Sorcerous rituals

Previously we exhumed and revived some mystic rituals, with the added details of where they might go wrong if performed by those not fully practised in their execution. This time we're going to look at sorcerous rituals, accompanied by an appropriate image:

Look at that face and tell me it wasn't done by AI

Mystic rituals produce reliable, specific results through complex procedures.

Less reliable (but more flexible) is the magic of sorcery: rituals of invocation, conjuration and binding. Practitioners are called “sorcerers” but possess no special power—beyond knowledge.

• Invocations bring forth a wisp of elemental power: a spell-spirit (see also AHPZ19)
• Conjurations summon elemental spirits of definite form, strong personality and great intelligence.
• Bindings enable the sorcerer to place contingencies on summoned entities, usually through a device and/or a command word
• Summonings are elaborate and highly specific rituals to conjure the most powerful spirits i.e. demons.
• Banishings return spirits to their realm of origin.

Rituals—including when they go wrong

The process of revising PARIAH continues apace. The most recent uploads to itch.io include two zinis-worth of rituals (amounting to a total of 3500 words), most of which are updated versions of magic previously published here or in PARIAH Vol. Rituals come in two distinct flavours: 

• Sorcerous rituals are concerned with invoking, conjuring, binding and banishing spirits to achieve a variety of magical ends. There are set procedures to follow, but these can be varied.
• Mystic rituals (formerly known as "shamanic") are much more specific in terms of both the procedure and the outcome

Within the world of pariah these rituals can be learned by anyone: there are no special talents or gifts required beyond knowledge. All of the Mystic rituals are learned by pariahs after assisting a set number of times. though not made explicit, the implication is that assisting in a ritual at least once offers some chance of it succeeding if attempted. Simply put, if usually I need to have assisted this ritual 3 times before "knowing" it: if I have assisted on only 1 occasion, I could ty doing it for myself... with a 33% chance of succeeding.

Spread from AHPZ21: Sorcerous Rituals

But what does failure mean, beyond the ritual not working. The sorcerous rituals have a failure system built in: there are displeased spirits, the necessity of entering their debt, and a series of random mishaps. But the mystic rituals are highly specific: it stands to reason that there should be highly specific outcomes for when they go wrong, too... so while I was at first reluctant to share these again, providing failure scenarios alongside them presents a good enough excuse to do so.

Miracles of the Forgotten Gods (RPG BLOG CARNIVAL BEYOND VANCIAN MAGIC)

A post in response to this month's RPG blog carnival: beyond Vancian magic

Magic

The imposition of the will upon base reality, to manifest one’s desires in the Here and Now without recourse to the normal agents of causality… that is magic. Bound as we are by the constraints of the Here and Now we look to those supernatural beings outside of it for assistance: the spirits. See links below for multiple versions of animist magic in PARIAH.

In the proto-Neolithic world agriculture and urbanisation have dramatically altered how humanity interacts with those spirits, and consequently the nature of magic. This is the era of RELIGION and of GOD(S).

This is the Age of Miracles.   

Some forgotten gods of the Real World

More Curses

 

I recently shared a revision to the curse of the spirit-touched, tying curses in PARIAH to PC inventory, in a nod to Cairn & Eco-Mofos. Continuing my ambition to publish revisions to the game as a series of modular zinis, I compiled the following curse "templates" (they can be applied as a lateral progression/impending doom track to any character) into the four-side format and published on itch:

• Hunger (descent into ghoul-dom)
• Lycanthropy
• Possessed
• Spirit-touched (as previous post)
• Thirst (proto-vampirism)
• Unnamed (becoming a Nameless One)

For lovers of the traditional blog format with no time for PDFs, please find the new curse templates lovingly copy-and-pasted below for FREE:

Developing Pariah's Dawn Realm (the influence of Scavengers Reign)

Last year I returned to the untied loose end of the Dawn Realm (crudely, Pariah's equivalent of the feywilde) with this slightly long, sketchy post. It's been fermenting since then with a great deal of reagents added following conversations on this blog and elsewhere, of which many were with Max Cantor of Weird and Wonderful Worlds. It took watching Scavengers Reign for me to take this pot of potent brew off the flames and let it cool, let the residue crystallise, and then snort a big hefty old line of the stuff.

