Magic

The Empire runs on three main strands: magic, religion, and politics. This chapter of the manual deals with GOD’s interactions with magic.

If you go to the “Magic” tab of the crew interface, you will land on the “New Ritual” page, which is discussed in detail in New Ritual below.

TODO: Notes on how / when players can change rituals

Spells

Spells are “small” magics. Every character with the Magician skill is able to cast some spells, and some magicians spend XP to be able to cast additional spells. Unlike rituals, we don’t record every spell that gets cast. Players cast a lot of spells over the course of an event, and it’s just not worth the effort. However, not needing to record the casting of a spell doesn’t mean we don’t need to do anything with them at all.

In general, casting a spell will cost “personal mana”. Every mage gets a supply of personal mana for free, and we don’t track usage of personal mana in the system. Occasionally characters will run out of personal mana and need to use crystallised mana (i.e. mana cards); you only need to worry about this if you have a mage who seems to be casting at least four spells in quick succession.

Detect magic

Detect magic is nominally a single spell, but from our perspective it’s really six different spells in one. Each time someone casts any of these variants, it will cost them one mana (personal or crystallised), so someone casting the full set of spells that can target a magic item (Identify Magical Item, Divination and Discern Enchantment) will be spending three mana.

It’s easy for a character to run out of personal mana if they’re doing this sort of thing, so you should check how someone is paying the mana if they’re casting more than four spells at once.

Identify magic item

If someone says they want to cast “Detect Magic” without any further qualification, they almost always actually mean “Identify Magical Item”. This is normally the first step for any character who has found a ribboned item, since the ribbon itself is likely to say nothing more informative than “Weapon”.

Players will sometimes ask to “identify this ribbon” or similar. There’s a subtle but important distinction here: their character is casting the spell to identify the item, and in character, the ribbon does not exist. The ribbon is there to allow us to track that the physrep it is attached to is not, for example, a common-or-garden sword but a magical sword with special abilities. Their character is instead identifying the magical item that, out of character, the ribbon is attached to.

1. Get the player to confirm they’re a mage. You can take their word for this. If they’re not a mage, they can’t cast the spell.

2. Get the player to give you the ribbon ID for the item they want to identify. Unless they have a very good reason, they should be able to show you the ribbon itself. Occasionally someone will try to cast this on an item that doesn’t have a ribbon, in which case the result is simple: “this is not a magical item”.

3. Confirm the ribbon is attached to a reasonable physrep, unless they have a good excuse such as the physrep being heavy armour they don’t want to carry across the field. There’s a fair degree of latitude here, but we do expect players to make at least a passable effort to have an appropriate physrep for the item. If it’s a sword they’ve looted on the battlefield, the best they might be able to do is a dagger or a mace or a hessian sack (preferably with “swag” written on the side…), all of which would be fine, but a teddybear or no physrep at all wouldn’t be good enough.

4. From the crew page, click the “Ribbon” tab, and enter the ribbon ID in the box. Press Tab or Enter, and the ribbon should load.

5. Review the “Ref Notes” section, just in case there’s something odd about this item that means this needs special handling. In particular, if there are any notes about a “Mark of Ownership”, you should tell the player that the item is subject to a mark of ownership, and tell them the recorded character name.

6. Provide the player with the details in the “Name” and “Bonded Power” sections, and nothing else.

Divination

Divination is the mechanism by which characters can work out what other things they could do to find out something interesting about an item. For most items, there is nothing to report here, but generally players will be performing this on some item where they have reason to believe there is something interesting.

If a player has a ribbon and wants to know how they can find out more about it, telling them they can cast this spell (or find a mage who can cast this spell) is often sensible.

1. Get the player to confirm they’re a mage. You can take their word for this. If they’re not a mage, they can’t cast the spell.

2. Get the player to give you the ribbon ID for the item they want to identify. Unless they have a very good reason, they should be able to show you the ribbon itself. Occasionally someone will try to cast this on an item that doesn’t have a ribbon, in which case the result is simple: “divination tells you nothing interesting about this item”.

3. Confirm the ribbon is attached to a reasonable physrep, unless they have a good excuse such as the physrep being heavy armour they don’t want to carry across the field. There’s a fair degree of latitude here, but we do expect players to make at least a passable effort to have an appropriate physrep for the item. If it’s a sword they’ve looted on the battlefield, the best they might be able to do is a dagger or a mace or a hessian sack (preferably with “swag” written on the side…), all of which would be fine, but a teddybear or no physrep at all wouldn’t be good enough.

4. From the crew page, click the “Ribbon” tab, and enter the ribbon ID in the box. Press Tab or Enter, and the ribbon should load.

5. Review the “Ref Notes” section, just in case there’s something odd about this item that means this needs special handling. In particular, if there are any notes about a “Mark of Ownership”, you should tell the player that the item is subject to a mark of ownership, and tell them the recorded character name.

6. If there are any boxes with red outlines on the page, provide the player with the names of the rituals or ceremonies stated in those boxes. Don’t tell them anything else, and in particular don’t give them any of the text to the left of those red boxes.

