Sorcerer
The
dead are too much with us
Influences:
Garth Nix (Sabriel, Lirael,
Abhorsen), The Sixth Sense, Kill the
Dead, all as if directed by David Cronenberg.
Humanity in this game
Humanity = expiation through grief, “letting go,” and honoring memory over existence. Therefore losing Humanity is not about failure to care, but caring too much and refusing to accept loss. If
a sorcerer’s Humanity goes to 0, he or she is possessed by demons, converting
them to Possessor types and utterly losing all identity to their drives. The
game does include an option for recovery, based on the “demon to human
conversion” rules in The Sorcerer’s Soul, but it will require some
action by other player-characters. |
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Making up your character
Is the
topic disturbing? If so, then good. Make up a
character which demonstrates to everyone else how and why this disturbs you. If
it doesn’t, then re-arrange your mind so that it does.
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I don’t care how Goth you are. Dead people should be gone.
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Think about it carefully … what could a dead being actually want?
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Sorcery isn’t technology. It literally means spitting in the universe’s
eye.
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Remember:
a sorcerer has mastered the commanding and binding of demons. It’s up
to you to say why and how your character has done this. ·
Sorcerers are rare – maybe 100, world-wide. ·
You learned how – who taught you? ·
This is an appalling, impossible thing to do – why in the
world are you doing it? In
all cases, think in terms of an awesome character for a movie, rather than a
“justification” origin story for a superhero. You’re providing actual setting
by answering these questions. The Kicker Something
has just changed in your character’s life, so much that every choice, every
decision, and every value has undergone a major review. This is the moment
when it all gets interesting. What
just happened? |
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Sorcery
Death
is a river: when you conduct a sorcerous ritual,
your real body freezes in place (literally) and you stand before the first of
nine Gates, through which the river flows. All Lore and Rituals utilize the
river and its qualities. There is only one river. No
one knows where the river actually goes. Sorcerers have no particular insight
into the meaning of life or the ultimate fate of a living being. Some
implications: (1) separate acts of sorcery at the same time may encounter one
another on the river, (2) any ritual may possibly run into something
unwanted, and (3) traps may be laid for the unwary. Rituals
work on any demon. The typical ritual takes 1-3 hours. Each may be
performed as a snap-shot, which drops the relevant score down to a value of
1, or as a 12-hour-plus full ceremony, which adds bonus dice. |
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All
sorcerer characters may perform all of the following rituals:
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All about demons
“Demons”
in this game are the dead have not proceeded past the Ninth Gate, for whatever
reason – and who have found a means (or are forced) to interact with the living
world. They are no longer the living beings they were; do not think of them as
people. Memory, to them, is nothing but obsession, and they know nothing of
life or its priorities, not even as memory.
Without
sorcerers, even the returned dead are almost entirely powerless. In this game,
demons gain their abilities and Power scores through the Binding process. This
idea has many implications both for the setting and for your options during
play, so consider it carefully.
Demon Desires and Needs
The
most typical Desire is Corruption, almost as a side effect rather than what
we might think of as “motive.” Needs
always concern emotions in some way. Demon Types
·
Objects are necromantic Tokens, not demons – use the rules in Sorcerer
& Sword ·
Possessors are the bodies of former sorcerers who went to Humanity 0;
they can only switch bodies through Corruption (getting another person to
drop to Humanity 0) ·
Inconspicuous demons take on very characteristic forms –
shadows/ghosts, hallucinations and mental phenomena ·
Parasites include corpse animators and substitute body parts ·
Passers are the risen dead, most powerful by far |
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