Doomed Ones (a sorcerous subclass for Dragon Warriors)

Doomed Ones were originally a magic-using character class that I created in 1980 for Adventure, a roleplaying game that Games Workshop commissioned me to write. (The title was their idea.) A Doomed One permanently burnt a point of Constitution to unlock about twenty quite powerful spells. The character got one use of each spell and at any time could sacrifice another Constitution point to get another use of the twenty. Since Constitution both set the basis for the character’s hit points and limited the number of times they could be resurrected, it was a death sentence with a lot of power to use up on your way to the grave.

Even if Adventure (did I mention that was GW’s idea?) had ever been published, I’m not sure Doomed Ones would have made the final cut. They were kind of boring. A player would cross off a couple of Constitution points, then stingily husband their forty spells in any encounter while letting other characters do the heavy lifting. Not that that couldn’t make for an interesting dynamic, just that there was only one story to tell there and it didn’t bear repeating dozens of times.

There’s a certain logic to revisiting the idea using Dragon Warriors, seeing as how DW evolved out of my notes for Adventure (huh, that title…). So here they are.

Doomed Ones

A Doomed One is a Sorcerer who has bound themselves under ominous stars in the pursuit of magical power to the exclusion of all else. The Doomed One is treated like a normal Sorcerer except as follows:

Attack, Defence, Stealth, Evasion and Health Points do not increase with rank. Magic Points increase faster than for regular Sorcerers.

Because Doomed Ones are half in love with easeful death, they are unaffected by fright attacks caused by ghosts and the undead.

Every Doomed One has a fate in the form of a death that has been prophesied for them -- their doom. When creating the character, the player specifies a time of day (night, morning, afternoon or evening) and a cause of death. Causes of death should be reasonably general, not “belladonna mixed into warm milk” or "bitten in the ankle by an adder", say. Pick from this list or (with the GM’s discretion) something similar:

A blunt weapon, a cat, a dog, an edged weapon, fire, a fish, a fungus, a horse, an insect, a lake or pond, a moat, an ox, a pig, a plant, a rat, a river, rope, sand, the sea, a serpent, a tree, wine.

In any situation in which the character is exposed to the fated element, object, or thing at the fated time of day, they are subject to a Magical Attack of 2d6 + (d6 x rank/2). If that overcomes the character’s Magical Defence they are slain, if necessary by a freak accident. Conversely, if they survive, the close brush with death immediately restores their full Magic Points and Health Points scores.

The GM should bear in mind that dying because of a fish could include choking on a fish bone, for example. Further inspiration is available by looking at unusual demises in antiquity, in medieval times, and in the Renaissance. Or even these bizarre 17th century deaths. However, a character who is careful to guard against their fate should not be arbitrarily imperilled. Don’t say, “A horse bolts towards you out of nowhere and knocks you down.” In that example, the character should only risk their doom if they have voluntarily approached a horse or a stable at the preordained time, or if the situation makes an encounter with a horse reasonably likely.

The prophecy doesn't entirely protect the Doomed One from death by other means. If reduced to –3 Health Points in circumstances where their prophesied fate doesn’t apply, they are incapacitated but remain alive. The character can be healed and will recover consciousness when at positive health points but thereafter is a parolee of fate, having cheated death because of their prophecy, and recovers only 50% of their Magic Points each day until such time as they are faced with the preordained circumstances, whereupon they are challenged by the Magical Attack described above; if they survive that then their full sorcerous abilities are restored.

If reduced to –3 Health Points when the foretold cause (but not necessarily time) of death is present, the Doomed One is slain in a way that ensures the fulfilment of the prophecy. (‘She might have dodged that fatal blow if that darned cat hadn’t distracted her at the crucial moment.’) In those circumstances no Magical Attack resolution is needed.

If the Doomed One is slain in a manner that leaves no possibility of doubt – for example, incinerated in a furnace or sliced into small pieces – and the ordained cause is not involved, it is left to the GM’s ingenuity to contrive some way for the cause to take post-mortem effect. For example, the character’s coffin might be dropped in a river on the way to the churchyard, or the funeral procession might be held up by a runaway horse.

It goes without saying that a Doomed One should be careful to keep their prophesied fate a secret. The GM should not reveal it in front of other players until the circumstances apply, and even then conceal the precise details. If our example character is foolishly riding a horse in the afternoon, and the horse stumbles and throws him or her to the ground, the other player-characters won’t necessarily know if it was the tree root in the road or an insect bite on the horse’s rump or the horse itself that was to blame.

OK, look, if you really insist -- and don't say I didn't warn you -- here is part of the original manuscript of Adventure from 1980 in which Doomed Ones first appeared. It's mostly interesting for the glimpse of the Assassins rules, which I used when writing Out of the Shadows (DW book 4), but both Doomed Ones and Shamans (also in the excerpt) would probably have been dropped, at least in that form, if Adventure had ever come out.

A magic moment

If your interest was piqued by news about my forthcoming Jewelspider RPG last time, there's more today. Much more, in fact. I've been working away at the magic system, and finally it's been unveiled to all those patient Patreon backers.

Jewelspider is set in the world of Legend (the same setting as Dragon Warriors) but it's more of a realistic take on Legend's medieval origins. This is the world as the people inhabiting it believe it to be. Magic is real, but it isn't a matter of careening fireballs and glitzy special FX. Typically a spell takes minutes, hours or even days to cast, but the outcome is much more significant than simple artillery.

The theory is that an evocative and flavourful magic system will mean that every spellcasting attempt is an adventure seed in its own right. To achieve that goal I'm eager for feedback from the Patreon backers (that wisdom of crowds thing) and after that I'll be releasing the game, first as a PDF and then in print form.

In brief, this is how the Jewelspider magic rules work:

The Nature of Magic

Magic in Jewelspider is a subtle art, often requiring tools and time to manifest. The core of the system lies in reality's reluctance to be altered by magic; overt magical effects are challenging to achieve.

Spellcasting Mechanics

Mastery Levels: To cast a spell, characters must possess mastery in the relevant type of sorcery.

Skill Use: Most spells are cast using Reasoning, though some can be woven from artistic expressions using Artistry. 

Intrinsic Difficulty: Each spell has a difficulty level that must be met or exceeded for successful casting.

The Seven Magical Laws

Each of these modifies the difficulty of casting.

• Contagion: Using personal items like hair or nails can influence spell difficulty.
• Subtlety: Spells cast without witnesses are easier to achieve.
• Deferment: Delayed effects are simpler to integrate into reality.
• Proximity: Closer targets make for easier spellcasting.
• Impermanence: Temporary spells are easier than permanent ones.
• Invitation: Spells accepted by targets (even unwittingly) are more potent.
• Sympathy: Artistic mimetic components (e.g., a feather for a levitation spell) can enhance spell effectiveness.

Tools and Time

The effectiveness of a spell often depends on the tools used. Rings, Diagrams, Books, Apparatus, and Laboratories each provide varying bonuses and require different amounts of time to use, from instantaneous to several hours.

Success, Failure, and Partial Success

Success: If the casting effect equals or exceeds the difficulty, the spell works as intended.

