Magic and the city: Magic-users in Traenendahl

My second submission for the RPG blog carnaval. This month's topic is Magic and the City. 

The town is surrounded by water, a clear sign of its former use during the Fallen Empire's rule. Except for the massive bridge and the monolythic walls, the buildings are all shabbily made on top of ancient ruins, temporary lodgings whose use got extended for longer than intended. 

What guards patrol the walls stare off into the distance, dreaming of elsewhere. Some long for home, others for places more exciting. The blacksmith polishes one of many near identical crude swords again, she gave up trying to look for new buyers years ago. Traders of various kinds spend evenings doing the math which always tells them they should have already left, even if ir meant leaving merchandise behind. 

A strange absence cuts through the typical ambiance of towns everywhere. The sounds of carts, chattering locals, barking dogs, yowling cats and general busy-ness is all drowned out by a severe lack of children playing, laughing, crying, being scolded or running away from trouble they caused. 

Just another day of shattered hopes and dreams in Traenendahl. 

The town: Traenendahl

As mentioned in the last post, I want to experiment with disparate magic: rather than a single unifying magic system, magics are diverse both in how they work in-universe as well as their resolution. This with the goal of emphasizing magic as arcane.

The main settlement I am making for the Star's Prison thing isn't quite big enough that it qualifies as a city, but I want to use this month's blog carnival as an excuse to think of magics that are being practiced by NPCs living in the town of Traenendahl. 

Traenendahl is sort of like a post-gold-rush town: When folks learned of the location of the Star Prison many adventurers flocked to it aiming to get their hands on that wish. Even more people thought they would be able to make bank off of selling shit to these adventurers. Now that the general consensus is that the prison is very dangerous, only the most daring and desperate still delve it, nowhere nearly enough people to sustain the many traders trying to sell shoddy rope, suspect rations and arms and armour that fell off a dead soldier on some battlefield. 

This history means that Traenendahl has a surprising number of different magical traditions given its relatively conservative size.

These traditions are separate from the player options I am still fleshing out (this project js taking way longer than I intended...), but if a player showed the desire to I would allow them to play as any of these as well. 

Magic services: local traditions

Soul forging 

Hilde is one of the few dwarves born with soul sense. All dwarves can identify metals and minerals by merely being near them through their stone sense, but those like Hilde are able to sense the spirits of all things. 

This allows her to forge these spirits into the things she makes. Give her something containing the essence of a creature or structure and she can make you a metal object infused with that essence. With one minor condition: Hilde doesn't like to waste her time. She only does ambitious projects and never the same more than once. Which inevitably drives up the time it takes to make her creations as well as the price she asks for them.

Wound rushing 

When you are wounded and in a rush you can use the services of Mohib. He has a cabinet in which time flows faster, allowing recovery time to be cut down significantly. 

There are some caveats. For one, you'll be bored as hell, as time flows as normal to the person inside of the cabinet. Second, you better not need regular care cause only one person fits inside. And finally, you have to make sure to bring enough food and water to last the time you'll spend in there. 

Mohib doesn't require payment for use of his cabinet. He also hasn't aged since moving into town a couple of decades ago. So you might want to take a moment to think about how you feel about that as well. 

Spirit distillation 

Sometimes while exploring you require a drink with some extra oomph. Dion's spirits can give you all that and more. No one but him knows how it works, not for a lack of effort on his account though. He will keep going on about alcohol opening up the mind, the different kinds of possession, which aromatics pair well with which spirits, and probably a lot more but at this point most people have started to tune him out. 

Distilation is his passion, and thus his wares are surprisingly cheap in terms of coinage. The real price for any significant amount of a particular spirit are ingredients. Offering him harder to come by ingredients makes him willing to part with even the more exclusive bottles in his collection. 

Rope training

Reliable rope is important to anyone attempting to delve the Star Prison. Fnan's ropes are more reliable than any. Not only are they able to withstand a lot of weight and wear, but Fnan is able to train rope to perform specific tasks when a command is spoken. 

Each rope can do only a single trick as, in the words of Fnan, rope isn't very bright. They come in a wide variety though, from rope that stiffens, rope that climbs, rope that binds, to rope that ignites. They also each have a name that they respond to.

