Wizards
"Spells and potions? Demons and incantations? Subtle and quick to anger?"
"Not so subtle."
Strengths
Weaknesses
Inherent AbilitiesMechanicsMagical WorkingsStrengths:
Weaknesses:
Soul Gaze
When a wizard looks into a persons eyes for more than a second, they exchange something called the soul gaze, in which both participants see into the other's soul. They see the other's innermost being, the things they've done, the things they are willing to do, and the things they are capable of doing. That sight stays with both people, clear as the moment it takes place, for life.
Once a wizard has soul gazed a person, it cannot be repeated and that person can meet the wizard's eyes with impunity.
Third Sight
The kind of things you see when you learn how to open your Third Eye could be blindingly beautiful, bring tears to your eyes-or they could be horrible, things that made your worst nightmares seem ordinary and comforting. Visions of the past, the future, of the true natures of things. Psychic stains, troubled shades, spirit-folk of all description, the shivering power of the Nevernever in all its brilliant and subtle hues-and all going straight into your brain: unforgettable, permanent. Wizards quickly learn how to control the Third Eye, to keep it closed except in times of great need, or else they go mad within a few weeks.
True Names
Everything in the whole world has its own name. Names are unique sounds and cadences of words that are attached to one specific individual-sort of like a kind of theme music. If you know something's name, you can associate yourself with it in a magical sense, almost in the same way a wizard can reach out and touch someone if he possesses a lock of their hair, or fingernail clippings, or blood. If you know something's name, you can create a magical link to it, just as you can call someone up and talk to them if you know their phone number. Just knowing the name isn't good enough, though: You have to know exactly how to say it. Ask two John Franklin Smiths to say their names for you, and you'll get subtle differences in tone and pronunciation, each one unique to its owner. Wizards tend to collect names of creatures, spirits, and people like some kind of huge Rolodex. You never know when it will come in handy.
It's difficult with people. People's self-concepts are always changing, evolving, so even if you get someone to tell you their full name, if you try to establish the link when they're in a radically different mood, or after some life-changing event that alters the way they see themselves, it might not work. A wizard can get a person's name only from their own lips, but if he doesn't use it fairly quickly, it's likely to get stale.
Controlling an inhuman being via its Name is a shady area of magic, only one step removed from taking over the will of another mortal. According to the White Council's Seven Laws of Magic, that's a capital crime.
Magic and Technology
It has something to do with being a wizard, with working with magical forces. The more delicate and modern the machine is, the more likely it is that something will go wrong if a wizard close enough to it. A wizard can kill a copier at fifty paces.
Don't even think about cell phones. Even a standard land line will have problems with a wizard.
Homestead Laws
Just as a vampire must be invited into a home, so too is it with wizards. A wizard can enter uninvited, but if he does so, he leaves the majority of his power at the threshold and is far less capable of working even minor magics.
Businesses do not have the same sanctity and can be entered without invitation or loss of power.
A threshold can have its power weakened by mostly-absent residents or large numbers of strangers coming in and out of the home during a short period of time. The weaker the threshold, the less power it has to keep out supernatural beings or a wizard's power.
Magic came from life itself, from the interaction of nature and the elements, from the energy of all living beings, and especially of people. A man's magic demonstrates what sort of person he is, what is held most deeply inside of him. There is no truer gauge of a man's character than the way in which he employs his strength, his power.
Magic Circles
Most magic involves a circle of one kind or another. Drawing a circle sets a local limit on what a wizard is trying to do. It helps him refine his magic, focus and direct it more clearly. It does this by creating a sort of screen, defined by the perimeter of the circle, that keeps random magical energy from going past it, containing it within the circle so that it can be used. To make a circle, you draw it out on the ground, or close hands with a bunch of people, or walk about spreading incense, or any of a number of other methods, while focusing on your purpose in drawing it. Then, you invest it with a little spark of energy to close the circuit, and it's ready.
One other thing such a circle does: It keeps magical creatures, like faeries, or even demons, from getting past it.
Evocation
Evocation is the most direct, spectacular, and noisy form of expressed magic, or sorcery. Explosions, fire, that sort of thing. You have to be able to see or touch where you want your effect to go. If you do it seat of the pants without a focus, it's tricky to get the right degree of control and things can go a bit haywire.
