and that Faulkner said you must kill your darlings and I have no heart for it even when I know he is right.

The Hesychasm of Abraxas Twain


Between the hither-gaunts and the brackish weeps of Lackly Veil there is a tract of broken ground. In that place there seems to be nothing but an ill wind and straggly woods. Upon an afternoon in autumn one may approach from just the right angle and come of a sudden upon the manse of a man with a cocodrille's heart. He awaits his lost bride in a prison of his own devising and across the Eastern Sea he sends his kestrels of pitiless desire.

Of old he had the heart of a man and human blood coursed in him. He strode upon the world and took part in the despoliation of time and matter. But time and matter cleft his earthly plans asunder and took from him his bride and with tedious inevitability wracked his body and mind with the predictable vandalisms. So he rode south into the lost lands and sought forbidden ways of rewriting the pact between death and life. Upon a muddy riverbank he cut his heart from his chest and took the scaly thing that beats in the breast of a cocodrille-fish to be his own.

Through archaic eyes he beheld the world anew. It breathed more slow than before and deeply. He passed from that place and came at length to the manse in the north in the sparse wood to remain in an afternoon that lasted two centuries.

In that place;

I. A tow-headed oaf squatting in the dust of an antechamber bears a leathern satchel within which are five vials filled with mineral salts that are the living essence of the enchantress Sibilia Vaunt, erstwhile pupil of Twain. Sibilia's corporeality sputtered out with her allotted decades and she was rendered and precipitated into these crystalline powders. The oaf is slack-jawed and bright-eyed with sorcerous thraldom and wears the lion-face of the leper. The salts yearn for another bearer whose life is keener that they may take over the laboratory of Gleck the Wan without falling victim to Quorme.

- Sibilia Vaunt is a 7th-level Magic-user but must daily invest a Charm Person, ESP and Hold Person spell to weave the snare that enmeshes the will of the gimp. He is now utterly hers and may cast her other spells as normal (2, 1, 1, 1), these are; charm (x2), ESP, clairvoyance, curse. She will tend to utilise the ability to bestow curses to induce a PC to take on Sibilia's endeavours.



II. In a sinkhole is Gleck the Wan whose physical self is being subsumed by formulae. Every crevice of his brimstone-stinking, poisonous hole is stacked with alembics and crucibles and suchlike paraphernalia alchemical and with stacks of slates and parchment scrolls. His ardent pursuit of ineffable perfection has taken from him the capacity to speak save in some inane arithmantic cant. All the words of the six human languages that were his are trapped in a slab of burning green ice in the "Traipse of Angles" - a realm far-flung and mostly theoretical. He does not miss them, his toil is here. Though he can no longer spit magery he has a Many-Ken nestled in a grimoire whose answers hasten Gleck ever closer to transcendence.

-Gleck the Wan: MU 6 AC: 9 hp: 13 dmg: 1d3 (pestle)

Other than the Many-Ken there are three other entities nestled in the sinkhole that have invested components of themselves in Gleck's endeavour;

The Gradient of Capitulation manifests as the dusty fragrance of crow and as the warping of accents closer to that of the Old Rhadamanthine slave-tongue, a thick and lispy dialect. Upon closer inspection it appears as a region of inverted shadows the size and shape of a sickly troubadour.

-as one approaches the gradient one's judgment is temporarily compromised, -1d6 WIS within 10'

-STR may be traded for WIS at 2:1 ratio with successful save vs. paralysis. Failure to save means you lose the STR anyway

In a corner is a trough of stone. Quorme the Glue-Man rises stinking from the trough if bothered by intruders and in the glutinous tongue of Viscous Prime requests the abrasive interlopers desist their speaking and breathing and angular motion lest he drag them into the porridge-coloured hell of the Underglump.

-Stats as an Adherer save that Quorme is more Fearsome

The Sardonic Charioteer is an mangled automaton of brass and hepatizon in the form
of a comely young warrior with a sinister rictus. It was made long ago to ride behind horses of scintillant attenuation that plunged between worlds at will. The horses are mathematically disassembled at present and serve as silvery pseudo-numerical glyphs on some of Gleck's more potent formulae.

-Unconcerned with all but the most appalling affronts to Gleck's endeavour. Stats as a gargoyle but flightless. If sore-pressed it will summon forth the steeds and disappear in a catastrophic twinkling - 5d6 dmg of light and sound within 20', save vs. petrification for half.

III. The Rhabdomancer's Vestibule. Here are seven hundred sticks and staves, rods and wands and beams and rungs and wattles and switches arranged neatly in rows upon the floor with manifold notations and diagrammatic marks and geometer's sigils chalked upon the stone. This is the array by which the venturesome Rhabdomancer is anchored to the earthly plane while he sojourns among prankish ghoul-maidens deep in Greenest Purgatory. Meddling with the array will set off magical alarums of puissant odium

1st meddling: Save vs. petrification or your bones literally become lead, heavy and poisonous. Permanently slow and increasingly sickly - lose 1 CON each day until dead.

