MAGEBLADE: magicky swag to buy

I almost never let characters buy magic items. Make, yes; buy, not really.

But in the first Mageblade in the City of Khosura there’s a priest called Caius bin Caius that sells potions. So we tried. And we liked it. So, there you go.

Here’s the list of stuff commonly available for sale if there’s an alchemist:

• Blazing Oil: 20c: Catches fire super-easily, deals 1d6 damage for 2 rounds.
• Oil of Fire Protection: 300c: half damage from fire. If a save is allowed to reduce or deny damage, an extra save is allowed to reduce or deny damage.
• Healing Geode: 500c: Once per day heals 1d6 cuts or blunt damage at the cost of 1 mana.
• Thaumaturgic Gem: 500c: Once per day heals 1d6 burn or cold or acid damage at the cost of 1 mana.

And this from a pharmacist:

• Healing potion: 50c: heals 1d6+3 damage.
• Antidote: 100c: counters poison effects.
• Life potion: 250c: heals 3d6+5 or 3 sips for 1d6+3.
• Balm of Restoration: 2000c: Heals 1d6 stat damage. It’s also a material component for the Death unto Life spell.

And this from an Apotropaist (or the kind of witch that removes evil eyes or whatnots):

• Goat: 4c: it’s a goat, it bleats, it screams like a human. It’s great for sacrifices or monster fodder. It poops at random.
• Blessed Water: 40c: deals 2d4 to undeads.
• Hamza: +4:300, +6:900: protects the character from ill luck. When the character fails a save, add the bonus of the amulet creator to the roll: if the new total passes, the character saved and the amulet breaks.
• Candle of Respite: 1200c: it removes the curse, but only if the creator level is at least the same as the curse caster.

DODECATHAUMAGRAMS OF THE MANIFOLD NEXUS

The Great Bureaucracy is busy writing a whole lot of thaumagrams writs, busy somewhere in the infinite tangle that is the Manifold Nexus. It does mostly bespoke jobs by hand for the Quaesitors and the Harassers, but a whole lot of work is done with blocks bearing the mirror image of a thaumagram in relief. The block is inked with inks made with a base of aged blessed wizard blood, sinner bile and spider venom, then silk is applied on the block and rubbed energetically, impressing the design on the fabric. These writs are then left to dry until ready to be rolled, stamped and numbered, cased (usually in long hollow bones or tubes of iron or jade) and eventually shuffled along the multiverse crawlspace toward their destination.

ONE STEP BACK

Back in the day I read Orion by Masamune Shirow. It has some special juju babble that is fantastic, and it left me very impressed. Seska’s sheer badassery and curves also left a teenager Paolo very impressed.

Anyway, a whole lot of magic in Orion is based about written form. So calligraphy and power words and sigils and whatnot. Here Seska is trying to… I’m not sure. That comic is incredibly obscure. I think she drew a massive ward to keep out Susanoo the god of Storms and at the same time… monitor the water element or somesuch.

Also, Susanoo kicks so much ass in this comic. Probably because he’s a god.

A CATALOGUE OF THE DODECATHAUMAGRAMS

The name says that the DODECATHAUMAGRAMS are twelve:

1. VIOLENT DARKNESS VORTEX, which obfuscates the sight and the judgement but not the drive, leading the victim to inflict violence and dark sorcery on friends and foes alike. For one turn the victim decides whether to attack or cast an offensive spell, but the target is at random. Save negates.
2. BLEAK GLOOM OCTAGON, leaving the victim listless, incapable of acting for 1 turn. Save every round.
3. PURE CLEANSE CIRCLE, the victim is cleansed of all curses and negative spell effects for a day. No save.
4. UTTER DISPEL CROSS, the victim is completely purged from magic effects, and won’t be able to work magic or use magic items for the next 1d6 rounds either. Save to avoid.
5. RUBY FIRE BARBS, the victim catches fire and takes 1d6 damage every round for 1 turn. No save, but Stop, Drop & Roll grants a save to terminate the effect
6. WHITE SANCTUARY CIRCLE, a person stepping inside its bounds has an additional 50% save against any attack or negative spell, effect or ability. The Circle stop working if the subject leaves or commits an aggressive act, or after a day.
7. PURPLE DEMON TRIDENT, summons a 3 HD fire demon that every round deals 1d6 fire damage to everyone within 10′, save to halve. The demon is hellbent on arson, murder and jaywalking and totally not under the control of the caster. It burns off in 1 turn.
8. GOLD CHARM HEART, makes the victim totally fall in love with the writ-giver for 1 turn. Save negates.
9. GREEN LIFE SQUARE, heals 2d6 HP. Save negates, as this deals damage to undeads.
10. SILVER BANISH ASTERISK, banishing the victim for a day to their plane of origin. Works only on those that are not on their plane of origin. Save negates.

