✨ Spellcasting
How a working actually happens at the table — your GM has the full rules:
- Skills. Ritual Magic (KN/VH) is the foundation. Each domain is a Path skill — Path (Spirit), Path (Chance), and so on — also KN/VH, defaulting to Ritual Magic−6, never exceeding it, and capped at QN + Magery — your attunement to the current is the ceiling on how far the Art can be taken.
- Rites. Every rite lists a default (e.g. Path−3) and a base QP cost. A rite you have encountered — witnessed, or read in full — you may cast at that default. A rite you learn from a teacher, grimoire, or your own research is bought up as a Hard technique (2 pts for +1, then 1 pt per +1, to a maximum of your Path). A rite you have only reasoned should exist is desperate work: default−10, and something always goes a little wrong.
- The roll. Path skill, minus the rite's default penalty (unless learned), −2 for the thin ambient field, plus extra time (+1 per doubling, max +4) and proper trappings (+1/+2; missing trappings −2 each).
- The price. The listed QP cost is multiplied by how loud the working is (below). Ritual time is 10 minutes per final QP. Your pool equals your QN and recovers about 1 per hour of rest.
- Circles. Willing participants each lend up to half their QN through the leader — and their presence raises what the leader can safely channel. Big workings are group workings; the calendar and the place matter more than any one caster.
- Lasting work. A working meant to endure (a ward, a seal) must be anchored to a place, object, or person, and its cost stays committed — your maximum QP drops while it stands. Prepared one-shot charms (vessels) instead reserve 2 QP each to carry (3 if the coiled working is offensive).
| How loud? | A witness concludes… | QP cost |
|---|---|---|
| Subtle | “Nothing happened.” “What luck.” | ×1 |
| Discreet | “Strange — but I suppose it could happen.” | ×2 |
| Overt | “I just saw something impossible.” | ×5 |
| Vulgar | “Reality is broken.” | ×10 |
Each rite in the style lists below shows its floor — its quietest possible use. A cruder or more visible casting is judged (and priced) higher. Casting subtly is the mark of skill.
🕯️ Magical Styles
Nobody learns the Art from a book alone. It survives in traditions — lineages of teachers and students, each with its own creed, its own methods, and its own guarded pages. A tradition gives you your first rites, your teacher, your tools, and your road: each is a specialist craft, deep in two Paths and conversant in one or two more. For anything outside that footprint you improvise at a steep default, find another teacher, or rely on a differently-gifted ally — no tradition covers everything, and the ones that claimed to are gone.
Each tradition below is described with its Circles — the ranks of initiation, each opening deeper rites than the last. A beginning practitioner starts in the First Circle knowing 3–5 rites; everything beyond that is earned in play. Entries show each rite's Path, its casting default, and its base QP cost. Rites marked † are the tradition's guarded teachings — their existence is known lore, but access is granted, never assumed.
🕯️ The Speakers with the Dead
The threshold-keepers: mediums, exorcists, grave-wardens, ancestor-workers.
The Speakers treat the dead not as a resource to be spent but as a responsibility to be discharged. Their creed is simple and old: the living and the dead each have a place, and someone must keep the door. Not to open it — to make sure it stays closed, and that those who must pass through do so gently. Almost everything they do is Subtle: they listen, they carry a message, they ease a restless spirit into rest, they read what a place remembers. When something will not rest — a revenant, a haunting, a thing that wears a corpse — they have the harder rites too: the containment circle, the warded house, and the great banishment. But even these are framed as care, not conquest. A Speaker who begins to enjoy the harder work is a Speaker their teachers start to watch.
The tradition survives in small, quiet lineages: funeral families, church sextons and lay-sisters who know more than the priest, hospice nurses who hum the old dirges. It is rarely a formal order — more often a chain of teachers and students, a bell passed down, a book of names. Its practitioners are the people a frightened town sends for when the lights won't stay off in the empty house — and they are, not by coincidence, exactly the people who become monster-hunters.
