Medieval Magic
Template:Magic Articles Original article by Dark Mutant
Reading the debate about medieval systems and "authentic" magic systems, I suddenly had a brainstorm about how to toss together a system that tries a more authentic approach to magic, or at least the way that it was conceived of in the middle ages, along with some of the ideas in the universal laws of magic. At the very least I wanted to have the removal of mana points, vis, or memorizing spells.
Part of it is that in those days, they didn't think of what they were doing as precisely magic. It was more metaphysics or natural philosophy, the exploitation of the existing laws of nature. Just as scientists and engineers assemble the proper materials and perform arcane rituals, so they did back in those days without worrying if they had enough magic points on hand.
On the other hand, their views of the laws of nature worked along slightly different lines than the way we view things. See Bonewitz's Laws of Magic for a better view of how their system worked. Also, the ideas of alchemy and astrology were key back in those days, and need to be incorporated. Certain rituals would only work when the stars were right, and required strange materials to work.
The system is still being hacked out. I'm still working on the conceptual details. Once that is worked out, I might actually get around to scales and integrating with an RPG system, probably GURPS or Ars Magica. Suggestions and commentary are always welcome.
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In the Beginning
The key concept in this system is that of the Quality. A Quality is an adjective that describes some aspect of an object. A Quality has a type and a level. The corpse of a human who was stabbed to death might be described as having the Qualities of Death, Decay, Violence, Human, Murder, and both the Quality of the person whose corpse that is and the person who committed the murder. As time goes on, some of the Qualities will fade. Since its a corpse and not human, the Human Quality will fade over time. The Decay quality will go up as the rotting gets more pronounced, and so forth.
All Qualities have their opposites. In truth, it is hard to notice the total level of a Quality, merely the excess of one Quality with regards to its opposite. The opposite of Death is Life, and so forth. Note that there is a difference between having two Qualities existing in balance and no opposing qualities in a substance or effect.
What happens when two opposing Qualities are brought together? Well, the net effect is cancellation, but there are two types of cancellation. There is destructive cancellation and constructive cancellation. Destructive cancellation is where the two Qualities negate each other, pure and simple, leaving only the net imbalance of the two Qualities. Destructive synthesis is fairly easy to do. Acid and base cancel out and leave a muck behind.
Constructive cancellation, also known as synthesis, occurs when two opposing Qualities are brought together and leave something which contains both of the old Qualities coexisting with each other. Synthesis is hard. In general, the two Qualities have to be of identical level and almost identical in nature except for the opposing Qualities. That is, two Names of opposite types may be brought into balance, or two opposite materials, but a name and a material cannot be brought into synthesis. Likewise breaking up a balanced Quality is hard to do.
You Want A What?
There are a variety of ways to accumulate various Qualities. Material sources are the most commonly thought of. Various substances have various qualities. The more exotic substances have stronger qualities. The whole art of Alchemy is devoted to forming substances with powerful Qualities to them. The refinement of pure essences, removing impurities and distilling various attributes. Note that most materials have multiple Qualities associated with them. Getting rid of various Qualities to refine the essence of one is half of what Alchemy is about. Putting Qualities in balance is the other half.
Qualities also come out of actions. Murdering someone contains the Quality of Death. At the precise moment of the murder, its a high Quality, fading immediately afterwards. Various effects produce various Qualities. Many rituals to restore the fertility of the fields either have sex or activities that are closely related to sex, for example. Actions also leave the impressions of Qualities in the targets of their actions and at the site of their actions, and more faintly on anniversaries of various sorts. Actions also leave Qualities on the people who perform the action as well.
There are also background Qualities. Places have various Qualities to them, usually resulting from either their composition or from what has happened at them. The more of either, the stronger the Qualities of the place. Other Qualities come from specific things, but broad enough to count as background elements. Planets, constellations and other celestial objects produce various Qualities in them. The strengths and types of Qualities depend on the object in question and their position in the sky, and their relations to each other. Conjunctions and occultations produce powerful effects, eclipses produce even stronger ones. Less powerful, but more common and predictable phenomena include the solstices and equinoxes, full moon and new moon, and the daily phenomena of noon and midnight.
Finally, there are words. Names contain the links to the stuff they name. The Qualities of the stuff named are evoked by the name itself. Actually, there are whole languages, but the verbs connect to the actions as the nouns connect to the objects, and so forth. Common language doesn't evoke powerful effects. Everything has deeper names, and there are truer and higher names to just about everything. Using a higher name evokes the qualities more strongly.
Spell Casting 101
Magic works by the Law of Similarity and the Law of Cotigation. The Law of Similarity means that like produces like. In short, if you want to produce an effect, you look at the levels of Qualities needed for that effect and reproduce them. The Law of Cotigation means that you can use substances of the same Qualities as the effect you are trying to produce, they need not be identical, though the closer you get, the better off you are overall.