The eleventh and twelfth DODECATHAUMAGRAM have not been leaked yet.

There are a few ways of using the DODECATHAUMAGRAMS in your game. Mageblade will have another method, and it will be really important for one of the classes.

DODECATHAUMAGRAM WRITS

Writs are special scrolls that are used as melee weapons. Often the printed writs appear in the black market, or become available from bureaucrats in need of a quick penny, usually for at least 500-1000 coins each. They must be unrolled with two hands and then used to hit the opponent. This makes the awkward to use if you are busy with sword and shield already, unless you want to drop your weapon and shield, maybe?

Writs are single-use items. In melee, wield the writ and hit unarmored AC, save applies when specified above. In Into the Odd, they are weapons dealing 1d4-1 which, if they were to deal damage, instead do zero damage and affect the target if the save. As an alternative, they can be thrown up to 10′ away. Once the victim is hit, regardless of whether the victim saves, the scrip is ruined and usually dissipates entirely in thin blue smoke.

THAUMAGRAM ORDERS

The origins of the DODECATHAUMAGRAMS are uncertain. What’s surprising is that some cults worship icons of Saints or complex drawings that are, thaumaturgically speaking, isometrical to the DODECATHAUMAGRAMS. This might hint at a deeper trilaeral symmetry between the Left-Right Hand Path Correspondence, the Manifold Fractal and the Nature of Godhood. Or it might be entirely dumb chance. Or utter poppycock. Further research is warranted. The Great Bureaucracy is not bothered at all by this.

Clerics can be of one of these cults. They lose the Turn Undead capacity, but each cult has an icon they worship and use as holy symbol: pick one of the following invocations. The cleric can use the icon once a day, plus convert not-yet-cast spell slots of any level to power the icon. The icon is not applied, but simply shown to a victim or pointed toward a target within 10′ as an invocation is made, no touch attack needed.

1. ICON OF ST. SYT’S SUPPLICE BY LIEGE VASSAL is isometrical to VIOLENT DARKNESS VORTEX
2. ICON OF ST. CIUCO’S CONTEMPLATION OF ALTERNATIVES is isometrical to BLEAK GLOOM OCTAGON
3. ICON OF ST. HARALD’S BAPTISM IN THE RIVER is isometrical to PURE CLEANSE CIRCLE
4. ICON OF ST. MORNA’S RESPITE AT LAST is isometrical to UTTER DISPEL CROSS
5. ICON OF ST. BARNAS’S TANTRUM AT THE GATE is isometrical to RUBY FIRE BARBS
6. ICON OF ST. SCIURA’S CHILLING IN HER GROTTO is isometrical to WHITE SANCTUARY CIRCLE
7. FLAME OUROBOROS PATTERN is isometrical to PURPLE DEMON TRIDENT
8. STATUETTE OF THE SAUCY HONEY GODDESS is isomatrical to GOLD CHARM HEART
9. SNAKES TANGLE WEAVE is isometrical to GREEN LIFE SQUARE
10. OSMIUM CROSS WITH HOOKS POINTING TOWARDS SUNRISE is isometrical to SILVER BANISH ASTERISK

DODECATHAUMAGRAMMATA SCHOOL

What’s more concerning for the bureaucracy is that some of its secrets have leaked and some savants learnt how to simply trace the DODECATHAUMAGRAMS by hand, in a few seconds. Quaesitors are always on the lookout for this kind of infraction and, when found, Harassers are dispatched urgently to curb it and give an example to everybody.

Do you even Wonder & Wickedness? The DODECATHAUMAGRAMS can be used as W&W spells. To cast them, use the usual W&W rules, but to cast them the sorcerer simply traces the glyph mid air and then concludes it by touching the victim or the target. A touch melee attack might be needed. If the attack fails the sorcerer can of course try to touch the victim again in the next rounds.