Failure: No effect occurs, though mishaps are possible.

Partial Success: Unexpected, often uncontrolled effects occur, adding a layer of unpredictability and excitement to spellcasting.

Counterspells and Wards

Defensive measures like Wards and the innate ability to resist spells by other sorcerers add depth and strategy to magical duels and encounters.

If you want to dive into the full details and join the conversation, head over to my Patreon page. Your support helps bring Jewelspider to life, and you'll get exclusive content and a behind-the-scenes look at the development process. Or just join as a free member, which still gives you access to a whole lot of early posts and ensures you'll get updates about publication.

(The image at the top is from Robin of Sherwood. As if you couldn't tell.)

Great men can work miracles

A trope I enjoy in folktales is the one that recounts the deeds of great heroes as achieved by wizardry, because of course there's no other way they could have done half of what they did. In one of the Knightmare novellas I had the protagonist thaw out a dwarf who'd spent the last fourteen centuries inside a block of ice in an Alpine cave. He'd eaten one of Hannibal's elephants, so Hannibal froze him solid.

The following tales of Drake, taken from Anna Bray's book The Borders of the Tamar and the Tavy, were an influence on Dragon Warriors and even more so on Jewelspider:

* * *

Tradition, in this part of the West Country, is still busied with the fame of Drake; and all the stories told of him are of a wild and extravagant nature. No doubt this originated from the terror of his name and the wonder of his exploits—exploits so extraordinary that they were here considered to owe their success to something supernatural in himself, and that he often performed them by the power of enchantment. Nor can we feel surprised at this credulity when we recollect that even in these days, with the peasantry of Devon, witchcraft is still believed to be practised in the county, and extraordinary circumstances or sufferings to be brought about by the active agency and co-operation of the devil.

Thus was our hero converted, by popular opinion, into a wizard; and as such the ‘old warrior’ (for so the lower classes here call Drake) is to the present time considered amongst them. The following traditionary tales will serve to show the sort of necromantic adventures which credulity has fastened on the memory of the great naval admiral of the reign of good Queen Bess.

One day whilst Sir Francis Drake was playing at the game of kales [ninepins] on the Hoe at Plymouth, it was announced to him that a foreign fleet (the Armada, I suppose) was sailing into the harbour close by. He showed no alarm at the intelligence, but persisted in playing out his game. When this was concluded, he ordered a large block of timber and a hatchet to be brought to him. He bared his arms, took the axe in hand, and manfully chopped up the wood into sundry smaller blocks. These he hurled into the sea, while at his command every block arose a fire-ship; and within a short space of time a general destruction of the enemy’s fleet took place, in consequence of the irresistible strength of those vessels he had called up to ‘flame amazement’ on the foes of Elizabeth and of England. Wild as this story is, there is something of grandeur in the idea of Drake standing on such a commanding elevation as the Hoe, with the sea, which spreads itself at its foot, before him, and that element together with the fire-ships obedient to the power of his genius, whose energies were thus mar­vellously exerted for the safety of his country.

The next tradition respecting Sir Francis was communicated to me by our esteemed friend, Mr. Davies Gilbert, who has shown the interest he takes in such fragments of the ‘olden time’ by the very curious collection he some years ago published of the Cornish ballads.

In the days of Drake the vulgar considered the world to be composed of two parallel planes, the one at a certain distance from the other. In reference to this space it was commonly said that Sir Francis had ‘shot the gulf,’ meaning that his ship had turned over the edge of the upper plane so as to pass on to the waters of the under. “There is,” said Mr. Davies Gilbert, “an old picture of Drake at Oxford, repre­senting him holding a pistol in one hand, which, in former years, the man who acted as showman to strangers was wont to say (still further improving upon the story) was the very pistol with which Sir Francis shot the gulf!”

Another story told of this hero is, that the people of Plymouth were so destitute of water in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, that they were obliged to send their clothes to Plympton to be washed in fresh water. Sir Francis Drake resolved to rid them of this inconvenience. So he called for his horse, mounted, rode to Dartmoor, and hunted about till he found a very fine spring. Having fixed on one that would suit his purpose, he gave a smart lash to his horse’s side, pronouncing as he did so some magical words, when off went the animal as fast as he could gallop, and the stream followed his heels all the way into the town. This assuredly was not only the most wonderful, but the most cheap and expeditious, mode of forming a canal ever known or recorded by tradition.

The next story of Sir Francis is a very singular one, nor can I in the least trace its origin to any real circumstance which might have been exaggerated in the relation, till it became, like the other tales about our hero, necromantic. It seems in every way a fiction. The good people here say that whilst the ‘old warrior’ was abroad, his lady, not hearing from him for seven years, considered he must be dead and that she was free to marry again. Her choice was made, the nuptial day was fixed, and the parties had assembled in the church. Now it so happened that at this very hour Sir Francis Drake was at the anti­podes of Devonshire, and one of his spirits, who let him know from time to time how things went on in England, whispered in his ear in what manner he was about to lose his wife. Sir Francis rose up in haste, charged one of his great guns, and sent off a cannon ball so truly aimed that it shot right through the globe, forced its way into the church, and fell with a loud explosion between the lady and her intended bridegroom. “It is the signal of Drake!” she ex­claimed, “He is alive, and I am still a wife. There must be neither troth nor ring between thee and me.”

Another legend of Sir Francis represents him as acting from motives of jealousy and cruelty, in a way he was very little likely to do. The story says that whilst he was once sailing in foreign seas he had on board the vessel a boy of uncommonly quick parts. In order to put them to the proof Sir Francis ques­tioned the youth, and bade him tell what might be their antipodes at that moment. The boy without hesitation told him Barton Place, (for so Buckland Abbey was then called) the Admiral’s own mansion in his native county. After the ship had made some further progress Sir Francis repeated his question, and the answer he received was, that they were then at the antipodes of London Bridge. Drake, surprised at the accuracy of the boy’s knowledge, exclaimed, “Hast thou, too, a devil ? If I let thee live, there will be one a greater man than I am in the world.” And so saying he threw the lad overboard into the sea, where he perished.

FURTHER READING

British Folk Tales & Legends by Katherine Briggs, on Amazon US and Amazon UK.

"A Hole in the World" (scenario)

You’d think multiple successful careers as an inspiring writer, captivating speaker and entertaining & informative broadcaster would be enough for Tim Harford. On top of that he’s a devoted husband and father, a steadfast friend, and one of the very nicest people you could ever hope to meet. But we, his gaming chums, know that he was really put on this world to run great RPG sessions just for us. Readers of the blog look forward to his enchanting Christmas specials for Legend. He created the Immortal Spartans and Company of Bronze campaigns that I’ve written about here from time to time, and another of his casually executed acts of genius was to conceive the Conclave game, loosely based on Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea stories.

