The Seic (pronounced 'see-ick') Razening destroyed the Old World when they attempted to rise up against the gods, and the gods struck them down with fire and holy light and the Unseen Sear which burns from the inside.
The Wasterwater is liberally spotted by giant jutting cliffs of iron that spike from the water, and look as if a great wind bent them back and forth. It has good spots in it where the water is only salt, and not tainted with the presence of the Unseen. A Knowing Man can tell you what types of fish and crabs are created by the gods,and what type were Changed by the Sear. It is most unwise to eat Sear-tainted meat, but some Forlorn Folk have no choice. Of course, their children grow up Sear Tainted, and strange. But there are many spots in the Wasterwater that are healthy if one knows the signs from an Old Grandpa Fisherman (which are few because most people don't live to see forty), or from a Knowing Man (who is expensive).
All about the Wasterwater, a long narrow lake (twenty miles wide and eighty miles long) lie the Ruined Lands. But there are places in the Ruined Lands where things are not so desperate, and human life struggles onward in the Tem Marsh, and the Marcy Coves, and in dozens of other areas. Some places are only a village, and even a few are less than that, just a hamlet. But some, like the Tem Marsh and the Marcy Coves have a loose council of ten to fifteen villages, a genuine tribe.
Further back from the edge of the Wasterwater, on both sides, the west and the east, are the Hard Lands where Sear Dragons allegedly roam. In any case, no one but the mad goes there, and no one comes back. The lands are scoured clean and glow an evil blue at night.
But there is magic in the land, and not all is horrible like the Unseen Sear.
High Sorceror--These men (only men) summon spirits to do their work. Wise tribal leaders call them to build levees, and to cleanse the soil, but the less wise try to make weapons of war of them. This the High Sorcerors dislike themselves feeling that war should be a matter of trust in the gods, and the Proof of the Right by Trial by Champion.
They do magic by ancient compacts.
Magicker--By mystic hand passes, and focused emotional energy they can heal or harm at a few feet range.
Waterman--He calls the rain, or stays the flood. Finds fresh springs, and makes war in defense if the Rules of Land War are forgotten.
Charm Girl--If you need to be hidden, or to have love, or to walk through Seared Land...go to a wandering charm girl, and she will give you an amulet to protect you.
Technomage--Some say they are evil. The illegitamate children of the Sieck some call them. But they know words to speak to old machines.
The History,not the Legend.
==========================
By the early 22nd Century, the Creche Boom had gotten out of hand. In response to declining birth rates worldwide and outbursts of infertility, especially among the advanced powers, scientists invented the Baby Creche. Give the Baby a Creche, a Robo-Nanny, and a Robo-dog, and you could still be the self-absorbed person you always were, but avert TEOTWAWKI by watching Europe become Eurabia.
The Secular Reasonists taught the kids of the Creche their theories,courtesy of the bots, and the kids saw no reason not to 'Do as Alexander Did.' Despite the best efforts, robots lacked the power to give empathy to kids. And without a strong moral code (see China's youth today) you had ambition without restraint. Cold-blooded, ambitious, and willing to do just about anything, the elite of the Creche roared into the Post-Modern Society like a flamethrower meeting papier mache.
The Establishment panicked, and threw up barriers, and after that tried to appease at the same time. It was the exact worst response. Angered by the barriers, they then smelled weakness which to these wolves in human skin smelled just like blood.
They would have gotten along just fine, the Creche Wolves, with their thousand year old ancestors, the Vikings. Unfortunately, the Wolves had nuclear weapons unlike the Vikings.
They shredded teh PoMo Establishment,a dn then went after each other.
By the end, most of Europe and England was uninhabitable. Its only near the English Channel, near the Tems Marsh specifically, and near Marseilles that most of the survivors huddled.
The Channel became a lake, and the oil tankers became the jutting iron cliffs, and the Channel silted up so that it became far more shallow.
But, as tech failed, and as post-modernism had led to a collapse of science....these both opened the door to mysticism which the Razening kicked that door wide open.
The Magic Bias went up.
Its now 3@5.
And there are mutant entities which feed on raditation, and emit radiation, but are invisible....the Unseen Sear. And there is still plenty of radiation...or the Sear. And there are degenerate mutants or The Forlorn Folk.
Sometime later I need to come up with a few magic spells for each of the groups.
Tems
Is this a mutant spelling of Thames?
--M. J. Young
Yes. Just like Marseilles turns into Marcy.
Second Post...
