Ogre Primacy

Construct Quick Reference Primer: Aspect (Sensory / Covert 1, Vulgar 2) + Factors 1d6 Backlash Primer Recovery Vulgar Sensory Covert Vulgar 6 None – – – 5 None – – Lose 1 4 None – – Lose 1 3 Corona – Lose 1 Lose Half (↑) 2 Aurora – Lose Half (↑) Lose Half (↑) 1 Aurora Lose 1 Lose All Lose All Nat 1 Anomaly Dis 1x1 Maelstrom

Snotling Physical Costs 1d6 Familiar (4+) Bonded (5+) 6 Stunned Stunned 5 KO’d KO'd 4 3 2 Badly Hurt Badly Hurt 1 Destroyed

Advancement Primacy Fate Initiate (●) Forces Initiate (●) Life Disciple (●●●) Matter Disciple (●●●) Mind Initiate (●) Prime Initiate (●) Space Initiate (●) Spirit Initiate (●) Time Initiate (●) Enhancements Fate 1 x ● Life 3 x ●● Matter 1 x ●●● 2 x ●● 1 x ● Mind 1 x ● Prime 1 x ● Space 1 x ● Time 1 x ● Points Available Primacy 0 Enhancements 0

Primacy

Primacy, the ogre tradition of magic, is based around the manipulation of primer to form constructs that enable extraordinary feats. These constructs can take the form of tools, of augmentations of living creatures (whether external or infused into the creature), or of independently-acting creations (such as snotlings).

Primacy is organized into arcanum based on a conceptual division of the world. Smash currently has access to knowledge relating to the arcanum of life and time. From his studies he has learned that the other eight arcanum are death, fate, forces, matter, mind, prime, space, and spirit.

Given the resources he has access to, Smash’s use of primacy shows itself in two ways. First, he can develop specific enhancements for a snotling bonded to him as a familiar. These are uncanny abilities the snotling can use to produce defined effects, such as his Stimulate Base Life enhancement.

Second, he can create improvised constructs from primer (or snotlings): one-use gadgets for performing feats covered by his known primacy practices. This allows him to perform more dynamic and creative feats, but at greater risk and cost.

Snotling Enhancement

With significant effort, ogre primacy may be used to permanently embody enhancements in a snotling maintained as a familiar. These enhancements allow the repeated use the same spell by embodying it as a persistent ability of the snotling.

When designing a snotling enhancement, define the type of effect the enhancement can produce, using the example enhancements below as guides for the proper scope of a snotling ability. Describe how the snotling's use of this ability appears (understanding that this appearance may still be relatively subtle). There is no need to roll the dice for embedding the enhancement in the snotling so long as Smash has reasonable time to work with his familiar (generally a few days worth of training in his spare time).

Snotling enhancements must be individually purchased. The cost in enhancement points of a snotling enhancement is equal to the highest rank of the practices used in the construct, plus any additional costs from prepaying for factors, plus one if the construct is covert instead of sensory. Snotling enhancements cannot allow for the performance of vulgar spells. The cost of this enhancement is paid by Smash’s investment of his available enhancement points, which will be awarded distinctly from the primacy points used to increase knowledge of an arcanum.

Some powers may have expanded utility with the addition of various factors (for instance, adding a target or allowing reduced intimacy of sympathy). If these factors are not prepaid when buying the power, they may instead be paid by committing primer to the familiar. Roll on the recovering primer table to see if this additional primer is recovered after the power is used. The familiar may connect with a bonded snotling within range of its touch for this purpose as part of the activation of the power.

If the first roll when using a covert familiar power is a 1, then — whether or not the roll is rerolled — the power becomes unavailable for future activation until the familiar has a moment to absorb a point of primer. Sensory powers never require primer in this way.

Primer Gadgeteering

Primer can be temporarily transformed into new forms using the techniques of ogre primacy. A concept of the desired magical effect is determined and confirmed by the GM to be possible within the arcanum of primacy known to the caster. The caster then conceives a design to embody the performance of the magical effect (e.g., a glove allowing the performance of telekinesis, an eyepatch granting a supernatural sense). This design is then impressed into the primer, with the resulting construct able to be used to perform the conceived feat.

Smash originally learned a technique for infusing in which the designs are impressed into primer using a lengthy ritual of inscribing the conceived design onto paper, burning the document, then mixing its ashes into the primer. Using the Staff of Life, Smash can instead program primer by channelling his direct intention.

As Smash doesn’t have access to primer, he can instead use snotlings. One snotling can be used in place of one point of primer when forming a construct. The snotling or snotlings shift into the shape of the construct for as long as necessary, then return to their prior state at the conclusion. This is unless the cost of the construct results in the permanent destruction of primer, in which case a number of snotlings are destroyed equal to the number of points of primer lost.

The creation of permanent constructs from improvised gadgeteering involves the prime arcanum of primacy, which, guarded closely by Usun, Smash does not have access to. As such, Smash may not transform primer into a permanent construct, nor permanently transform a snotling into a particular construct. Instead, all of his improvised manipulations of primer or snotlings are temporary, such that the resulting construct may only be used once before reverting.

Most constructs, and spells in general, produce instantaneous effects, though these effects may have long-lasting consequences. However, some spells naturally require a duration to be useful. Such spells have a duration of one scene (or one hour if the notion of a scene if a poor fit).

Please note that while some example spells below are described as snotling enhancements, any of the example spells—any of the known practices in general—may be embodied in constructs.

Gadgeteering Steps

Define the effect. Define the single intended effect the caster desires to see in the world, within the limits of the practices known to the caster. The precise target of the effect does not need to be specified at this time, but the factors included may limit the eventual choice of targets.

Describe the design. Describe the physical design of the construct.

Determine aspect and factors. Determine the aspect of the construct and if it has any factors that add to the required commitment of primer.

Identify primer. Confirm Smash has sufficient primer (or snotlings) to commit to the construct.

Infuse the primer. The design is infused into the primer. With the Staff of Life, this may be performed with a touch.

This results in a one-use magical construct that may be activated to attempt to achieve the effect defined in the first step. No roll is required in the process of building a construct. However, using a construct may still require a roll to determine if the attempt cleanly succeeds or produces a twist, with explanations for twists possibly being explained narratively as the result of a faulty infusion. Further, rolls will be required after activation to determine if the primer is recovered or if backlash occurs on vulgar effects.

When tracking time at combat speeds, thanks to the Staff of Life, Smash may infuse a construct and activate it as part of a single action.

Aspects

Each construct has an aspect, a description of how much the construct disrupts the natural order of the world. The more blatant a construct’s aspect, the more costly it is to cast and the more violent is the world’s backlash against it. There are three possible aspects: sensory, covert, and vulgar.

Sensory

Sensory constructs represent the most fundamental privilege of mages – to know the secrets of the world. Sensory constructs might allow a mage to perceive something otherwise imperceptible, understand something previously unintelligible, or learn something otherwise inaccessible. Sensory constrcts sometimes expand the scope of a mage’s senses and sometimes bypass the senses to deliver information directly.

Sensory constructs are private workings – they affect only their own caster or their familiar, and cannot be imbued into their targets as constructs of stronger aspect can. The function of sensory practices is totally undetectable by normal means and involves no change in the world whatsoever – practices of this sort don’t rely on any kind of probe or sonar, but rather widen the gates of their caster’s perception to allow for instant apprehension of their target phenomena. Intense metaphysical scrutiny might note the casting of sensory magic as ripples in the caster’s soul, but otherwise sensory practices are beyond even magic’s ability to detect. Similarly, sensory constructs cannot be countered or dispelled.

Sensory constructs have a default commitment of 1 primer. Sensory constructs never cause backlash.

Covert

Covert constructs subtly bend the world to the mage’s will. Covert constructs can be very significant in effect, but don’t exercise dramatic and overt supernatural power. The effect of a construct is covert when it manipulates the natural order rather than upends it.

Covert effect are in principle detectable by mundane means – thermal vision might detect inexplicable heat fluctuations, weather vanes might shift minutely, and so on – but look more like the effects of faulty equipment or blind luck than of miracles. Other magic can detect or interfere with covert magic by locking onto or hindering the means of its operation.

Covert constructs have a default commitment of 1 primer. Covert constructs never cause backlash.

Vulgar

Vulgar constructs blatantly transform the world in accordance with their caster’s desire, causing the caster’s will to trump the order of the world and imagination to become reality. Vulgar constructs allow their casters to instantly and sometimes violently change the world around them, or to bring impossible states of affairs into being; objects vanish or levitate, space-time bends and warps, the dead walk, and minds are untethered from bodies.

Vulgar constructs have a default commitment of 2 primer. Vulgar constructs may cause backlash.

Factors

Area factors increase the total area a construct can affect:

0: affected area is within an adult’s armspan

1: a hallway or room

2: a modestly-sized home or basketball court

3: a blood bowl field or mansion

+1: further area factors each roughly double distance, quadruple area, octuple space, etc.

Healing / Damaging factors alter a construct’s ability to inflict or repair wounds:

0: bashing wounds (such as stunning or knocking out)

1: badly hurt

2: permanent injuries

-1: transfers instead of inflicts/heals

Precision factors allow constructs to overcome targeting obstacles:

0: the mage clearly perceives the target and their location (normally with sight or tough) and is in the target’s vicinity

+1: the target is healing obscured and targeting required guesswork or magic

+1: the target is very distant

Size factors allow constructs to effect on larger single targets:

0: a centaur, ogre, or wagon

1: a dyre or small boat

2: a barn or whale

3: a modestly-sized home

+1: further size factors each roughly double the total possible size

Sympathy factors allow constructs to reach across sympathetic distance between the target and the caster. Constructs with multiple targets need only enough sympathy factors to reach the single most distant target, so a construct targeting two intimate characters and one encounter character needs 4 sympathy factors. A construct that exploits a sympathetic connection against the will of at least one of its endpoints degrades that connection by one step; this wear and tear heals by one step for each day a sympathetic connection goes untouched by magic. Connections to inanimate objects or places only regenerate if their sentient endpoints want them to.

0: Sensory – the subject is in sensory range

1: Intimate – the caster has closely interacted with the subject for appreciable time (a full adventure, by default), or is targeting the subject through a piece of their physical substance

2: Known – the caster has frequently interacted personally with the subject, or is targeting the subject through live communication or through an important friend or possession

3: Acquainted – the caster met and interacted with the subject casually, distantly, or occasionally, or is targeting the subject through a photo or other accurate representation

4: Encountered – the subject has been met, held, or touched by the caster once

5: Described – the caster has never encountered the subject but knows about them

N/A: Unknown connections are beyond the reach of sympathy factors

Target factors each double the number of discrete objects, characters, or zones of space a construct affects:

0: One target

1: Two targets

2: Four targets

+ 1: Double the previous number of targets

Primer

Ogre constructs are built from primer, the raw stuff of creation. The more blatant or wide-ranging a construct’s effect is, the more primer that construct requires.

Smash can use snotlings that he’s bonded to himself as primer. Rather than transforming primer into the desired form, a bonded snotling may be transformed instead. As many snotlings as required may be used this way, up to the limits of Smash’s available bonded snotlings.

Determine the primer commitment of the construct based on the aspect and factors of the construct. No construct has a total commitment of primer of less than 1.

The commitment determines both the temporary investment of resources into the function of the construct and the degree of risk posed for the loss of primer if the reversion to liquid primer (or living snotling) fails.

Snotling Management

In social situations, Smash will only be accompanied by his familiar, though he may also equip snotlings transformed into constructs.

Smash will have trouble managing more than two untransformed snotlings in addition to his familiar in active adventuring situations (e.g., spelunking, sneaking, fighting).

Smash can maintain a pool of up to six bonded snotlings in addition to his familiar, available for use as primer given access to them. This pool of bonded snotlings can be replenished at a rate of one per week from Mercato’s home hive or one every two weeks from Mercato’s travelling hive without risking the hives shrinking in size. Without access to a hive, with the encouragement of the life techniques, Smash may regain up to one snotling a month. It takes about a day for Smash to bond a snotling to himself enough to use it as primer, during which it settles into his pack, not necessarily requiring active involvement by himself.

On physical costs for snotlings, roll 1d6. If the result meets their threshold (see below), there is no effect. If it doesn’t, the snotling suffers an injury.

Bonded Snotling (5+)

Roll 1d6 for snotling injury:
6	Stunned	The snotling needs a moment to collect itself, but is otherwise fine.
3‑5	KO’d	The snotling is incapacitated for the remainder of the scene.
2	Casualty	The snotling is badly hurt.
1	Casualty	The snotling is destroyed.

Snotling Familiar (4+)

Roll 1d6 for snotling injury:
6	Stunned	The snotling needs a moment to collect itself, but is otherwise fine.
3‑5	KO’d	The snotling is incapacitated for the remainder of the scene.
1‑2	Casualty	The snotling is badly hurt.

The familiar’s resistance will improve naturally as more enhancements are added to it.

Using Constructs

While Smash is likely to be the best at using his own constructs, given his knowledge of their workings, they may be used by any character that possesses them and is able to determine their method of activation. That character's player declares its activation and—based on the design of the artifact, the intended result, and our understanding of the character's competence—a difficulty will be assigned.

Constructs that are given to another character must be used by them within that scene (or within one hour) or they will decay (all primer embedded within is lost). Similarly, once used, they must be recovered within that scene (or within one hour) for the casting mage to recover the primer or snotling(s). Overcoming this limitation would require the use of the prime arcanum.

This roll determines whether the use of the construct is an unqualified success (where the roll meets or exceeds the assigned difficulty) or produces a twist. As usual, twists are not necessarily failures, but instead tend towards a chaotic result including a mix of success and failure.

In addition to the roll for success, roll for recovering primer.

When activating a vulgar construct, in addition to the rolls for success and primer recovery, roll for backlash.

Recovering Primer

Roll on the following tables after a construct is either used or unmade without being used to determine how much primer can be recovered. Roll with advantage when dismantling an unused construct.

1d6	Sensory Constructs	Covert Constructs	Vulgar Constructs
6	–	–	–
5	–	–	Lose 1 Primer
4	–	–	Lose 1 Primer
3	–	Lose 1 Primer	Lose Half Primer (↑)
2	–	Lose Half Primer (↑)	Lose Half Primer (↑)
1	Lose 1 Primer	Lose Committed Primer	Lose Committed Primer

Backlash

Roll for backlash whenever using a vulgar construct. Unless otherwise specified, this roll is made with advantage. This roll may not be rerolled for any reason.

6 – No Effect

5 – No Effect

4 – No Effect

3 – Corona

2 – Aurora

1 – Aurora

Natural 1 – Anomaly

Disadvantaged Natural 1x1 – Maelstrom

-1 to check for every two primer committed to a construct beyond the base aspect cost

The starting duration of a backlash is one scene. However, as backlashes fade, they turn into a backlash of lower intensity, but higher duration. The increase in duration works as follows:

1. one scene / one hour
2. one day
3. one week
4. one month
5. one year

So, for example, by default, an anomaly lasts for one scene, but produces an aurora that last for another day, then a corona for another week beyond that.