Required skills: Occultism · Thaumatology · Hidden Lore (Spirits) · Ritual Magic · Meditation
Required rites (First Circle): Death Vision · Sense Spirit · Summon Spirit · Final Rest · Lend Energy
Entry: the standard style package; a modest buy-in — the tradition a hunter is most likely to awaken into.
| Circle | Rites (Path, default, base QP) |
|---|---|
| First — Listener the grounding; senses and hears the dead | Death Vision (Spirit, −1, 2 QP) — read a corpse's last moments Sense Spirit (Spirit, −1, QP 1/2 per yard) — sweep a place for the dead Summon Spirit (Spirit, −1, 20 QP) — the séance — halved at the grave; one question, one more per minute Final Rest (Spirit, −1, 20 QP) — lay a ghost gently and permanently to rest — the signature of the whole tradition Lend Energy (Body, −1, Any amount) — the circle mechanic in rite form: channel your strength through another's working. Every tradition teaches it first |
| Second — Speaker requires all First Circle; calls and questions | Sense Danger (Chance, −1, 3 QP) Truthsayer (Mind, −2, 2 QP) — the interrogator's rite Aura (Mind/Magic, −1, 3 QP) — reads possession and hidden natures — a hunter's staple History (Chance, −4, QP 3-10 by depth) — psychometry — read what a place remembers Seeker (Chance, −2, 3 QP) — find a person or object; map and pendulum Stop Bleeding (Body, −2, 1 QP) — the Speaker often also sits with the dying |
| Third — Keeper requires Second Circle; entrusted to keep a threshold | Turn Spirit (Spirit, −3, 4 QP) — drive a spirit back Scryguard (Magic, −1, 3 QP) Watchdog (Magic, −1, 1 QP) — ward-alarms Pentagram † (Magic, −1, QP 1 per sq ft) — the containment circle — permanent until the chalk is scuffed Repel Spirits † (Spirit, −6, QP 4 per area) — the warded house Banish † (Spirit, −3, 20 QP) — the great exorcism — the rite the whole tradition builds toward; always ritual-scale, needs circle, grave, or holy ground |
| Inner — Elder Speaker rare; the tradition's quiet masters | Materialize (Spirit, −2, 5 QP) — give a spirit form enough to be seen and heard by all Projection (Spirit, −6, 4 QP) — walk out to where the lost are Bind Spirit (Spirit, −12, QP 1 per 3 points of spirit) — only to hold what must not be loosed — never to enslave |
Perks (★ = unique to this tradition): Shaman's Trance (the medium's working state) · Spirit Contract (a cooperative bound or allied spirit) · Covenant of Rest (an oath to lay the dead to rest; in return, protection — the defining bargain) · Intuitive Cantrip (Corpse Smart) · Spell Enhancement (Affects Insubstantial — essential for actually fighting the dead) · Sanctum · Scroll-Reading · Mana Compensation · Far-Casting · Continuous Ritual (the all-night vigil) · Rule of 17 · Spell Resistance · Wizardly Garb (bell, book, candle, censer) · Named Possession (a bell, mirror, or censer) · Special Exercises (Spirit Empathy, Medium, or Will) · Magical Style Adaptation · Academic/Guild Rank · Secret Rite.
★ Gentle Passage — a rite used to lay a spirit to rest (never to force or exploit it) counts as one tier quieter. The veil cooperates with those who mend it.
★ Steady Circle — willing participants in a circle you lead roll Stability at +2 during the rite. You keep your people whole.
★ Keeper's Ward — your standing wards and Pentagrams get +1 to resist any spirit trying to cross or break them.