One objective with this world is a variation on magic school. The PC has a chance to learn survival skills, some psi abilities, and various types of magic, and maybe pick up a bit of old hi-tech. Nothing huge, but there's a fair number of opportunities.
Tech 12@10
Mag 3@2
Psi 4@10
Body 12@1 (since the butterflies are gone.)
High Sorceror
A practitioner of High Sorcery is trained by a master sorceror in the skill of Use Ring of Sorcery which is a Mag 1@9 skill of Operate Complex Activation Device.
The Rings of Sorcery are engraved with the Tongue of Enoch, and (Like the Swords in another world) are practically unique. +8.
They are non-intelligent, and they are covered with the various Ancient Compacts made between the Atlantaen and Egyptian sorcerors and various neutral spirits and other spirits to a lesser degree as well. When the magic faded, so did the power of the Rings, but now that magic has come back, the power of the Rings has as well.
All spells require a loud voice in, depending on the compact, Atlantaen, or Ancient Egyptian. Also, a sorceror may use Enochian for either one, however no one knows how to speak it. This must be in the form of "By the Ancient Compact first made between the High Sorceror Such-and-Such and the Spirit of the Water Whose Name is XXXXXX, I call upon the spirit to cleanse this land between the red rocks I have laid out of the toxins in the soil in a way that is harmless to the humans."
Proper words +5; Loud +3; Foreign Language +5; Use of Defining Markers which are not reused unless ceremonially cleansed such as red stones, or apples or anything fairly unusual. This is in part because the spirits often enjoy messing with the sorceror so that if say there were another red stone which the sorceror had accidentally kicked then the spirit could make his own interpretation of what an area was perhaps. +2 with sorta-destroyed +1 with time to place defining markers is five minutes.
Typical total time including the double-check time and the speaking time is ten minutes for an amateur which is +31.
A high sorceror must have free use of his hands to hold out in front of him (or his arms if his hands are lopped off although this is a minor negative), and he must be standing if possible, and if not, he may sit at a slight negative.
In order to learn the Ancient Compact a Difficult Ed Level skill must be passed. In order to use a compact, a simple Ed Level check must be passed after it is comprehended with the preceding Difficult check.
In order to gain the attention of a spirit, an initiation ceremony must be passed. Each spirit has a variety of magic skills it can teach the use to activate. But the more powerful or dire the magic, the more powerful and dire the ritual. In order to learn to call lightning, you have to atract the attention of Spikxshotxz, the storm giant spirit, and doing so requires that you be struck by lightning after a night long ceremony. If you survive, you can hereafter call on Spikxshotxz.
One power that is learned after much labor is the power to create new Rings of Sorcery. As you might imagine, the apprentice is bound to serve his master by stringent compacts for a long time (twenty years, and after that the master may call on his servant a specified number of times every year.)
Note: Most High Sorcerors are not all that powerful. They have the potential to be Sorceor Emperors, but for now, they don't have that level of power.
Just glancing through (sorry, busy), but I noticed a 1@9 Use Complex Activation Device mentioned with a world bias of 3@2; you'll need that bias to be at least 3@7 for that device skill to be within the curve. That lets in limb-regenerative healing and permanent solid-to-solid transmutation, among other things, which may be more magic than you want. The alternative is to dumb down the High Sorcerers' devices to be less complex to use.
Thanks Wodium, Mag Bias is 3@9.
I also note that at a Mag bias of 3@9 an indig can neither create a magic device nor gate one in from another universe; worlds in which magic devices can be brought into existence by indigs have very high mag biases, generally.
I probably should comb through that mag spell design; I didn't pick up the area affected and would need to consider that in determining the power, and I didn't see a bonus for the requirement that you make a successful ed lev check to cast a spell (+10 sounds right to me).
--M. J. Young
MJ,
I'm coming up with a cool trick here for the Create Mag Device. In pre-Sumerian times, Atlantis and Egypt (right after the Flood and before the end of the continent spanning glaciers) the Mag bias was a lot higher. Thus, the Rings were made then. And then the Mag bias began a slow drop through the millenia until it nearly bottomed out in the 21st century. The Razening happens, and magic starts to slowly revive over the next three centuries.
As to the stat for the ed level I did not put in, that was deliberately done as I wasn't sure what to put in, and so I hoped for some advice which I received. Thanks.
The other, I have not decided. I think I need to go for a variable size area for the spell. That is, the Sorceror can cleanse your farm field of toxic nerve gas aftermath and radioactivity, and the size of the farm field varies as to the farmer.