Thaumaturgy
As above, so below. Make something happen on a small scale, and give it the energy to happen on a large scale. The spell needs something to connect the spell to the effect. Hair, fingernails, blood samples are all used in thaumaturgy on a living being.
Potions
Potions are all made pretty much the same way. First you need a base to form the essential liquid content; then something to engage each of the senses, and then something for the mind and something else for the spirit. Eight ingredients, all in all, and they're different for each and every potion, and for each person who makes them. For example:
The escape potion was made in a base of eight ounces of Jolt cola. We added a drop of motor oil, for the smell of it, and cut a bird's feather into tiny shavings for the tactile value. Three ounces of chocolate-covered espresso beans, ground into powder, went in next. Then a shredded bus ticket I'd never used, for the mind, and a small chain which I broke and then dropped in, for the heart. I unfolded a clean white cloth where I'd had a flickering shadow stored for just such an occasion, and tossed it into the brew, then opened up a glass jar where I kept my mouse scampers and tapped the sound out into the beaker where the potion was brewing …
Foci
Or magical focuses. A wizard can get a lot more done with a lot less waste of his precious reserves of power if he uses magical foci. These items are created and enchanted with a particular intent - a blasting rod to focus energy into focused power and flame, a shield bracelet to focus energy into a magical shield, a mask to focus energy into casting an impenetrable veil (like invisibility but more flexible.) These items are invaluable to wizards who might otherwise waste energy in less focused uses.
Suggestions for Making Wizard Characters
Wizards tend to specialize. They gravitate toward a sphere of magic for which they have a particular aptitude. Some are extremely good with veils (kinds of invisibility or illusion); others are good with fire; while another can't figure out fire at all, but give him water and you have a tsunami on your hands.
A wizard who is a jack of all trades will be a master of none. Sure, he can spark up a decent fire, freeze his own ice cubes, and mask himself fairly adeptly, but a specialist wizard will plow right through him.
Each wizard will have his own particular take on spellcasting, his own particular foci, his own preferred "language" in which to cast spells. Be creative and have fun with it. There's no reason to make it serious business all the time.
"Not so subtle."
Strengths
Weaknesses
Inherent AbilitiesMechanicsMagical WorkingsStrengths:
- Magic (that's a good'un)
- Third sight
- Soul gaze
- Slowed aging
Weaknesses:
- Need for study and prep
- Expensive material components
- Technology hates wizards (no high tech home for you!)
- The White Council will watch you and the sentence for breaking the laws of magic is death
Soul Gaze
When a wizard looks into a persons eyes for more than a second, they exchange something called the soul gaze, in which both participants see into the other's soul. They see the other's innermost being, the things they've done, the things they are willing to do, and the things they are capable of doing. That sight stays with both people, clear as the moment it takes place, for life.
Once a wizard has soul gazed a person, it cannot be repeated and that person can meet the wizard's eyes with impunity.
Third Sight
The kind of things you see when you learn how to open your Third Eye could be blindingly beautiful, bring tears to your eyes-or they could be horrible, things that made your worst nightmares seem ordinary and comforting. Visions of the past, the future, of the true natures of things. Psychic stains, troubled shades, spirit-folk of all description, the shivering power of the Nevernever in all its brilliant and subtle hues-and all going straight into your brain: unforgettable, permanent. Wizards quickly learn how to control the Third Eye, to keep it closed except in times of great need, or else they go mad within a few weeks.
True Names
Everything in the whole world has its own name. Names are unique sounds and cadences of words that are attached to one specific individual-sort of like a kind of theme music. If you know something's name, you can associate yourself with it in a magical sense, almost in the same way a wizard can reach out and touch someone if he possesses a lock of their hair, or fingernail clippings, or blood. If you know something's name, you can create a magical link to it, just as you can call someone up and talk to them if you know their phone number. Just knowing the name isn't good enough, though: You have to know exactly how to say it. Ask two John Franklin Smiths to say their names for you, and you'll get subtle differences in tone and pronunciation, each one unique to its owner. Wizards tend to collect names of creatures, spirits, and people like some kind of huge Rolodex. You never know when it will come in handy.
It's difficult with people. People's self-concepts are always changing, evolving, so even if you get someone to tell you their full name, if you try to establish the link when they're in a radically different mood, or after some life-changing event that alters the way they see themselves, it might not work. A wizard can get a person's name only from their own lips, but if he doesn't use it fairly quickly, it's likely to get stale.
