White Chalk (Almanac 25)

I'm so poor at keeping up with these annual challenges, so I thought I'd run my own.

Here is a single, 6 mile hex: it is divided into 30 one mile hexes, because PARIAH is a game of overland exploration (among other things). This is a development of White Chalk, itself an outgrowth of earlier proto-Neolithic Britain thoughts.

Initial 6 mile hex, divided into 1 mile hexes.

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The aim of this post is to provide an overview of a region by zooming into one six mile hex. Over the course of this year, I'll be producing regular posts providing typical events for this region as the game year. These include:

• seasonal movements of birds, animals and humanoids
• weather hex-flower specific to the season/month
• Star charts and astronomical information (meteor storms, eclipses etc.)
• plant and fungi information (foraging for food and medicine)
• human cultural information (festivals, rituals, transhumance etc.)

Like my other PARIAH sandboxes this is set in a fantasy proto-Neolithic i.e. late stone age with many anachronistic elements. Unlike the other setting (City of 100 Gods, Atop the Wailing Dunes, City of Ghosts) the climate is temperate rather than tropical. In fact, the entire map is based on the south coast of England, not least because this particular part of the UK is right on my doorstep—indeed, it is my doorstep.

N.B. This was largely inspired by the many Neolithic sites around Sussex, Hampshire and Kent. If you have come to this blog as an outsider to the weird hobby of RPGs please understand this as a piece of speculative fiction rather than archaeology.

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.

DEATH TO THE BLOGGIES

Hahaha only joking. I love the bloggies! 

Consider yourself clickbaited. 

I never do that: haven't previously will never do so again... but I just couldn't resist after Prismatic Wasteland's substack post titled Are the Bloggies Rigged?, which also featured my hilarious Goblin punch joke (uncited). I mean, anything I have to say has to be taken with a pinch of salt given that I was overlooked (thank you, general public) after being a finalist in 2023—see my handmade-by -Zedeck 2023 finalist pin, below!

This is very cute and I love it

Honestly, no sour grapes here, but I do have one or two things to say.

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.