After Tim’s Conclave campaign wound up, I ran a two-part session to fill in for the fact that my planned Yellow King campaign had been aborted. This adventure is set in Tim’s archipelago world which I assume is a lot like Earthsea (I still haven’t read the books) but you could port it across to another game world, with or without lots of water. Central to the concept, though, is that the players are mostly great wizards, and this is a world where magic really is powerful. It doesn’t matter how skilled a swordsman or thief you are, any of the wizard characters can ningauble you without working up a sweat.

There are several magical disciplines. Most wizards specialize in three or four of these, but all learn the art of Naming because that is a prerequisite for many other enchantments. Knowing the true name of a thing means that your magic will automatically work on it. For example, if you use Change magic on a rabbit and you know its true name then your statement has the full force of reality; the rabbit becomes whatever you say it is. Most of the time, though, you won’t know the full name of something. The rabbit can’t tell you, so you’d need to infer as much of its true name as you can, using the root name class for animals and then mammals and then leporids – I’m guessing here. The point is that you roll your Name skill first, and your degree of success in that modifies your roll for Find or Mend or Change or whatever. If you fail the Name roll, forget it; you can’t derive the name you need so your magic won’t work.

Tim came up with a very elegant rule system. I won’t recount it here as he might one day want to expand it and publish it (when those multiple other careers don’t get in the way) but you can soon whip up your own. All you need to know in what follows is that Vigour stands for stamina and strength; Skill is imagination, dexterity and intelligence; Wisdom is knowledge, fortitude and judgement. If like me you’re too lazy to read the books, the Isolate Tower has a handy glossary of magical terms, of which the main categories seem to be as follows:

• Change - turn a thing into something else (major) 
• Find - locate a lost item or person 
• Gate - opens and seals paths and portals
• Healing 
• Illusion
• Mend - fix a broken object
• Naming – the key to most of the other magical disciplines
• Pattern - scrying and discerning hidden connections (major)
• Send - project your image; the image can speak and sense, but not physically or magically act on its surroundings; cannot cross water, but otherwise has no limit on distance.
• Summon - bring an object or person (living or dead) to you (major)
• Weather – control wind, rain, fog, and so on

So, to summon a wind you would first try to intuit its name (Naming roll) then make a Weather roll. If somebody is trusting enough to tell you their true name, your magic will always work on them.

Wizards are not supposed to profligately make use of magic. In Le Guin’s stories, a "good" wizard would sail a boat from island to island and sit becalmed for days rather than conjure a wind. "Bad" wizards seem to be those who actually apply what they know. (So, pretty much the way Jedi and Sith operate in Star Wars.) In the game, lacking a specific mechanic or even a logical explanation for why we should restrict our use of magic, the player-characters were soon flinging spells about without a qualm. If you want your game to play out more like a Le Guin story, I suggest something like:

• Use of magic depletes the local mana, making further magic progressively harder 
• Every use of magic has a reaction – good winds one day will mean dead calm the next, etc.
• Unrestricted use of magic affects the wizard’s health. 
• The College of Hythe polices magic – use it too freely and they will discipline you.

Another point about this world: magic is dominated by the wizards’ college on the island of Hythe, which is said to lie at the heart of the archipelago. The college is all-male, making it difficult for women to study magic openly. Any female PCs will probably conceal their gender as Golpas does in this scenario.

At the Tip of the World
The player-characters are all wizards. One of them has his home on the island of Skryp, the easternmost of the known isles. He has noticed that several local lads (Flintoy, Ratch, and Witkin) who went off to sea last year have returned from their voyages with much greater wealth than anyone expected. Some might suspect them of having turned to piracy, explaining the silks and pearls they gave their wives, but the player-character knows they are honest men.

The truth, which the characters will have to ascertain (they only need to ask, but will probably complicate it), is that the three men came by this wealth when their captain, Haspool, claimed the contents of a drifting merchantman as salvage. His ship is the Hazard and it sails out of Port Pressen on the island of Vaygra.

(“Where was the abandoned ship found drifting?” “Couldn’t tell you. We’re not navigators. You’d have to ask Captain Haspool.”)

At Port Pressen
The characters must get Captain Haspool or his navigator (Tully) to tell them where the ships were found drifting. Yes, ships plural. He has salvaged two, both crewless. (“The Bunch of Grapes was not so rich pickings as that first one, the Woven Band, but both were claimed legally.”)

Pirates
The complication is that pirates have got wind of the drifting hulks and are patrolling the area. If they see the characters' ship, they may just decide to raid it. The pirate ship is the Good Work.

• Pirate captain: Korak
• His wizard: Golpas

Golpas is a female sorcerer who passes herself off as a man. She is not powerful (stats 10) but has +1 in Name and +2 in Gate, Illusion, Healing, Send, Weather.

The Zone
A Sargasso-like area of mists and incessant rain; visibility is very poor. The periphery of the zone is a region of cold mist seething like smoke off the incessant rain. Sailing into it is like going into a waterfall.

Make a Vigour +Name roll on entering the Zone. If you fail, you’re starting to get rewritten. You might lose your sense of smell/taste, become increasingly drained of colour, find your shadow keeps slipping away, you cease to leave footprints, start to dissolve into vapour, etc. This is an ongoing effect to be used as a ticking clock to spur the characters later on.

Any attempt to make a Name roll in the Zone is at a penalty of -5 (at the periphery) up to -8 (centre of the zone) as names here fluctuate so fast.

They see a ship drifting without crew (the ironically named Fine Weather). It is listing to one side owing to the water that is filling its bilges. Aboard:

• Gulls with blind human faces. Their shrieking sounds like men poorly imitating the cry of sea birds.
• Outlines in the rain of people – the crew – but they are the absence of people.
• Eyes that can be seen staring out of the timbers.
• Scuttling shapes that seem to be a hybrid of rats and human hands.
• The log book is sodden with rainwater – unreadable.
• The hold is full of crates of spices and furs, mostly ruined.

In the zone, true names are being reconfigured. A name might be cut in half and recombined with another – for example, splitting shape from identity left the outlines in the rain (shape component) and the identity-component was then spliced to the identity of seagulls.

As they quit the Fine Weather, some of their own crew, in the process of having their true names rewritten, start to change. They become like cobweb shells that blow apart on the wind, leaving pale dancing sparks that flit about the rigging. (Have the bosun point out that men in the rigging haven’t moved for several minutes. Those are already husks, who will become dislodged and blow away when anyone is sent up to investigate.)

In the centre of the zone (they’ll need Pattern to locate it as the rain obscures everything) is a missing piece of reality: a rift in the air like a break in a pane of glass. They hear a keening sound of wind as they approach it. Anyone with Name skill (ie any wizard) can visibly see reality warping around the edges.

They cannot approach, but see the hole in reality at a distance. Intermittent pulses of light emit from it, accompanied by a shockwave that they can feel rather than hear. In each pounding shockwave it’s as if for a moment everything ceases to exist.

As they get within forty feet, the effect starts to strip away the substance of the ship. They must turn back, as it’s only possible to get closer once they have the missing piece.

To fix it they must recover the missing piece. It was taken by a wizard, who was transformed by the fragment and fled. But they must turn back now, for almost all the crew are already lost and the rest are panicking.