This is not a post that includes a Scavengers Reign hexcrawl... but I've robbed a few of the details, because the big breakthrough that show provided was to really show how the world interacts with not just the explorers, but the elements within it.

If you wanna someone with real OSR chops talk about this show, please go and bother Patrick Stuart's substack, linked here. This post is extraordinarily long and I don't finish it properly: there's at least one further post before I get all the ideas down, and then 

Spell-spirit houses: small shrines to small gods

This post envisions how spirit houses could work in PARIAH (or your animist RPG of choice). Before I get into it I want to say a quick word about its provenance. I've previously written 3 posts on the topic of shrines but they crossed over into real life recently when I started to consider the act of building a birdhouse through an animist lens in this post. 

I've also begun watching SCAVENGERS REIGN (only a few episodes in so no spoilers, please): without giving too much away I am completely in love with it. So much resonates with the psychedelic animism I have made my life's mission to evoke (and there's a post percolating as we speak on this very topic) but it was a much more subtle moment that crept into the ultimate genesis of this post, which I will mention towards the end.   

But for now, spirit houses...

Spirits of the Here & Now, visiting the shrine I built to house them     

...instead of invoking and binding spell-spirits, why not provide them with a nice place to live?

D12 Meteoric Metals

I had a draft of the post D12 Anomalous Orbs sat unpublished for long enough to justify its "retroactive dating", so it sits neatly in the April posts... but this is genuinely hot-off-the-press, unadulterated May 2024 content just for you.

When I first used the phrase STAR METAL in PARIAH volume 1 I imagined the reader would assume this to be meteoric iron, though I made no explicit statement regarding its nature... though a while back I washed my hands of a monster created by cryptomnesia known as an Ancient One  Now fully immersed in UFO lore and the existence of supposed “exotic materials”, I thought it would be fun to come up with a list of alternative material properties for “star metal”. In addition to the usual fantasy sources, this table was inspired by anecdotal accounts from ufology and the preindustrial metallurgists and alchemists. There used to be a spiritual element (pun intended) to material science which is sadly lacking today!

Cubic of polished meteoric iron illustrating the Widmanstaetten structure

Weapons & proficiency

I saw this beautiful image of an opalite spearhead on a discord server (the image is a screengrab from this video https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Bffz6HjrF0w, thank you, Krisnan) and it set me to thinking about weapons: specifically, proficiency and enchantment.

Image showing an opalite spearhead being held up to the sun.

Additional big shout out to ANCIENT CRAFT for their ongoing posting of Neolithic and late palaeolithic tool making videos.

This is the nerdiest post I've made in a while and I'm proud of that. Disc-horsers prepare to be bored stiff... you may want to skip to the part marked LEGENDARY WEAPONS as that's probably more fun.

Atop the Wailing Dunes: the Artefact

 

Centre spread of Atop the Wailing Dunes: illustration by Edd0 text transcribed below

THE ARTEFACT

Form of the Artefact

1. 3D realisation of Mandelbrot set, to be worn as a mask by its wielder
2. Incandescent floating ovoid, size of an ostrich egg
3. Plumed helmet as the Blighted One’s, though fits a human head
4. Set of animated, concentric golden rings, levitating

BECMI Intelligent Swords

During a recent discussion on the NSR discord server the subject of intelligent magic items popped up, and I was immediately reminded of the rules for generating intelligent swords in the Frank Mentzer Expert Set.

Drawing of a  magical—possibly intelligent—sword by Larry Elmore

There are other, similar rules for intelligent swords in Moldvay. Seeing as this is the go-to old-school ruleset (and likely the basis for any similar rules in OSE or Basic Fantasy), I'm ignoring those. Likewise—as with my [positively ancient] post about dwarf clerics— this is a paraphrasing of existing mechanics. I'm not adding anything original here.