Where a backlash is already in effect and another is rolled:

• If the additional backlash is less severe than the current one, modestly increase the area of effect of the existing backlash.
• If the additional backlash is equally severe to the current one, increase the duration by one step and significantly increase the area of effect of the existing backlash.
• If the additional backlash is more severe than the current one, it subsumes the lesser one.

Intensity 1 – Corona

Magic cast in the area has perceptible side effects.

The effects of the use of primer leach out into the world, causing any further use of primer techniques to be immediately perceptive. People may perceive strange sights, sounds, or sensations. While these are not directly harmful, the casting mage may be identified as their cause by observant others based on connections that will appear between the caster and the disturbances. If spellcasters can refrain from using any additional magic, they can refrain from being noticed, however.

After the required time, the corona disappears

Future backlash checks in the area are made without advantage.

Intensity 2 – Aurora

Weird phenomena alter the appearance of the area.

Backlashes of aurora strength begin to take on lives of their own. Aurora zones act on the world regardless of the presence or absence of magic; the local laws of nature have been pushed so out of kilter that the area is marked with some kind of constant, detectable distortion. Aurora backlashes correspond vaguely to magic of sensory aspect, affecting a place’s look and feel rather than its nature.

After the required time, the aurora reduces to a corona of one higher duration

Future backlash checks in the area are made with disadvantage.

Intensity 3 – Anomaly

The physical or supernatural laws of the area change tangibly.

Anomaly backlashes are felt as well as seen. They’re roughly analogous to covert practices in their power to bend and twist the facts of the world, but unlike covert practices are starkly obvious aberrations of the natural order. Like auroras, anomalies reflect the spells and mages that generated them, and intensify in the presence of primer manipulation. Unlike auroras, anomalies are more than scene dressing; an anomaly backlash might enrage local spirits, cloud the minds of bystanders, or disturb the flow of time. Anomalies have the potential to impede or even injure characters within their boundaries, especially when a lot of magic is in use. The mere presence of practices can turn light showers of hail into lashing storms or loosening earth into sucking quicksand.

After the required time, the anomaly reduces to an aurora of one higher duration

Future backlash checks in the area are made with increased disadvantage (roll three, take the worst).

Intensity 4 – Maelstrom

Local reality warps drastically.

Worse still than anomalies, maelstrom backlashes involve the violent breakdown of natural law. The world’s answer to the practice of creation, maelstroms are nightmarish vortices of fractured reality. Maelstroms parody the spells that spawn them, extending their consequences to grotesque extremes or counteracting them in a lunatic bid for cosmic balance.

After the required time, the maelstrom reduces to an anomaly of one higher duration

Future backlash checks in the area are made with increased disadvantage (roll three, take the worst).

Fate Techniques

Purview: destiny, games, final outcomes, happenstance, inevitability, narrative archetypes, probability, social contexts, stories

Fate, the subtle arcanum of change, holds dominion over the purpose and relevance of events. It’s a normative force which pushes towards certain outcomes and leaves the world to figure out how those outcomes might be achieved. Fate is natural to the world; everything has a destiny and a bane which foils that destiny, whether trivial or overpowering. Even the uninitiated can use occult knowledge to lay down blessings and curses. Fate is tangled up in obligations, promises, and social relationships; many people are driven by their destinies to keep being who they are and doing what they’re doing.

Fate magic works through seemingly meaningless coincidence. It controls whatever’s random, which is to say whatever’s above, beneath, or beyond one's notice and generally absent of intentionality. This might include the arbitrary whims of unknown characters, the delicate interactions of minuscule machine parts, or the subtle kinematics of tumbling dice. Often, a given spell’s effects turn out to have been the result of events that took place long ago, far away, or both. Mundane investigation will never reveal that the results of a Fate spell were anything other than inevitable or arbitrary, although astrology, tarot readings, and other mystic means can often detect this subtle hand of change.

A primacist doesn’t need to and often can’t specify exactly what chain of contingencies allowed their spell to take effect, and so Fate magic has been known inculcate a certain easygoing complacency in its users. Fate spells don’t generally produce specific objects or people, but rather specific outcomes which adapt themselves to the local context, so a spell that brings a raid to a casino might bring a wolf pack to a forest clearing.

Aspects

Sensory fate allows characters to detect and analyze the effects of other fate magic, measure probabilities, or divine the specifics of destinies. It also affords the user an amount of metagame knowledge, identifying the narrative importance and role of things the fate mage is faced with.

Covert fate alters probabilities within the realm of normal experience. It decides which of a number of potential outcomes actually occurs: which card is drawn, which bullet misses, which applicant is hired. The chosen outcome doesn’t need to be the most likely one, but it must be plausible and basically appropriate to the context.

Vulgar fate seizes and orchestrates the operation of the world, rendering the unthinkable actual. It causes drastic changes in role and context and produces outcomes which are technically possible but completely unbelievable: thunderbolts strike with seeming purpose, master snipers miss broad sides of barns, and children stroll unharmed out of collapsing buildings. Even when vulgar fate spells serve only to ensure results that were already likely, they suffuse the scene with a sense of mythic inevitability. Onlookers ineffably intuit that a sword must strike true or that a relationship cannot blossom, not for any material reason but because the story of the world cannot unfold any other way.

Backlashes

Low-key fate backlashes usually make themselves known through inexplicable and repeated coincidence, such as by causing random number generators to count out the digits of pi or flipped coins to land on their edges.

Powerful backlashes tend to script bizarre interactions and outcomes within their boundaries, such as by ensuring that any two beings that enter the zone will leave as deadly enemies or by turning each visitor into a helpless victim that the next must heroically save. Fate’s influence can impart random, scripted, or idiosyncratic behavior to paradoxes that would have otherwise behaved straightforwardly. The lingering consequences of stepping into a Fate paradox can distort someone’s life for days or weeks.

Mechanics

Fate spells with abstract or investigative effects are resisted by the target's composure and own resonance with fate. Fate magic can boost or hinder almost any kind of rolled action, and characters controlled by high-level fate spells might be rendered physically helpless or even under the caster’s effective control, but aren’t denied their Defense or conscious awareness. Fate spells can launch damaging attacks by causing hazardous elements of the scene to happen to affect targets, and can deal direct damage by causing targets to expose themselves to sources of harm. Such attacks normally deal bashing or lethal damage, but might have more severe effects depending on the unique vulnerabilities of the target. Fate attacks don’t require damage factors to exploit metaphysical weaknesses; it’s no more difficult to make a promethean stumble into a bonfire than to make one stumble into a pit. Damaging attacks and other tangible consequences of Fate spells can often have delayed effect, only actually inflicting damage (and prompting defensive rolls or similar reactions) once some circumstance crops up that can reasonably deliver the consequences promised.

Aftereffects

Fate can inflict a vast variety of long-term consequences on its targets, many of which are impossible for the insufficiently superstitious to recognize as supernatural. Afflicted characters might find themselves perennially late for work, unlucky in love, or doomed to destroy all that they hold dear. More than any other arcanum, fate relies on storyteller framing to impose its lingering effects, but it’s also the arcanum that allows for the most dramatic and consistent storyteller framing when it’s in action.

Initiate of Fate (●)

Knowing fate allows a mage to discern the specifics of a target’s fate and overall role in a scene. Knowing can sort targets into archetypes like “trusty sidekick”, “unimportant bystander”, “looming disaster”, and “coveted treasure”, or determine what kind of finale a character’s Destiny is pushing them to, or analyze the specifics and fallout of other Fate magic. Scrutiny allows a mage to sense the pull of a subject’s destiny. Knowing also allows a mage to perfectly estimate the odds of a simple, randomized event, and therefore tell whether those odds have been tampered with.

Read Destiny (Fate ●/Sensory/Knowing) This spell reveals whether a subject has a divine destiny and what sort of outcome that subject’s destiny is building towards. Further scrutiny successes allow the mage to determine the destiny's strength and its recent effects on the subject's life.

Signifying fate communicates through random chance. The mage can mark existing destinies, leaving lasting symbols and messages for other fate mages to find and read. They can also communicate through divinatory mediums already receptive to information, such as tarot readings or entrail examinations. Signifying can also halo randomness itself with meaning, causing the positions of fallen dice, the swirl of falling leaves, or the drum of rain on window panes to harmonize according to the mage’s nature. Signifying can cause existing destinies to make themselves and their parameters obvious, even summoning indications of a particular destiny’s bane.

Fated Message (Fate ●/Covert/Signifying) This spell sends messages through others’ fate-related divination attempts, such as by causing tea leaves to clump in symbolic ways or a tarot reading to produce the signs corresponding to the mage’s answer.

Unveiling fate allows a mage to tell with a glance what is or isn’t important. The mage can watch destiny in action, marking immediately whether subjects have a divine destiny. Unveiling can reveal whether subjects are under the effects of any fate spells or other luck-altering powers. It can also tell whether subjects have relevance to the ongoing narrative of the caster or another target. This isn’t precognition so much as cheating; characters or objects are ‘important’ to unveiling fate because the storyteller has plans for them, or because they’re allies or enemies of the mage (actual or potential), or because they’re going to do something dramatic in this very scene. Fate sight also recognizes whether an area has been or is likely going to be the site of some freak coincidence, whether something is particularly unlikely or mundane, or whether someone has sworn a mighty oath or otherwise dedicated themselves to a role.

Eye for Danger (Fate ●/Sensory/Unveiling) A mage using this spell can tell on sight whether someone or something is “dangerous”, though not how or why. A patch of earth might be dangerous because the footing is unstable or a vampire sleeps within, and a man on the street might be dangerous because they’re looking to mug someone or are a trained soldier. It’s rare for experienced mages and other supernatural creatures not to read as dangerous.

Special: A fate mage and their familiar have an intuitive sense if their fate is undergoing a significant shift.

Forces Techniques

Purview: electronics, fire, heat, illumination, lightning, magnetism, motion, plasma, sound

Forces holds dominion over the energy of motion. Any natural or supernatural power might drive a change in state or position, but it’s forces that ultimately pushes the world out of one equilibrium and into another. Wholly material and mechanical, forces are frequent byproducts of fallen magic and science both.

Forces magic manipulates the physical phenomena that cause things to move and the energy those phenomena impart to their subjects. It can control motion, temperature, charge, and other invisible sources of action, as well as flame, lightning, and other mundane energetic phenomena. Negative qualities like cold, darkness, and stillness are not themselves forces, but can be produced and controlled by by dissipating or displacing heat, light, or kinetic energy. The effects of a forces spell are as physical as their caster is and can’t affect incorporeal beings or objects unless other magic has granted the caster an immaterial presence. Once such interaction has been established, forces can command flames in the spirit realm or gravity in the astral plane just as well as it controls the energies of the material world.

Forces magic below master level is heavily dependent on the caster’s physical environment, and normally works by redistributing or transmuting forces already at work in the scene. Many forces spells have twofold effects or unavoidable byproducts; a spell might stop one object to launch another or freeze one person by using their body heat to incinerate a second. It’s almost impossible for a forces mage to be completely strapped for material, however; even absent violent weather, high-speed traffic, or powered machinery, forces can draw on static charge, gravitational attraction, or the motion of the caster’s own body.

Aspects

Sensory forces magic can measure weight, temperature, or similar qualities, reveal normally invisible forces to the caster’s senses, and decipher electronic communication.

Covert forces magic can manipulate energy beyond the range of human senses, altering the flow of current or the propagation of radio signals. It can subtly alter how forces affect the human condition by tweaking temperatures, blunting impacts, or guiding projectiles. They might draw down lightning strikes, short out fuses, make bombs go dud, or otherwise trigger already-possible events.

Vulgar forces spells blatantly reshape or transform energy, and might cause levitation, spontaneous combustion, or flash-freezing. Vulgar spells might generate invisible but unprecedented and significant phenomena, such as by conjuring a spark of flame inside a grain silo.

Backlashes

Low-key forces backlashes result in will-o-wisps, strange noises, or inexplicable signal broadcasts.

Stronger backlashes might alter friction, temperature, or light in subtle but tangible ways.

Severe backlashes can annul friction, warp gravity, or rain fire.

Mechanics

Forces spells that can’t be conventionally opposed, such as forcible levitation or the suspension of personal friction, are resisted by the target's resolve and magical aptitude. Direct damage is opposed by their toughness and magical aptitude.

Forces can boost or hinder a variety of physical actions, and can hinder mental or social actions through distraction or interference. It can inflict bashing or lethal damage, either directly or as an attack; generally, heat, sonics, static charge, and other unseen effects deal bashing damage, while fire, lightning, and other obvious phenomena deal lethal.

Forces spells need area, size, and target factors concomitant with their tangible effects on characters and environmental features; a spell that chills one person and scorches another has two targets even though it’s moving a single payload of heat. Zero area factors worth of ambient heat, gravitational force, or other unremarkable background energy can be focused into tangible jolts or flashes but can’t do more than bashing damage unless patterned into something more dangerous. Purely sensory or communicative effects such as flashes of light don’t need area factors to work, but might need precision factors to be intelligible at great distances.

Aftereffects

Forces effects are entirely natural, and things set on fire, blown apart, recharged, or otherwise energized remain so as long as they normally would. Spells might can grant lingering properties to forces themselves, creating unusually specific weather patterns or persistent flames.

Initiate of Forces (●)

Initiates become aware of the myriad forces coursing through the world around them. Their sensory spells can boost attempts to notice or analyze furnaces, weather, or other energetic systems. Covert or vulgar spells can boost attempts to find or notice the caster.

Knowing forces analyzes the content and nature of energy. It can perfectly measure temperature, pressure, velocity, and similar qualities. It can compare multiple forces the caster can perceive or envision, predicting interactions and allowing the caster to intuit solutions to appropriate scientific questions.

Free-Body Diagram (Forces ●/Sensory/Knowing) Concentrating on an object or being, the caster learns what mechanical forces and pressures are, in combination, holding it in place or moving it about. Each success answers a question about the subject. This spell can identify load-bearing walls or reveal unusual peaks or absences of pressure, and might boost attempts to destabilize or maintain precarious static equilibria.

Signifying forces communicates through energy’s action. Lights, sounds, or motions emphasize aspects of themselves or take on the aspect of the caster’s nimbus. These overtones might be subtle to the point of being subliminal, or they might overtly alter the character of whatever force they work through, but signifying can’t actually obscure or replace the content of an existing image, sound, or signal, nor create light, noise or other energy from nothing.