Possible episode to insert on the voyage if the players need a hint:
They spot an island with a wide bay. No wind is allowed here for it is the home of the sorcerer Jutle. The moment they enter the bay, the sails go slack and no weather can be induced to enter. Jutle is a middle-aged man hauling driftwood on the beach who asks if they are here to see the master. If they recognize him he’ll reveal that he is the master here and will help them, but he is a true ‘softly softly’ wizard and won’t have any truck with using magic flamboyantly.

The Missing Piece
Remember that characters who failed Vigour +Name are now at phase 2 (losing their shadow)

The fragment of reality was taken by a wizard named Agios. He held his name together with his magic but was transformed into a monster. Pattern will reveal his likely routes, Find will take them to him.

As they approach the missing piece it’s night; they sense they will come to it by dawn. It’s overcast, but they see they’re approaching a column some sixty feet across that stands directly up from the ocean. It seems to be of mottled pink and grey marble. Water steams off its side in the early heat of day (unless approaching by night).

This is no marmoreal column but the monster that Agios has become. Out of the haze above comes its giant distorted face. To protect the ship from this initial attack will require defences equalling 50 points – reduce damage from total wreck at 0 defence to protected at 50 defence. (More efficient if they find clever ways to fend it off, eg a mast spears its eye rather than a shield of force in the air. Note that direct attacks are very hard – see below.)

The monster resembles a huge sea-worm with a distorted face like something moulded from clay.

Direct-attack spells are hard to use against this creature:

• Name attempt at -10 (due to continual fluctuations), then
• Spell must succeed by 5 or more to be effective

It can smash masts & hulls, snap up several men at once (make a Skill roll to avoid unless you have a magical defence), etc.

The missing fragment is inside the monster’s stomach. Transforming Agios back to normal won’t last long even if the spell takes. The most effective thing is to get inside the monster somehow. They will need illumination, and must protect themselves against noxious fumes and acid.

The fragment of reality is shaped like two trapezoids and is about the size of a book. To transport it safely (the edges cut through literally anything) they will need to use Change to solidify the air around it or something like that.

Fixing a Hole
Remember that characters who failed Vigour +Name are now at phase 3 (dissolving)

It’s not just a case of slotting the missing fragment of reality back in place. You need to Name it (no modifier) and then cast Change -- but that must be done on the other side of the hole at the same time as in this reality.

To pass through the gap in reality to the alternate world requires Gate. The alternate world is a plain of sand with ripples surrounding the hole in reality, and a ring of greenery (savanna) in the distance. They immediately notice the dead calm. No weather at all works in the affected zone, though there are winds blowing across the steppes. This zone is analogous to how the archipelago world is being changed around the hole in reality there.

To cast spells here:

1. Skill + Name (to read)
2. Then Wisdom + Name (to transform into a usable form)
3. Then cast the spell

The characters are greeted by primitive tribesmen who blame them for breaking the world. This is a world of open grassland in which the only wizards are female – the mirror image of the characters’ own world.

The natives’ shaman (Ma’ada) is reasonably powerful (stats 11) with Name +5 and Change +4. She must make her Name rolls at -5 here just as the PCs had to in their world.

Of course, the natives of this universe do not speak the same language. The characters must find a way to communicate – perhaps through use of Illusion magic, causing images to appear in a campfire.

Remember that somebody needs to fix the piece in place from this side: either one of the characters, or Ma’ada if they can explain to her what is needed, or Agios if he isn’t dead.

The Conclave

I like this cover painting (by David Bergen) because it depicts a wizard who might have stepped from the pages of National Geographic rather than Dragon magazine. I’ve had the book for decades but never so much as read the first page. Now that might change because I’ve been playing in Tim Harford’s marvellous Conclave campaign, inspired by the Earthsea books.

Tim began by stripping everything back to just a few pages of rules. I know people are playing full-on tactical dungeon bash games using platforms like Roll20, but our style is more theatre of the mind anyway, so it made sense to pare the system and dice-rolling to a minimum.

There were seven players and we were all wizards in an archipelago world where magic is brought about by using the true names of things. (That’s Ursula K Le Guin’s idea.) We began by describing our characters. Here’s Oliver Johnson on the background of the mage Wax:

“My mentor was my father, ‘Ear of Ear’, the shaman before me, but now ‘of his bones are coral made’ (see below). At the age of 12 he gave me my true name. Since his death, only he, the wind, and his coral brothers know this name.

“Wax is a shamanistic sorcerer on the Island of the Ear in the scorching southern Sandbanks group of islands. As you point out, these areas were never subject to the rule of the High King and have their own language, Al Vari. Though we can of course speak the Common Tongue when called upon, we prefer our own language and customs. Just out to sea are The Great Southern Shoals.

“Wax is a skinny, sun-tanned fellow with dreadlocks and a perhaps a not very clean loin cloth as his sole wardrobe, he carries a conch shell and a coral staff/spear about five feet long. Like many on the island he is addicted to the dreamberries that grow in profusion among the sand dunes. They give him powerful visions of the past, the present and, sometimes, even of the future…

“Along the coast of the Island of the Ear are the many coral houses of my people, a fishing folk with a peaceful way of life. Apart from, that is, at certain times of the year when the fish are running, such as the great tunny migration, when I am called to ritualistically gather the fish into the Bay of the Larynx and the villagers proceed to batter the hapless creatures to death in the shallows (for this, think the Sicilian Mattanza ceremony) . At other times I am required to raft the dead out to the Great Shoals and lay the corpses upon the exposed reef so they can once more become the sea and the coral. I spend many days there as the bodies fall apart, driving the seagulls away so the spirits of the dead will be of the sea and not the air… The reef speaks to me of its mysteries and the wider oceans beyond. Sometimes at the dead of the moon the coral men come out of the sea and sit once more on the beach and converse of their living days. I sometimes join them, listening to their strange clicking language which over the years I have become quite proficient in. The last time they came from the deeps my father told me of a great treasure they had found in the ocean troughs, an immense object like a metal dragon. He does not know whether it is a thing of evil or good, but suspects the former. The ocean depths and the reefs near it are now absent of life.

“Wax lives in a huge cave complex overlooking the Bay of the Larynx, knows as The Pipes. Strange ululations are caused by the fierce sirocco blowing from the south and it seems the wind brings him news of those far away deserts and their peoples. A secondary aid is his conch shell which he often applies to his ear and from which come the voices of the other sorcerers of the isles and the desert lands who also carry these devices.

“Wax is sometimes referred to as ‘Ear Wax’, for there is another sorcerer with the same name on the nearby Island of Wax (known as ‘Wax Wax’). We are not friends, nor shall we ever be, though he, too, has a conch.”

And my own character:

“I hail from the far north, where lie bleak, flat islands of pebbles whose shores are lapped by an iron-grey sea. Sullen fisherfolk live short, hard lives untouched by beauty. By day the frost and the flensing wind scour all in a cruel embrace. At night the vault of stars is vast beyond grandeur, a pitiless glimpse into cosmic infinity that exposes the utter hopelessness of all human endeavour.