Controlling an inhuman being via its Name is a shady area of magic, only one step removed from taking over the will of another mortal. According to the White Council's Seven Laws of Magic, that's a capital crime.
Magic and Technology
It has something to do with being a wizard, with working with magical forces. The more delicate and modern the machine is, the more likely it is that something will go wrong if a wizard close enough to it. A wizard can kill a copier at fifty paces.
Don't even think about cell phones. Even a standard land line will have problems with a wizard.
Homestead Laws
Just as a vampire must be invited into a home, so too is it with wizards. A wizard can enter uninvited, but if he does so, he leaves the majority of his power at the threshold and is far less capable of working even minor magics.
Businesses do not have the same sanctity and can be entered without invitation or loss of power.
A threshold can have its power weakened by mostly-absent residents or large numbers of strangers coming in and out of the home during a short period of time. The weaker the threshold, the less power it has to keep out supernatural beings or a wizard's power.
Magic came from life itself, from the interaction of nature and the elements, from the energy of all living beings, and especially of people. A man's magic demonstrates what sort of person he is, what is held most deeply inside of him. There is no truer gauge of a man's character than the way in which he employs his strength, his power.
Magic Circles
Most magic involves a circle of one kind or another. Drawing a circle sets a local limit on what a wizard is trying to do. It helps him refine his magic, focus and direct it more clearly. It does this by creating a sort of screen, defined by the perimeter of the circle, that keeps random magical energy from going past it, containing it within the circle so that it can be used. To make a circle, you draw it out on the ground, or close hands with a bunch of people, or walk about spreading incense, or any of a number of other methods, while focusing on your purpose in drawing it. Then, you invest it with a little spark of energy to close the circuit, and it's ready.
One other thing such a circle does: It keeps magical creatures, like faeries, or even demons, from getting past it.
Evocation
Evocation is the most direct, spectacular, and noisy form of expressed magic, or sorcery. Explosions, fire, that sort of thing. You have to be able to see or touch where you want your effect to go. If you do it seat of the pants without a focus, it's tricky to get the right degree of control and things can go a bit haywire.
Thaumaturgy
As above, so below. Make something happen on a small scale, and give it the energy to happen on a large scale. The spell needs something to connect the spell to the effect. Hair, fingernails, blood samples are all used in thaumaturgy on a living being.
Potions
Potions are all made pretty much the same way. First you need a base to form the essential liquid content; then something to engage each of the senses, and then something for the mind and something else for the spirit. Eight ingredients, all in all, and they're different for each and every potion, and for each person who makes them. For example:
The escape potion was made in a base of eight ounces of Jolt cola. We added a drop of motor oil, for the smell of it, and cut a bird's feather into tiny shavings for the tactile value. Three ounces of chocolate-covered espresso beans, ground into powder, went in next. Then a shredded bus ticket I'd never used, for the mind, and a small chain which I broke and then dropped in, for the heart. I unfolded a clean white cloth where I'd had a flickering shadow stored for just such an occasion, and tossed it into the brew, then opened up a glass jar where I kept my mouse scampers and tapped the sound out into the beaker where the potion was brewing …
Foci
Or magical focuses. A wizard can get a lot more done with a lot less waste of his precious reserves of power if he uses magical foci. These items are created and enchanted with a particular intent - a blasting rod to focus energy into focused power and flame, a shield bracelet to focus energy into a magical shield, a mask to focus energy into casting an impenetrable veil (like invisibility but more flexible.) These items are invaluable to wizards who might otherwise waste energy in less focused uses.
Suggestions for Making Wizard Characters
Wizards tend to specialize. They gravitate toward a sphere of magic for which they have a particular aptitude. Some are extremely good with veils (kinds of invisibility or illusion); others are good with fire; while another can't figure out fire at all, but give him water and you have a tsunami on your hands.
A wizard who is a jack of all trades will be a master of none. Sure, he can spark up a decent fire, freeze his own ice cubes, and mask himself fairly adeptly, but a specialist wizard will plow right through him.
Each wizard will have his own particular take on spellcasting, his own particular foci, his own preferred "language" in which to cast spells. Be creative and have fun with it. There's no reason to make it serious business all the time.