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Table of Contents
Due to the poor design of the Teomallki's Immu in the core book, the STs have decided to overhaul it.
Rituals
Rituals have been replaced with a new system unique to the Teomallki (Although other mummies may learn it).
Each level of the four Immu may be used to cast rituals that relate to the four elements. These rituals may be short and have small effects, or longer and more elaborate providing greater effects. Additionally when doing something that matches the Immu being used, the effect can be created quickly, or with a reduction in the rituals difficulty.
Novice: Touch/Imbue/Divine/Weaken - Strengthen or weaken the elements.
- Ask the wind for information on something using Respiro
- Touch fire without being burned by it using Alitu.
- Toughen a house's exterior against bullets using Sandaru
- Imbue the earth with water making a muddy morass using Saudade.
Apprentice: Grasp/Ward/Strike/Mend - Control a small amount of the element.
- Direct damage becomes possible at this level, hurling an element against foes. Such attacks deal lethal or aggravated damage determined by the ST with a base damage equal to the highest immu used in the ritual.
- Such direct damage rituals are always cast at spell speed, requiring a single roll and action.
- Any effect created by this level of an Immu requires constant attention to maintain. This costs one action a round.
Journeyman: Hold/Enchant/Empower/Purify - Maintain direct control over the element.
- Rituals of this level are self sustaining, allowing the caster to focus on other things without using their action each round to maintain the effect.
- Rituals of this level can be made permanent with the expenditure of willpower, lasting 1 day per willpower spent.
Master: Birth/Create/Command/Destroy - Create a new source of the element.
- Creating an element from nothing requires the expenditure of a single point of willpower.
- Such sources produce their element for 1 round per dot in the Immu in question.
Grandmaster: Rebirth/Awaken/Dominate/Cataclysm - Awaken the area itself.
- The creation of spirits becomes possible at this level, transforming a small animal into an elemental spirit. These spirits are considered jagglings or gafflings.
- Awakening an area allows rituals to be made permanent, creating places of power where the effect is always on.
- Awakened areas last for 1 day per Sekhem/Chi/Waka or Willpower spent. Such rituals require expensive materials and extensive preparation but can be extended through additional Sekhem/Chi/Waka or willpower expenditures.
Specialization
Each Immu path represents an element. But each element has tasks that it synergizes with. When using an Immu to perform a task it is tied to you may perform rituals at spell speed with a single roll or may perform the task at ritual speed with a -1 bonus to difficulty.
The exception to this rule is using Immu to defend yourself, in this case such magics are always performed at spell speed with no difficulty bonus.
Saudade - Water: Healing, Light, Faith, Rebirth
Alitu - Fire: Divination, Blessings, Destruction, Purification
Sandaru - Earth: Defense, The Body, Creation, Death
Respiro - Air: Knowledge, Cleansing, The Mind, Spirits
The ST may require you have dots in multiple Immu to perform a desired effect.
Keywords
Keywords are a way to convey large amounts of information about what you are trying to do quickly, speeding the process of creating and adjudicating rituals. The most commonly used keywords are:
Novice Keywords:
Touch: The ability to interact with an element without being changed by it, the user could touch fire without being burned, touch water without getting wet ect.
Imbue: The ability to add the properties of an element to something. You could imbue the strength of the earth into a wall to make it stronger, the power of fire into it to make it harm those that try to break it, the power of water to make it bend instead of break, or the power of air to make it deflect blows and push attackers back.
Divine: The ability to see and understand the elements. One could divine a grassy field for fire to find a single ember, or could divine in the desert for water to find a drink. This ability at later ranks can search for people, places, objects, or even predict the future.
Weaken: The ability to limit or even reduce the power of the elements in something. A wall could be weakened and made easier to collapse, a fire could be reduced in intensity, water could be made to boil or ice to melt, air could be thinned and made harder to breathe.
Apprentice Keywords:
Grasp: The ability to reach out and take control of an element in the area around you. You could rapidly dig a grave, draw fire away from a burning building, raise water levels, or control winds and weather.
Ward: The ability to focus the elements towards defense. This keyword can be used to create a defensive ward of any kind. From a protective bubble that absorbs damage, to a ward that increases the difficulty of performing the task the ward is designed to impede.
Strike: The ability to use the elements as a weapon. This keyword can be used to create attacks of any kind. From a bolt of lightning to a blast of flame.
Mend: The ability to repair things, be it the living, the spiritual, or the inanimate. You could close wounds, mend objects, or even repair basic machines. When healing health levels the difficulty of this ritual is tied to the type of damage you need to remove.
Journeyman Keywords:
Hold: The ability to prevent change to an element. When used this keyword allows you to lock an element in place. You could concentrate on a wall to hold it together in a storm, concentrate on a fire to keep it from going out. Keep water from boiling or even prevent someone from breathing out or in, slowly suffocating them.
Enchant: The ability to bind the power of the elements to an object or being. You could bind the power of fire to a sword, allowing it to burst into flame upon command, or bind the power of water to a cloth, making it always damp and ready to use. You could bind the power of air to a person allowing them to breathe underwater, or the power of earth to a suit of armor making it more protective. Such enchantments can last as little as a few hours to as much as a few years, based on the amount of effort, waka, and preparation that goes into the ritual.