“I dwell within the wind and the darkness, being the god Surma -- or at any rate worshipped as such by the few hundred savages of those islands. When the sun is gone and all must huddle around a spitting driftwood fire, they know they must forfeit their own comfort to save offerings for Surma, god of sudden endings, lord of the final moment, who demands propitiation for all the hours he has withheld his attentions from those who yet sit shivering by the fire.

“Those primitive fishermen belong to a tribe called Tarvastans and they eke out a hard life. In the middle of an empty island strewn with large pebbles stands a spire of crystal about half the size of Cleopatra’s Needle. The fishermen burn offerings to the god Surma who lives here, hoping to propitiate him, for Surma is the spirit of violent death.

“Surma is not in fact a god but a human wizard. His name is Kullervo and he was brought up by the Tarvastans, who treated him harshly as he was a captive from another tribe and not one of their own. One day the young Kullervo found the crystal monolith, which even then the Tarvastans regarded with dread, and discovered that by approaching it in a certain way, ‘stepping sideways from sideways’ as he understood it, he was able to get inside. Within the crystal is much bigger and Kullervo discovered he could hear whispers left over from beings who lived here long ago.

“The Jume are dead, as we understand it, but their words had innate power and could not die. Those words echoed still within the matrices of crystal, speaking to the sensitive mind of the child. Kullervo returned day after day, enduring the blows and cruel commands of the fisherfolk as he learned the secrets of the Jume. Soon he contrived the death of the man who owned him, causing the body to sit up on the third night of its wake and foretell the return of the god Surma. Since then, Kullervo took on the identity of Surma and occasionally protects and occasionally persecutes the Tarvastans, though most of the time he forgets their existence, engrossed as he is in the endless mysteries to be gleaned within his crystalline citadel.”

Tim asked us a few questions before the first game. I only have Surma's answers to those questions, of course:

Who trained you? The endlessly echoing voices of the Jume, which in the crystal sanctum have far outlasted the Jume themselves. From their immortal whispers I gleaned the secrets of my art. In the things of which they spoke I am unrivalled, therefore, but I remain ignorant of the gentler ways of wizardry which the Jume disdained.

Who knows your true name? None, but it is there in the world nonetheless, for in my early days of study I spoke it aloud within the walls of crystal, which allow no sound of magic import to be deleted. Yet I will confound any attempt to learn it from there, for I spoke many other names, equally indelible, so that if any foe somehow found his way into my sanctum (no easy feat in itself) they would hear my voice pronouncing many names. How would they know the true name? They would have to sift it from the reverberating choices I have left there, each cunningly contrived to be as convincing as the next.

Where do you now abide? In my crystal monolith – from outside, a grey quartz splinter on a small, barren, rocky island; yet inside it is a palace in dimension, though austere and unwelcoming to any who does not have iron in their will.

One reason why you are pleased to be summoned to the Conclave is that you have seen worrying changes where you live. You wish to discuss them and seek advice from your peers. The names of new things are more similar to each other than they were in older times, more easily determined by grinding logic than by arcane craft and intuition. It is as if the world is losing the flavour of things, becoming colourless and uniform under the skin of reality. This is why the old songs lose their melody, why the fisherman’s catch is mostly minnows, why the young cast their elders out into the cold, why the storms are violent and unseasonal and dragons hide in distant clouds.

In the set-up we were told we'd been invited to travel to the island of Dain by the Master Summoner of the College of Wizards: "Surrity, Lord of Dain, invites you to a feast in honour of his visitors. Parties at Castle Karmon have a reputation for showy social displays, progressing to other forms of immodesty. The thought may appal or delight you, and the invitation to yours to accept or reject."

Surma replied: "It is right and proper I should be at the feast, as I am in a sense at all feasts. Where I pass, flowers wither, a chill deepens the shadows, and all feel an unease at the momentary reminder of their mortality -- a reminder that those who see beneath my mask of resplendent black harpy feathers will not forget."

My write-up of the first game was from Surma's unique perspective, which didn't even trouble to stick to chronological order:

SESSION ONE

Rarely do I choose to leave my lands, but on a whim I responded to an invitation from one styling himself the Master Summoner of Dain, not the least of my motivations for this being whimsical curiosity, for I have heard that ‘a wizard of Dain’ means a buffoon.

Many new impressions, then, in no particular order:

I visited a tavern, a low-ceilinged smoky hovel into which men press themselves like herd animals in a pen. Here they drink away what little wits they possess, exchanging metal rooted up from the ground by manual effort. And they talk and talk, and thus they squander each breath until the last.

At a circle of nine stone seats, along with Wax and six others, I was enmeshed in a spell and visited by one calling himself the White Watcher. He commanded one of the others to die, resisted the most vindictive thunderbolt I could find in those meagre skies, and even managed to temporarily restrain my own freedom of movement. (Note: perhaps he was another aspect of myself?) While I was preparing a means to escape the binding and counterattack, Wax called down some other bolts, one of which brought the senile Master Summoner to himself and he sent the Watcher away.

In the market one of the mortal wizards bought cloth, but rather than give metal coins for it he cured the stall-owner’s daughter of a fungal infection. Her home was smaller and more squalid even than the moss-roofed bothies of my worshippers. I told light to inhabit it, which the mortal wizards took for an illusion. (Note: a kind of visual trick.) The wizard, who styled himself the Whisperer, said that the disease was once common in the isles but had been thought eradicated.

Lord Surrity is the ruler of the island of Dain. I forgot to ask the relationship, if any, between him and the College of Hythe, but their library is on Dain also. (Note: mortal wizards acquire their magic from books; before I leave for home I should visit the Librarian to look at some.)

The greatest marvel: I saw a man who seemed to have no True Name. He styled himself as a slaver called Jude. You would imagine such a one would live as Wax and I live, with one foot in the otherworld, yet he supped his tankard at an ale-puddled bar and did a sordid deal to sell children to a merchant for sexual violation. (At my instruction, this merchant later took the children to the castle and confessed his crimes to the secular authorities.)

Let us end this account at the beginning. Wax arrived at Dain on the back of Sprugel the Great Turtle, a stylish gesture, and disembarked with the unearthly hints and flavours of dreamberry raptures still trailing him in a cloak of half-seen wisps. I came in the form of lustrous pearls borne in a chest by tritons with the heads of fish and hindquarters like octopuses, caparisoned in coral hauberks and sitting astride brine-spitting sea horses that rode forth from the mouth of a blue whale with two centuries of barnacles on her flanks. I did not notice how the mortal wizards made their way to Dain, but I believe they came by boat.

Tim commented: “Surma is a Vancean mage in a Le Guin universe. It shouldn’t work yet it does.” Whether I'll ever prevail on him to publish The Conclave as an RPG is another matter. He is rather busy with books, radio shows and a podcast, not to mention running our weekly game, so it might take a while, but come back tomorrow for another taste of the campaign.

The price of magic

What’s it like to have to do a deal with a mafia boss? Most of us will luckily never find out, but from stories we know that the cost of doing business is going to be steep. If you go to the Godfather for a favour it’s because circumstances have left you with no alternative. You’re in a bind. He’ll do something for you that nobody else will, but eventually a time will come when he wants something from you in return – and you’re not going to like it.