Chthonic Codex: Progress, Spelunking Ferrets and Scapegoats

My three-weeks-long trip through Europe (Glasgow-London-Paris-Lausanne-Milan-Hamburg-Berlin-Glasgow) is now finished and I’m back at work.

There’s been progress with Academia Apocripha and Mystery & Mystagogues and Secret Santicore Mobile but since I spent two of the three weeks with an on and off sinusitis progress is less then expected. Sadly the Mystagogue of the Bridge of Bones was not available, so i spent a few days being completely useless but eating like a pro.

Anyway, school design and writeups are at a good point, more schools and more spells have been added. The count at the moment is 8 or 9 schools: the Great Schools of Necromancers, Chimerists, Fire Dervishes, Gatekeepers, Stargazers, plus the Great Workshop, the so-called School of the Unseen (which might be a yet-unobserved school of illusion, a school posing to be a lie pretending to be a school in hiding or might not even exist at all), the Chthonic Craft practised by Hypogean Ascetics, and possibly the lost School of Pharmacy (why lost? good question). Each school comes with 13 new spells, except Necromancy and Pharmacy which have the full panoply of AFG necromancy and physiurgy (that’s healing for you) because these spells are kind of needed anyway.

If I have time I might even “schoolify” all the AFG magic disciplines, bringing the number of schools to, erm, between 11 and 14 depending on how I feel about having these Moon Hunter weirdos and the arcanaluddite Troll Spellsmiths. And human sacrifices for demon-god-worshippers and their Goetia spells. Even if I don’t schoolify them all, we are talking of about 150 spells, half of them new, the other half from AFG, plus special a few game mechanics specific for every school, like the Elixirs from the School of Necromancy.

And there’s gonna be also other stuff. I expect the PDF for CC:AA to be ready in January, and CC:M&M in February. Bookbinding and box-making to happen in March, shipping as they come ready.

Joesky Tax: Spelunking Ferrets and Scapegoats

There are some weird treasures in the boxed set. I’m not sure if they will end up in CC:AA or CC:M&M but they can probably be more at home in the latter. Anyway, here’s a couple:

Spelunking Ferrets are specially trained LVL 1 ferrets. They are unnaturally quiet and letargic and usually do not move much at all. This changes when they are thrown at an opponent: they will attack and, after hitting, they’ll latch in and bury in the victim dealing damage every turn. They can also be inserted in a willing subject, usually through the mouth, but they are also happy with other body cavities, or even with creating new body cavities. There they will dig, extract and devour any external body like internal moulds and oozes, uncontrolled growths, eggs, half-digested godlings, resident squids and extra souls. In the process the ferret will deal 2d6 damage to the suffering patient, and then probably die of indigestion.

Scapegoats are goats kept in sacks. When someone is to be blamed or about to suffer a curse or a mortal wound, the goat will instead suffer the consequences. The scapegoat can also be given away to someone to temporarily avert their wrath. Bagging goats is a very dangerous fine art practiced only by the most adept Savants, but it’s said that it’s common knowledge between Hypogean Hermits. What’s certain is that the mysteric ritual involves naked chanting the Stodgy Selenic Song under the open sky and must be completed before dawn, and that a captured goat is required. The goat will not survive more than a week in the bag, a month if properly watered.

Portals: from here to there in no time at all

Travel in the Middle Ages was full of dangers and uncertainty. On the other hand magical portals can make travel much quicker and safer.

Most of the post was written as the players I told you about before started toying with a portal in the Uplands, and I had to come up with destinations. Then I started working on it, then Albert from Underworld Kingdom/World of Ortix joined in, then we decided that maybe, just maybe, there’s enough to be written to fill a small booklet. So there you go, two of the worst procrastinators of the OSR (we are getting better though! Albert is actually finishing a lot of material nowadays and I’m, well, trust me) joined forces to bring you swag. So here you’ll see a really really brief treatment of the topic and a small excerpt of the final content.

Anyway, bridges and fords might be washed away, roads might be blocked by fallen trees or brigands[*], forcing travelers to take long detours. Portals on the other hand warp space and time, pin it on a physical aperture due to sympathetic magic principles while negating the illusion of distance between two places and allowing to step through the stabilized warp. Or something equally silly.