I'm going to need to make that five centuries so that the High Sorceror's have been able to work for a bit already. Really, I'd like to have the Sorceror's working earlier...but I guess with the way things are I'm forced to make the current time more of the High Middle Ages than the Dark Ages. The Sorcerors can't begin cleansing fields unless I get a minimum of Mag 3@9 which is going to take some time from Mag 0@9, and so once they begin operating things are going to take a definite turn for the better.
Hmmmm. Its an interesting wrinkle that I would not have come up with and so perhaps its more interesting than just a straight 'we're hanging on by the edge of our fingers' Dark Ages Reborn type world. Hmmmm.
Second Post.
The cost for the area of the magic is 150% of the usual cost (50% more than usual) due to the variable sizing allowed in the High Sorceror's spells.
Forex: If the area cost for a usage of the spell on Farmer Joe's field was +20 for the size, it would cost a total of +30. However on Farmer Greg's field which was much bigger the cost would be +40 for the size, but with the variable size advantage, it would be a total cost of +60. Does that work?
My recollection is that it's -10 for giving the caster variable control over a variable that is normally fixed. That would include area of effect.I think I need to go for a variable size area for the spell. That is, the Sorceror can cleanse your farm field of toxic nerve gas aftermath and radioactivity, and the size of the farm field varies as to the farmer.
You can cleanse the field with a spell modeled on 3@1 Prevent/Remove Impurities. The baseline is one thousand cubic foot volume, so you have to decide how much depth in the soil should be purified and then take the rest out to a baseline area. Thus if you say that the purification is to one foot depth, you've got a 10x100 area for baseline; if you go two feet, it's 10x50, and if you go to five feet it's 10x20. Then, since you've made this the adjustable variable, you incorporate some component which doubles with the area to be affected.
This isn't really so hard, though, because the baseline TF for the purification skill is 0:01:00, that is, one minute, so if you're looking at ten foot depth and a ten by ten plot with a one minute time factor, you make it two minutes for ten by twenty, four minutes for twenty by twenty, eight minutes for twenty by forty, sixteen minutes for forty by forty.
I'm thinking, though, that you want to cover larger areas in slightly less time--you want long rituals, but not days long rituals. So you pack in some points for materials components, appropriateness, body involvement, the bonuses for language, whatever can give you a boost. Figure you can get +50 without changing the time factor at all, -10 for the fact that you've given the caster control over that extra variable, means +40. Using that, you can double the base area four times for a balancing -40, which means forty by forty in a minute. (Conversely you can cut the time in half four times, but since you don't really want to be working with 7.5 second rituals and it comes to the same outcome on a larger field probably with less math, doubling the area is the better choice). I did this with a 10 foot depth, but probably your purification will work with a two and a half foot depth, which means you've halved the depth twice and can double the area twice, a base of eighty by eighty feet. Allow yourself a bit of a fudge factor and you can call it twenty-seven by twenty-seven yards, all without any inherent sit-mod, and the size of the field ultimately comes to one minute per block of that size.
Real quick thumbnail effort to get +50 sit-mod:
- Appropriate words +5=5
- Spoken loudly +3=8
- Magical language +5=13
- Sound necessary +2=15
- Ritual requires walking around area and touching the ground at regular intervals with both hands, total body involvement +15=30
- The remaining +20 is comprised of materials bonuses, which is tough but not impossible. I tend to think of low-grade finished gemstones or high-grade manufactured items as being in the range of 5, so if you get two objects in that range and specify that in the casting they dissolve into the soil, you've got your +20 (+5 for each, doubled for being destroyed) which brings you to 50.
--M. J. Young
OK. Should we have the Farmer (who probably has a family and several farm servants and one or two maidservants) so he's a substantial figure have to apply to the the local Noble or Chief for a loan to pay the High Sorceror? Basically, the Farmer comes up with the loan, pays the Sorceror, and then gives the Noble half the proceeds from the new cleared field for the next ten years...??
This is a society where there are pretty much no bankers because no one has enough money for that.
Magickers are simpler.
They can heal or harm with touch, or at very short range. This requires intense emotion and mystic handpasses, and magical language (which for amusement's sake I'm going to make be 'Basic', the computer language in English (the people of the World of Sear speak 'Frengle', a hybrid descent of French, English, and Gaelic that's been twisted by time.)
This gives the PC someone he can talk to at the outset of the game because a Magicker does have 1@2 familiarity with 22nd Century English which is very similar to the verser's English.
So, a spell is...
If A=0, then goto line B.
