Magic
Magic in Tealon comes in two broad varieties: talents, and the Five Archmagicks.
Talents are all sorts of minor magical knacks a person may be born with, some inherited, some seemingly at random (itâs also the term for people who possess these abilities, as in âsheâs a talentâ). Scholars understand little about most of these powers; itâs likely theyâre not all the same thing, but they get lumped together for simple discussion. One person might be born with a healing touch that can mend injuries and cure ailments, while another might receive prophetic visions in dreams. As a rule, talents are highly specialized and small in scope; no one has ever been born with the power to split open the earth and crush castles into dust. Theyâre also extremely rare, such that there are no significant institutions built around their use.
To possess a talent, your character must have at least one aspect that relates to how the talent has affected their life. Depending on the ability, this aspect might be enough, functioning as a permission to do things related to the talent and allowing you to invoke it as normal. You may also take a stunt related to the talent, if itâs appropriate; this is a normal stunt in terms of refresh costs, but can do something supernatural that most characters canât.
Ever since he was a child, Alain saw visions of the future in his sleepâ
always hazy, fading from his mind upon waking, but over time, he learned to pay attention, and to remember some of the details. His trouble is Plagued By Inescapable Propheciesâ
his power is more of a curse than anything, since he canât ever seem to actually change or avert anything he sees in his visions. However, he does have a stunt called Prophetic Foresight, which he can use once per session to ask the GM to reveal to him one aspect of a person, thing, or situation that will come up later that session, giving him a free invoke on that aspect.
Talents arenât what most people think of when they hear âmagicâ, though. That belongs to the Keepers, Tealonâs resident order of mages, established centuries ago after the Dragon War to serve as guardians of the Fire Emblem and liaisons between humanity and dragonkind. From their dragon mentors, the first Keepers learned to harness the incredible powers of the Five Archmagicks, which allow a skilled mage to work wonders on a far greater scaleâif theyâre prepared to accept the risks involved.
Magesâ arts are a mix of intricate technique learned through intensive academic study, and inner focus attained through meditation and mental training. Spells are cast through gestures, spoken incantations, and specially prepared magical tools like wands, staves, and ritual circles. Magic of this kind isnât an inborn abilityâtheoretically, anyone can learn it, though few actually possess the intellect and determination to do so. Aspirants typically join the order as children or adolescents, scouted for aptitude by Keepers working throughout Tealon and sent for study at Flamewatch by noble parents looking to secure a prestigious future for a third or fourth child, or, much less often, common ones looking to rid themselves of a mouth to feed. The order regards a potential future Keeper as a valuable good in themselves, and doesnât ask apprentice fees or donations to take in a student. From the time they arrive at Flamewatch, aspirants spend months or years working in the keep as servants to test their will; then, they graduate to study of fields useful to the practice of magic, including natural philosophy, mathematics, and the draconic language, and are taught to read and write if they couldnât already. Most wash out during these years, and are sent off with good will, going on to apply the skills theyâve learned as physicians, scribes, or engineers. The few who make the cut are inducted as apprentices under a Keeper, and begin their instruction in the true magical arts, the hardest phase of their training yet. Only once they have demonstrated the skill, maturity, and self-control to wield their art safely and responsibly (and, perhaps most importantly, in the loyal service of the order) are they awarded the full title of Keeper of the Emblem.
To be a Keeper, your character must have at least one aspect that reflects their time spent training at Flamewatch, and their continuing loyalty to the order as well as to the queen. With this, they can spend skill points to become proficient in the Five Archmagicks, each of which is its own skill with its own potential applications, and its own consequences for improper use. The vast majority of Keepers heavily specialize in just one or two of the Five Archmagicks, learning only the basics of the othersâthink of it like how a biologist and a physicist are both scientists, but have completely different training, and may understand only the very basics of what the other does.
Freya is the Archmagick of Life. Freyamages are healers without equal, but possess many other powers over living things as well, from changing their shapes, to withering the flesh with magical plagues, to even imbuing dead things with a semblance of life (though they canât truly resurrect the dead). The last practice especially is heavily regulated by the order, for its potential to damage the reputation of Keepers everywhere among those who believe in respect for the dead; still, fieldâs tremendously useful applications keep its practitioners in high demand everywhere.
Norn is the Archmagick of Fate. It is a confusing field, often poorly regarded among Keepers and derided as a waste of time, though there are those who are fascinated by it. Norn is best thought of as probability magic; while it canât be used to divine the future (as any Nornmage will tell you, the notion is nonsensical, as knowledge of the future inherently changes that future), it can be used to determine the probabilities of future events with great precision, and to alter those probabilities to a mageâs advantage. While meddling with causality is unreliable at best and disastrous at worst, the potential utility of such a power canât be denied, and âgood luck charmsâ provided by Nornmages are often highly sought by the uninitiated.