Trademantra (Forces ●/Vulgar/Signifying) The mage grants energy their imprimatur, marking it as ‘theirs’ and as subject to their will. Light and sound are overlaid by the nimbus, becoming associated perceptually by the spell; it might seem that a television’s static pulses in tone with their voice, or that lightning strikes when they mention… The Castle.

Unveiling forces reveals unseen energies to the caster. The mage can tell at a glance when things are heated, chilled, or electrified. Unveiling can allow the mage to navigate through darkness by sound alone or perceive wavelengths of light normally invisible (e.g., infrared).

Heat Vision (Forces ●/Sensory/Unveiling) The mage can see by heat as well as light. They can navigate pitch black rooms and spot people from miles away in cold places, but see little beyond an undifferentiated glare in hothouses or calderas.

Special: XYZ

Life Techniques

Purview: animals, bodies, blood, flesh, growth, healing, health, plants, reproduction, satiation, vitality, disease, microbes

Life, the gross arcanum of the primal wild, holds dominion over material vitality. Life is matter undergoing both dynamic growth and homeostatic equilibrium, physical substance that strives unceasingly to sustain its animation against the ravages of entropy. Life is ostensibly fragile, maintained by the rarest of coincidences and flimsiest of chemical status quos, but is at the same time possessed of a fierce resilience that transcends simple material sturdiness or energetic inertia. The supernatural forces of the fallen world frequently twist, disrupt, or counterfeit natural life, and the mysteries of natural biology have been thoroughly plumbed by common science.

Life primacy manipulates living material, biological processes, and vital energy. It can warp or repair living things, sabotage or optimize the chemistry that sustains living things, and sap or replenish a living thing’s health, satiation, or overall vim. The thoughts and desires of biological creatures are bound intimately up with their bodies, so life primacy can indirectly affect moods, instincts, and urges. Anything part of a living thing is subject to the life arcanum, whether plant or animal.

Life primacy only has direct effect on substance that’s currently alive, and can’t control or transform corpses, fingernail clippings, fallen leaves, or other once-living detritus. Spilled blood or cut hair loses vitality after a turn has passed, and severed limbs or other major body parts take at most a minute to die and leave life's purview. Life doesn’t directly affect poisons, pheromones, or other organic secretions or byproducts, but can control if and how they’re produced and how living beings metabolize or process them. Life infusions can bestow and trigger a bird’s sense for magnetic fields or an electric eels internal generators, but such secondary effects are entirely non-magical.

Life primacy that doesn’t use the practice of making doesn’t quite obey conservation of mass, but does obey a broader conservation of vital force. Creatures that gain or lose size or strength in the course of life-based transformation make up the difference in terms of hunger, health, and fatigue; patterning can turn a human into a ravenously hungry tiger or a mouse brimming with vigor and satiation.
— Iyralbeth

Aspects

Sensory life primacy detects and analyzes living things, revealing properties such as species, health, or instinctive drive.

Covert life primacy makes nearly-imperceptible alterations to living beings, altering their experiences of the world or tweaking their capabilities. It can enhance or alter senses, banish fatigue, or sharpen reflexes. Covert primacy might work at a level beneath metahuman perception, making mostly-imperceptible changes. Covert primacy is enough to buffer against poisons or recover someone from being knocked-out.

Vulgar life primacy makes drastic changes to living beings. It can transform one creature into another, rearrange body parts, or heal injuries.

Backlashes

Mild life backlashes change the appearances of living matter or alter the instincts and behaviors of nearby rodents, birds, or other simple life forms.

Stronger backlashes might materially impact the instincts, statuses, or capabilities of some or all living beings nearby.

Particularly severe life backlashes can drastically mutate or outright slay those nearby.

Mechanics

Life spells can boost almost any physical action a living being takes, and can hinder actions of nearly any kind by undermining the living actor’s health or self-control. They can heal or directly inflict wounds of any kind to living targets, potentially using damage factors to render wounds resistant to healing or to steal the victim’s life-force in order to heal the attacker or a third party. They can launch bashing or lethal attacks by growing natural weapons, directing hostile animals, or animating plant life. Life spells that produce and control tangible minions can often attack, defend, and barricade simultaneously, but are also subject to conventional attack.

Creatures transformed by life spells don’t change their core or derived character traits, but become able to use them in new ways and might enjoy boosts when they do so. By the same token, a transformation might hinder or outright disallow certain actions of the subject. Radical differences in size might boost or hinder interactions between different characters, make larger characters impervious to the actions of smaller ones, or make direct interaction all but impossible; titanic or minuscule characters act on entirely different scales from those of human size, and treat each other as environmental features or background details requiring special equipment or circumstances to meaningfully affect.

Aftereffects

Life spells can inflict or repair injuries, diseases, deformities, or other physical maladies. Modifications that result in states of affairs a body could have reached on its own are lasting, but bodily transformations or preternatural senses only last as long as supernatural aftereffects normally do. They can make long-term changes to the health and development of living things, though it can take many years for such effects to bear out. Life aftereffects can produce carnivorous horses, clawed humans, or other life forms that normally wouldn’t exist, but not life forms that normally couldn’t exist.

Initiate of Life (●)

Initiates can detect and imprint themselves on life. They can scrutinize creatures to gauge their physical traits, and can enjoy sensory boosts on attempts to notice, diagnose, or take aim at living things. Knowing spells can pinpoint nearby creatures, and unveiling practices can completely trump stealth that relies on stillness or camouflage. Covert spells can boost the caster’s attempts to be noticed or understood by living creatures.

Knowing life measures and analyzes life forms. It can gauge a living thing’s physical traits, state of health, energy level, or maturity, and reveal a subject’s physical capabilities or active physiological processes. It can compare one scrutinized subject to another to tell how closely the two are related and whether they’re affected by matching diseases, wounds, or other effects. In combination with the knowing practice of other arcanum, knowing life can predict how a life form will likely be affected by a phenomenon from the conjunctional arcanum’s purview.

Tactile Empathy (Life ●/Sensory/Knowing) This enhancement empower a snotling to pinpoint and describes what a scrutinized subject can feel by touch, whether the weight of a hidden blade or the pain of an unhealed wound. Intense and unusual sensations are easy to identify, while slight or common ones more difficult.

Signifying life expresses the caster’s resonance through the incidental appearance and behavior of surrounding life forms. It can pattern birdsong, goosebumps, or swarming after the caster’s intentions, or cause skin coloration, pheromone release, or other physiological communicative cues to become more noticeable. Signifying practices might encode information that only bears out over days, months, or years, altering how fungi spread, flowers bloom, or hair grows.

Inscribe Foliage (Life ●/Covert/Signifying) The enhanced snotling can ensure that the lichen, weeds, or other sessile life on a target surface will grow in a pattern of the caster’s design.

Unveiling life reveals living things to the caster’s senses. The mage can immediately tell if something they perceive is alive, how that living thing can be broadly classified (whether as a mammal, flower, or other category), and whether that living thing is or isn’t significantly hurt or possessed of some other standout quality. Unveiling can detect the aberrations produced by undeath, immortality, or other supernatural states of being, though identifying their specifics takes Knowing magic.

Vital Signs (Life ●/Sensory/Unveiling) A snotling with this enhancement always knows whether something they perceive with their senses is alive, and whether it’s healthy, hurt, or dying.

Special: A life mage and their familiar are always aware of each other’s physical condition.

Apprentice of Life (●●)

Apprentices can direct or buffer against life’s functions. They can hinder the perception, concentration, or judgement of living creatures or boost others’ attempts to capitalize on such impairment. They can direct the behavior of animals and influence the desires of sapient beings, but can’t override ingrained instinct, devotion, or self-regard. Apprentices can boost physical actions or resistances by enhancing the actor’s body and heal living beings of any kind of damage. They can alter the long-term health and wellness of living subjects, producing obstructive or debilitating aftereffects but not directly hindering action or inflicting damage. They can launch bashing or lethal attacks by driving animals to violence, but creatures so manipulated rarely continue their assault upon suffering any serious injury or resistance and might still be forced to ignore their instincts through magical means.

Perfecting life hones and fortifies living patterns. It can optimize the function of living systems, allowing creatures to operate at their peak strength, agility, or coordination, thereby boosting physical actions or eliminating difficulties arising from exhaustion, illness, or poison. It can toughen wood, flesh, or other living tissue against damage or cleanly and completely repair any damage the subject could heal from naturally.

Enhance Vision (Life ●●/Covert/Perfecting) The construct enhances the natural eyesight of its wearer for one scene. While it doesn't allow new forms of perception (e.g., infrared), night vision is significantly enhanced as well as clarity both near and far within the natural limits of what its wearer might be capable of.

Mend Wounds (Life ●●/Vulgar/Perfecting) The construct can heal wounds caused by violent trauma. It can mitigate stabbings, blunt impacts, or cuts, but not incineration or necrosis (e.g., badly hurt but not permanent injuries or death). As usual, healing factors apply (+1 primer for badly hurt instead of bashing).

Ruling life activates and directs unconscious biological processes and reflex action. It can cause sudden sneezing, adrenaline release, floral bloom, or other physiological reaction. It can manipulate biochemistry or trigger instincts to alter moods or sharpen urges. It can trigger reflex actions like the clenching of a fist or the kicking of a leg. It can prevent living bodies from harming themselves or their symbiotic components, curing headache, heartburn, or other internal malady or guarding donated tissue against rejection. Ruling can’t make a body harm or cease to sustain itself and doesn’t suspend a living being’s control of its own body, but can distract, embarrass, or manipulate sapient creatures and control animals already inclined to straightforwardly obey their instincts.

One-String Puppet (Life ●●/Covert/Ruling) A snotling is imbued with the uncanny ability to trigger a reflex action in a human target. Someone with their finger on a crossbow trigger might be made to pull it, or someone walking a flight of stairs might be made to trip when one leg flails out. Each reflex action is a distinct activation of this ability.

Stimulate Base Life (Life ●●/Covert/Ruling) A snotling is imbued with the uncanny ability to encourage basic living processes. A plant might be encouraged to open its flowers or a person to feel tired, hungry, or irritable.

Veiling life hides or disguises living things. It can alter subtle or overt cosmetic features such as voice, coloration, or scent. It can alter the apparent subtle biological qualities so as to fool in-depth analysis, changing a sample’s blood color, age, racial coding, or contamination.

Animal Form (Life ●●/Covert/Veiling) The snotling can be rearranged into a living shape that it maintains for one scene, then reverts to its original form. This new form can mimic a natural or fanciful animal of the same mass. An attempt to mimic a specific animal may require a successful skill check.

Copy Identifying Features (Life ●●/Covert/Ruling, Veiling) The snotlings causes the traces of the caster’s body (or that of a second target) to duplicate those of the subject. While the spell is sustained, its beneficiary leaves behind tracks, fingerprints, hair, nails, claws, etc. as appropriate to the subject. Traces of the beneficiary remain changed after the spell ends. Opposes mundane skill and mortal magic efforts to identify the target.

Living Mask (Life ●●/Vulgar/Veiling) The construct forms a temporary body covering such as a mask. An attempt to mimic a specific individual may require a successful skill check.

Disciple of Life (●●●)

Disciples can twist life according to their desires. They can deal direct damage to living beings, hinder or disable a living being’s physical actions, or transfer wounds of any kind between living subjects. Severe consequences can paralyze or puppeteer a living thing, such that they helplessly boost the caster’s actions or take complex physical actions in the caster’s stead. Disciples can launch attacks, defend themselves, or blockade movement by commanding animals or animating plant life.

Fraying life disorders living things and interrupts the coordination of biological processes. It can interfere with speech, manual dexterity, feats of strength, or locomotion by ruining the synchronicity of muscles and tendons. It can ruin the body’s deeper cohesion to cause headaches, mood swings, digestive problems, and other maladies, up to the point of inflicting direct bashing damage. Fraying can also confuse and unfocus urges and instinctive behavior, spoiling a predator’s hunting ability or a beaver's productive labor.

Diminished Perception (Life ●●●/Covert/Fraying) This enhancement allows a snotling to degrade one of the target’s senses. For example, with vision, this may prevent a living creature’s eyes from focusing properly, hindering or completely precluding attempts to read, recognize details, or take aim at anything beyond immediate reach.

Weaving life adjusts, animates, and controls living Patterns. It can seize and puppeteer plants and animals, causing trees to lash out with roots and branches or people to go rigid with paralysis. It can manipulate the physiological characteristics and proportions of a living thing, changing a subject’s size, sex, build, or breed within the confines of its age and species. Weaving can mold organic matter like clay, animating wood, blood, hair, or other largely uniform living tissue, but can’t alter something’s mass or change how tissues connect; a life mage can lengthen someone’s bones into protruding spines or shift an animal’s distribution of muscle, but not melt a complex creature into goo. Weaving can manipulate the flow of life force itself to transfer wounds between living creatures.

Doppelganger (Life ●●●/Vulgar/Weaving) The construct can transform a target into a duplicate of a specified subject for one scene.

Replace Injury (Life ●●●/Vulgar/Weaving) The construct can compensate for a permanent injury to a person for one scene.

Transfer Injury (Life ●●●/Vulgar/Weaving) The construct can transfer an injury from one animal, including metahumans, to another. The difficulty of using the construct is higher for transfers of a wound between animals with relevant dissimilarities, such as transferring a broken bone in a hawk's wing to a rabbit's foreleg, with a transfer between metahumans generally being easy. As usual, healing factors apply (-1 primer for transfers instead of pure healing; +0 for bashing; +1 badly hurt; +2 permanent injuries).

Unseen Rider (Life ●●●/Covert/Weaving) The snotling gains the uncanny ability to redirect the instincts of a non-sentient animal. It can absorb itself through their skin and, for the duration of its occupancy, compel a general mode of natural behavior. A mother bear might be compelled to treat a target like a threat to her cub, or a wolf to treat a specified person as the leader of its pack. It can re-emerge on command when the compelling is finished.

Wake Foliage (Life ●●●/Vulgar/Perfecting, Weaving) The construct can animate and control plant life, allowing it to attack, obstruct, or seize things on the caster’s behalf. Large, sturdy plants like trees can strike for lethal damage, while softer vegetation might deal bashing damage or only be able to seize and entangle. Perfecting fortifies the plant life against harm and tearing, so while thin creepers of ivy can’t meaningfully harm a human adult they can still strongly hinder movements.

Adept of Life (●●●●)

Adepts can transform living patterns completely. Their spells can inflict direct damage of any kind on living creatures or strip those creatures of their faculties and strengths. Victims of severe consequences might find their core physical ability deteriorating. Adepts can transform living subjects, altering their senses, capabilities, or sizes, but can only be scaled to a degree; absent the appropriation of external material, a subject can’t usually gain more than half again their initial mass, based loosely on their health and satiation, and can’t lose more than nine tenths. Targets transformed by severe consequences might be totally disabled. Patternings that transform the brain don’t affect the mind directly, but do give subjects new instincts and transform their thinking over time. The instincts of a new form hinder thoughts or actions that contravene them, and each day spent in an inhuman form might threaten the long-term loss of mental attributes or skills.