2nd meddling: Make WIS check, if successful you know the world is a folding membrane and you are part of it, completely unable to extricate yourself from that structure. This is baleful to behold and with it comes the certainty that it was ever thus and others live in denial of the horror of the real. Save vs. paralysis each time someone denies that the world is a membrane or attack them for a round.

3rd and subsequent meddlings: Destined world-line of the soul. Roll one of each dice including d100, those are your scores for everything henceforth until ye eat of narwhal's spleen.

IV. The Widowing Quag is an oily pond in a grot of undulating moss wherein squats a woman who has undergone some kind of process of ossification. Her movements are imperceptibly slow but for her desperate eyes. By a slow process of signs she may answer questions and address grievances. She is consumed by the desire to intervene in the Pech's endeavour. When she was young and quick she followed Twain through his wild years and became mighty in sorcery under his tutelage but the path to immortality she sought is changing her into a elegant statue of bone. She loves him and he does not love her.

-It takes her a whole turn to cast a spell. Lady of Bone: MU 8 INT:17

V. An aged Pech carves a concubine in tainted ivory from the tusk of a colossal olifant emerging from the muck. He served Abraxas Twain long ago, before the assiduous dereliction took hold. His servitude continues out of force of habit. The carving is to be the vessel that will receive the next incarnation of the lost bride. He knows that the answer to the riddle of the Hesychasm is the horn the swordsman bears but does not know how much he yearns to tell it.

　
Cennaledh Bru : D2 AC: 9 (jerkin and targe) hp: 12 dmg: d6 (war-adze) AL: N ML: 8 Booty: the sculpture and all the ivory would be worth 5000 groats at least


VI. In a yellow field sits a man at table. The crimson horn of a monoceros is tucked in the belt of Jonas Grootzwaard. Grootzwaard is a man of girth and middling years lending grizzle to his spade beard and of indomitable callous charm. He wandered in a decade before and has weathered the afternoon well. He could leave at any time but is bound with some kind of inexplicable love to the Bone Lady who loves Twain.

Jonas Grootzwaard: F4 AC: 6 (brigandine) hp:23 dmg: d10+1 (Ye two-honde swerde) ML: 10 STR: 14 CHA:15 Booty: Faded green finery - 3 groats, ballock dagger -12 groats, Swerde - 100 groats, he has a fine meal of wine and meats set before him, enough food for three

If he is slain with edged weapons a Blotwyfe emerges from the pooling red. She swims though dark oceans of gore seeking portals into the real.
-As a wight with tangled locks and an eating knife of tarnished silver worth 13 groats


VII. In a sanctum of faded splendour Abraxas Twain waits. He is again as a man just past his prime and deeply acquainted with the cynicisms of immortality. Not much interests him save the means by which he may secure the semblance of his bride. If engaged Twain will speak of the amputation of a moment from the flow of things and how this anomalous fragment of time and place allows the blessing and curse of continued existence. For a variety of reasons he will not and indeed cannot allow anyone to leave the place. The little woodland requires their continued presence, they are part of it now and no longer of the outside world. Kestrels watch from every eave.

- Stats as a 13th-level Magic-User and a vampire, save that exposure to sunlight does nothing nor can he be slain at all while he remains here (and he may not leave) save by piercing his cocodrille heart.

- He will have at least one ritual memorised in addition to other spells.

- There is no booty here

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Rituals

The rituals developed by Abraxas Twain require the casting of numerous spells and the assembly of various ingredients to perform. The spells that make up the rituals have no purpose other than as part of these rituals.

1. Funnel-hatted apes of the utter-vasts clamber down on silken threads from beyond the sky. They will do your bidding for 3 turns as their magic hat funnels allow them temporarily to survive earth's toxic influence but then they with scarper back up the threads - they each require at last 100 groats worth of rare earths to devour or they will run terribly amok.

To summon the apes: Frenzied Ululations of Ashmodai (1st), Prance of the Immolated (1st), Ghastly Snare of Aspic's Splendour (2nd)

Stats as Rock Baboons, 2d4 appear

2. Caacrinolaas' Succor: A thing like a new-born babe but huge and emaciated and inky black comes riding a river-horse through mists and squalling vortices of poisonous sound - eat of its proferred liver to regain a lost level but lose 1 point in a random characteristic if you do. The thing is Abominable

To call forth the Thing on the River Horse: Abject Sprawl of the Vanquished Worm (1st), Now Must We Eat of Tainted Meat (1st), Gimping the Night Glare (3nd), Sparkling Putrescence of the Marrow (4th)

3. A lost brother from a dream who never really existed arrives and is tired and thirsty and an appalling parasite that you may not slay or allow to be slain any more than you would a real brother.