Rune is the Archmagick of Thought. Runemages study the workings of the mind, and wield power over that wondrous and complex apparatus; they can send psychic messages over great distances, read the thoughts and emotions of others, and even, in some cases, alter a personâs mind to change their beliefs and behaviors. Some claim that this last practice should be put toward the healing of madness and broken spirits, but the masters of the order regard this as too dangerous to attempt, and so the technique remains banned without exception; simple sensory illusions, like false sounds and images, are an edge case that remains legal, for now. Despite the suspicion they naturally inspire, Runemages are sought after to facilitate long-distance communication, and as interrogators and spy-hunters.
Surt is the Archmagick of Forces. The Surtmage is perhaps the most iconic figure of the magic-user in the eyes of the common folkâa force of destructive wrath, calling upon fire and lightning to blast their foes, splitting the ground asunder and flying through the air on harnessed wind. Surt is the magic of war, and skilled practitioners are prized by military leaders for their ability to function as things akin to living siege engines, or to break whole enemy formations singlehanded. Its gentle applications are few and limited, and not all Keepers have the stomach for such destructive art, even when used against the wicked in defense of the innocent.
Ymir is the Archmagick of Space. Its practice is concerned with place and distance, with Ymirmages learning to transport objects and people instantly wherever they wish. They are also among the few who understand that space and time are not so separate as most believe, for Ymir is the magic of time as well; while it cannot cause anything to travel into the past, it can alter the flow of time as it moves, making days seem to pass in moments from a personâs perspective, or slowing the world around the mage so they can act with impunity. Keepers lack the power to transpose whole battalions or armies for military actions, and Rune is generally better suited to sending messages quickly, but still, a commander who underestimates the power of a single operative or small team transposed to a key location at the right moment is a fool indeed.
Keepers can take each of the Five Archmagicks like any other skill, spending the same pool of skill points (they donât get extra). If they have the skill for one of the Archmagicks, they can use it to do things that full under that purview, whether that be overcoming, creating an advantage, attacking, or defending, as appropriate. However, magic comes with risk. Whenever a mage uses one of the Five Archmagicks and fails, they take stress equal to the shifts of failure. The type of stress depends on the skill used.
Failing with Freya inflicts physical stress. Freyaâs power is life, and excessive or careless use of it depletes the mageâs own life force, causing exhaustion in the short term, and premature aging in the long term. Consequences from Freya stress should reflect these hazards.
Failing with Rune inflicts mental stress. Mishandling the power of Rune damages the mageâs own mind, causing memory loss and distortion, erratic moods, hallucinations, delusions, and catatonia, ultimately leading to brain death. Consequences from Rune stress can be any of these.
For each of the other three Archmagicks the mage can useâNorn, Surt, and Ymirâthey gain an extra stress track. For Norn, they gain entropic stress; for Surt, they gain control stress; and for Ymir, they gain dimensional stress. These tracks have 2 boxes each by default, and gain more, plus extra consequence slots, with high ratings in their respective skills, as normal (i.e. a high Norn skill grants extra boxes of entropic stress, and an extra mild entropic consequence slot at +5).
Using Norn improperly or excessively causes the mage to accumulate entropy: they become more and more unlucky. Fate will take greater and greater license to screw them, causing more and more improbable accidents to befall them until their luck inevitably runs out and they dieâthat is to say, they take worse and worse consequences that the GM can compel more often, until they run out of Fate Points to spend avoiding their doom. Consequences from entropic stress can be almost anything, reflecting the mageâs supernatural misfortune.
Screwing up with Surt has an especially insidious effect: the more one does it, the harder it becomes to control Surt in the future. Botch a spell to conjure flame and summon an inferno, and youâll find that every time you conjure fire in the future, the fire fights harder and harder to break free of your control, burning bigger, hotter, harder to keep in check the worse it gets. If they donât blow themselves up, careless Surtmages risk becoming walking disasters, constantly firing off uncontrollable spells that destroy everything around them until their fellow Keepers finally arrive to put them out of their misery. Consequences from control stress should reflect the mageâs growing struggle to keep their powers in check.
Finally, the more one botches things with Ymir, the more one risks becoming desynchronized from time and space. This begins as transposition and time manipulation spells going awry, sending you to the wrong place or putting you too far ahead; then, you start transposing randomly, blinking in and out of reality, existing in two places at once, waking up in the morning to find itâs been a week since you went to sleep. Eventually, you simply vanish, lost to dimensions unknown. Dimensional stress consequences should reflect these issues as they grow more frequent and severe.