My formative experience with portals was made under Waterdeep in a videogame called Eye of the Beholder, which lets you trample around what might or might not be a much much smaller (and actually completely unrelated) version of of the Undermountain until you die or you slay the titular monster. So, if you see something like this:

You only need to open it with the appropriate key to make it go all crazy like this (please ignore the different stone background):

And then open (again, different stone background):

Then you can have a stroll on these freaky stepping stones on the black abyss with not even a single little star and reach the other side, which can be very close or very very far away. YES, no brigands on the way, took only two hours, the slaughter of a goblin tribe and 2000gp to buy the key off a shady dude in town instead of three weeks on riding across the wilderness under the rain. I told you it would be convenient.

Anyway, there are three important concepts about portals: structure, destination and opening. The book will treat them more extensively, but you can have some small excerpts first.

Structure

The structure is how a portal appears. The portals in the pictures above look like number 1 in the table below. Roll 1d6.

1. a wall with an ornate (gilded, carved etc.) basrelief or friese of a gate or door.
2. a door. it looks like an ordinary door and works like a door. If properly opened it swings open on the destination.
3. only a marked location. When opened a flight of stairs opens, leading down.
4. a huge mouth with humongous fangs. Or maybe it’s a real mouth?
5. a big stone/wooden/bone/crystal/metal/whatever arc.
6. a well or pit in the ground, when opened filled with a rainbow mist.

Destination

The destination might be somewhere in your campaign 1d1000 miles away. Or 1d1000*1d1000 miles away. Or some other random place. Either decide or roll 1d10 on the table below.

1. an hidden treasure room. Unfortunately, the magical passage closes after passing through it and probably there’s no other way to exit the room, maybe except some hidden passages or thin walls.
2. a tower in a city made of brass, surrounded by a sea of flames.
3. a beach of an island in the Aegean sea. There is a sheep pen close by, vineyards and olive trees. You can see a cave in the cliffside as well, with 1d6 hungry cyclops (LVL 13 giants) living inside.
4. underwater, 100 yards away from a castle made of red coral, 3d6*10 mer-people lead by the King of the Waves (LVL 4+1d6 multiclass fighter/cleric/mage)
5. the private quarters of a lich.
6. the realm of a demon prince
7. a desolate and forgotten mountain stronghold
8. a dragon’s lair (there’s 75% chance that a dragon is present, guarding the treasure)
9. an ancient graveyard or subterranean tomb complex
10. a dungeon, level 1d10.

Opening

To open a portal you need a key. As Planescape and myths teach us, keys can be whatever. It’s usually somehow related to the circumstances of the portal-building. Roll on all the following tables first, then join the dots and feel free to ignore those that don’t fit your game:

the key is… (roll 1d6)