First, you determine the level of effect needed for a spell. That pretty much means determining the list of Qualities you need and the level of each Quality. Due to the fact its an imperfect universe with a malicious GM, the level of Quality needed to generate a murder by magic is much higher than the level of Quality generated by murdering someone. In short, its usually easier just to do something without magic than with it. Note that the list of Qualities you think you need and the list of Qualities that are actually needed are two different things. The GM can have fun with this aspect.
Next, determine the resources needed to pull off a spell. Note two important factors here: both the caster and the target have Qualities, and these Qualities contribute directly to the resources needed to pull off a spell. More precisely, the net imbalance of Qualities may be counted. If you're casting a spell on a bonfire, the bonfire has the Quality of Fire that can be counted in the final spell. Also, if you have cast fire spells a lot, you might have accumulated the Quality of Fire yourself, which may make Fire spells easier to cast. Bear in mind that actions leave Qualities on the doers.
Once the caster and the target are taken into account, you then figure out what else needs to be added in. Bear in mind the powerful rituals, the ones that make the masses tremble in their boots, are going to require hideously powerful levels of the various Qualities involved. Spells often have strange actions, mysterious tomes, exotic material components, distinct places to cast them, and even more distinct times in a desperate attempt to assemble the amount of Qualities needed to perform the spell. And even then they often impose requirements on who can cast the spell and on whom or what.
Folk magic can be handled by saying that the curing of warts and other minor effects have a very low Quality requirement to them, enough so that just using herbs, simple invocations and the like can deal with them. If one comes up with the idea of rituals gaining in power through repetition (see a later section for detail), then one can actually raise the Quality level to curt warts, but have a simple ritual to cure it, on the grounds that the ritual has been done by peasants for centuries and its got a lot of momentum behind it.
Things That Go Boom
An important feature to consider is the "so much and no more" aspect of Qualities in a ritual. More is not necessarily better. You get what you paid for, and if you overpaid, you get more than you necessarily wanted in your ritual. If you cast a Death spell with an excess of the Quality of Death, you might find yourself killing a lot more than you planned on, such as yourself.
Most objects have various Qualities to them. The more mystic Qualities all have an effect on the final ritual. Including the ones that weren't required for the effect the ritual is supposed to invoke. If your spell requires a conjunction of Mars with Saturn, and Jupiter is nearby, your spell may be warped by the proximity of Jupiter unless something is done about it. One method is to simply come up with a new effect that incorporates all the elements you have. The other method is to cancel them out. As before, constructive or destructive cancellation can be used.
Qualities not related to the planned effect but not cancelled out in some way lead to side effects of the spell. The strength of the Qualities determines the level of the side effect. Something to take into account is that *all* Qualities connected to the ritual are counted for this purpose. And any Qualities unknowingly in opposition are automatically destructively cancelled. Thus it really pays to make sure you know all the variables connected to your ritual. Also it helps to make the rituals performed in some isolated spot with a well known history.
A final point of caution is that there is a temptation to use a lot of different items to build up a level of Qualities needed to perform a spell. The more items one uses in a ritual, the harder the ritual is to perform and the more likely something is going to go wrong anyway. The best magic uses as little as possible, and uses the highest quality components.
Support Your Local Wizard
So what do magicians do? First off, what items have what Qualities, and how much, isn't found in the local public library. The books that have them are generally kept very secret. So most magicians spend lots of time performing experiments to determine what items have what Qualities. Also, learning what items have Qualities buried in them in balance is another common activity of magicians. Astrology is also important, keeping track of all the constellations, all the planets, and how their relative positions affect the net Qualities associated with any place and time are also involved.
Then there is the assembling of raw materials with Quality. Alchemists spend their lives refining and distilling materials with Qualities they desire. Then there are the infamous component hunts, were people go for the common eye of newt and the more uncommon things like a rooster's egg or the tears of an angel. Exotic Qualities need exotic sources, and getting some of the items can be an adventure in and of itself. (and probably will be) Then there's the learning of names, the sanctification of sites, and other sources of Qualities. All of these resources are preciously guarded.
Another aspect is the raising and lowering of Qualities in oneself. There are two paths the magician may take. First is to deliberately go for strong unbalanced Qualities in some area where power is desired. The advantage is that you automatically qualify as a reusable source of Quality for working all magics of that type. A Necromancer who builds up a strong Death quality can work magics by himself, without materials, special words or locations (like graveyards) that lesser magicians would need a whole list of preparations to perform. The problem is that the magician picks up a huge vulnerability. First off, Qualities of the same type as the magician may be used on the magician much easier. Necromancers have a hideous vulnerability to Death. Also, Qualities may be brought in destructive opposition to (temporarily) neutralize the magician in question.