Magic ought to be like that. I’m not thinking so much of things like scrying spells, which give the players a few supernatural hints to help move the game along, but the kind of magic that gives a quick ‘n' easy fix to a serious problem. When you use magic like that it should be a last resort, and the players should know there’ll be a price to pay later.

Consider healing magic. Too often it patches you up in moments and it’s like one of those herbal remedies that say on the packet “no side effects”. You know what a medicine with no side effects is? Useless. Anything really miraculous should come at a cost, and that cost should be interesting. Not just a matter of paying over a hundred thousand gold pieces, but the sort of quest or payment that embroils the characters in all sorts of fresh trouble.

In my Krarth campaign (which drew on Russian folklore in the same way that our Ellesland campaigns draw on British folklore) the player-characters were grievously hurt in a skirmish at their prince’s Winter Palace. Things had gone so badly, in fact, that over a decade later we still refer to an evening of catastrophic dice rolls as “nearly as bad as the Winter Palace”. They escaped from their foes into the dark and limitless pine woods. One of the characters, Niyej (played by Oliver Johnson), was less seriously hurt than the others and went in search of magical aid. Following a peasant rumour, he sought out a wise woman called the Mistress of Warts. The notes for that evening’s session ran as follows:

The Mistress of Warts

Somebody must go looking for the wise woman who can cure wounds.

Through light woods, slowly the sun disappears in clouds. Cold.

He emerges on a blustery ploughed meadow, climbs to the crest of the hill where he sees a long, long meadow stretching ahead. Gloomy, windswept, dispiriting landscape. He has to keep trudging up this seemingly unending slope. [I particularly like that it was the existential horror of this gradual but monotonous slope that most unsettled the player.]

He’s been told that he needs to keep on until he sees a line of trees and a pile of rocks marking a path.

Keeps on. It’s just after noon. At last he sees it. The path leads to heavy dark woods that reek of sweet fungi. Finds an old woman in the shadows. Under her cowl, a face all knotted around like a canker on a tree-trunk, just a single eye visible within the erupted skin.

She says he must stay – “with her sister.”

He goes past, to a cave where the sister waits. A girl of great beauty.

If he stays with her, winter sets in but it is warm and steamy in the cave. He occasionally ventures outside to piss in the snowdrifts, then rushes back to the fire and the furs and the girl’s embrace.

In spring, as the ice thaws and the daffodils appear, she says she is pregnant.

Summer – blossom drifts in, rabbits hop around, bees buzz in the trees outside. Thick scent of flowers, warmth of sunlight dancing in the green as her lump grows.

Autumn. Low light slanting through auburn and yellow leaves, mists, fruit rotting on the ground. He returns to find midwives around his woman, steam fills the cave from boiling pots. He hangs around nervously by the entrance, going forward as the baby is born. He sees it lifted by the midwives, catches just one glimpse: a shapeless, cankerous blob with a single eye –

He awakens on the hillside with a wooden mannequin in his hand. It now seems to be around 4 pm on the same day he set out.

He knows how to use the mannequin – dip a pin in someone’s wounds, then prick the corresponding part of the mannequin and the person’s wound will vanish.

Each time this is done, the mannequin grows in size. At first the character might notice when he puts it in his pocket – there was plenty of room before, but now it’s a tight fit. When it has absorbed a total of 100 Hit Points of injury, it comes to life – now a little dwarf – and gives a macabre baby’s cry of “Daddy!” before pursuing the character:

So far so good. But that’s just how I planned it for that first session. Niyej returned with he mannequin, the other characters were restored to health, and the campaign continued. From time to time they took wounds, of course, and each time they used the mannequin it grew bigger.

But now I began to think that having all this culminate in a big fight with the birth mannequin would be pretty dull. That’s just a way of handing the players back all the wounds that had been healed. More importantly, a fight closes that thread of the story off, it doesn’t keep the ball in the air. Instead I needed something that would move the story in a new direction by providing the possibility of conflict. Inspiration struck several sessions later, and this brief write-up should give you some idea of where it led:

Strange magic befell the characters in the Drakken Woods on their way to Port Quag. The sun failed to rise for three days and all except Count Fane became children. Somebody guessed that this was because the rest of them had all used the healing mannequin. A great white bear attacked and they managed to slay it, though most were injured.

Then the witch who gave birth to the mannequin appeared and asked everybody to bestow some gift (from their own stats) so that her mannequin could have a proper life. Balarog gave looks (his hair promptly fell out) and Makan gave psychic strength, but the others refused. So the witch named those two the mannequin's ‘godfathers’ and gave them gifts, then showed the party the way out of the woods. She kept the mannequin, by now as big as a large marrow. As the characters looked back, she stood holding it and it seemed that it stirred in her arms.

The party boarded a mysterious ship in Port Quag that immediately set sail northwards of its own accord. They would all have frozen to death except that Balarog used his gift from the witch – a paper pavilion that became a house big enough to provide shelter. Makan had the means to create food, but not enough to feed everyone. There were squabbles. Zharl took the wheel and by incredible application of strength he steered the ship towards the coast. Balarog nearly came to blows with Gyse over a cheese. Makan told the Count, who was resting from his injuries sustained fighting the bear. The Count broke up the squabble and pointed out to everyone that sorcery seemed to be affecting their minds.

Zharl remained at the wheel for two days and nights, finally bringing the ship to the coast at Mount Brink. Going ashore, they found a group of tribal savages who worshipped a glacier.

Balarog went exploring and returned with Niyejj and the Regent of Gog. The Regent decided to take everybody into his confidence, telling them that the sceptres of the Magi are used to bless each new prince. However, the sceptre used at the court of Gog is not the original sceptre of the True Magus Gog. Hence it could be argued that the royal line of Gog are imposters. Kaurballagen discovered this twenty-five years ago and rebelled, launching his own quest to find the genuine sceptre so that a ‘true’ royal line could be initiated. The Regent wants to find Kaurballagen's body in the glacier to see if there is any clue as to where the sceptre is. Once he has the sceptre, he can ‘legitimize’ the current Prince of Gog (the ritual of blessing must be done before adulthood). He asked everyone to consider the situation and examine their conscience. Did they truly serve the prince? If so, they should swear allegiance. If not – if they were bothered by the news he had just given them – they should renounce Gog and leave.

Everyone agreed to stay. But then the Regent said they would need supplies for the ascent of Mount Brink and so he instructed them to take food from the tribal savages. ‘The tribe will not have enough to last out the winter,’ he said, ‘therefore kill the elderly now so that they have the mercy of a swift death.’

Makan and Balarog would have done so, but Niyej flew into a rage and said he would not serve so ruthless a cause. Just as it was all getting a bit fraught, a beautiful youth with pale skin and golden hair showed up and pointed out an old lady of the tribe who was trying to hide some food. Niyej became even more irate when this youth, called Manikin, addressed him as ‘Father’.