I have a more interesting stab (ha!) at this topic over on Iconoclastic Flow:
https://flowiconoclastic.blogspot.com/2022/10/blades-with-brains.html

...and yes, it's swordtember, so I suppose the timing is germane.

What has that wise one got on their head?

Wise-ones and witches, sorcerers and summoners, ghost-talkers and spirit-walkers...

...they've always got something on top of their head.

Sketch of a drawing of The Sorcerer, a 13,000 year-old cave painting

(Even as I write this I realise masks would be much more interesting, but I don't want to jump on the bandwagon of the latest psychedelic mesolithic RPG, Maskwitches of Forgotten Doggerland CW: images are "AI generated")

* * *

ANIMA: MOSAIC Strict Spirit Magic

What's This?

I'm fond of the free-form magic system that was included in PARIAH Volume 1 and have written multiple posts about using hit dice in a similar way to GLOG magic dice, a number of ritual magic posts (including this one) and an attempt at summarising free-form spirit-magic for the post-kickstarter crowd. 

Fond, yes, but not in love... and perhaps it's time to take some advice from Jim Parkin (via William Faulkner) and kill my darlings...

Artefacts of the Others

As explained in my last a recent post I think I'm nearly done with hand-wringing and "anxietising" over my post frequency (or lack thereof). Life is complex at the moment and I will just have to deal with it, hoping that the future will provide more opportunities to play and to create.

That said, I have plenty of drafts sat on the ol' slush-pile awaiting a cursory polish, and I will attempt to drip feed these out to you as the weeks and months go by. This is one such slush-post: the Artefacts of the Others...

Roadside Picnic concept art by Alex Andreev https://www.behance.net/gallery/19310523/ZONA 

This post is at least partly inspired by the novel Roadside Picnic, though the contents were originally designed for use in burgeoning Pariah adventure/sandbox City of Ghosts. Another inspiration—the great Semiurge of Archons March On—I shall pace the generator proper at the top of the pile:

The form, materiality and the effect these artefacts produce may not make any real sense: this is not a bug, it's a feature. A Neolithic person would have no idea what to do with a Marshall combi amp, but taking it apart they'd gain multiple capacitors capable of delivering powerful shocks, lots of shiny copper and a fuck-off big magnet. Similarly, artefacts are fragments of larger wholes, beyond the ken of the average pariah, but still capable of producing incredible supernatural effects.

Read on to find out how the generator slots together (1d20 tables listed below)

D66 Enchanted Items

Have I done one of these before? Feels like I should have... maybe I'm thinking of that I search the body post I did recently. In any case, here are some magic items for your proto-Neolithic campaign:

Neolithic grave goods, possibly magical.

2 Curse Templates: Doom of the Sleep-flower Smoker | Lycanthropy

CW: SUBSTANCE ABUSE/ ADDICTION and BODY HORROR

In PARIAH, powerful curses are represented by curse templates. Inspired by Emmy Allen’s lateral advancement trackers (particularly wendigo sickness and the wounded daughter) templates provide the opportunity to inflict a doom on a pariah over an extended period rather than removing them from the game immediately—providing the opportunity to remove the curse, or at least having some fun in the attempt.

This is the basis for ghouls in PARIAH:
http://aloneinthelabyrinth.blogspot.com/2020/04/ghouls.html

Each template has triggers which initiate a roll on the affliction table. Each entry reveals one (or more) afflictions: beneficial, baleful or both. Each curse has a point at which the player must surrender their character to the GM, though it is down to the table to establish when that point might be (suggestions are provided). A pariah may suffer multiple curses concurrently.

Curses are thus diseases, a monsters, and a weird mode of lateral character progression (but not necessarily in that order)...

Doom of the Sleep-flower Smoker

Sleepflower by Abigail Lingford

Sleepflower is a powerful entheogen: used without caution it can be lethal... but even cautious shaman may begin walking a path darker than that which leads to the realm of the dead...