Cause Harm to the One in front of me.
Run.
Spells are pretty much limited to the following:
1. Heal at touch "Defrag." Limited Damage Repair Mag 2@1
2. "Reboot". Save Life Mag 2@1
3. "Anti-Viral" Cure Disease and Neutralize Poison are Mag 2@4 and 2@5 respectively. This spell does both because the Magickers don't distinguish between poison and disease.
4. "Crash" Mag 2@1 is the Opposite of Limited Damage Repair, may be done at short range of up to five feet.
5. "Dupe" is a high level spell that is cast before another spell allowing the Magicker to cast the spell at multiple targets at once.
6. "Firewall" is a Mag 1@6 Protections NOS which I'm not sure how that works.
7. "Download Virus" is a Mag 1@8 Curse whose effects depend on the Virus the Magicker knows. One popular one is a block against being healed by a Magicker (which tends to be used to force apologies to Magickers). Another one is the Keep Spinning the Drives which forbids the sufferer from being still (some partof his body must always be moving even in sleep.)
High Sorcerors tend to be majestic, and learned, and formal, and haughty. Magickers are much more visceral, and down to earth, and quick-witted, and while they are smart, they are not as smart as High Sorcerors and definitely not as educated although they are more educated than most.
Edit: I'm not sure, but I might make Watermen a degenerate form of High Sorceror. As to Charm Girl, no one can make magic items, but I suppose one could cast a spell on a person with teh contingency...the spell stops when you take off the amulet.
I'm not going to say that you can do it, but off the top of my head I can see casting a temporary area of effect spell on an object so that it has its effect in the area immediately around the object for the duration of the spell. You'd need low power spell effects and high rituals to get durations that run into days.
You can also do trigger effects, that a spell is cast on an object and when some specific act completes the spell the spell effect occurs. An example of this is that Graeme uses chicken bones for his translation spells, spending hours in ritual with each bone, and then having the spell complete when he breaks it. There's a penalty for dividing the ritual, and there's a problem with the expectations of the user, but I think you could probably design one such that the trigger was that the caster induces someone else to perform the trigger act, and then the fact that the caster instructed the end user that doing this would have that result would mean when the end user did that the caster would have completed the spell. I think if the caster died before that happened, or left the universe somehow, all such charms not taken with him would cease to work.
--M. J. Young
--M. J. Young
Waterman
=========
Some say they are a degenerate form of High Sorceror, as in the quarter-trained, knows a few charms, but not the theory High Sorceror. Others think that the same spirits which taught the High Sorcerors of old were trying to do the same thing again. Others have different theories. In any case, most villages have either a Waterman, or one in the village next to them.
Watermen are forbidden from making war, except in direct self-defense, or when the Rules of Land Warfare have been broken.
The Rules of Land Warfare (which also apply to the sea even tho' the names not been changed.)
1. No killing of prisoners taken in war. You may maim one to mark them as property, or injure one to make it harder for them to escape from slavery, but no killing.
2. No injuring of women taken in war who have not tried to escape, or injury of children period. (Their definition of 'injury' is stringent. Getting whipped with a bullwhip is not 'injury'. Injury is having your Achilles' tendon on your right leg cut, or an archer losing a finger.)
3. No treacherous attack without warning. Yes, you have to hire a merchant or some neutral party to go and tell the next village over 'we're at war'. After that, ambush is fair play.
4. No attack on holy days (Sunday, the four Cardinal Days, or the birthday celebration of teh village chieftain which is a traditional holiday celebrated with LOTS of beer.)
5. No attack in winter or at night.
6. No use of Watermen magic or Charms of Invisibility. No attacking Watermen.
7. No sinking of boats as they are too precious to lose. No burning of villages or destroying of food, and NO Destroying of Fields (Salting an enemies field is likely to get all your neighbours to show up and turn your whole village into slaves.)
8. No executions except as punishment for breaking the Laws of Land War, attacking a Waterman, or salting a field (your village gets enslaved, the chieftain who orders this gets tortured to death with his body parts fertilizing the field he destroyed.)
They have serious problems with toxic farm fields from the Razening, and so they take a very dim view of destroying what little they have. And yes, its obvious that Watermen had a large hand in making this Law.
Typically a Waterman in a village will note an up and coming lad, and contact another waterman in another village who will amble through and apprentice the lad and take him away (thus weakening the bands of loyalty to home). Once trained, the Waterman will go to a third village, and have a family and so forth. But he's trained and swore to remember he's a Waterman first.