Empower: The ability to enhance an element, to make it more of itself. One could focus the power of fire to purify corruption, to drive out disease or refine ore into metal. Earth could be refined into diamond or other crystals. Air could be empowered to create powerful winds, to suck all the oxygen out of a room or to drive away poisonous gasses. Water could be turned to a powerful curative, a caustic acid or even ice.
Purify: The ability to remove corruption from things. This keyword creates a cleansing ritual targeting a specific thing and can never be done at spell speed. The more successes this ritual gains, the greater the area and more severe the corruption it can purify, at the ST's discretion.
Master Keywords:
Birth: The ability to generate an element from nothing. This keyword frees the user from the need to have the element they wish to work with at hand. The user could create a spring, start a fire with a thought, create wind and weather, or make earth and stone from thin air.
Create: While many would think this is similar to birth the create keyword is more about making complex objects out of many elements, from a bat, to a sword, to a gun. The user will need to have the required elements on hand unless they also wish to use Waka and the birth keyword to generate something fully out of thin air. This can be quite expensive.
Command: The ability to control the elements and the things made from them. The user could use birth to create a statue from stone, and then command to animate it and set it about a task. These simple constructs are not intelligent though, and fall apart after completing their task.
Destroy: The ability to remove an element from the world. Doing so is quite taxing and expensive, and always harms the Teomallki. A user could remove all the silver from a cell phone, rendering it useless, or all the carbon from a steel sword, making it brittle.
Grandmaster Keywords:
Rebirth: The ability to remake something using the elements. The user can use the elements to remake creatures and objects. The user could drive a Fomori from it's victim without killing the victim, remake a cat into a dog or take an animal and bind the elements to it, creating a spirit from it tied to that element, or even bring the recently dead back to life.
Awaken: The ability to create consciousness, and awaken the world around the user. This ability would allow the user to make a statue, and then grant it consciousness. Naturally doing such things must be very protected as they are obvious veil breaches. Likewise they could create a spirit and grant it consciousness, creating a jaggling or gaffling from the elements themselves.
Dominate: The ability to force control over the elements and the things created with them. The user can seize control over a wall, pulling a building down, or likewise raise one with raw force of will. You could seize control of water and flood or drain areas. You could seize control of fire to snuff it out, or burn down large areas. Likewise the user can use this power to dominate other beings, forcing action through rough control of the elements that make up that being.
Cataclysm: The pinnacle of controlling the elements in nature, this power allows the user to create cataclysmic events. Earthquakes, Wildfires, Floods, or Tornados. Even hurricanes and volcanic eruptions. Likewise it can be used to stop such events or lessen their severity.
Rolling
Pools and Difficulties
When rolling for a Ritual you'll be asked to roll the Immu you are using plus an attribute determined by the situation. If you are using more than one Immu in conjunction you will use the highest dots among the Immu plus that attribute.
Overt Spells will have their own dice pool to roll as listed in their descriptions.
Spell And Ritual Speed
Spells and rituals are different in that a ritual takes long periods of uninterrupted time, allowing for a multiple roll extended action, while spells are a single roll single action activity.
In general a ritual takes 10 minutes per dot used in the ritual. So if a ritual requires 3 dots in an Immu it takes 30 minutes. This will allow multiple rolls to accumulate successes, generally one for every ten minutes of duration, though the ST may reduce or increase this amount.
Spells take a single action, and only allow a single roll. Whatever successes you get or don't get on that roll, are all you're going to get.
The ST is the ultimate arbiter on if a ritual can be cast at spell speed. And may allow you to cast something quickly if it makes sense narratively.
Costs
Rituals generally cost 1 Sekhem/Chi/Waka for every dot used in the ritual. For example a ritual that requires 3 dots in Alitu costs 3 Waka in general. But an ST may increase or decrease this amount. One exception is offensive magic. Such rituals are always cost at spell speed, and always cost a single lifeforce to cast.
Duration and Thresholds
While duration is ultimately up to the ST to decide there are some general boundaries. The ritual can be set up to be short, moderate, or long duration when cast, and the ST has the power to determine which options are available.
A short duration ritual lasts one minute per lifeforce spent in the casting. So if a short ritual costs 3 waka, it will last for 3 minutes. The benefit of a short ritual is that it only costs a number of successes equal to it's cost in lifeforce.
A moderate duration ritual lasts for one hour per lifeforce spent in the casting and requires a number of successes equal to twice it's lifeforce cost.
A long duration ritual lasts for one day per lifeforce spent in the casting and requires a number of successes equal to five times the lifeforce cost.
Willpower can be spent to help offset these success thresholds. For each point of willpower spent as part of casting, you reduce the ritual's success threshold by one step. So if you create a long duration ritual, but spend 2 points of willpower in the casting, you treat it as a short duration ritual for the purpose of how many successes are needed.
If a ritual is cast at spell speed duration becomes a function of total successes, lasting one round for each success you gain in casting. For offensive magics duration is always instantaneous, and successes are used to determine if the spell hits, and how much damage it does.