Patterning life completely reconstitutes living patterns. It can totally alter substance, size, and body plan, molding life forms according to the caster’s will. It can turn people into frogs or trees into swarms of hornets, but can also fuse or warp living beings into hybrids or mutants completely of the caster’s design. Such creatures are still subject to mass, proportion, and other physical design constraints (though perfecting can lend unusual durability to otherwise untenable designs) but might have any combination of natural capabilities.

Photosynthesis (Life ●●●●/Covert/Perfecting, Patterning) This spell allows its beneficiary to derive nutrition and energy from sunlight exposure, and near-flawlessly recycles the chemicals and nutrients involved. The caster still needs water, but otherwise does not need food so long as they spend the better part of each day in direct sunlight undertaking minimal activity. This magic tinges the skin green and alters the digestive and circulatory systems in subtle ways, so medical scrutiny of the subject may uncover the transformation.

Unraveling life tears living patterns apart and spoils their capabilities. It can directly rip or blight flesh, dealing direct damage of any kind, or it can attack specific capabilities to inflict total blindness, muscle atrophy, or malignant cancer. Unraveling can be used beneficially to destroy the parasites, bacteria, or tumors afflicting a living pattern. Spontaneous unravelings can produce aftereffects that threaten a target’s traits, while rituals can directly cripple victims in lasting ways.

Life Tap (Life ●●●●/Vulgar/Unraveling) Resisted by the target and cast with at least two damage factors, this spell drains the vital energy of its subject, inflicting deadly damage and healing the caster or a second target.

The Book of Life

Anatomy of a Snotling, Simola Green

The Shaping Techniques as Chronicled by Simola Green in Her Study with Anssi the Clever at the Anvil of Flesh

Usun seeing his reflection in Lake Iyral, is how the story is told. The possibility of a second of his kind. A mirror with its own will. He swore an oath then, the Beth Iyral, to make it so. And he did, though the cost was dire.
— Anssi the Clever

Anssi dismisses any questions about the methods used in making Iyralbeth, claiming it as pointless for us lesser creations to consider. Whether he inquired about it from Usun and was rebuffed, or truly doesn't have curiosity for any learning without a practical use to him, I can't say.
It does seem, clear, though, that Usun gave up some portion of his strength to make her, which would explain why he didn't, or couldn't, repeat the process. The first generation of ogres was therefore made, not through Usun's manipulation of the well of primer, but through an adaptation into themselves of the same natural process of reproduction they observed in the lesser creatures around them. And from that, us, more than mere animals, even if less than our progenitors.
— Simola Green

Matter Techniques

Purview: chemical reactions, drugs, gases, liquids, machinery, poisons, solids, terrain

Matter holds dominion over inanimate physical substance. Matter is the raw material appropriated in the growth and creation of life and left in the wake of life’s passing. Though often chemically active, matter is metaphysically inert, and symbolizes supernatural change rather than motivates it.

Matter primacy analyzes, shapes, and transmutes nonliving substance. Objects, terrain features, and the very air can be animated or transmogrified according to the caster’s will. Organic and inorganic materials alike fall within matter primacy’s purview so long as they aren’t part of a living pattern. Matter is effective on materials dusted on, attached to, stabbed through, severed from or secreted by living creatures, even if those materials are animated by alchemy, necromancy, or other magic; flakes of dead skin, prosthetic limbs, plates of food, pools of blood, and shambling zombies are all subject to the arcanum. Otherworldly inanimate substances such as the twilight remnants of buildings or the terrain of the spirit world can also be affected by matter primacy, so long as appropriate primacy is used to enable the matter primacist to interact with their target in the first place.

Matter can cause objects to bend or transform under their own power. Such actions have strength proportionate to the material; animate paper can’t lift a wagon, but another wagon could, and stone and metal can do serious injury to flesh. However, matter primacy animates objects by sculpting and shaping them, not pushing or accelerating them, and doesn’t impart any energy that outlasts the magic at work. Objects can’t be heated, cooled, electrified, or even thrown with matter alone. A boulder swung by an an arm of stone smashes through obstacles but stops and falls from rest at the end of its arc.

Matter primacy can reorganize substances so that their internal energies are easier or harder to release. Catapults or firearms sculpted with magic are fully functional, petroleum burns readily despite having once been water, and conjured francium reacts explosively with moisture in the air. Matter can similarly affect living beings indirectly by producing drugs, poisons or acids. Such effects are wholly natural, and might be bypassed or disabled by other supernatural powers.
— Iyralbeth

Aspects

Sensory matter primacy analyze the structure and composition of the caster’s surroundings, providing information normally accessible only through sensitive equipment, hours of laboratory work, or detailed chemical reference.

Covert matter primacy influence properties matter beneath the threshold of normal human perception, such as the rates of chemical reactions or the subtleties of turning gears. Such spells can strengthen or weaken objects, direct chemical processes, or sabotage machines.

Vulgar matter primacy can reshape or animate objects, transmute one substance or object into another, or force machines chemicals into activity or quiescence despite direct and obvious pressure to the contrary. They can shift and hold substances into states never found in nature by altering their shapes, phases, and physical properties.

Backlashes

Weak matter backlashes change the appearance, texture, or surface consistency of matter in the area, or cause anomalies in air flow, water currents, or dust deposition.

More powerful backlashes might lead to the appearance of sinkholes, the diffusion of airborne hallucinogens, or the threat of architectural collapse.

Deadly matter backlashes might wrack the area with earthquakes, change the air to acid, or trigger the growth of unliving terrain that impales, crushes, or suffocates anything caught within.

Mechanics

Many Matter spells don’t directly affect rolled actions or alter game traits but do change the range of actions that characters can take, such as by raising walls or disabling vehicles. The ability of such effects to directly affect characters might call for contested rolls, but the outcomes of those rolls have no bearing on the effects themselves – a pit still opens in the floor whether or not the person it opened under was able to leap to safety. Matter spells can boost or hinder a variety of physical actions by conjuring obstacles, strengthening equipment, or animating minions. Substances created by matter are completely real and can trigger supernatural vulnerabilities or spirit bans with no extra effort on the caster’s part.

Spells that produce matter that’s explosive, radioactive, toxic, or otherwise potent beyond its normal size and mass need area or size factors to generate indirect effects and successful checks to inflict consequences on other characters; missing factors or low successes indicate insufficient exposure, purity, or internal energy to produce the desired indirect result.

Aftereffects

Almost all effects of matter magic are lasting. Substances don’t retain the impossible states of being or blatant supernatural properties that sustained spells might grant them, but do retain their forms and substances even in the aftermath of vulgar magic – lead remains gold, pumpkins remain carriages, and so on. Subtle changes to objects can linger in the usual fashion, rendering things unusually effective, precise, or resistant to wear. Matter magic makes merits, particularly resources, extremely easy to raise, and usually guarantees a character whatever mundane equipment they care to own.

Initiate of Matter (●)

Initiates can investigate and mark the material around them. Sensory spells of this level can boost rolls to search for objects, analyze materials, or reason out chemical relationships.

Knowing matter reveals subtle properties such as composition, purity, or volatility. A mage can compare one substance to another they can detect or imagine, predicting how the two will react. Knowing can analyze distinct objects rather than general substances, determining precise size, shape, mass, and durability.

Map Material (Matter ●/Sensory/Knowing) The mage envisions the three-dimensional shape of a substance they can perceive. This spell can pinpoint gaps in seemingly solid walls or the hollows left by swimmers in water. The caster always learns the total size of a contiguous sample of material, but requires size factors to accurately envision an object larger than a car.

Signifying matter expresses the caster’s nimbus through the inanimate. It allows the idle swirl of dust, condensation of water, or rustle of leaves to reflect a mage’s disposition or communication. Such changes don’t disturb the consistency or content of the subject material, but layer it with additional meaning and tone, whether subtle or overt.

Transmutation Marks (Matter ●/Vulgar/Signifying) This spell charges matter an aspect of the caster’s nimbus, causing it to bear a lingering sign of the caster’s power. This imprint can be used to imply that wholly natural events were the caster’s doing.

Unveiling matter reveals the presence and surface properties of objects and materials in the caster’s range of perception. It can broadly classify matter, recognizing on sensory contact if something is acidic, explosive, metallic, organic, toxic, or radioactive. It can differentiate between substances, revealing colorless gases filtering into the air or incongruous chemicals in a plate of food. Unveilings can recognize whether things are or aren’t metaphysically matter at all, telling between sleepers and corpses or rocks and mussels.

Air Monitor (Matter ●/Sensory/Unveiling) For the duration of one scene, the construct will monitor the air for dangers, whether for an actively harmful poison or toxin, or the absence of an element necessary for life.

Sense Poison (Matter ●/Sensory/Unveiling) This spell detects poisonous substances, whether dripping from a snake’s fang or swirling in a proffered wineglass.

Special: A matter mage can tell if their familiar's position would support their own weight.

Apprentice of Matter (●●)

Apprentices can direct matter’s activities. Apprentices can also boost a variety of physical actions, commonly by enhancing worn or held equipment important to those actions. Spells can hinder or disable physical actions by rendering machines or equipment inoperable or inconveniently active, though effectively disarming someone the application of severe consequences. Apprentices can boost attempts to sneak or smuggle by obscuring visibility or disguising objects, and can boost or obviate attempts to infiltrate or trespass by controlling or deactivating security measures. They can launch damaging attacks by unleashing existing hazards or directing dangerous machinery. Apprentices can directly boost resistance against poisons, acids, and other chemical dangers.

Perfecting matter maintains function and structure, keeping edges sharp, surfaces smooth, and gears aligned. It protects things from malfunction, wear, damage, or transformation, and optimizes mechanical or chemical processes. It can sustain shapes and properties despite external or internal pressures. Perfected equipment boosts actions based on the equipment’s material quality. Ritual Perfectings can grant objects lingering durability or enhancement. Perfecting spells can also heal the wounds of nonliving beings.

Anytime Armor (Matter ●●/Covert/Perfecting) This spell quietly fortifies clothing, boosting the wearer’s Defense against conventional attack.

Ruling matter can activate, direct, or halt chemical reactions and simple or complex machines. It can guide how acids burn, sediments deposit, or non-living objects decay. Ruling can protect against chemical harm by slowing or stopping the reactions that allow acids and poisons to take effect. It can activate machines; wagons can become jammed, locks can open or close, and crossbows can fire or jam. Ruling can also direct the motion of already mobile but otherwise directionless matter, changing how gases diffuse, liquids spill, or dust settles.

Fastidiousness (Matter ●●/Covert/Ruling) This spell prevents dirt, water, and similar sources of muss from adhering to the subject’s body or possessions. Substances aren’t directly repelled, but never seem to stick and either dry rapidly or brush off easily.

Knock (Matter ●●/Covert/Ruling) This spell ensures that a mechanical lock will lock correctly, or yield when forced. Typically the caster themselves will perform the physical act of opening or closing the door or lid, though this spell can render locks malleable to anyone’s effort if the caster wishes.

Veiling matter changes the surface qualities of matter, disguising substances as other substances or making chemical qualities harder to discern. Covert Veilings can create confusion between similar substances or foil scientific analysis, while vulgar Veilings can wholly recast an object or material’s appearance. Veilings don’t actually change the overall size or shape of their subjects, but can alter fine details such as wood grain or fracture lines.

Fool’s Gold (Matter ●●/Vulgar/Veiling) This spell disguises common metals as pure gold, granting them the appropriate hue, shine, and overall appearance, but doesn’t change the metal’s other properties. The altered appearance lingers as an aftereffect.

Disciple of Matter (●●●)

Disciples can reshape matter with raw will. They can launch damaging attacks against or disable other characters by striking or imprisoning them with animate material. Disciples can deal direct bashing damage to non-living beings, and can heal or transfer the wounds of such targets.

Fraying matter disorders, loosens, and weakens things, sapping durability and disrupting function. Spells make machines faulty, materials vulnerable, and reactions inefficient – guns jam, computers crash, and walls buckle. Fraying spells can hinder the physical actions of or deal direct bashing damage to zombies, golems, or other unliving constructs.

Weaken Wall (Matter ●●●/Covert/Fraying) This spell undermines the integrity of a solid barrier, making it as easy to break as if it was rotten or poorly made. Thick walls of steel or stone might still require equipment or machinery to defeat.

Gremlin King (Matter ●●●/Vulgar/Fraying) With this spell, gears grind, belts snap, and sparks fly. The caster forces machines and mechanical tools to jam, malfunction, or otherwise fall into chaos. This spell hinders attempts to employ the machine productively, and on a severe consequence can render the machine nonfunctional until it’s been repaired.

Weaving Matter redistributes material, changing consistency, phase, shape. Weavings might deflect tear gas, carve pathways through bodies of water, or shape boulders into golem servitors. They can sustain unnatural phase changes, solidifying water or liquefying steel. Weavings are subject to conservation of mass, so a wall that thickens in one place must thin elsewhere, solids and liquids are only compressible to a limited degree, and at least an area factor of gas must be compressed to yield more than a handful of liquid or solid matter. Weaving spells can transfer mass and wounds between objects or nonliving beings.

Liquid Wall (Matter ●●●/Vulgar/Weaving) This spell shapes a volume of liquid into a standing wall. While sustained, the wall can be moved, pushing characters around or striking them with bashing damage. Tenacity opposes attempts to breach the barrier, and the size to which the wall can be stretched without losing effectiveness is limited both by spell factors and available liquid.

Mind Techniques

Purview: decisions, emotion, intellect, memory, opinion, psychic powers, sentience, socialization, thought, volition

A mind is self-awareness—perceiving the self as distinct from the environment—in a being that can learn. Anything that learns and makes decisions can be manipulated with the mind arcanum. This includes rodents and other simple creatures, and intelligent undead like wights, but not mindlessly obedient beings such as zombies.

Mind aspery can directly target the thoughts or emotions of a being. But it may also indirectly alter a mind through manipulation of its context: altering the emotional properties of objects, places, messages, or other things minds might perceive and be affected by.

Simple in principle. Difficult to leverage in practice. Minds are dynamic and multifarious things that don’t simply stop and listen when affected by outside forces. Unlike the subjects of many other aspery devices, minds are already shaped and driven by the wills and desires of other beings, so any thought an aspirist casts can end up one voice among thousands. It’s much easier to communicate with a mind, scan the surface of a mind, or manipulate the perceptions of a mind than it is to invade and dominate one. Which isn't to say the latter is impossible.

The mind is not precisely the self. A unique mind is a consequence of a being’s body, soul, and environment, and so minded subjects will naturally tend to recover their usual personalities and dispositions in the absence of either constant manipulation or profound and lasting damage. Further, the mind and soul are distinct, and mind techniques have no purchase on the latter.
— Aspirist of the Mind Guddit Charcock

Aspects

Sensory mind primacy is used to observe minds and their behavior. It observes a mind’s workings from the outside, noting surface qualities like complexity, activity, emotional state, and focus of attention.