Fnan really cares about her former protégés and will ask after them whenever she meets a former customer. If she finds out you have mistreated one of her ropes, she'll refuse to sell any more to you or your party in the future. 

Also, she's an elf. Completely unaffiliated with the Fallen Empire, but given what those elves have done some might feel strongly about dealing with one.

Thoughts

I think this covers most services players would usually seek out, i.e. enchanted items, magical healing, and magic potions. 

Some of these might be open to exploitation, but I think I can make all of these work at the table. 

It is also a pretty decent amount of magic for a relatively smallish town and feels sufficiently disparate to me. 

Some more leg work would probably be nice (some examples of trained ropes, distilled spirits and forged souls, estimates for how long wounds take to heal + how long it would take for them to heal in the cabinet), but this is all stuff players would probably only be interested in after the first delve, so I feel comfortable postponing that legwork until after I have started up a table for this game. 

Magic and the City: a Sewer witch

My submission for the RPG blog carnaval. This month's topic is Magic and the City.

A sewer witch

In the still of night, broken only by her footsteps, Mildred thought she heard something behind her. 'It is probably nothing,' she wished to herself as she quickened her pace. Probably nothing lingered a moment in the gutter, watching Mildred walk-run-walk down the street. 'Poor thing', he thought 'Something must have given her a start.'

Once the night was truly still again, probably nothing, unaware he had been something, crossed the street and continued skulking home. While his feet mindlessly tread the familiar cobbles, his thoughts went down equally well-trodden paths. Iconic verses such as '... stupid fucking waste of time...', '... all the way across this damned pisstain of a city...', and of course '... shitgulping idiots...', with a steady refrain of 'should've just stayed the fuck home' would at regular intervals escape his mind through his mouth.

The welcoming smell and familiar drip, drip of the outfall pipe that gave entry to his abode stirred him from his grumbling murmurings. He performed the ritualistic darting look to make sure he wasn't seen before climbing into the pipe which had to be growing a bit taller each year. Either that or the ground was beginning to sag.

'Are you up Felps, you sad sack of bones?' his cloak squelched to the ground. 'You wouldn't believe the mind blistering ordeal that was this sabath meet,' and hat flung ontop a pile of trash. His hands sifting through empty bottles looking for one that wasn't. 'Why did I even join their dumbass coven?' The pop of a cork and eager gulps, the hands had been succesful. 'Bunch of stinking, blabbering fools.' He looked around blinking. Something wasn't quite right. 'Did anything happen when I was...' his words falling out of his mouth into the now glaring absence of both scaly snores and toothless attempts to rip off his legs. 'Felps?' his voice asked while his free hand began to slowly lift up his gown. 

A heavy bootstep thumped from the dark of the inner sewers. 'I am sorry Alistar, but we will have to politely ask you to come with us,' said the harsh face as it came into the light. Various heavy bootsteps underlined that last 'us' by also stepping forward, bolts glittering from the ends of crossbows to make sure he would understand the nature of the request. She hated this part of the job. Not that she felt anything for the gross little man, his death would be just. But trudging through these godforsaken sewers to snuff out his kind was disgusting and the tenacious smell of the place would continue to disgust her for days afterwards. 

'You sure got me now Agnes, don't I feel like a shitbrained fool. No use in fighting it, so I might as well turn myself in,' as he finished his sentence he started running towards them, lifting his knees awkwardly high. As his left leg came up she saw it, whatever it was. Instinctively she reeled back, her entire squad involuntary making way as they too were taking aback by what they saw. When she tried to describe it afterwards, the words that kept coming back to her were 'oozing', 'throbbing', and 'greenish', though her mind refused to recollect the image of that disgusting knee.

By the time she had got herself back together and dared look in the direction he had high kneed off to, Alistar was gone. She commanded her squad to pursue him, knowing full well it was in vain. No one would dare to encounter that horror again and the pursuit following her order was more symbolic than anything else.

Magic and the city

The city doesn't abide magic. Urbanisation is an organising force and the arcane inherently resists such organisation. That is not to say there is no magic in the city, just that unlike rural areas where magic is part of daily life, it is forced into the absolute margins. 