Makan and Balarog accepted they were the youth's godparents and pleaded with Niyej to take on his responsibilities and give Manikin moral guidance. Niyej refused – ‘He is a creature of darkness, nothing to do with me!’ – and Makan feared that, without a father, Manikin cannot hope to learn right from wrong.

As an interesting footnote, the gist of that plot development was written up in note form as briefly as this:

On the road to Port Quag, they go through a wood where night lasts 72 hours. They all revert to childhood except for Count Fane. They face a terrible threat – a great bear that they will have to fight hard to overcome.

The Loathly Lady then appears and says that all gave blood to the Birth Mannequin but it is now after Niyej because it has no soul. And so they must decide whether to be its godparents and give it a soul.

If all decide (independently) to do so, they relinquish one skill or a stat point which becomes a specialty of the Birth Mannequin.

Which implies that the Mistress of Warts and the beautiful maiden in the cave were one and the same, as some of the players guessed. At any rate, what could have been a “zap and you’re healed” moment in the game turned into an eerie, labyrinthine subplot that went on to generate all kinds of interesting dilemmas and choices for the players. And they knew from then on that magical healing in my campaign was never going to be as easy as knocking back an aspirin.

Dealing with demons - part 1

"Dealing With Demons" appeared in White Dwarf issue 44 (August 1983) and was to be an official part of Games Workshop's Questworld pack, except that Questworld never happened. It was later adapted to Dragon Warriors in James Wallis's gorgeous but elusive In From The Cold book, but the translation didn't really work because you can see from the demons' names that they were intended for a culture far less Eurocentric than Legend.

For this post I've reverted to the original Runequest rules. Today we've got the basics of demonology. Come back in a week for the demons and demon lords.

Part One: DEMON MAGIC

To the superstitious, a demon is any obviously powerful supernatural being. The word is even used to describe unusually malformed Chaotic creatures or the less familiar elementals. In the precise sense, however, a demon is a being which usually lives on another plane of existence, but which is capable of acquiring a physical presence in the mortal world. The demon’s native plane must be one that to the demon itself constitutes physical reality. For this reason the spirit plane does not qualify, so embodied spirits such as dervishes or elementals are not true demons.

It is fairly well known among those with more than a passing understanding of the subject that the demonic hierarchy consists of sundry demon races ruled by ascending ranks of nobility up to the demon princes, each of whom may reign over several different planes of existence.

The categorization, study, and control of the many demonic types comprises Demonology, a Knowledge skill with a base score of 0%. Familiarity with Demonology means that the character knows something of the relationships, powers, and Runic associations of the various demons. From this, he or she may be able to infer their weaknesses, if any. The Demonology skill does not include summoning techniques or other magics, although it is useful to know something about demons before you start trying to summon them.

The Pentacle of Protection

In case a demon turns out to be hostile, the Pentacle of Protection is a useful defence for the summoner. The Pentacle must be drawn out with various substances on some hard surface around the summoner. This takes several minutes and so must be prepared before the Ritual of Summoning is begun. When the Pentacle is complete, the summoner casts a point of battle magic POW into it, thus activating it for the next hour. So long as another POW point is cast into the design before the hour has passed it will remain active. Once the Pentacle’s power is allowed to lapse, the design smoulders away into fine ash.

A hostile demon cannot cast spells into nor enter an active Pentacle. Neither can it use summoned minions of its own to attack the summoner. There are minor design differences between Pentacles according to the type of demon the Pentacle is intended to ward against. If the wrong demon materializes, the Pentacle is useless.

It takes only a few hours to learn to draw a Pentacle. Draw Pentacle is a skill with a base score of 70% adjusted for characteristics as follows:

Increase in the Draw Pentacle skill is by experience only. Remember that the summoner won’t know whether he has drawn out the Pentacle correctly until a hostile demon tries to violate it. Also, one Pentacle cannot be drawn inside another, so characters cannot double their insurance that way.

Pentacles are not the summoner’s last line of defence by any means. Common sense and a good grounding in Demonology can provide a beleaguered summoner with further wards (special herbs, words and spells that the demon will retreat from, etc) to slow a hostile demon’s attack until it can be dispelled.

The Ritual of Summoning

This is the form of magic most people would think of in connection with demonology. The Ritual of Summoning is a skill that can be practised by anyone with POW of at least 10 and with INT and DEX both 12 or more. It has a base score of 0%, modified as follows:

The Ritual of Summoning takes fifteen minutes to perform and requires several rare components such as incense, chalks, paints, and certain powders and distillations. These components are used up in the Ritual and must be prepared for each summoning, at a cost of 2d4 × 10 Lunars. As the evocator completes the incantations he rolls against his Ritual of Summoning skill to see whether the demon appears. Many demons have an innate resistance to summoning which acts as a negative modifier to the character’s chance of success. Critical and fumble rolls usually have no special significance, except that on a roll of 00 some other demon than the one intended will appear.

Bringing the demon into being causes a drain on the summoner’s life force. At the moment of completing the Ritual he loses ld3 points of CON, later recovering at the rate of one point per week. Once the demon has been evoked, it remains on this plane of existence for 1-4 hours and then returns to its own world. Only the Ritual of Binding will prevent this.

Simply evoking a demon does not give the summoner any control over it, and if he does not use the Ritual of Binding he will have to bargain for its services. In this case, use the response table in Appendix J of the Runequest rulebook. A demon that takes an active dislike to its summoner will attempt to kill him; if thwarted in this (by a Pentacle of Protection, for example, or if the summoner is obviously too powerful) it will depart. A moderate response indicates that the demon is prepared to serve, but may drive a hard bargain; if offered significantly less than it would normally expect, it may become enraged and attack (check response again at -10) or simply depart. A friendly demon will probably settle for a deal close to the summoner’s first offer, as long as this is not wildly short of its expectations. In the case of NPC summoners, Bargaining rolls can be used. If the summoner is a player-character, however, then the referee should take the role of the demon and haggle.

Once the deal has been agreed and the demon has received its payment, the summoner must say, ‘Here then are my wishes...’ and go on to describe the service he wants the demon to perform. This must be concisely and carefully worded. Demons are adept at twisting the meaning of a casual phrase and at following the letter of an agreement in order to discommode their summoner. The demon will then embark on the task set and continue until it has done what was asked of it or until the time limit on its summoning runs out, whichever comes first. Demons are typically quite happy to undertake suicidal missions because the destruction of their physical form only returns them prematurely to their own plane. If the demon’s spirit or freedom of action is endangered, however, it will be considerably less enthusiastic about completing the task. If it voluntarily backs out of an agreement, the demon must return 90% of its payment to the summoner.

The lesser demons are usually called upon to kill, spy or steal in their evocator’s service. Although the demons may have special skills which make them excellent for such activities, it is after all much the same sort of thing for which common thugs or mercenaries might be hired. Demon lords and princes will not stoop to menial annihilations and the like, but may be persuaded to use their grand supernatural forces, sometimes to the summoner’s lasting benefit. The demon Lord Kesh, for example, can teach a character to brew venoms and acids. The exact services available from the various demons, and the payments they might ask in return, are described later.