Covert mind primacy invisibly alters a mind’s properties within the bounds of that mind’s normal operation. It can tease surface thoughts into readable form, kindle and direct emotions, and plug statements or ideas into the forefront of a subject’s consciousness. Advanced applications can augment charm or intellect, access or edit deeply-held memories, orchestrate complex emotional responses or trains of thoughts, and even inflict painful mental trauma. Though feats like telepathy and emotion control are technically covert, targets who realize that their thoughts and feelings aren’t originating in their own heads can cause mind-affecting effects to fail immediately, so experienced mind primacists wield their powers carefully.

Vulgar mind primacy blurs the barrier between mind and matter, causing thought and emotion to swirl tangibly through the world as they act. They can directly override the limits on a mind’s behavior, whether moral convictions or survival instincts, in order to unleash atavistic emotions, conjure overpowering hallucinations, or utterly crush the will. Beyond that, vulgar mind primacy can break the rules minds as a whole are governed by. Minds can be untethered from bodies, broken down and rewritten from the ground up, or even created whole cloth.

Backlashes

Weak backlashes create strange sensations or brief mood swings.

Powerful backlashes can powerfully distort the behavior of those within them.

Particularly severe backlash zones might brainwash bystanders or drive them into murderous or suicidal frenzies.

Mechanics

Mind primacy can affect targets indirectly by changing how something is perceived, understood, or remembered, but can’t directly control a character’s behavior, block a character from interacting with their environment normally, or otherwise afflict a character with severe consequences without formally targeting that character. For instance, a device that grants its beneficiary an alternate, hallucinatory appearance will change what onlookers see but leave them free to react; a nightmarish visage that actually forces others to flee in fear requires enough area or target factors to encompass its intended victims. A device that causes its subject to vanish from the sight of others doesn’t prevent that subject from being tracked by other means, while a device that renders other characters totally incapable of perceiving, tracking, or attempting to act on something would need to target those characters and score a significant success.

Mind primacy can have almost any effect on the decisions or actions of other characters. Even modest successes are normally sufficient to influence unnamed characters or otherwise neutral important characters, and significant successes can place even unwilling and narratively significant targets completely under the caster’s control. Mind magic can also spoil or destroy a target’s social advantages, causing allies and retainers to abandon their former beneficiaries or switch sides all together.

Characters that mind primacy prevents from remembering facts, processing language, or otherwise taking normal mental actions can attempt to struggle free from those effects, even if they’re otherwise free to move and act.

Aftereffects

Mind primacy can leave targets with a variety of emotional or psychological consequences, both good and bad. Beneficial primacy might allow targets to increase their abilities, skills, or mental or social advantages, while harmful primacy can leave targets bereft.

Initiate of Mind (●)

Initiates can observe the minds around them, noting the presence and qualities of thinking beings. Sensory primacy of this level can boost rolls to read or empathize with other people, and covert primacy can boost attempts to be well-remembered or clearly understood. Success over a target allows a primacist to see into that subject’s mind.

Knowing mind allows a primacist to learn a mind’s qualities and contents. It can mark mental activity, track emotional state, gauge psychic health, and even read thoughts and memories. Knowing spells can tell what a mind is “doing”, whether concentrating, daydreaming, or buckling under stress. They can roughly gauge a mind’s strengths and weaknesses. Knowing mind can interpret a subject’s thoughts, allowing the caster to listen in on surface thoughts or glean vague sensory impressions. Intense scrutiny allows a primacist glimpses of thoughts, sensations, and memories, even if the subject isn’t immediately reflecting on them or wants to keep them hidden. Knowing can also analyze other mind effects and determine if a mind is under supernatural influence. Sustained knowing primacy often boosts a caster’s attempts to pick up on lies or express understanding.

Read Emotion (Mind ●/Sensory/Knowing) This enhancement allows a snotling to scrutinize the mind of another, learning one or more surface emotions. Usually, a significant success is needed to learn of deeply buried or consciously suppressed feelings.

Signifying mind reveals the presence and character of thoughts, feelings, and other psychic phenomena. It doesn’t effect direct mind to mind communication, but can make emotion, attention, concentration, or other mental activities apparent. Signifying might produce psychic cues subconsciously or overtly perceptible even to the non-caster, or leave rarefied imprints and messages that only other mind magic or psychic abilities can detect. Signifying also allows a primacist to impress their own emotions and personalities onto the perceptions of others, rendering themselves easier to notice or remember.

Significant Look (Mind ●/Covert/Signifying) This enhancement allows a snotling to send an honest impression of its master's feelings or intentions to a target. It’s usually used to silently clue allies in on the fact that the primacist is lying, or to draw another’s attention to something that the primacist doesn’t want to visibly acknowledge.

Unveiling mind allows a primacist to tell on sight if something has a mind, and to appraise that mind’s relative complexity, size, and sophistication. Mages can learn with experience what various minds tend to look like, and with practice distinguish immediately between apes and rodents or between adults and children. Unveiling can tell if a mind is conscious, slumbering, or comatose. It can also spot mind magic and supernatural powers in action.

Sense Sapience (Mind ●/Sensory/Unveiling) This enhancement allows a snotling to intuit immediately whether or not something they perceive is sapient. Things that seem to people but that don’t read as sapient might be illusions or zombies, while animals or objects that do might be shapeshifted or possessed.

Special: A mind mage can sense their familiar's emotional state.

Prime Techniques

Purview: abstraction, distinction, illusion, incarnation, language, metamagic, mana, patterns, resonance, symbols, uniqueness

Prime holds dominion over abstraction. Prime illuminates and sanctifies. Brings clarity to chaos. It divides this from that, self from other, and is from isn’t. The white sap (primer) itself is emblematic of the bridge prime builds between the figurative and the literal: it’s both abstract authority and tangible substance. It is the potential to shape reality and the substrate of all that exists.

Prime aspiry works by evoking and manifesting resonance. It can act on the meanings of words, the demeanors of people, or the characters of places, revealing, obscuring, or enforcing abstract notions such as allusion, truth, or holiness. Such effects are subdued on natural creatures and phenomena, but pronounced on subjects with inborn supernatural significance, so prime devices might stir places of power, abjure ephemeral beings, or manipulate other spells. By acting directly on the white sap, prime can reify ideas into perceptible phantasms and solid constructs, translate subjects into intangible thoughtforms, or rip entities completely apart. All that exists is subject to enchantment or obliteration by prime: this includes objects, people, spirits, and spells, but not complete intangibles like ideas or organizations. Altering a subject's underlying reality isn’t the same as altering its physical properties, and without conjunctional use of other arcana, prime can’t simulate, produce or transfigure specific forms of matter, energy, or ephemera directly.

Prime aspiry can empower symbols and resonance qualities to influence mundane phenomena like the signifying and ruling aspects of other arcana do, imparting agency and direction to otherwise aimless or random events. Targets don’t so much gain new capabilities as exercise their existing capabilities in line with the abstract ideal that the prime aspiry lays out: a cold and gloomy place might cause flames to gutter and moods to darken, but wouldn’t blot out the sun or render happiness impossible. Such effects are general, affecting all of a subject’s qualities unless targeted precisely through other arcana, so without the forces arcana an air of gloom can’t be made to affect a place’s lighting but not its emotional aura.

Prime can more directly alter the behavior of symbols themselves, changing how words, letters, or other signifiers communicate underlying meanings. This doesn’t change the physical sound or look of the medium but the idea that medium carries, causing the interpreter – whether human, machine, or otherworldly force – to understand and react better or differently. This allows for the translation, obfuscation, or redirection of almost any communication whose medium is apparent to the caster. Prime aspiry is effective on any media that are internally consistent and translateable by some systematic means, whether artificial, natural, commonly used, or entirely dead; a prime device can translate the Mercato merchant code as easily as ancient Khemri, and interpret colloquialism and subtext as easily as formal or literal meaning. However, while prime devices can translate, they can’t directly teach a beneficiary or grant them understanding based on prior experience; obscure references, private euphemisms, and in-jokes are beyond simple translation. A prime device could bypass a consistent substitution cipher, but not determine what “the eagle has landed” means to the spy that’s hearing it, or even reveal to a particularly ignorant aspirist what an eagle actually is.

Prime’s most straightforward effects are on subjects already magical. Supernatural spells, rituals, and invocations can be bolstered or warped insofar as they rely on ceremony and symbolism rather than inborn power. Prime can’t affect a t'skrang's psychic powers or a vampire’s hypnotic gaze, but has full purchase on skaven sorcery, khemri necromancy, orc rites, and other formalized magic. Creatures of incarnate ideal, such as spirits, horrors, or other ephemeral beings, can’t be controlled or transformed directly but can be fueled, empowered, starved, or abjured by prime devices that cause creatures, objects, or places to correspond better or worse to the resonance of the being in question. Natively magical places such as hallows, loci, or even paradox zones can be bidden to manifest or direct their unique resonances.

On its own, prime can produce abstract forms with volume and legibility but no chemical, energetic, or spiritual properties and no ability to outlast the spells that conjured them. Prime constructs take on a vibrant, radiant aspect that emphasizes their resonance qualities and sets them clearly apart from their material environments; they burn without heat and glow without casting illumination. Such constructs need other arcana, normally forces, life, or matter, to lend them tangibility or other physical properties.

Prime can affect magic directly, but not necessarily the outcomes of magic. A subject shielded from magic by prime can’t be directly transmogrified or decayed, but is no harder to strike with lightning or imprison in stone. Protecting against the latter kind of spell requires not shielding the target but foiling the caster.
— Prime Aspirist Tomera Shakebelly

Aspects

Sensory prime can detect and decipher resonance, meaning, and symbolism, allowing for the rapid apprehension of a subject’s unique signature or the translation of most language. Prime is often used to analyze magic and mages, revealing the properties of scrutinized spells and nimbuses. It can investigate the underlying realness of Patterns in general to spot illusions or magical tampering.

Covert prime can alter the flow of resonance and meaning to create subtle but tangible changes in the world. Otherwise arbitrary or random events unfold so as to reflect the feelings and ideas underlying them, whether in the patterns of falling raindrops or the shifts in bystanders’ moods. Covert prime can change how symbols and messages are perceived and understood in subconscious ways; a subject might intuit the meaning of a phrase in an unknown language but not receive a word for word translation. Covert primacy can powerfully affect ephemeral beings by altering the significance of those beings’ environments, even to the extent of fueling powers or inflicting damage. Covert primacy can affect other spells in ways invisible except to mages, whether in constructive or destructive ways.

Vulgar prime manifests meaning as a tangible force. The primacy manifests in a direct and obvious way, overlaying the numinous image and sensation of what the world could or should be onto the base fact of what is. Symbols and messages become totally clear or flatly meaningless regardless of their contingent forms. Physical beings or objects whose underlying form is attacked burn or dissolve into undifferentiated glow, Platonic solids solidify out of raw magic, and enchantments or counterspells blaze with arcane power.

Backlashes

Prime backlashes are the most likely to interfere actively with magic, and might recolor, counter, amplify, or redirect spells cast within their areas. They might also warp or scramble attempts at communication within their boundaries, overlaying messages with strange implications or altering meaning directly. The resonance of things in a prime backlash can mutate in ways subtle or obvious, rendering the area holy, profane, or anything in between regardless of true significance. In violent backlashes, constructs of pure magic might manifest from thin air or elements of the environment might be destroyed outright as they’re overloaded or deconstructed totally.

Mechanics

Prime effects that manipulate the spells or other magical properties of unwilling targets are resisted. People may also resist primacy that influences comprehension, communication, or behavior through meaning or resonance manipulation.

Prime primacy can boost attempts to notice or resist magic, and can boost or hinder physical actions by conjuring tools, obstacles, or servants. They can boost or hinder attempts at communication, translation, or subterfuge by clarifying or obscuring meanings. They can inflict direct damage of any kind on any targets perceptible and tangible to the caster. Prime primacy can temporarily mundane repair wounds or structural damage, and lastingly repair injury of the esoteric sort that prime itself inflicts. The severe consequences of prime primacy can trap subjects in prisons of solidified magic or cause them to temporarily cease to exist.

Aftereffects

Prime primacy can alter the resonance qualities of objects and places, although subjects will eventually acquire resonances appropriate to their natures and experiences. They can alter the tenor or vibe of letters, symbols, or other repositories of information, although altering the literal form and content of a book or compact disc involves other arcana. Prime can increase the flexibility with which magic is imbued into its subjects, allowing for items that release spells or grant powers rather than straightforwardly manifesting predetermined qualities. Prime rituals can shift or sever ley lines and create or destroy Hallows, but such workings decay rapidly unless the local geomancy is altered to support them. Usually, such effort is represented by a purchase of the Hallow merit. Prime alone can’t undo the aftereffects of other magic short of destroying their subjects entirely, since arcanum aftereffects aren’t themselves supernal.

Initiate of Prime (●)

Initiates can observe and reveal meaning and magic. Sensory prime primacy can boost rolls made to notice magic or symbolism, or allow mages to investigate the properties of supernal or ceremonial phenomena. They can also investigate resonance directly, allowing primacists to determine a subject’s first resonance quality with the speed and certainty afforded by a knowing device rather than at the pace of normal scrutiny. With sufficient success, initiates can glean the contents of encrypted communications. Covert and vulgar spells can boost attempts to communicate or interpret.

Knowing prime analyzes symbols and resonance signatures. It allows the primacist to immediately intuit the content and meaning of any communication they concentrate on, whether spoken or written, though encrypted information might require deep scrutiny. It can immediately apprehend the unique resonance signature of a subject and deliver precise information as to that subject’s abstract or supernatural character. Knowing primacy can measure the functions and properties of magic. Knowing prime allows the primacist to take the measure of another spellcaster.

Analyze Artifact (Prime ●/Sensory/Knowing) Allows its user to scrutinize a magical artifact.

Cherub’s Ear (Prime ●/Sensory/Knowing) By listening and concentrating on a stream of spoken language, the user may intuit that language’s precise meaning. This effect clarifies inherent subtext and idiomatic expression, but doesn’t break references, ciphers or innuendos with special meaning apparent only to specific listeners. Translating more than one stream at a time requires target factors.

Signifying prime reveals the symbolism and magic and ensures that the casting primacist is understood. It can subtly or obviously highlight the presence of meaning, making onlookers recognize that sounds or markings constitute communication rather than random noise. It can imbue subjects with ineffable psychic impressions or tangible auras indicating inherent resonance and the presence of magic. Signifying can similarly render speech or writing comprehensible regardless of language or circumstance, allowing for an intuitive understanding that works through no discernible earthly mechanism. Signifying can also directly highlight primer or other supernal phenomena, manifesting a primacist's aura or area's resonance signature in ways apparent to physical senses.