The primary magic-users of cities are the sewer witches. They excel at manipulation of that which society can't get rid off, but would rather pretend wasn't there. Each sewer witch specialises in a different area of profanity. From wielding disgust to embracing the relative trashness of everything, from endearing themselves to the discarded to dispelling decorum. 

The few other magic-users that manage to survive the city tend to despise sewer witches, as they don't help the public image of magial arts. Some merely avoid them, others actively try to out them to the relevant authorities. 

Playing a sewer witch

Just like the fighter variants, the sewer witch is intended to be a background/class thing to use in the mega-dungeon game I am still slowly trying to get off of the ground. If you get a 1 and a 2 on your d6 rolls for HP and GP respectively this is what you end up with:

Sewer Witch (1HP 2GP)

If you open yourself to what disgust tries to suppres, profane secrets reveal themselves: You are a master of the stuff most people rather avoid. 

Take:

• Disgusting robes
• Familiar  (rat, bat, frog, or similar)
• Soggy notes on fecal distribution (somehow always wet)
• Stinking sack of some kind of waste 
• Piece of chalk (UD4)
• Bottle of moonshine

What is your profanity of expertise?

1. Disgust is your mouldy bread and cheesy butter. (One of your bodyparts is incredibly offputting. Showing it to an unsuspecting person makes them reel, keeping it exposed makes it hard for anyone to look at you).
2. You have a knack for sending shivers down spines. (Your touch is simultaneously uncomfortably sensual and strangly remeniscent of insect legs. Touching someone stopts them in their tracks for as long as you actively touch them).
   
3. Morning breath is an alien concept to you. Why limit such a gift to only part of the day? (Your breath is absolutely rancid. A whiff is enough to get nauseous, a full gulp of it will cause even the strongest stomach to empty itself.)
   
4. Your love for the discarded endears you to them. (You can rally the spirits of broken objects. No matter the state it is in, as long as it is still recognizable you can use something one more time before it permanently breaks.)
5. There is nothing wrong with being trash, but folks can't seem to wrap their heads around that idea. (You can tell the self worth of a person at a glance. Given enough time you can convince even the most confident person they are no different than trash). 
6. Polite society is nothing but a dream. It takes only a prick to wake up from it. (If you draw blood, the bleeding creature loses all sense of decorum and all of their inhibitions until the wound is healed.)

What made you go look for the Star?

1. Regret: You assumed they wouldn't understand and broke it off before they found out. Now you can't help wondering what could have been.
   
2. Ambition: Urbanisation is an inevitability. If only you could rule one of these future mega-cities from the shadows.
   
3. Loss: Your alligator sewermate meant the world to you. Losing them was the single biggest loss of your life. 
4. Vengeance: You offered them wisdom and they laughed in you face. They'll see who has the last laugh.
   
5. Fear: If persecution of your arts continues you fear it won't be long before there are none who will carry on the tradition.
   
6. Idealism: The ideal world is like an open sewer: Nothing hidden away; acceptance of all parts of life. 

Thoughts

First of all I would like to credit Cosmic Orrery, as I am pretty sure I got the idea for magic having no unifying principle from them. Regardless whether or not I am remembering it correctly, just go and check out their stuff, it is super rad. 

The micro-fiction at the start of the post is something I want to experiment with. Not sure if I am going to keep it at the start of the post, but definitely want to try to do a little scene like this for every background I am making. 

I have a rough version of a total of 36 backgrounds, each with a concept and an ability. However, I want to do some more legwork, so I plan to give each a unique d6 table to give them a bit more detail and a d6 table with random motivations. It is something I saw in GLOG character creations rules Arnold shared in 2016 and I really like providing it for players that just want to quickly roll up a character and play. 

The fighter variants don't have these tables yet, but I'll be sure to add them once I get around to it. 

Thinking about how magic would work in 'the city' when the game I want to run doesn't take place near a propper city was a bit of a challenge. I ended up reversing the trope that cities are the place to go if you want to find magic. Faux medieval cities seem to exist primarily for the purpose of commerce, and the unpredictability of magic seems like a poor fit for that. Also, I went to university in Rotterdam and that city is a prime example of intolerance of anything weird in the name of productivity, so it might have been an unconscious inspiration. 

It does feel a bit like cheating to use this for this month's blog carnaval, so I might try my hand at another post later this month.