Banishing a Demon

For a number of reasons the summoner of a demon may want to banish it before it would normally fade from this plane of reality. Banishment requires the demonologist to chant a mystic phrase. This takes five rounds, during which time he can defend himself but not attack or cast spells. When the chant is completed, the summoner rolls to see if his attempt is successful, the chance of success being the same as his chance of summoning it in the first place. If successfully banished, the demon disappears immediately. Only one attempt at banishment can be made; if that fails, other means must be used to destroy the demon.

A character skilled in demon magic will also be able to use banishment against a demon summoned by someone else. In this case the chance of dispelling the demon is half what the character’s chance of summoning that demon would be. As before, the character has only one opportunity to make the banish roll.

The Ritual of Binding

Binding eliminates the necessity of bargaining with a demon but it has its drawbacks in that attempting to bind a demon without its consent will certainly enrage it. The Ritual of Binding takes only one melee round to perform, but to stand even a chance of success the caster must expend battle magic POW at least equal to the demon’s own POW. The caster can spread the load over all his bound spirits and POW storage crystals. The POW points are committed without the character knowing the demon’s exact POW, of course. It is a good idea to overestimate.

The Ritual of Binding is a Knowledge skill with a base score of 0%. If the character succeeds then the demon is bound in his service. Instead of vanishing after a few hours, it remains on this plane until killed or banished. A bound demon cannot directly harm the one who bound it, nor can it deliberately kill itself in order to escape from this plane. The binder can give it one command of up to thirteen words, and the demon will obey this command literally. Commands such as ‘Obey all my future commands’ or ‘Serve me loyally’ are not effective, and immediately free the demon if tried. That is, the command must specify particular services and actions rather than establishing conditions or attitudes for future behaviour.

Bound demons are not like bound spirits. The binder cannot see through their eyes, nor use their INT and POW for spell purposes. A character cannot have more than seven demons bound on this plane at one time; if he tries to bind an eighth, all are freed.

Some demons have a special resistance to binding, which works like Defence against the binding Attack. With enough POW (and guts) a character could try binding a demon lord, but their resistance is likely to be 80% or higher.

Binding can in some cases be to the demon’s advantage. It may want permanent residence on this plane. Demon lords invariably desire to return to their realms as soon as possible, but some of the lesser demons lead a difficult existence in their own world and would prefer being bound to this plane. The problem is one of trust. There is nothing to prevent a summoner from agreeing to bind a demon ‘as a favour’ and then giving it any order he likes. There is thus only about a 1% chance of a demon asking to be bound. If you then actually keep your word and bind it without giving it a command, you will have that demon’s eternal gratitude.

The Pact of the Dark Companion

After successfully bargaining with a demon its summoner can, instead of requesting a service, offer the Pact of the Dark Companion. This applies only to lesser demons—demon lords will not even consider making the Pact with any except the mightiest human heroes. A character can have only one Pact operating at any given time.

For the demon to accept, it must already be very well-disposed towards the character (an ‘extremely friendly’ reaction on the response table). The Pact is then sealed in any of several revolting ways, the result of which is that the evocator gives the demon some of his own life and soul: his POW and CON both drop permanently by 1 point. They can still be increased in the usual way, but the character’s maximum possible score is also reduced by one. After sealing the Pact, the demonologist receives the demon’s mark and the creature departs.

Thereafter the evocator can call on his Dark Companion at any time. The normal summoning procedure is unnecessary. There is a 20% chance each round of calling the demon’s name that it will hear and come to aid him. It will always serve to the best of its abilities, but cannot remain on this plane for a total of more than twenty-one Combat Rounds in a single day. If slain, it vanishes and cannot rematerialize that day.

The Dark Companion must slay at least one sentient being each month as it feeds on the release of life-energy. If prevented from doing so it will end the Pact and then seek to slay the evocator before returning to its own world forever. The evocator can thus force a conclusion to the Pact by withholding victims. Other methods are to try banishing the demon, dispelling it using the Curse of Asterion, or destroying it in spirit combat.

The Curse of Asterion

Also called the Curse of Binding Energy, this is a technique for dispelling a particular demon for all time. It is usable only once in a character’s lifetime (for reasons which will become obvious), and in fact only two cases of its use are recorded—once when the noble Asterion employed it to save his daughter’s life, the other when the lunatic mage Athat turned it against a demon lord in a moment of arrogant pique.

The Curse is learned by a character reaching 85% in Demonology. A fairly short phrase, the Curse is only effective if the character follows through the complex logical arguments associated with it as he speaks the words of the Curse. This is represented by a roll of INTx5 or less on percentile dice.

The procedure is as follows: the character must touch and grapple with the demon as he (or she) activates the Curse of Asterion. If successful, both the demon and the character disappear forever from this world. Are they both disintegrated by the power of the magic? Or transported to a dimension of their own where they battle on together throughout eternity? The truth is unknowable.

Possessions

The possession spells are a group of enchantments for possessing people (usually the caster's companions) with the spirit-essence of a demon lord. The demon is not summoned by the spell. The effect of a possession is to enhance the recipients' fighting prowess or other skills. The exact effect varies according to the demon invoked.

Possession spells take five rounds to cast and have a duration of fifteen minutes. Although they cost battle magic POW to cast, possessions do not have to be memorized within the caster's INT limit like battle magic spells. Instead the caster must make his roll in the Cast Possession skill for the spell to work. If he fails, he loses half the POW cost of the spell to no effect. Cast Possession has a base score of 0% with these characteristic adjustments:

To cast a possession spell one must also have the talisman appropriate to the demon lord invoked. This could be a mask, wand, bell, gong, amulet, or one of several other items. The caster must prepare talismans for any demon lords he wishes to invoke at a construction cost of 3-18 Lunars each. Alternatively, he can buy or otherwise obtain talismans prepared by another demonologist. The character must make his Demonology roll to see whether he has properly prepared a particular demonic talisman, as Cast Possession will always fail if the talisman used is defective.

A single casting of possession affects up to three people. To be affected they must be conscious but passive – the spell cannot be applied to a character in combat. Possession can be directed at subdued or harmonized enemies of the caster, but he must overcome their POW for the spell to take effect. Also, possessions do not give the caster control over the spell's recipients – the possessed characters retain their own normal aims and motives. However, they cannot under any circumstances harm the caster so long as he carries the proper talisman.

The average POW cost of a possession spell is some 12 points. Exact costs and effects are given later.

Campaign notes

You cannot just walk into a Lankhor Mhy college and enrol in demon magic classes. Demonologists tend to be scarce and reclusive for several very good reasons. One is the fact that they occasionally indulge in human sacrifice and other practices not widely approved of. Another is the very high risk taken by the habitual summoner. Most telling of all, the priests of established temples consider demonology synonymous with demon worship, a threat to their own authority, and so the practice is universally frowned upon if not actually outlawed.

How then is a character to learn the demonic arts? There are two ways. Either collect the rare books and study them, or else seek out one of those reclusive masters and convince him that he needs an apprentice. Both may well be expensive, but the crucial factor in the character's study will be one of time. The Skills Table reflects this.