The other path is to go for balanced Qualities in oneself. The advantage here is that the magician doesn't pick up any special vulnerabilities. Also, the magician picks up a more precise control over magic since the magician isn't contributing any unopposed Qualities to the magic involved, or has any personal Qualities that need to be overcome for a spell. The disadvantage of course is that the balance doesn't directly aid any magic the magician performs, so that all the effects raised must come from outside the magician.
The fact of personal Qualities is quite of concern to a magician. Knowledge of one's own personal Qualities is not automatic, and it changes over time in response to the magician's own actions and nature. Many times rituals are performed with the magician as the target. Initiation rituals are designed for one of two effects. First, they are either to generate net Qualities in a person, making them more receptive to and more powerful in a certain type of magic, or they are designed to reduce net Qualities and make a person more perfect by placing all their elements in balance.
Priests are in many ways easy to handle under this system. They have a Quality of Piety or Divine Favor of whatever one chooses to call it. Prayer is a magical invocation of some Power with its associated Qualities in conjunction with the Quality of the priest. The Quality might work for or against if the priest is a target of spells. (if a fellow priest is trying to invoke a healing prayer, it probably will help, if a magician is casting hostile magic, the Quality will probably help resist if the god is of the virtuous category) Forget about trying to take priests on in a church on holy days with a devout congregation around.
Impact Your Options
One optional idea to play with is the idea of a ritual increasing in power with repetition. That is, a folk behavior supposed to represent something actually picks up power due to the fact that people perform that ritual all the time, over and over. Such as marriage ceremonies and other small rituals that get done repeatedly. If there is a custom of a man and a woman exchanging rings in courtship, the exchange of rings starts to pick up its own power, having a Quality associated with it, which then can be incorporated into spells.
A spell gets performed enough times, it gradually accumulates its own power, its own existence because of its repeated use. The pentagram is used to summon demons because that's the most common spell to do it, and the pentagram has accumulated its own qualities as a result. Sort of a magical feedback processes. If a method works and gets used often enough, it becomes the standard method to do it, and all spells to work that effect increase in effectiveness using the elements of the standard ritual. Folk magic may have a lot of effectiveness out of proportion to what it should be doing simply because its been done so much everywhere that its gained power as a result. Magicians, who go off the beaten path of conventional magic, don't have that power.
What's Left?
Well, first, there isn't a system in here yet. Presumably once all the stuff has been thrown together, a difficulty value is assigned to the ritual that needs to be performed, and skill rolls are needed from the active participants. However, there are still conceptual issues that need to be resolved.
First off, how to add up various Qualities. If one has an angel's feather, a whole pile of them should not add to the Quality of a spell much more than one does. So there probably should be a uniqueness rule for each source. Also, if one has a set of disparate sources for various Qualities, should they add linearly, or should there be some form of diminishing returns? There are arguments in both directions. The linear system is easier, though there might be some form of law of diminishing returns for sources of a broad category. Like adding linearly the net Quality of the material parts with the invoked names, but doubling the amount of material components doesn't necessarily double the Quality of the material components. Similarly with words of power.
Finally, is there an effective difference in magic between an object with no opposed Qualities and an object with balanced Qualities? One possibility is to make magic involving a Quality harder to perform on an object with that Quality in balance with its opposite. And is there a difference between the amount of Quality in balance with respect to this stability? There probably should be, but I'm willing to be argued out of it with good reasoning. If there is a difference, how much should there be and what effects will having items with balanced Qualities have in a ritual?
Difficulty levels for various types of magic need to be hacked out. A strong idea to play with, given what I know of medieval magic (not much but a little) is that information gathering magic and spirit magic were the predominant forms. Presumably these types of magic were far easier than any other sort. Gathering information probably doesn't require hideous amounts in the way of Qualities needed for the effect, but may require a high skill level, due to the delicacy of the resulting effect. A botch may give faulty information.
Spirit magic (summoning, binding and banishing spirits, as well as magic to instill fear, love, lust, whatever) is also popular. I'm working on the idea here that magic to do physical stuff is rather difficult to pull off. Since the caster presumably has a spirit, the Quality of Spirit is at least partly present. One then needs to work out the other Qualities needed to muck around with spirits.
There are probably other conceptual issues I'm missing. Once those are filled in, then several things need to get done. First off, a list of the most important Qualities and any relations between them. For example, the element of air has the Quality of Air, but there were correspondences under Cabalistic magic between Air and Intellect and Swords, for example. Often disparate Qualities have linkages between them, for the magician to exploit in magic.
The reverse of this is that if a magician assembles various Qualities for a ritual, then that ritual ends up having various additional Qualities that are the combination of base Qualities required for the ritual. Sort of an inevitable side effect process, and these Qualities need to be dealt with. On the other hand, the system is getting complicated enough already, this might drive it over the edge into un-usability.
Then, a scale system and actual values for sources of Qualities and Qualities needed for various effects, as well as the skill system for doing magic. Here are the areas where I'm starting to turn up serious blanks. Help would be appreciated.