Additionally Wards and Enchantments have their own rules for duration and cost as explained below.
Limitations
Healing
Healing:
The difficulty of a healing attempt depends on the type of damage being healed.
Bashing Damage is difficulty 4
Lethal Damage is difficulty 6
Aggravated Damage is difficulty 8
As such when using Saudade to heal, the difficulty to heal aggravated damage at ritual speed is 7.
Wards
Wards:
Creating a ward is relatively simple. The player decides what they wish for the ward to protect against. Be it physical damage, mental influence, or even something as simple as a specific material like iron or wood. From there the strength of the ward is determined by the user's dots in the appropriate Immu. Each dot provides one die of protection. Whenever something triggers the ward, any die rolls that come up against it lose a number of dice equal to its level of protection. So a 3 dot ward against physical harm would protect against bullets by causing the attacker to lose 3 dice to damage rolls against the wearer. But that same ward would not stop damage from fire, lightning, or any other non-purely physical form of damage.
Likewise this reduction has its limits. A ward against health level damage can only stop bashing damage at the 1 dot level, bashing and lethal at 3 dots, and only gains aggravated at the 5th dot.
A mental ward would cause the user of any mental influence power to lose dice against attempts to influence the wearer and so on.
Wards have a base cost equal to the dots used in their creation, up to 5. But the user may spend more lifeforce and even willpower to extend the duration of the ward. As such the creation of wards is often a lengthy process taking a week or more as the user pours lifeforce and willpower into the object or place.
A ward lasts a number of days equal to it's base cost. But for every 10 lifeforce/willpower added to the ritual this duration increases by one order of magnitude. Days turn into weeks, weeks to months, months to years, years to decades, decades to centuries.
Enchantment
Enchantment:
Enchantment is the process of attaching an effect to an object, creature, or being that imbues it with the power of the elements. Enchantments range from simple improvements in an objects function, to powerful changes to the very nature of something.
Most enchantments are placed on an object, imbuing it with power that aids the user in it's purpose. The player and the ST decide what the object will do, how it will be limited and how it's actions are governed. The ST then informs the player which Immu and at what level are required to create the object. If the character has those Immu at the appropriate levels the object can be created, or they can gather the assistance of others who have the Immu they are missing to help in the ritual.
Costing 1 lifeforce for each dot of Immu required in it's creation. For example if an enchantment requires Alitu 3, Sarandu 2 and Saudade 1 then the base cost of the object is 6 lifeforce.
From there the creation mirrors that of a ward.
An enchantment lasts a number of days equal to it's base cost. But for every 10 lifeforce/willpower added to the ritual this duration increases by one order of magnitude. Days turn into weeks, weeks to months, months to years, years to decades, decades to centuries.
Spells
Examples
Reinforcing something
A Teomallki may need to reinforce a door. To do this the ST tells them to roll their choice of Sarandu + stamina. The ST decides that the door is already meant to be defensive in nature, so reinforcing it is not a difficult task to enhance something that is already there and decides on a difficulty of 5.
The Teomallki holds his hand against the door and the player rolls Sarandu + stamina diff 5 and gains 3 successes, adding armor to the door.
This ritual costs 3 Waka as the user had 3 dots in Sarandu.
Imbue Flame
A teomallki can imbue his weapon with flame, making it more deadly. The ST asks him to roll stamina + Alitu and the player gains 3 successes. For the next 3 rounds his weapon will be imbued with flame, dealing lethal damage instead of bashing.
As this ritual is used as a means of self defense it is cast at spell speed and costs 1 Waka.
Flame Bolt
A Teomallki with Alitu is attacked by a servant of darkness. In defense of himself he wants to hurl fire at his enemy. He has a lighter to create flame for him, and the ST has him roll Alitu + Dexterity at difficulty 6. The player rolls and gains 4 successes. The target rolls a dodge and only gains 2. The Teomallki has 3 dots in Alitu so the base damage is 3 + 2 successes from rolling more than the opponent for a total of 5 aggravated health levels of damage dealt to the target as the ST determines that in this case fire would be aggravated.
This ritual, even cast as a spell costs 2 Waka.
Healing Wounds
A teomallki happens upon a badly injured ally. The Teomallki chooses to use Saudade to attempt to aid his ally. Any Immu can be used to heal and the Teomallki kneels beside the wounded ally, placing his hands on the wound. The ST instructs the player to roll Saudade + Intelligence at the standard difficulty and the player chooses to take multiple rounds to heal. Rolling three times the user gains 5 successes The ally has three lethal health levels of damage, allowing the Teomallki to restore him to health.
This ritual costs 3 Waka, one for each health level healed.
Divination
Immu can be used to divine the future. A Teomallki player asks to use Respiro 3 to divine where a lost child is. The ST approves and asks the player to roll Perception + Respiro. The player rolls per + respiro at difficulty 5 gaining 4 successes. The ST gives information on which way the breeze is blowing and before long the Teomallki is lead to the missing child.
This ritual costs 3 waka, one for each dot the Teomallki had in respiro.