Optional traits: improved QN, Will, Perception · Medium / Spirit Empathy · Blessed (rare) · Empathy · Allies (a cooperative spirit, or a circle of the living) · Danger Sense · Sense of Duty (the dead, the living) · Code of Honor (respect the dead — never raise or exploit them) · Vow (lay to rest what you disturb) · Phantom Voices · Nightmares · Charitable. Skills: Diplomacy, Savoir-Faire, Singing (dirges), Hidden Lore (Undead), Research, History, Physician, Professional Skill (Mortician), Theology, Fortune-Telling.
📜 The Hermetic Lodge
The scholarly ceremonial tradition: the library and the locked upper room.
If the Speakers are the tradition of the graveyard and the Cunning Folk the tradition of the kitchen, the Lodge is the tradition of the library. Its practitioners are scholars first and sorcerers second: they believe the Art is a science — lawful, structured, knowable — and that power comes from understanding the machinery of reality rather than pleading with it. Where a cunning-woman mutters over a poppet, a Lodge adept spends three nights aligning a ceremony to first principles, and then it works exactly as the theory predicted.
The Lodge is ceremonial and precise — the correct hour, the drawn diagram, the named tools, the words in the old tongues. The rigor is not superstition; it is efficiency, generations of technique for doing the most with the least. They are the tradition that best understands the unseen itself: wards, counter-magic, the reading and unweaving of other people's work, and divination pursued as rigorous inquiry. Socially it is an initiatory society — grades, oaths, jealously guarded degrees, and a deep contempt for “vulgar” hedge-magic. A Neophyte is taught almost nothing until he proves discreet; the highest rites are known to a handful of Magisters. The Lodge knows a great deal the world needs — and gives nothing away for free.
Required skills: Thaumatology · Occultism · Research · Hidden Lore (Magical Writings) · Ritual Magic · Symbol Drawing
Required rites (First Grade): Detect Magic · Identify Spell · Seeker · Scryguard · Lend Energy
Entry: expensive — the required skills are all scholarship — and correspondingly powerful in the unseen and the analytical.
| Grade | Rites (Path, default, base QP) |
|---|---|
| First — Neophyte theory and the first wards | Detect Magic (Magic, −1, 2 QP) — the deliberate, reliable version of what the Sight does by instinct Identify Spell (Magic, −1, 2 QP) Seeker (Chance, −2, 3 QP) Scryguard (Magic, −1, 3 QP) — shield the work from prying eyes Lend Energy (Body, −1, Any amount) — the circle mechanic in rite form: channel your strength through another's working. Every tradition teaches it first |
| Second — Practicus requires all First Grade; divination and detection | Aura (Mind/Magic, −1, 3 QP) Trace (Chance, −3, 3 QP) — track a subject once found History (Chance, −4, QP 3-10 by depth) — psychometry as rigorous inquiry Sense Danger (Chance, −1, 3 QP) Magelock (Magic, −1, 3 QP) Watchdog (Magic, −1, 1 QP) |
| Third — Adept requires Second Grade; counter-magic and containment | Counterspell (Magic, −1, Half the target spell) — within a ritual, against a standing working Ancient History (Chance, −5, QP 3-10+) Divination (Chance, −6, 10 QP) — each method — tarot, lecanomancy — is its own rite Turn Spirit (Spirit, −3, 4 QP) Pentagram † (Magic, −1, QP 1 per sq ft) — the containment circle Analyze Magic † (Magic, −3, 8 QP) — learn exactly what a working is and how it was made |
| Inner — Magister rare; keepers of the temple's secrets | Dispel Magic † (Magic, −6, QP 1-3 per spell) — the unweaving ritual — takes down standing wards, curses, and workings Banish † (Spirit, −3, 20 QP) — framed as lawful expulsion, not exorcism Magic Resistance (Magic, −7, 1-5 QP) Projection (Spirit, −6, 4 QP) |
Perks (★ = unique to this tradition): Academic/Guild Rank (your grade — the defining social perk) · Thaumatological Doublespeak (couch your magic in dense theory) · Wizardly Garb (robes, wand, ring, lamen) · Named Possession (wand, staff, or ring) · Sanctum (the temple-room) · Scroll-Reading · Mana Compensation (the Lodge's hallmark) · Continuous Ritual · Adjustable Spell · Better Magic Items · Rule of 17 · Spell Resistance · Special Exercises (IQ or Magery) · Magical Style Adaptation · Secret Rite.
