Owlbears and Chickenhawks

The first Fall was the mightiest of acts of Falling; it happened, when Sin sprang like wisdom from the head of Satan , and he was cast down from the limitless heights of heaven to the bottomless depths of hellfire by God's wrath. The fall here is twofold. The physical fall was surely grand; but Satan performed a great and unprecedented act before that, in creating Sin wholly anew from his mind, fathering all Falls from then on into eternity. This, surely, was the greatest Fall. But this puts Satan and his demoniac followers in a difficult spot; for if war with heaven is to be waged by inspiring further Falls, and this first fall was not great enough to topple the Almighty, how do they ever usurp that loathsome, limned throne? Satan's first try was to consign all of humanity to sin, through the temptation of humankind. But the Son of God came down to earth, died for their sins, and returned to heaven to settle that score. And so the creative space within which Satan has to ope...

 This series of posts has covered, exclusively, magic coming from lesser sources. What makes this final post so interesting to me is that the source isn’t necessarily lesser. It is stranger, darker, and more dangerous than the other methods. This is magic as radiation, or as we call it in this setting, Spirit-Calling. Magic as Radiation: Enter the Spirit World Magic as radiation is unique because one needs little to no formal training to call spirits. Spirits are willing to enter any human’s body. That being said, those with strong force of will and innate magical ability will be better hosts for spirits.  The Mages of the Cyclica and the Church of the Human Font might be disconcerted by the questions about consciousness that Spirit-calling forces reconciliation with. Most would prefer to see the art eradicated than devote time answering such questions. Setting Element: Spirits Spirits are creatures that embody some kind of symbolic or elemental force. They live all around th...

 The two major academic models of magic have origins in the same general theory, leaning on a single ritual that draws magic to them in one fell swoop. But there are other ways of channelling magic; more time-consuming, perhaps, but more fruitful as a result. It is a technique abandoned by academia for its volatility and brutishness, but which flourishes in the cracks between the Churches. Magic as Fire:  In the Cracks Some liken it to drawing in a breath through lungs that aren't your own; others, to bailing out a sinking boat. Either way, channelling magic is a long, drawn-out process. Channelling magic and maintaining it requires lots of Fuel, and the longer you try to maintain it, the more fuel you'll be expending.  Setting Element: Containing Magic When a decent-sized spell builds up, it has to be contained. Most wizards contain the spell in their mind; after all, their mind is almost always on them. Others contain it in a Gong, or an a group of minds, or in a brewin...

 In my previous post, I covered the grim students and clergy of the Cyclica and its Saints. They worship magic as a tidal force, frozen by will and understanding and returning into formless miasma through inattention. The Church of the Human Font split from the Cyclica over a the Heresy of the Vessel . See, to the mages of the Cyclica, magic is everywhere, yet unseen except through its effects, and man's only capacity for interacting with it is through thought , of all things the most intangible and evanescent. But the key to the Cylica is their twin rituals, the Ritual of the Vessel (which primes a physical vessel for containment of the intangible Tide of magic) and the Containment Ritual (which brings a Tide of magic into the vessel). The mysticism of Saint Mosil and the Raving of the Mad Saint are wondrous, and their effects on the world unparalleled; yet they are grounded to the world by the Vessel, a physical thing, which can be optimized, compared in efficacy to other Vessels...

Magic is thoroughly explored for its properties. Most magicians agree that there are a number of ways one can bring magic into the world; opinions on which way is best, which way is dominant, and which one should use, varies magician to magician. Magic as the Water Cycle; Mages of the Cyclica In this model, magic wafts through the air, a miasma, until it condenses on its own or through the help of a wizard. The magic has to be contained somewhere, but can be contained indefinitely. Then, when a wizard needs it, they perform another ritual which condenses it into a spell. Raw magic: analogous to water vapor. Condenses into harnessed magic with weight & magnitude, or with a ritual. Stored in ritual storage containers or natural ones. Harnessed magic: analogous to water. Magic that has to be stored somewhere, in a ritual or natural container. A supply of harnessed magic is called a Tide; vessels for a Tide are called Tidelocks. Directed Magic: analogous to ice. Spells. Setting Element...

 Heavily influenced, if not directly stolen, from  this techniques list at The Manse , and from  this post. 1. Dragon-Spit Sword Strokes Whenever your bladed weapon strikes something hard, like stone or metal, you can gain one Slow tag for the next turn in order to shower sparks from the blade's head. If someone is nearby, those sparks could sting painfully, or temporarily blind them. 2. The Lobster Sheds its Skin With a single round of movement, you can jump out of any clothing or armor. You will always have a loincloth on, stop that. 3. Merchant's Only Friend You can flick coins at people as if throwing stones from a sling. These coins will hit things and get all bent up because of how hard you're flicking them. This is a Powerful Fingers attack that deals half damage, rounded up. 4. Drunken Master For every comically large drink you have (1 round) gain a Drunk Tag. At the start of every round, roll 1d6+1d8. The first die chooses the Tag (Enduring, Powerful, Precise, Qu...

 At some point I was discussing a unified monster hunter class with someone on the GLoG discord, and I suggested having a specific rules system for rodeoing that you could unlock with a skill. Cut to now, having just read the ruleset for Oblid's driving game, and having scavenged an initiative ruleset for gunfighting from Squigboss on the GLoG discord, I thought it might be cool to take a stab at a new way of doing skills. The goal of this system is to interlace player and character expertise mechanically. The idea is this: if a player is unskilled at something, they can perform extremely basic functions in that domain with a check. Examples with the skills I'm adapting include: Driving: making a tight turn, decelerating rapidly. Languages: figuring out the emotional content of what someone's saying with some sort of empathy/sensemaking check. Hacking: entering passcodes under pressure, following scripted prompts to a desired digital outcome. Gunfighting: shooting at someo...