The effects of messing up magic are especially nasty because the consequences are extremely difficult to fix. Freyamages and Runemages get off the easiest, since their less severe consequences can be healed as normal physical and mental stuff with Physic and Empathy, respectively; Freyamages pay for this by having their more severe consequences, in the form of accelerated aging, be simply impossible to reverse, while healing a Runemage whoâs really far gone requires forbidden mind-invasion magic to undo the damage, which might leave them a vegetable if itâs not done right. Other than these cases, the only thing that can fix the consequences is another application of the same Archmagick, which has to be done by another mage of greater skill than the patient (a higher rating in the same Archmagick).
There are two ways to mitigate these dangers before they occur: rote spells and focus items. As a stunt, you can take a single rote spell for an Archmagick you possess; this is a set magical effect with a predefined power and scale, that you still have to roll to produce, but donât take stress or consequences for if you fail. For example, you could take a rote spell for Freya that you call Knit Wounds, which lets you reduce the severity of a moderate or mild physical consequence by one step instantly if you make a Freya roll with a difficulty equal to the stress value of the consequence; on a failure of that roll, you wouldnât take any stress. If you wanted to amplify the spell to heal a severe consequence, though, itâs not a rote anymore, so you take the stress if you screw up. You can take as many rote spells as you want, as one stunt each.
Also, for 1 refresh each, you can have focus items. These are magical tools youâve prepared to help you work spells more safely; they function by absorbing the stress from your failures, taking the consequences away from you. When you take a focus item, you pick which Archmagick itâs used for; it can absorb up to 3 shifts of stress from failing with that Archmagick, after which it becomes unusable. Stress absorbed by focus items doesnât go away on its own, but you can repair them by making a roll with the appropriate Archmagick; for each shift you exceed the stress on the item by, you remove 1 stress from it. Staves and tomes are the most popular focus items, but yours can be whatever you want.
Enchanted Items
The powerful of Tealon covet weapons, tools, and relics infused with power by mages of old. Such creations are rare, the product of only the very most skilled mage-artisans; no two are alike, and each has a rich history.
If you want your character to have a magic item, they must have an aspect relating to how they got it. If they do, you simply take a stunt to represent the itemâs power; this stunt can be a magical effect. The item itself also has a single aspect, which you create, representing its legacy.
Manaketes
If you want, your character can be a manaketeâa dragon in human form, or the half-human, half-dragon child of the same. The first manaketes were those dragons who decided to ally with humanity after the Dragon War, setting aside their old tribal allegiances to join together as the Tribe of the Earth, and binding the majority of their power in dragonstones so they could take on humanlike shapes and live among humanity as friends and kin. Only a handful of that generation now remain as the greatest elders of the Earth Tribe; they are too powerful to be suitable as player characters, but their pureblood dragon descendents may not be. Over the centuries, some Earth Dragons have also taken human partners, producing half-dragon children without the extensive lifespan of their pureblood kin; these half-bloods are also perfectly valid as player characters.
Keep in mind that manaketes are extremely rare, and having everyone playing one would strain credulity, setting-wise.
If you want to play a manakete, first decide whether your character is a pureblood or half-blood. Whichever you choose, your character must have at least one aspect relating to their heritage. Pureblood Earth Dragons can be centuries old; is that the case for your character? What have they seen and done in all that time? If theyâre a half-blood, what was that like for them? Was their dragon parent present or absent? Were they treated with suspicion or shunned for their parentage? Did they always know, or was it a surprise when they found out?
Looks-wise, manaketes often appear perfectly human, but they may have minor draconic features, like reptilian eyes, small horns, patches of scales, or sharp teeth. Purebloods are more likely to have such traits than half-bloods.
Every manakete has a dragonstone, a crystal that contains their draconic power. All pureblood Earth Dragons have a dragonstone made for them by their families at birth. Half-bloods may not, if their dragon parent isnât around; in this case, they run a high risk of madness, sickness, and death during adolescence if one isnât made for them. All Earth Dragons know how to make dragonstones, as do all Keepers. A manakete can only ever have one dragonstone, which is irreplaceable. If theyâre separated from it, they lose the ability to take on their dragon form; if itâs destroyed, this is permanent.
If your character is a pureblood, you must spend 1 refresh to give them the Dragon Form stunt; if theyâre a half-blood, this is optional, and can be done later if itâs not right away (you canât take Dragon Form as one of your free stunts, you have to spend refresh for it).
- Dragon Form: Once per scene, you can spend a Fate Point to transform into a dragon. For the rest of the scene, you have the aspect Iâm A Dragon, with 2 free invokes. While youâre a dragon, youâre the size of a substantial house, and have all the abilities being a dragon impliesâflight, fiery breath, armored scales, dagger-sharp teeth, the works. Anyone who wants to oppose you must have a way to counter these advantages, probably with aspects of their own. You can remain in dragon form for one scene per Fate Point you spend; after you turn back, you take physical stress equal to the number of consecutive scenes you spent changed.
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