Nimbus Flare (Prime ●/Vulgar/Signifying) Reveal a subject’s aura, lining a target spellcaster in a halo of power. This display allows viewers to recognize the spellcaster as a supernatural being and to note the distinctive features of the spellcaster's supernatural abilities, potentially confirming or nullifying their perceived responsibility for some work of magic or providing an advantage to on rolls to impress or terrify.

Unveiling prime detects meaning’s presence and general character. It can tell whether a sound, object, or shape constitutes a symbol or message and hint at the general kind, letting a primacist intuit that they’re looking at a greeting or hearing a set of directions. It can detect things set apart from their surroundings by particularly distinctive or powerful resonance, highlighting ley lines, ritual spaces, or other magical phenomena. It can answer broad, binary questions about auras and other numinous signifiers, telling immediately whether a subject is mundane or enchanted, magic user or not. Unveiling prime provides unparalleled perception of primer and other elements of primacist magic, allowing the user to detect mages, primer, or other repositories of primatic power, tell at once which arcana a device employs, or instantly apprehend the resonance signature of a magical device.

See the Extraordinary (Prime ●/Sensory/Unveiling) Reveal the supernatural aspects of characters' auras, rendering them amenable to further scrutiny.

Special: A prime mage and their familiar can each sense when they are being directly targeted by any type of formal mortal magic.

Space Techniques

Purview: capacity, connection, correspondence, direction, distance, location, portals, scrying, sequence, sympathy, teleportation

Space holds dominion over relative position. Time and familiarity forge sympathetic connections between people, places, and objects. These connections transcend material distance and allow for communication and interaction regardless of apparent separation. Actual physical distance is purely a trick of perspective, though it’s one of the illusions that the mortal world imbues with material reality.

Space magic controls sympathetic connections, the spatial coordinates and orientations that sympathetic connections determine, and the overall fabric of space that interwoven sympathetic connections collectively describe. The relationships between things can be traced, altered, or communicated through, and things themselves can be turned, immobilized, or repositioned. Space magic transforms the perspective of its subjects, not the physical substance of their Patterns, so broom closets made to contain airship hangars or sojourners crossing seven leagues with every step suffer no particular strain or deformity. The indirect consequences of space magic can powerfully alter or injure, however; the transposition of lethal hazards or the violent disturbance of space itself can wreak havoc on bystanders.

Aspects

Sensory space magic allows mages to perceive and scrutinize sympathetic connections as well as local topology in general. It can determine what’s mystically connected to what and if the fabric of local space is somehow anomalous.

Covert space magic brings sympathetic connections to life, causing them to not simply indicate direction but to transmit information. In combination with sensory magic, this allows mages to spy on or communicate with distant subjects. It can also cause tangible if subtle effects on the world, stretching or folding space in ways that the uninitiated sometimes notice but usually write off as optical illusions or signs of insufficient sleep.

Vulgar space magic warps the world blatantly, allowing for banishment, co-location, teleportation, or similar outlandish feats. It causes the truth of sympathy to eclipse the illusion of distance, causing apparitions of of the caster and target to accompany scryings, sendings, and other long-distance workings as distant locations bleed into each other.

Backlashes

Mild space backlashes generally warp perspective or confuse the inner ear.

Stronger ones cause distances to stretch or shrink or doors to open into the wrong rooms, and the worst are inescapable labyrinths or lacerating vortices of fractured space. Space paradoxes appear at both “ends” of a space spell and so commonly stretch across multiple locations; many mages are careful not to teleport directly home lest they bring whatever calamity they’re fleeing directly into their sanctums.

Mechanics

Most Space effects are resisted by the targets resolve and mystical knowledge. These traits are used to prevent involuntary teleportation, entrapment, or other spatial attacks, but also oppose attempts to scry, build sympathy, or otherwise affect targets in abstract but unwanted ways. A character can unconsciously resist even if they have no way of detecting the magic, but don’t have to if their players decide that the character doesn’t mind being looked in on or otherwise affected by the caster. Spells that place victims in dangerous places or transport dangerous things to victims are resolved as damaging attacks opposed by Defense, as are spells that conjure hazardous spatial turbulence. Direct damage from destructive co-location is resisted similarly.

To create or transform a sympathetic connection, a spell’s net successes must equal the sympathy factors required to bridge that connection (taking degradation into account) either before or after the spell’s casting, whichever is higher. It’s as costly to turn an intimate connection into a described one as to do the converse. Affecting a subject’s sympathetic links is as difficult as affecting a subject, so sympathy factors sufficient to bridge preexisting sympathetic distance are required to transform, destroy, or replace sympathetic links to a target out of sensory range.

Space effects can boost or hinder variety of rolls related to combat, investigation, locomotion, or travel. Severe consequences can disable, immobilize, or reposition targets. Mages can attempt to teleport victims to the bottom of the ocean or the heart of the sun, but important characters who don’t take enough damage to die on the spot are only affected in a partial, mediated way that leaves them hurt but not banished or annihilated; they can choose to suffer damage (usually lethal) equal to the teleport’s net successes but remain where they are, or to appear in a place near their target destination that isn’t necessarily fatal and then use their Defense to reduce the spell’s net successes further.

Sympathetic Distance: The sympathetic distance a spell must cross is always measured from the caster; the higher the distance, the weaker and more difficult to use the connection. It’s based primarily on a mage’s acquaintance with their subject, but can also be established through physical objects such as drops of blood or scraps of clothing. A mage needs direct sensory contact with a sympathetic link to make use of it. Precision factors might be required to cast through a link that’s particularly distant or hard to see.

0: Sensory – the subject is in sensory range

1: Intimate – the caster has closely interacted with the subject for appreciable time (a story, by default), or is targeting the subject through a piece of their physical substance

2: Known – the caster has frequently interacted personally with the subject, or is targeting the subject through live electronic communication or through an important friend or possession

3: Acquainted – the caster met and interacted with the subject casually, distantly, or occasionally, or is targeting the subject through a photo or other accurate representation

4: Encountered – the subject has been met, held, or touched by the caster once

5: Described – the caster has never encountered the subject but knows about them

N/A: Unknown connections are beyond the reach of sympathy factors

+ 1: The subject has at least two dots of Fame or Occultation, and isn’t otherwise Intimate or better

+ 1: The caster doesn’t know the subject’s real name

A sympathetic link’s connection to a target degrades separately from the casting mage’s personal connection to that target, so a mage launching a prolonged sympathetic attack or surveillance campaign benefits from having multiple connections to their target to cycle through. An entire link degrades even if only a piece of it is used, so mincing up an object might make for easier transport but doesn’t multiply that object’s sympathetic longevity.

Samples of a target’s substance, such as locks of hair or slivers of bark, are considered separate links if they came about through separate events. Each jab of a hypodermic needle produces a sympathetically distinct blood sample, but that sample can’t be later subdivided, and after-the-fact collections such as “the blood she spilled during that fight” or “the hair he lost to that haircut” are generally considered single objects and measured out by the scene. The storyteller is the ultimate arbiter of what counts as a single working link.

Body samples don’t remain sympathetically useful indefinitely. Eyelashes or skin flakes last a day, while splashes of blood, scraps of flesh, and other samples suggesting lethal damage (even if no wounds were actually marked on anyone’s character sheet) are good for a month. Irreplaceable parts such as eyes or hands retain their sympathy indefinitely as long as they’re preserved in recognizable form. For creatures like vampires that can naturally regenerate severed body parts, even limbs and organs don’t count as irreplaceable under most circumstances.

Patterning and making magic can improve a sympathetic connection beyond its normal rating. Artificially inflated connections linger as long as other aftereffects of the spell that made them would, and might be indefinite as a result of making magic. An augmented connection that degrades from involuntary use or other effects won’t regenerate above its natural level, however.

Unraveling and unmaking can similarly weaken or destroy an existing sympathetic link. Such sympathies only restore themselves naturally; a mage can instantly regain a “Described” connection with anyone they can think of and remember, but must meet that person again to develop an “Encountered” connection, and so on.

Sympathy Degradation: Sympathetic connections weaken one step each time they’re tapped against the will of at least one endpoint, usually by a spell whose resistance a target doesn’t opt to forgo. Direct connections between people based on familiarity regenerate by one step each day those connections go untouched by magic of at least covert aspect, whether resisted or not. Connections between people and inanimate sympathetic links only regenerate in this way if their endpoints wish them to, so material vectors for sympathetic attack tend to be disposable.

Ritual perfecting spells whose net successes at least equal a connection’s total current distance (as measured in sympathy factors required to bridge it) can restore degraded connections to their natural value. Since connections immediately degrade following uninvited use, this won’t completely repair connections to unwilling targets. Sympathies transformed by patterning or created by making start fresh and undamaged regardless of their old status, but similarly and immediately degrade one step if their endpoints didn’t want them in the first place. Making spells can prevent degradation from occurring at all while those spells are sustained, but once they cease to be sustained will cause one step of degradation just as any uninvited spell would.

Sympathetic Casting: Space magic functions normally on within the caster’s sensory range, and no special effort or preparation is required for a mage to teleport to a somewhere they can see, immobilize someone they’re touching, or otherwise affect their surroundings.

Mages can use Space magic to project their actions or other spells at sympathetic distance, affecting targets beyond line of sight. Affecting a distant target always requires sympathy factors, and always creates a two-way, reciprocal link; in any turn that the caster can perceive and affect the target, the target can perceive and affect the caster as though within arm’s reach. The link created by covert spells is only perceptible and therefore usable by characters who can perceive space magic at work, or who have some power appropriate to the magic being used at long range; for instance, a telepathic vampire might be able to strike back against covert mind-reading or emotional influence. Vulgar spells cast at sympathetic range always render the caster obvious and directly accessible to the target, able to be seen or even touched from some abstruse direction.

Knowing and Signifying: Space 1 can examine sympathetic connections themselves to infer purely spatial information about distant targets, such as how far away those targets are or if those targets are shielded against scrying. The weaker a sympathetic connection is, the more difficult it becomes to learn spatial information about its endpoint.

Knowing spells compare scrutiny successes to a connection’s sympathetic distance; successes at least equal to the distance yield general information, while successes at least double the distance produce precise or detailed data. Covert or vulgar Signifying spells apply Potency in place of scrutiny successes to the same end. Investigating a sympathetic connection itself requires only that the mage have access to either endpoint; the caster doesn’t need to know either endpoint’s name.

Ruling: Conjunctional use of space 2 sends information along sympathetic conduits and allows purely sensory or communicative spells to affect targets at sympathetic range. The caster and subject can’t affect each other’s minds or bodies, but can make themselves and their surroundings seen, heard, and understood.

Weaving: Conjunctional use of space 3 compresses distance and allows the caster to affect far targets, but not move anything between their location and that of the target, as long as an unobstructed path between themselves and their target exists. Spontaneous spells can reach hundreds of yards and obviate the need for precision factors; ritual spells can reach any distance, provided a path exists.

Patterning: Conjunctional use of space 4 directly attaches one location to another, and allows for full contact with lasting consequences, and might leave either party in either location.

Spells using ruling, weaving, or patterning can directly bridge a sympathetic connection to directly interact with distant targets or alter the sympathies to those target. Such spells don’t need to overcome any sympathetic gap through degree of success or potency, and instead incorporate one or more sympathy factors, becoming more expensive to cast. If the caster doesn’t know their target’s name, they treat their sympathetic connection to their target as though it were one step worse. This penalty only applies if the target is a sentient being with the capacity to know its own name; an anonymous person or dog is harder to sympathetically affect than an anonymous ant or gravestone.

Aftereffects

The most common consequence of space magic is the long-term reconfiguration of sympathetic connections. Space can also leave subjects suffering frequent vertigo, grappling with a muddled sense of direction, or, of course, stranded on the wrong side of the planet. Portals, extradimensional spaces, infinite loops, and other impossible topologies can only exist through sustained magic, but objects or places that have been moved, torn to pieces, or banished completely from reality stay in whatever state Space left them in.

Initiate of Space (●)

Initiates become aware of the structure of space and the web of connections undergirding that structure. They can investigate existing sympathies and mark them for other initiates to distinguish. The sympathy factors separating a mage from some other target speak to the difficulty of revealing general spatial information about that target; produce precise information is even more difficult. Sensory spells of this level can boost attempts to navigate or orient one’s self.

Knowing space allows a mage to analyze sympathetic connections – usually either those between things they can see and distant things they’re personally aware of, or between multiple things they can see. It’s possible to observe and attempt to categorize the sympathetic connections radiating from a target in general, but this usually involves sorting through impossibly dense nests of information. Concentrated on a sympathetic connection, knowing can reveal spatial information about that connection’s endpoint, such as its distance, direction, protection against spatial manipulation, or proximity to a ban or portal. The caster can determine a connection’s strength, integrity, or magical activity, and can discern whether anything in the scene is connected to them or something else they’re connected to. They can also determine the properties of portals, wards, and other spatial phenomena.

Measure Sympathy (Space ●/Sensory/Knowing) Each scrutiny success rolled for this spell allows the caster to determine the strength of the subject’s sympathy to something else in the scene, or to something the caster is familiar with.

Signifying space inscribes messages that other space mages can read or causes elements of space to reveal themselves to all observers. A spell might highlight an object’s symmetry or lack thereof, render the length of a hallway easy to estimate, or delineate the edges of an invisible portal. With sympathy factors, a signifying spell can reveal spatial information about the far end of a sympathetic connection, such as the distance to its endpoint or the presence of other branching sympathies.

Straightedge (Space ●/Covert/Signifying) This spell draws a perfectly straight line at any angle to the horizontal through space itself, such that even the uninitiated can intuitively follow it. It can therefore subtly help to aim projectiles, guide construction projects, or otherwise measure the world.

Finder (Space ●/Covert/Knowing, Signifying) This spell analyzes a sympathetic connection, revealing the distance and direction to the connection’s endpoint. The sympathetic distance to the sought-after target speak to the difficulty of pointing the caster in the right direction and affording a reliable estimate of how far the target is, such as “hundreds of miles” or “within a block." At a higher difficulty, the mage can exactly learn the subject’s location. This spell can immediately pinpoint targets already in sensory range and therefore at zero sympathetic distance, making it useless to hide in plain sight or rely on disguises.

Unveiling space reveals the contours of space to the caster’s senses, allowing a mage to perfectly estimate distances, flawlessly orient themselves in any environment, or detect the boundaries of portals, wards, and other spatial phenomena. Unveiling can immediately detect sympathetic links between subjects in sensory range, and can gauge and examine how many strong sympathetic links extend from a subject and if any of those links are behaving strangely.