To precipitate the arrival: Dredging the Hate-Canal (2nd), Gape of Querulous Frenzy (2nd), Chant of Nacreous Vehemence (3rd)

4. Vomit your wolverine soul to go ravening against your enemies.
Soul-Glutton: AC 5 MV: 150' (50') HD: as caster + 10hp # att: 1 dmg: 1d12 ML: 12 - the thing will not stop for a day and a night - if it is killed the caster dies also

To spew bestial destruction: Whisper of the Insatiate (1st),  Baalphegor's Glowering (2nd)

5. Scrying Cyst: Sink down 12' beneath the ground to a sumptuously appointed fungus palace where divinatory spells have ten times the usual duration.

To descend into the cyst: Aurifigian Carnivory (1st), Bonnacon's Madrigal (2nd), Loathly Testament of Decarabia (3rd)

6. Crossing the Abortive Gulf. The caster rides a Viridian Spleen-Drone, clanking and steaming and crusted with corrosion, across the palpable obscure to cavort among the archaic Lobster-Moles in the Primordial Principalities of the Carcass-Moon (disappearing beyond the campaign's boundaries)

To cross the gulf: Guttural Utterance of Doom (3rd), Sublimating the Gauge of Splinters (4th), Gliding Over All (5th), The Desecrated Fulcrum (6th)

P.S.

"When one is a child, when one is young, when one has not yet reached the age of recognition, one thinks that the world is strong, that the strength of God is endless and unchanging. But after the thing has happened--whatever that thing might be--that brings recognition, then one knows irrevocably how very fragile is the world, how very, very fragile; it is like one of those ideas that one has in dreams: so clear and so self-explaining are they that we make no special effort to remember. Then of course they vanish as we wake and there is nothing there but the awareness that something very clear has altogether vanished."

Russell Hoban, Pilgermann

Hedge Magick

I seem to remember the idea of cantrips being tossed around on other blogs recently. I've been thinking along those lines myself lately. What I want to do is give low-level magic users (or Hermits or Cunning Men/Wise Women or whatever I am going to call them) something to do at those times when they've used their paltry quota of magic or are saving their detect magic spell for the crucial moment when it is really going to count. Also, and this is important to me, I'd like to introduce some way of emulating the grubby eccentrics that were the wizards and witches of the middle ages (or of the Dung Age conception thereof). These people performed, presided over, or guided various ritualistic actions that had ambiguous or negligible outcomes. In these situations the appearance of performing an action to achieve some degree of control over some aspect of a chaotic universe was important.

In a game situation I think this kind of minor magick could be reflected as allowing the magic-user character to influence the outcome of a roll, granting a +1 bonus. This is not a game-breaking power, but I think it needs to be balanced with some mechanism. The mechanisms that could be utilised to ballance this power are time and cost, each Hedge Magick cantrip takes 1 turn and costs 10gp (maybe 5) in magical ingredients. If the ritual granting Tostig the Ruffian a +1 to his strength check as he attempts to topple the idol takes one turn rather than one round, or if the necessary materials sacrificed to propitiate the spirits to grant a +1 bonus to a search for secret doors cost ten gold pieces then the players have incentives to not overuse these minor powers.

I am not yet sure how this would work out in play, the threat of poverty and extra wandering monster checks may not be suffieciently prohibitive to prevent the party's Hedge Wizard from consulting the bones, burning mystical incense, drawing magical designs etc. before each and every action that is attempted. The time constraint will have the effect of making it impossible to use hedge magick in battle, but potentially a charms could be worked beforehand to influence the outcome of a couple of rolls.

The cantrips are further restricted by only being active for one turn after completion of casting (or maybe 1 turn per level of caster).

Rolls that can be influenced include;

-A specific saving throw e.g. a charm against poison
-An specific ability check
-A reaction roll
-An initiative roll
-An attack or damage roll (a weapon could be enchanted)
-A search for secret doors roll
-An open doors roll
-Armour Class, a special case, equivalent to a -1 penalty to opponents attack roll.

The fluff component of this could take the form of;

-Incantation/mumbling/screeching of magical words
-Trance-like meditation/concentration (caster may be asleep)
-Burning of foul-smelling incense/candles/sacred herbs
-Imbibing of sacramental entheogens
-incising/drawing/painting strange magical designs/runes/glyphs on the subject
-Anointing of subject with unpleasant ointments/unguents
-Consumption of unappetising objects/substances
-Strange and unsettling dances with singing and/or the ringing of bells/chimes or the rattling of rattles.
-Consultation of the liver/spleen of an animal/person
-Repetitive and interminable casting of the bones/runestones

et cetera

Any combination of the above would be appropriate. I think a random table would be in order but it's too late here now and I have to get up early.

I think this has the potential of being flavoursome and frequently of little help which is very suitable. The greater magicks that constitute the wizard's spellbook should be rare and special - beyond the experience of the rude peasants who might occasionally call upon charms of dubious efficacy from the local madman.

This whole concept relies, to a certain extent, upon the low-level nature of the campaign. I am capping human characters at level 7 and Demihumans at about level 4 or 5. Magic-users do not have the heights of awe-inspiring power to look forward to so they need to be compensated with some extra options at low level.