★ Flawless Trappings — with full, correct ceremonial trappings, the trappings bonus is +3 instead of +2. Obsessive precision, mechanized.
★ Lodge Sigil — your standing wards bear the Lodge's seal: +1 to resist, and any Lodge member recognizes (and can pass) them.
★ Unweaver — your ritual Dispel Magic or Counterspell ignores 2 points of the target working's resistance.
★ Astral Precision — +1 to divination and Seeker-type rites performed under proper ceremony.
Optional traits: improved KN, IN, Will · Status / Wealth · Contacts or Patron (the Order) · Language Talent, dead languages · Eidetic Memory · Tenure · Curious · Obsession (a line of research) · Overconfidence · Intolerance (the uninitiated) · Code of Honor (Lodge oaths) · Miserliness (with knowledge). Skills: Languages, Literature, History, Philosophy, Mathematics, Astronomy, Expert Skill (Hermeticism), Teaching, Alchemy, Diplomacy.
🌿 The Cunning Folk
The folk tradition: charms, healing, and hexes — the kitchen, the garden, and the sickbed.
The Cunning Folk are the practical magic of ordinary life: cunning-men and wise-women, hedge-witches, herb-doctors, midwives, and charmers — people who never call what they do “magic” and would be alarmed to be called wizards. They heal what the physician can't, find what's lost, sour a cruel neighbor's milk, keep the evil eye off the newborn, and read a future in cards or tea. Almost none of it looks like magic: a poultice that works too well, a hunch that pays off, a run of bad luck for the man who deserved it. This is the most Subtle tradition of all, and the most invisible — a cunning-woman can practice her whole life in plain sight and be remembered only as “good with herbs.”
Their craft is charms, not ceremonies. Where the Lodge draws diagrams and the Speakers keep vigil, the Cunning Folk brew, knot, stitch, and mutter. They are the masters of vessels — the poppet, the knotted cord, the horseshoe over the door, the bottle buried at the threshold — and half of what they do is prepared in advance and carried by ordinary people who never knew a witch made it. They lean on herbs and the old draughts, on the sacred days and places of country custom, and on small circles of kin. There is no order and no oath — only lineages of teaching, mother to daughter, master to apprentice, and a strong ethic of use: magic is for helping, and occasionally for justice. Their curses are hedged with rules, reversals, and a wariness of going too far — the old craft remembers what becomes of those who don't stop.
Required skills: Naturalist · Herb Lore · Occultism · Ritual Magic · Fortune-Telling
Required rites (First Circle): Minor Healing · Sense Emotion · Lend Vitality · Lend Energy · Itch
Entry: the cheapest tradition to enter — its required skills are homely and useful anyway — and the most likely to be a friendly first teacher.