Sense Displacement (Space ●/Sensory/Unveiling) This spell attunes the caster’s kinesthetic sense to space itself, allowing them to feel exactly when, how far, and how fast they’re moving. Mages with sharp memories can perfectly gauge their absolute positions relative to their last known location.

Internal Compass (Space ●/Sensory/Unveiling) While this spell is active, the caster has perfect positional and spatial awareness. They have an infallible sense of direction, an intuitive sense for true north, and the ability to pinpoint position if they’re in a general area they’ve used this spell in before.

Special: A space mage and their familiar are always aware of each other's relative position.

Spirit Techniques

Purview: animistic behavior, anthropomorphism, concept expression, emergent behavior, essence, memetic propagation, spirits, the spirit world

Something’s spirit is its supervening nature, its core definition that’s evolved from otherwise incidental form and function. A spirit directs and animate its source, reifying an essence that transcends and often outlives the source’s material particulars. All spirits vie for survival, whether they’re born of living things, earthly elements, or spellings of words, and each succeeds or fails in a savage struggle against its closest competitors based on its fidelity to its own identity and its capacity for viral spread. Essence follows existence to the extent that spirits manifest independently in entire ecologies of otherworldly creatures, though the spirit world is largely hidden in the shadow of the material one.

Spirit aspiry actualizes and manipulates the emergent essences of subjects both concrete and abstract, as well as the ephemeral beings and circumstances those essences generate. It can control how things, places, and ideas express themselves to their surroundings, and can empower, transform, or enslave the spirits themselves. Almost anything can give rise to a spirit in either sense of the word, whether a creature, object, place, or concept, and spirit aspiry can deal with the spirit of an animal as easily as the spirit of a meadow or the spirit of the law. Sapient creatures, for whatever reason, don’t have spirits of their own, but do produce phenomena of potential spiritual significance. A human’s religion, a vampire’s bloodlust, and a werewolf’s body count are all potential fodder for spirits and spirit aspiry.

Spirit aspiry often stirs the abstract and inanimate to life and activity. It causes seemingly random qualities or behaviors, such as an animal’s curiosity, a crossbow's ability to fire, or a song’s memorability to manifest with coordinated agency. Animals and people might indulge archetypical instincts or urges, concepts might leap to the forefronts of minds, and objects or places might take on disinct vibes or more vigorously fulfill their functions. A crossbow can’t aim and fire itself, but it can weigh suddenly on its strap to remind its carrier that it’s there, pull its holder’s hand hungrily towards a target, or jam itself out of spite if it feels it’s been misused.

Resonance is crucial to spirit. The emotional or conceptual tenor of a thing controls the kind of spiritual presence that thing will evolve, and the denizens of the spirit world starve or flourish based on their access to resonant essence of appropriate aspect. Spirit devices can easily identify resonance and almost always draw on it, but can’t actually change it; the underlying nature of a thing is spirit’s source, not its purview. Similarly, spirit aspiry can affect what kind of spiritual activity develops from an object or idea, but doesn’t edit the object or idea directly. Something with an altered or nullified resonance can still have spiritual significance; a knife that’s had its emotional undertones erased by prime aspiry remains meaningful to a spirit of knives, or of metal, or of sharp edges.

In the physical world, spirit aspiry often rouses or transforms spirits in the wake of its immediate influence on people, places, or concepts, and magic meant to contact or influence something’s inchoate essence frequently puts the caster in contact with a fully-realized and independent spirit if one already exists. Spirit is just as effective in places like the underworld that can’t metaphysically support a parallel spirit world. In such places, Spirit devices might have nonexistent, subtle, or short-lived aftereffects, or they might spur the gestation of one of those rare spirits that can sustain themselves in normally inhospitable environments.
— Aspirist of Spirit Falmo Darkwater

Aspects

Sensory spirit primacy allows mages to read resonance, investigate the lifelike qualities of their surroundings, or perceive and investigate spirits, the Gauntlet, and other elements of the spirit world.

Covert spirit primacy exerts unseen influence to awaken and command spirits. It can cause things to exercise their natures in ways that seem coincidental to observers or directly manipulate incorporeal beings and phenomena.

Vulgar spirit primacy manifests spirits blatantly. Totemic avatars coalesce around mundane subjects roused to action, and already-existing spirits might be dragged across the Gauntlet, materialized, or otherwise made to grossly intrude into worlds they don’t belong in.

Backlashes

Spirit backlashes usually warp or agitate existent spirits, or imbue normally mindless phenomena with random agency. Mild backlashes can create distracting or misleading impressions of the desires of local surroundings, while powerful backlashes can drive machinery to bloodthirsty frenzy, tear the Gauntlet asunder, or fuse local spirits into maddened hybrids.

Mechanics

Spirit magic can boost or hinder attempts to interact with the environment or use equipment by compelling the cooperation or reticence of the spirits involved. It can produce minions capable of launching attacks, blockading movement, or otherwise acting on the scene. Such creatures either boost the actions of those they serve or take instant actions in their controllers’ steads. Severe consequences of spirit primacy can trap targets in the Twilight or Shadow or leave targets immobilized or possessed.

Spirit primacy can deal in ideas, organizations, and other abstracts. Primacy meant to analyze, awaken, communicate with, or reify an intangible concept treats the concept itself as a single target. However, a mage can only affect the particular, contingent instance of a concept present in the immediate scene. A spirit device might interact with a local manifestation of community, or orc music, or state-sanctioned violence, but not the universal versions of those phenomena. Affecting the activity of a concept across an entire building, cave system, or municipality takes area factors. Spells that manipulate abstracts in order to tangibly affect specific characters or objects need area, size or target factors commensurate with their intended scope.

Spirits

Spirit primacy often deals with independent spirits, supernatural creatures with their own powers and agendas. Spirit primacy often manipulates the various manifestations of spirits, but can’t directly reproduce the abilities that spirits wield. Spirit primacy can boost a spirit’s mundane actions, change if and how a spirit manifests, or fuel a spirit’s powers.

A mage can quickly force a spirit under their control to deploy one of its powers, but must pay the primacist cost in willpower or essence themselves.

All spirits have bans and banes. Forcing a spirit to subject itself to its bane is treated as a direct damage spell and requires appropriate damage factors. Spirits can’t be compelled to contravene their bans for the same reason that a human can’t be compelled to fly up into the air; the best a primacist can do is to ritually reconstruct a spirit into a new being with a new ban. Attempts to reforge or create a spirit possessed of powers the mage can’t reproduce through their arcana.

Twilight

Spirit primacy can interact with intangible spirits, render incorporeal spirits material, or even translate physical beings and objects incorporeal. The Twilight accessible through spirit is distinct from that inhabited by other ephemeral beings such as ghosts, and spirit primacy can’t affect or even detect such beings absent the use of conjunctional arcana. Similarly, ghosts or untethered consciousnesses can’t perceive or interact with Twilight beings in Spirit’s purview. No Twilight exists in the Shadow; there, all beings are equally material.

Spirit primacy can translate physical things into Twilight or materialize Twilight spirits and objects. It can also affect Twilight targets while the caster is corporeal, or vice versa. Beings or objects rendered incorporeal aren’t in spirit’s purview the same way that natural spirits are; a brick shunted into Twilight is still subject to matter, although a primacist would need to be able to perceive it before they could affect it with spells.

Vulgar interactions between physical and Twilight characters are always reciprocal to some degree. Apprentice spells that affect a spirit’s influences and manifestations empower the spirit to use influences or manifestations on the caster. Primacists who, using weaving, reach magically from one state to the other become visible and tangible to the other for at least a turn, and a tool or weapon’s physical or twilight presence bleeds out to suffuse its owner when that tool is put to use.

The Shadow

The Shadow is a plane of existence that mirrors the physical world. All physical objects create shadowy representations of themselves in astral space. Living things have brighter forms on the astral plane, which is called an aura. The awakened have auras that are brighter and more colorful than their mundane counterparts. Nothing has a "physical" presence in the Shadow unless it has an astral form, though even then, nothing is truly physical in the Shadow.

The Shadow is a warped reflection of the physical world in which everything is alive; anything of import that happens in the material realm may birth a reflection in the Shadow, and that reflection may live on long after the original is gone. Thus demolished buildings, ancient trees and extinct animals may all still exist there in spiritual form. The only exception are sapient beings: people are eerily absent from the Shadow. This may be because only these creatures possess souls. (Ghosts, the echoes sometimes left behind when humans die, are composed of ephemera but exist in Twilight, not in the Shadow.)

Travel between the material and shadow realms is impossible because of a barrier known as the Gauntlet, except at places of great spiritual energy known as loci. Because of the Gauntlet, few mortals are aware of the Shadow; only spiritual creatures and mages adept in the spirit magic commonly interact with it and its denizens.

The Gauntlet

A metaphysical barrier called the Gauntlet separates the Shadow from the material world. The Gauntlet doesn’t impede spells that establish perception or communication, but is applied as a penalty to Perception rolls made for a mage to notice details of one world from the other.

The Gauntlet doesn’t directly resist spells cast in one world that transform the other. However, it takes Patterning spirit to project the effects of other arcana across the Gauntlet, and a spirit or other target can elect to hide behind the local Gauntlet and use the better of its own efforts or the local Gauntlet rating to resist the spell. As with spells cast from or into the Twilight, magic that pierces the Gauntlet always allows the target at least a turn to interact with the caster.

Any spells that actually transfer something on one side of the Gauntlet to the other always contest the local Gauntlet rating. Spirit primacists can draw on loci to ease the passage across the Gauntlet. Any primatic device meant to project effects or move subjects across the Gauntlet at a locus isn’t opposed by the local Gauntlet rating, and takes full effect as soon as it’s shaped.

Aftereffects

Spirit devices often alter supernatural status quos by awakening, relocating, or transforming local spirits, who proceed to act on their own. Spirits befriended or enslaved through spirit primacy often serve as allies, retainers, or staff. Devices can also alter if and how customs or ideas spread, or lend tangible quirks and personalities to otherwise inert objects or places. Aftereffects of this kind can work subtle but lasting changes to the social or physical landscape.

Initiate of Spirit (●)

Initiates become aware of the spirits around them and make spirits aware in turn. They can directly determine resonance qualities with the speed and certainty of a knowing spell. They can enjoy sensory boosts on attempts to navigate social situations, predict autonomous behavior, or track the spread of ideas. They can perceive, analyze, or and communicate with independent spirits or enjoy sensory boosts on attempts to find them. Significant successes yield hints at a spirit’s bane or ban, while the severe consequences of a signifying spell can reveal such secrets more directly. With basic success on a scrutiny roll penalized by the local Gauntlet rating, they can peer into or out of the spirit world.

Knowing spirit analyzes the essences of subjects. It can analyze a subject’s resonance or its lifelike, animistic properties, revealing metaphorical fears, hungers, ages, or means of procreation. Knowing can glean that a package yearns to explode, that a fire has been burning for a scant few minutes, or that a joke is wanting for retellings and going stale. Knowing can analyze independent spirits, gauging attributes, influences, numina, and rank and hinting at deeper properties. It can measure a subject’s essence reservoir, tell if something is tethered to or possessed by a hidden spirit, and discover the effects of numina, gifts, or other spirit powers.

Predict Spirit (Spirit ●/Sensory/Knowing) This technique reveals what kind of spirit a scrutinized subject would likely produce given its resonance and properties. The degree of success determines a number of allowed questions about the spirit’s powers or proclivities and can therefore provide indirect clues as to the subject’s nature. If the subject already has an independent spirit, this spell indicates that creature’s likely starting properties but not how it’s grown and changed with time.

Intuit Wants (Spirit ●/Sensory/Knowing) This spell reveals what a scrutinized object, place, or abstraction “wants” to do, revealing the subject’s most immediate and pressing desire and finding subtler urges with further scrutiny successes.

Signifying spirit makes the caster known to spirits and makes spirits known in their reflection of the caster. The essences of things, ideas, or processes can be made subtly or blatantly perceptible, and their random spiritual manifestations can be directed to reflect the caster’s nimbus or intentions. The caster can make themselves understood to and through spirits, imprinting messages into traces of essence or causing spirits to instinctively understand their words despite a lack of facility with the Shadow’s language. The presences and properties of spirits themselves can be revealed to onlookers, even to the point of causing a spirit’s appearance to reflect the creature’s own ban or bane. Signifying can also aid attempts to communicate with other beings, but merely boosts normal attempts to get ideas across rather than enabling complex, fluid communication.

Whispered Wants (Spirit ●/Covert/Signifying) This spell causes a subject’s essence to wordlessly broadcast its immediate desires. Even the oblivious can pick up without quite knowing why that a crossbow needs its string changed or a performance yearns for applause.

Unveiling spirit makes spirits, both inchoate and coherent, perceptible to the caster. It allows a mage to immediately recognize things in their environment that have been invested with emotional or spiritual significance or which are currently subject to spiritual manifestations, influences, or numina, though only scrutiny through knowing primacy reveals specific details. Unveiling allows a caster to immediately gauge the local Gauntlet rating, notice spiritual phenomena such as loci or verges, or perceive spirits in Twilight.

Speak With Spirits (Spirit ●/Covert/Knowing, Signifying, Unveiling) This spell enables the caster to perceive independent spirits in Twilight and to communicate with them despite language barriers. The spirit of the caster’s words is translated rather than the definition, so this spell hinders attempts by either party to lie through omission or semantics.

Special: A spirit mage and their familiar automatically recognize spirits on sight.

Time Techniques

Purview: divination, duration, history, parallel timelines, postcognition, prediction, second chances, speed, stasis, wear and tear

Time, the gross arcanum of arcadia, holds dominion over the flow and sequence of events. Time is less a force than it is a medium; it doesn’t make things happen but rather allows things to happen, to concretely have happened, and to have changed the world by having happened. In the fallen world, time flows steadily: the present snakes relentlessly forward, devouring the haze of endless potential that is the future and trailing a singular, coherent past in its wake. Time isn’t the same thing as history, and has no special interest or function in ensuring that one event happens rather than another or that the past remains static or even makes logical sense. Time isn’t the same thing as age, either; the former usually inflicts the latter, but doesn’t have to.

Time magic reads, bends, or interrupts this perpetual flow. It can investigate or alter how patterns are affected by time’s flow, changing if and how things age. Divination is an active thing, requiring that the time stream itself be bidden to reveal the information it’s gathered in passing, and prophecy is harder still. There’s no default future that all time mages see; a forward-looking augury must actually sculpt the trajectory of the present, condensing the chaos of everything that might happen into the wavering notion of what will probably happen. Such auguries are best guesses as to a subject’s future based on the present, don’t take the caster’s own newfound knowledge into account, and grow increasingly unreliable the farther forward the mage looks. They are, however, consistent with each other – if a new augury contradicts an old one, it’s because something’s changed. Whether prophecy discovers the future or creates it is unclear, and so is whether a time mage alters the world or simply slips into whichever one of many worlds best suits their desires.