1. a physical object, touching the portal. 2-in-6 of needing a specific object, for example the sword of the High King. Examples: roll 1d6:
   1. a key
   2. a jewel
   3. a stone
   4. a weapon
   5. water
   6. a stone
2. something physical, but with metaphysical connections, touching the portal. Examples: roll 1d6:
   1. blood of a sorcerer
   2. blood, sweat and tears of the builder
   3. dragon breath (bottled is fine too)
   4. ectoplasm
   5. mana tar
   6. holy water
3. an emotion or feeling, truly felt within close distance. Examples: roll 1d6:
   1. anger
   2. lust
   3. hunger
   4. despair
   5. terror
   6. pining
4. a specific time. Examples: roll 1d6:
   1. twilight
   2. a specific time of the day
   3. when the stars are right (a specific moment of the year, like an equinox, solstice or 4:30AM 12 days before the last day of autumn)
   4. some astronomical alignment or opposition
   5. an eclipse
   6. 1d100 hours/days/weeks/months/years after it opened last time, reroll every time
5. a sacrifice, right under the portal. Examples: roll 1d6:
   1. a burnt offering of food
   2. an animal slain, blood sprayed on the portal
   3. a weapon blade must be broken
   4. a gem must be shattered
   5. fasting for 1d6 days
   6. mutilation of a small but significant body appendage, roll a d6:
      1. ear
      2. eye
      3. nose
      4. tongue
      5. a finger
      6. any will do, like hair, a wart or nails
6. an action must be carried out in front of the portal. Roll 1d6:
   1. a specific magic glyph must be traced on the portal
   2. 1d6+1 people must have a specific kind of steamy hot kinky ritual sex around the portal
   3. a specific magical/mystical ritual must be celebrated in front of the portal to open it
   4. the password must be (1d4)
      1. shouted
      2. spoken
      3. sung
      4. traced on the portal
   5. a prayer must be (1d3)
      1. sung
      2. spoken
      3. silently recited
   6. a spell must be cast. Roll 1d6:
      1. a unique spell designed specifically to open this portal
      2. Knock or equivalent
      3. an elemental-based spell cast on the portal, element depending on the “related to” result
      4. any demonic/necromancy spell
      5. any clerical or theurgic spell
      6. any spell but it must be cast directly on portal (like trying to heal it)
7. an event, happening somewhere relatively close to the portal (a few hundred miles, or in the same part of the continent). Roll 1d6:
   1. the death of the king of the land or something equally pretentious
   2. a cockatrice hatches from a cock’s egg
   3. the last copy of a spell is burnt
   4. the first lightning from a nearby summer storm
   5. a star falls
   6. famine strikes the land
8. two keys are needed to open the portal, either both keys at the same end or one at each end. Roll twice on this table. Reroll results if for some reason make the portal impossible to open. If rolled more than once, keep on adding keys.
9. This portal can be used with different keys (2d6). 2-in-6 chance of different keys leading to different locations.
10. Some part of the portal that is currently missing. It may be a part of the sculpture, a missing gem in the portal’s decoration or something similar. If you want to be fancy and love in-jokes, the key is the keystone of the arch (or equivalent) which at the moment is collapsed on the ground.

and it’s related to… (roll 1d6)

1. one of the two sides, 50% chance each.  2-in-6: the link is one way only toward the relevant side. 2-in-6: the key can instead open d6-in-6 portals to the same side as well, but always one-way only and always toward the same end. Example: a wooden ring made from the tree that stood where one of the portals stands.
2. both ends. Example: the portals’ architraves are made from the same stone block, the key is a small leather pouch containing the stone powder created when the architraves were sawn off.
3. something else. Possibly something off-world that the PC will find, like magnetic cards. Whatever.
4. well, there are two keys, each one-way only. Roll twice.
5. and more. nothing specific, actually anything like that will do.

A is for Abacus, Magical

Since I’m not busy anought with other stuff I decided to try this alphabet challenge thing.

If I get to C I’ll be seriously happy. 🙂

Anyway, A is for Abacus. Apparently Italian dictionaries used to have “abacus” as their first word… except it’s a lie, the first word in an Italian dictionary would be “a”.

Abacus, Magical

The user of the abacus can point at a bunch of things (coins, people, etc) and the abacus will display the correct amount. If used more than once a day, one of the abacus beads will vanish from the most significant row.

Scrolls, Identification and Magic

Lack of sensible magic creation rules always appalled me in D&D. Possibly because I tend to play magic users and possibly because the difficulty and investment needed to create magic items doesn’t really match up with the relative abundance of it in the standard D&D game.

Same for magic item identification: the only way to identify magic items in BECMI is the slate of identification found in the companion handbook (can’t tell about B/X as i don’t have the cyan box).

Anyway, I decided to mix Holmes Read Magic and normal Identify in a new spell:

Unveil Arcana – level 1 MU, level 1 CL

Range: 1′

Casting time: 1 turn

Duration: instantaneous

The magic user will properly identify and understand one unknown function of a magic item:

For scrolls and spell books: similar to Read Magic, but will identify just a single spell of all the unknown spells present in the scroll or spellbook.

For other magic items: the weakest unknown function of the object will be identified first.

Regarding magic item creation, I’ve made up my mind about spells and potions:

Spell Scribing

A spell-caster can scribe a known spell into a scroll. The process will cost 100 mo and a week per spell level in rare ingredients. No other item production, adventuring or spell research can be done by the caster.

Potion Brewing

A spell-caster can brew a potion that when imbibed will have the effect of a spell that the caster can cast. The process will cost 300 mo and seven days per spell level in rare ingredients. It’s necessary to peruse a laboratory worth at least 5000 mo per spell level. No other item production, adventuring or spell research can be done by the caster.