HEARTH SPIRITS: Neolithic House Ghosts

Discussing the etymology of hobgoblin on the discord server was a reminder that the idea of a "kitchen ghost" or "hearth spirit" is common to many cultures across the globe. Hob is used by a lot of British people to describe their stovetop, an evolution of the hot plate that once kept pots simmering on traditional stoves. Goblin, of course, was a type of fey creature rather than a rat-faced runt with green (or orange) skin and a selection of  pointy sticks. The hobgoblin was thus a kitchen-based domestic spirit and not the larger kinds [of orc], as suggested by Gandalf.

They used to be fun, now they're just another "proud warrior race" trope.

In protestant Europe (and in many of the lands the countries of that cultural sphere once occupied) belief in this spirit and the practice of honouring it has largely died out over the last few centuries along with many of that culture's folk traditions. The guilty party in this case being the religiosity of the reformation and the "rationalism" of the later enlightenment period. 

Spell Research Mini-Game by Foot of the Mountain Adventures

Recently I mentioned in a post about magical monasteries that I was participating in a spell research mini-game run by Pat Eyler of Foot of the Mountain Adventures. Well, Pat's only gone and written it up!

https://www.patreon.com/posts/45365209

I wanted in inspirational quote from a real magician.
This is much better than anything I found from Crowley...

Thought I'd try a run-through again, using Pat's system which I don't think he has yet published, so I will allude to the rules rather than state them outright! I'll link back here as soon as Mountain Foot finalises them... the playthrough assumes first edition rules or variant thereof.

Magiography (Mages are monks, monks are mages)

There's quite a convoluted story as to how I came back to tabletop gaming and how this blog came into being—a story which one day I shall tell. For now you will have to content yourself with the following flake of my life: once, I was attempting to design  a video game using RPG Maker. 

It went through various iterations, but core to all of them was the act of researching and studying magic.

The Alchemist by Erol Otus

It's difficult for me to explain quite why I find this model of the magician (as cloistered academic) so appealing. Perhaps its the fact that my youthful academic promise remains unfulfilled, or that my adult pea-brain is still mystified as to how universities came into being in the first place (against the backdrop of warring church and state... people were just able to swan off and read?). In any case, the "academic magician" is an archetype I've wanted to interrogate more closely for a long time now.

This is explicitly not about Harry Potter.

SPIRITS IN A SEMI-MATERIAL WORLD: Spells Are Spirits

This is part of an ongoing series of blogs that begin "this is part of an ongoing series".

True, but irrelevant. This is in fact one of many ancient drafts that is being treated to a almost cursory dusting before presentation to the ravenous appetites of the RPG blogosphere.

Its revival was in part inspired by Semiurge's recent post regarding the New Magical Revolution (NMR—patent pending, but soon OGL will be drafted by my legal team so you can join in too for the small price of your soul). That post is here and the phrase New Magical Revolution is not mentioned once so in years to come when you and your friends are rich off of the fruits of my incredible labour perhaps you will recall that fine July morning when you read those three words and thought that it was a side project by Prince but also how cool are follow on sentences and caffeine?

https://archonsmarchon.blogspot.com/2020/07/knowledge-is-power-or-magic-without.html

Actually this is now the fourth time I've tried to write this and I'm totally lost as to how this fits together, so I'm just going to talk a bit about free-form magic. 

Yua performing ritual magic in Netflix series Frontera Verde. Currently available on Netflix.

RITUALS

Content warning: animal sacrifice (mentioned).

The purpose of ritual magic in game is to...

• emphasise the power and mystery of magic
• to provide additional flavour, and to generate other :
• create adventure opportunities (fetch quests for ingredients, research, casters etc.)

Rituals should:

• Require a great deal of preparation.
• Have a fairly specific effect (whereas spells, in game, work more like generalised tools).
• Have a duration limited by natural cycles (night and day, lunar cycle, seasons etc.

In PARIAH, the closest thing to a D&D spell is an invocation: these require some sacrifice on the caster's part, and are less reliable. In contrast with "spells" rituals:

• Require no personal sacrifice aside from time (often animal sacrifices are required).
• Require components and specific timing.
• Have powerful and predictable effects.