Time magic treats history as a passive recording and the future as unexplored terrain – neither are causal agents. Spells which read, occlude, or manipulate history do so from the present and so can preempt or follow each other as normal game actions do. A spell cast on Tuesday which shrouds Sunday from augury will have come too late to foil a divination that happened on Monday. Magic that visibly interacts with or alters the past only actually does so from the moment that magic is cast – scried-upon characters don’t notice anything strange on Sunday, but might on Monday suddenly remember being watched by a ghostly apparition and wonder why they didn’t react.

Time can scan the past and predict the future, but it can’t peer directly into the present, meaning anything happening in or simultaneous to the current scene – that takes Space magic. It takes around an hour for the turbulent action of the present to congeal into the static, intelligible past.
— Iyralbeth

Aspects

Sensory time primacy allows mages to perceive the flow of time itself. This allows for the detection of temporal anomalies and of other time magic, making it invaluable for detecting time-wielding spies or for receiving messages from the past or future. Sensory magic can also mark the flow of time, precisely measuring durations or determining the ages of scrutinized objects or persons.

Covert time primacy culls data from the time stream or sends data through it, giving the caster or another target visions of the past or future. Covert primacy can influence time’s flow in ways technically tangible but too brief or subtle to register to human senses. A time mage might react with surprising speed or always seem to beat deadlines, but not blur from place to place. The onset of a complication might be strangely delayed, but a watched pot eventually boils.

Vulgar time primacy can grossly disrupt time’s flow. It can speed things up, slow things down, trap subjects in stasis or even cause alternate pasts, futures, and presents to bleed into the now. Vulgar auguries tangibly disrupt the time stream, causing apparitions of the targeted time to manifest around the caster and images of the caster to manifest in the targeted time. A time spell can alter the present by changing the past, but in a limited and disjointed fashion that only manifests from the present onwards and usually only affects the spell’s subjects.

Backlashes

Weak backlashes can mess with bystanders’ senses of time, cause durations to elapse at the wrong speed, or foul up divinations.

Stronger backlashes slow, hasten, or rewind events that happen within them.

Severe time backlashes can overlay pasts, futures, or parallel presents onto the world. A character entering a severe time backlash might find themselves standing in the distant past or future, or struck repeatedly by attempts to erase them from continuity.

Mechanics

Targets reflexively resist attempts to read their past or future even if they can’t detect the attempt, unless they’re okay with or would be okay with being augured by the casting mage. Characters can’t passively resist being spied upon if they happen to be present in a time and place being augured through other vectors. Time magic can boost initiative, and boost or hinder actions that depend on speed and timing. Its serious consequences can disable targets in a variety of ways, and advanced applications might be able to directly inflict or heal damage by reopening old wounds or delaying new ones. Even total rewinds can’t restore lost primer or meta-game resources (e.g., rerolls) and can’t undo dramatic events such as mutation, soul loss, and death; such consequences stick with a pattern regardless.

Time spells don’t target the generic “past” or “future”, but specific events in their targets’ timelines. A spell doesn’t look “ten years ago”, but might look at “me, ten years ago” or “me, when I last fought”, formally targeting the caster in both cases. A Time spell needs target factors to ensure that it finds a moment containing predefined sets of characters and things; “when my master and my lover last met on my roof” has three targets and therefore requires two target factors.

Prophecy

Time ●●: The mage can determine what’s most likely going to happen absent interference and before the fact of their now knowing the future is taken into account.
Time ●●●: The mage can learn the results of specific hypothetical actions they might take, or at least have control over.
Time ●●●●: The mage can learn what kind of actions they or other targets of the spell would have to take in order to bring a hypothetical future about.

Sometimes, the storyteller honestly doesn’t know when and how a future event is going to happen, often because it depends on random chance or player decisions.

In such cases, a spell’s results are murky and cryptic, but that spell can be sustained in latent form. A latent prophecy is sustained at the usual cost, but can’t be dispelled and has no time limit: rather than ending after an hour, it lingers indefinitely, even through the mage’s sleep. As soon as the prophesied event occurs, the mage can release the spell to to become retroactively aware. This gives a player license to have their characters make reasonable offscreen preparations and to show up in, avoid, or otherwise act on the prophesied scene.

Perceiving and Reacting to Divination

Magical senses can detect when their user is the target of a divination. Augured mages can potentially respond with a spell of their own, usually veiling to hide their pasts or fraying to cloud their futures. Times in which a character was shrouded by sustained time magic, or which have been retroactively occluded by patterning, attempt to resist competing time magic.

Mage Sight also allows a mage to immediately “remember” someone or something else in their past being covertly augured while they were present. Such a mage isn’t the spell’s formal target and can’t block or resist it directly. They must rule time to scrutinize the spell and pattern time to retroactively shield their own past from it.

Sympathy

Time spells that investigate or affect the present must be cast at sensory range unless paired with space. Time spells that scan or interact with the past or future are cast at sympathetic range without need for conjunctional acana. A spell that draws on the past or future to transform the present needs sensory range to its present target as well as sympathy to whatever other target’s timeline is being used.

Time spells need sympathy factors to access the timeline of something the caster doesn’t have at hand. A mage might have a “sensory” connection to the parking lot they’re standing in but only an “encountered” connection to the meadow that lot replaced. A handful of soil, mouse skeleton, or other relic of the meadow could allow for an “intimate” connection, since it would count as a physical part of the target; a geological survey or photograph of the meadow as it was would suffice for encountered. Simply declaring a target time without possessing any personal or physical link (“where I’m standing, five thousand years ago”) means dealing with a “described” sympathetic connection. Time spells always use a mage’s current sympathy to a target, so it’s harder to see the past of a friend who’s grown distant or a house last seen years ago.

Access to parallel timelines takes sympathy to the source of that timeline’s divergence. Timelines stemming from the mage’s recent actions or events in the current scene (such as a one in which someone was shot rather than missed, or in which a door was opened rather than closed) are sensory, but increasingly obscure and divergent timelines are increasingly costly to access. A world in which Ka-Sahan still stands is only described unless the mage has a relic of or deep connection to whatever event might have caused, in another world, Ka-Sahan to not be razed.

As usual, sympathetic connections tapped against either endpoint’s will degrade one step and only heal each day they’re untouched by magic. Otherwise, time can’t alter sympathy directly.

Be aware that, by default and unless modified otherwise, all snotling enhancements have a sympathy of 0 and therefore must be used on a visible target.

Aftereffects

Spells can leave subjects with skewed timing or alter the rate at which perishable materials decay. Time often eases or complicate other divinations. Ritual time spells that rewrite portions of history or fuse one timeline with another can create lasting, dramatic changes. People tend to take such things in stride, assuming their memories are playing tricks on them if today’s status quo doesn’t seem to match yesterday’s.

Initiate of Time (●)

Initiates observe time in action and leave their mark upon it, occasionally availing themselves of sensory boosts on certain actions.

Knowing time allows a mage to measure time’s characteristics and parameters. It can determine how long something has existed in its current form, whether a creature or object. It can tell how a character, object, or place has been or is being affected by the passage of time. Knowing time can be used to intuit how long a process or activity has been going on or how much time an otherwise predictable process has left. It can also investigate the parameters of temporal anomalies or time-related supernatural powers.

Measure Duration (Time ●/Sensory/Knowing) This enhancement allows a snotling to discern and communicate when an autonomous process will come to its natural end – it can predict the death of a houseplant, the detonation of a demolition charge, or the collapse of a burning building.

Tell Age (Time ●/Sensory/Knowing) This enhancement allows a mage to tell, with a moment’s observation, how long something has existed in its current form. It can tell when a book was bound, how long someone has had their current haircut, or when an object was last repaired.

Signifying time allows a character to express their magical signature through manifestations of time’s passing or the flow of time itself. The ticking of timepieces, the corrosion of metal, and other continuous processes can be made to reflect the caster, though sometimes with a long delay. The mage can also leave lasting marks on the present or another time they’ve accessed through other magic, leaving messages for other time mages to read.

Time Capsule (Time ●/Covert/Signifying) A snotling gains the uncanny ability to tease the threads of local time into a particular shape, leaving a message for other augurs to read – the caster might note something of interest in the scene, warn other mages not to scry further, or make notes for their own benefit.

Unveiling time lets a mage perceive time’s action. It can recognize timekeeping devices, estimate ages relative to the mage or other elements of the scene, and recognizes whether something is getting older, growing stronger, or otherwise changing with time. Unveiling time can also grant a mage a flawless sense of time, allowing them to measure the duration of anything they experience, always know what time it is relative to whatever their favorite reference point is, and enjoy a sensory boost to initiative and actions dependent on timing.

Detect Immortality (Time ●/Sensory/Unveiling) A snotling with this enhancement can tell on sight whether something is failing to age towards death. Vampires, elves, spirits, and beneficiaries of certain time spells stand out, but this rote doesn’t distinguish between them.

Special: A time mage and their familiar are always aware what time it is.

Apprentice of Time (●●)

Apprentices can activate and direct time’s inherent capabilities. They can read the past or future, potentially boosting actions whose success immediate pre- or post-cognition would ensure. They can investigate the histories or likely futures of targets, learning information or predicting actions.

Perfecting time organizes the time stream. By creating self-sustaining patterns that can survive the chaos of the indeterminate future, the mage can learn what will happen in a target’s future given present conditions. Long-term precognition allows for planning and strategy, while short-term precognition can boost attempts to parry blows, navigate traffic, or otherwise perform tasks requiring rapid reaction and adaptation. Perfecting spells can also bolster time against manipulation or degradation, preventing subjects from being slowed or warped by other magic.

Moment of Weakness (Time ●●/Covert/Unveiling, Perfecting) A snotling gains the ability to share a vision of the next point in time its target will be particularly vulnerable – hurt, tired, or low on willpower or other resources. Modest rolls to gather information may determine when and where, with more difficult successes filling in other helpful details.

Predict Intruders (Time ●●/Covert/Unveiling, Perfecting) This snotling can divine the next time when a place will be entered by unauthorised persons, as the mage defines them (and subject to occultation or other supernatural counterfeiting of authority). Increasing levels of success can determine more of (in order) When, Who and How the entry will take place; beyond that are extra facts useful to someone determined to stop it.

Right on Time (Time ●●/Covert/Unveiling, Perfecting) The snotling can ensure that, within reasonable limits of the possible, you always arrive at the moment you mean to. This moment may be specified relative to the actions of others at the place of your arrival, but in that case they become a target of the power.

Ruling time can force the present to recall and reveal the past, allowing a mage to gaze into history. Such magic might deliver pieces of information in flashes of insight or allow a mage to watch history play out at normal speed. Ruling time can also activate or delay the onset of any steady, autonomous change with a set timer or duration, even halting ticking clocks or hissing fuses at vulgar aspect. Vulgar ruling of time can suspend aging entirely, but also freeze the subject’s ability to recover using the passage of time, such as rest or natural healing.

Glimpse Origin (Time ●●/Covert/Unveiling, Ruling) The snotling gains the ability to call up the moment that its subject came into being or entered their current state. It might show a character’s birth, training, or most recent promotion, or it might show the scene in which a wound was inflicted or a contract was signed.

Veiling time falsifies the properties of timelines or hides them outright. Veiling time can’t fake the contents of the past without use of other arcana, but can change apparent dates or ages or block divinations.

Private Past (Time ●●/Covert/Veiling) The snotling gains the ability to contest any attempts to view the target’s past. The target appears veiled and indistinct in divinations that don’t target but incidentally include them. They still interact with the viewed scene in this form, so their actions can be deduced from context. A similar rote uses fraying to stop the caster’s future from being predicted.

Disciple of Time (●●●)

Disciples can also warp time’s substance, boosting or hindering a variety of rolls or wholly disabling targets by speeding or slowing the flow of time. They can inflict direct bashing damage on targets whose health or integrity relies on continuing and well-ordered activity.

Fraying time weakens time’s coherence and consequences. Fraying can contest attempts to control or organize time and render the future scattered and chaotic, foiling prophecy. It can also ruin a target’s ability to tell and keep time and cause the passage of time to become chaotic and disjointed. This can cause sounds to garble, machines to malfunction as parts move out of sequence, or living creatures to lose all coordination or even suffer bashing damage as their bodily processes slip out of sync. Fraying doesn’t deny a target any defense to attack, however – threats that come too close become as disordered as the enchanted target.

Scorched Time (Time ●●●/Vulgar/Fraying) The construct can violently roil local time in its target area such the scene becomes impossible to augur by mortal time magic. This spell is usually cast with area factors, and its after-effects render the area’s history murky and confusing.

Preservation (Time ●●●/Covert/Fraying) The snotling can protect its master and their personal possessions from everyday wear. Items don’t fray, dull, or rust, and the caster tends not to callous or wrinkle and ages at about eighty percent as fast as they should. This spell resists magic that would rot or age the caster or their person. A version of this ability using unmaking (rank five) can halt the subject’s aging entirely.

Weaving time can speed and slow action. Sped-up targets divide the time needed to complete extended tasks and receive boosts to initiative and a variety of actions. Slowed targets are hindered and find their opponents boosted. Severe consequences can slow a target to near immobility, freezing characters and objects in place. Stopped characters can’t act, but are still able to defend themselves; incoming attacks bring their own time with them into the victim’s personal space. In combination with perfecting, weaving can glimpse hypothetical futures predicated on actions under the mage’s direct control – the caster can learn what would happen if they were to push a button, or go down a fork in the road, or otherwise make some decision that’s still up in the air, by perfecting their intent to take that action and weaving it forward.

Haste (Time ●●●/Vulgar/Weaving) Time seems to slow down for the user when the construct is activated, allowing them to act with incredible speed. This spell boosts initiative, attempts to attack and defend, and other short-term physical actions and multiplies the subject’s ground speed.

Sense of the Flux (Time ●●●/Covert/Perfecting, Weaving) A snotling is imbued with a feel for the weight of events. It can sense and communicate the general impact of an event that is under it or its master’s control.

The Book of Time

The Vuorinen Treatise on Precedence and Antecedence, Annotated by Ergholt the Precise

Combined Techniques

Time + Life

Twenty-Something (Time ●●, Life ●●/Covert/Veiling, Perfecting) The snotling can grant its master the appearance and physical resilience of a young adult, boosting resistance against fatigue. Not only do they have the boundless energy of a teen, but they will never appear more than 25 years old – even under magical scrutiny. The vain mage is no more physically powerful than before, but can easily pull all-nighters, stay healthy on takeout, and revise the definition of drinking “too much”.

Sources

These rules are based on an adaptation of White Wolf's Mage: the Ascension rules. This adaptation, and the original rules of Mage: the Ascension, will be referenced where the provided rules are insufficiently precise and as a starting point for the working of primacy magic not discussed here.

The previous version of ogre primacy may be found here.