| Circle | Rites (Path, default, base QP) |
|---|---|
| First — Charmer a beginner with a few reliable charms | Minor Healing (Body, −2, 1-3 QP) — overnight, it is merely a good recovery Sense Emotion (Mind, −1, 2 QP) — read the heart Lend Vitality (Body, −1, QP 1 per HP loaned) Itch (Body, −1, 2 QP) — the humblest hex — rung one of the ladder Lend Energy (Body, −1, Any amount) — the circle mechanic in rite form: channel your strength through another's working. Every tradition teaches it first |
| Second — Cunning-Person requires all First Circle; the village relies on them | Stop Bleeding (Body, −2, 1 QP) Awaken (Body, −2, 1 QP) Sense Danger (Chance, −1, 3 QP) Seeker (Chance, −2, 3 QP) — dowsing and finding Fear (Mind, −1, QP 1 per yard) — sourceless panic is always deniable Clumsiness (Body, −2, QP 1 to 5 per -1 DX) — “accident-prone” Loyalty (Mind, −3, 2 QP) — the love-charm |
| Third — Wise One requires Second Circle; renowned healer-and-hexer | Cure Disease (Body, −5, 4 QP) — “the fever broke” Neutralize Poison (Body, −6, 5 QP) Pain (Body, −2, 2 QP) — rung three of the hex-ladder Hinder (Body, −3, 1 to 4 QP) Curse † (Body/Chance, −8, Varies) — the true, lasting malediction — hedged, in the tradition, with a condition of release; its trace is only misfortune, which is why nothing is ever proved Watchdog † (Magic, −1, 1 QP) / Nightingale † (−1, 2 QP) — the charm that wakes you to danger or keeps a sick-room safe through the night |
| Inner — Old One rare; hedge-witches of legend | Major Healing † (Body, −3, 1-4 QP) — deep mending beyond the everyday poultice Sleep (Mind, −2, 4 QP) Forgetfulness (Mind, −1, 3 QP) — “can't quite remember” Daze (Mind, −1, 3 QP) |
Perks (★ = unique to this tradition): Rote Alchemy (any folk elixir) · Improvised Items (a nail, a ribbon, a crust of bread) · Intuitive Cantrip · Mundane Magic (the heart of folk deniability) · Wizardly Garb (apron, herb-pouch, charms) · Named Possession (a charm, distaff, or knife) · Sanctum (the cottage and its garden) · Convenience Casting · Rule of 17 · Mana Compensation · Scroll-Reading · Special Exercises (Empathy, Green Thumb, or Will) · Magical Style Adaptation · Secret Rite.
★ Charm-Wright — every vessel you make is 1 QP cheaper to hold: protective charms ride at 1 QP, offensive at 2. The charm-makers of the setting.
★ Green-Handed — +1 to the casting roll when a rite uses herbal or entheogen trappings, and +2 on the draught's HT roll: you know the doses.
★ Kindly Face — once per rite, if the working could plausibly pass as coincidence, it is one tier quieter for being noticed (not for cost). Nobody suspects the harmless old woman.
★ Threefold Wariness — you always know when a curse you cast risks rebounding, and may abort before committing energy.
Optional traits: improved HT, Will, Perception · Empathy · Healer · Green Thumb · Animal Empathy · Resistant to Poison/Disease · Allies (kin, or a familiar animal) · good Reputation among the common folk · Sense of Duty (the community) · Code of Honor (harm none who don't earn it) · Secret (practices witchcraft) · Vow (never refuse a sick child). Skills: Physician, Diagnosis, Pharmacy (Herbal), Poisons, Veterinary, Animal Handling, Cooking, Fortune-Telling, Weather Sense, Gardening, Midwifery.
⚒️ The Quiet Craft
The near-extinct artificer tradition — makers, not casters. A discovery, not a starting option.
Every other tradition works the world's forces — spirits, minds, bodies, fate. The Quiet Craft works its substance. These are the makers: smiths who forge a blade that never rusts, lamp-wrights whose lights never gutter, glaziers of the unoverhearable room, coopers of the cask that keeps water pure for a decade. A Quiet-Craft rite doesn't look like magic because it is also carpentry, or smithing, or glasswork. The magic is in how the thing is made.
This makes them the tradition of enduring work and superior charms — where the Cunning Folk make many cheap charms, the Craft makes few, lasting ones: the masterwork amulet, the warded lock, the tool that keeps its virtue for a lifetime. But the tradition is dying. No living master knows the whole of its lore; much survives only as half-legible entries in guarded workbooks, and its living masters can be counted on one hand. A maker's workbook is among the most valuable objects in the world — and a character does not start in this tradition. You find it: a recovered book, a dying master's last apprenticeship. The old guild-titles persist though the guild is gone.
Required skills: Thaumatology · Occultism · Alchemy · Ritual Magic · one craft skill (Smith, Armoury, Jeweler, Carpentry, or Glassblowing)
Required rites (First Circle): Ignite or Extinguish Fire · Seek or Purify Water · Find Weakness · Continual Light · Lend Energy
Entry: ordinary in points, near-impossible in access — it must be found in play, priced in story.
| Circle | Rites (Path, default, base QP) |
|---|---|
| First — Prentice the four homely wonders every maker begins with | Ignite Fire (Energy, −1, 1-4 QP) / Extinguish Fire (−1, 3 QP) Seek Water (Matter, −1, 2 QP) / Purify Water (−1, QP 1 per gallon) Find Weakness (Matter, −4, 1 QP) — feel where a material will fail Continual Light (Energy, −1, Varies) Lend Energy (Body, −1, Any amount) — the circle mechanic in rite form: channel your strength through another's working. Every tradition teaches it first |
| Second — Journeyman requires all First Circle; a working artificer | Sharpen (Matter, −10, Varies) — the edge that never dulls / Ruin (−8, QP 2 per lb) — rust and rot in minutes Season (Matter, −1, QP 2 per meal) / Preserve Food (−2, Special) Silence (Energy, −1, 2 QP) — the room no one can overhear Fog (Energy, −4, QP 2 per yard) / Predict Weather (−4, Varies) Shape Earth (Matter, −1, QP 1 per 25 cu ft) — small workings pass as craft Hush (Energy, −2, 2 QP) — the step that leaves no track |
| Third — Master requires Second Circle; a keeper of real secrets | Weaken (Matter, −5, 2-6 QP) / Restore (−1, 2 QP) Darkness (Energy, −2, 2 QP) — a room that drinks light Shape Metal (Matter, −2, 6 QP) — work cold metal like clay — lost lore, precious …and works the guild never committed to paper † — the lamp that never dies, the rustless masterwork — taught only bench-to-bench, at Master rank, if a living master can be found at all |
| Inner — Grand Artificer near-mythical; makers whose works outlive kingdoms | The craft's last and greatest secret † — whispered of, never named, and never yet seen by anyone who told of it Lost Overt Matter/Energy rites known only in theory — castable pre-tear only at ruinous cost |
Perks (★ = unique to this tradition): Better Magic Items (the Craft's whole reason for being) · Improvised Items · Rote Alchemy (quenching oils, tempering baths, lamp-oils) · Precision Recharger · Named Possession (a masterwork tool, or the maker's own magnum opus) · Sanctum (the forge or glasshouse) · Wizardly Garb (the maker's apron, tools, and mark) · Scroll-Reading (another maker's coded workbook) · Mana Compensation · Special Exercises · Magical Style Adaptation · Secret Rite.
★ Master Vessel — your vessels may hold effects of longer duration than the standard moment (GM sets the tier). The Craft's central secret, and the world's only source of it.
★ Lasting Work — your enduring, anchored workings commit 1 fewer QP (minimum 1).
★ Field-Reader — +2 to research rolls to reconstruct or invent Matter/Energy rites, and you can learn a sparse-Path rite from a fragment no other caster could parse.
★ True Temper — a weapon, lock, or tool you make with a Matter rite gains a lasting quality (never rusts, never fails, holds an impossible edge) that reads as superb craftsmanship, not magic.
★ Efficient Forge — a rite performed as part of genuine craft-work, with the proper craft skill, counts its trappings bonus as +3. The magic hides in the labor.
Optional traits: improved DX, KN, HT · Artificer · High Manual Dexterity · Patron (a client who covets the work) · Wealth · Single-Minded · Contact Group (the few makers left) · Obsession (perfect the work) · Secret (keeper of lost lore) · Workaholic · Loner. Skills: Smith, Armoury, Jeweler, Carpentry, Glassblowing, Machinist, Metallurgy, Engineer, Alchemy, Merchant, Hidden Lore (Magic Items), Artist, Prospecting.