Discern enchantment

Discern Enchantment is the way for characters to find out some basic information about other rituals that an item might be subject to. Honestly, this is sufficiently rare that I can’t remember how to handle it. If one of these comes up, get a ref or one of the heads of department to help, and we’ll work it out on the fly. (Then remind us to update this manual!)

'Identify ritual performance In the incredibly unlikely event that someone comes to GOD to attempt to cast this spell, you’ll need to hand them over to a ref.

Discern Arcane Mark

“Arcane Marks” are magical records that a character has joined one of the Empire’s magical Orders. The vast majority of the time, this will be handled in the field with a ref, but in theory it could come to GOD.

1. Get the player who cast the spell to give you their PID.

2. From the crew page, click “Character”, then enter their PID (with or without the additional CID part) in CID box, then press Tab or Enter to load their character page.

3. Check the character is a mage: they should have “Magician” in a list of skills at the bottom of the page. If they’re not a mage, they can’t cast the spell.

4. Check if the character is a member of one of the Empire’s orders: if they are, it’ll be listed as “Order” in the main part of the character page, in the same place as “Banner”, “Coven” and “Sect”. The entry simply doesn’t appear for characters who aren’t members of an order. If this character is a member of the order, note the name of the order.

Confirm the result here is what the player is expecting: it’s occasionally the case that the database gets this wrong. You may need to be subtle about this, as membership of orders can be an in-character secret.

It’s fine for the character to not be a member of an order, you just need to know because it affects the later results.

5. Get the details of the target of the spell:

• If the target player is present, just get them to give you their PID.
• If the target player is not present:

(a) Confirm that the spell was cast within touching distance of the target, and with the target’s knowledge that this spell was being cast. If the player can’t confirm that, hand this over to a ref.

(b) Get the player to identify the target of the spell. Hopefully they can give you a PID that you can enter into the CID box; if not you’ll need to use the “Search” button or the “Search Characters” interface to find them.

6. On the target’s character page, confirm whether they are a member of an order, just as for the casting character. As with the caster, if the target player is present, double check the result here is what they’re expecting. You may need to be subtle about this, as membership of orders can be an in-character secret.

7. Give the casting player one of the following answers, as appropriate:

• “The target character does not have an arcane mark”
• “The target character has an arcane mark, but as your character does not have an arcane mark themselves, you cannot tell anything else”
• “The target character has an arcane mark, and it is the mark of the same order as your character”
• “The target character has an arcane mark, and it is the mark of a different order to your character’s order”

Discover Conjunction

“Discover Conjunction” or “Detect Conjunction” is the mechanism by which (a) players find out the details of a skirmish they could go on, and (b) Plot find out that players know the details of a skirmish they could go on. As such, it’s important to use this process if players are finding out about some plot, and equally important to not use this process for purely out-of-character enquiries about things like accessibility information, or enquiries on behalf of crew. As such, “Discover Conjunction” must get recorded whenever it is cast.

If you want to look up information about some plot / encounter / conjunction without using the Detect Conjunction interface, for now either work it out yourself from the Plot pages, or see a head of department; at some point we might get around to documenting the process…

To record someone casting Discover Conjunction, and to get the information you need to provide: 1. From the crew page, click “Magic”, then “Detect Conjunction”.

2. Enter the PID of the player in the CID box (optionally with the CID part), then press Tab or Enter, or use the Search box to find the character if the player doesn’t know their PID.

3. Get the player to give you the location information they have. Hopefully the player will be able to give you a nation or territory or region, as that’ll give you something to select in the drop-downs on screen and therefore narrow down the search. Once you’ve selected those details, click through to the “Conjunction” view.

4. Getting the region right isn’t enough, in the same way that meeting someone for dinner when the only address you have is “Preston” isn’t likely to work. The player should be able to give you more specific location information, that matches the “Location” column on the screen.

If there’s clearly no match, detecting the conjunction fails. If there’s a good match, carry on. If you’re unsure, get help, either by contacting the plot team yourself, or by escalating to a head of department.

5. Once you’ve found the correct conjunction, click the “Select” button. That (a) records that the conjunction has been seen by players, so the plot writers know to expect people to actually turn up, and (b) will get you the data you need to give to the players.

6. Provide the players with the time and day of the conjunction, the expected duration, and the size (which means the number of people who are allowed to go).

7. Ask the player if they need any accessibility information; we don’t provide this automatically, because it’s not in-character information, but if the player wants the accessibility information, we will provide it. Depending on what information will make the plot more accessible, you can provide any or all of the information on the “Access” tab.

If you’re unsure what’s appropriate, tell the player the categories of information that are there, and ask them what information would be relevant to them; trust the player’s assessment of their own abilities – in terms of both what they can and cannot do – and err towards giving as much information as they’d like. It’s much better to give someone a small IC advantage from having access information than it is for someone to be denied access to a plot unnecessarily because of their out-of-character disabilities.

In some cases, the access information may include offers of accommodations, e.g. the plot writer might be planning on using a smoke generator, but it’s not a critical part of the plot so they’d be able to run the plot without it if it’d help with accessibility. If a player wants to take advantage of those accommodations, you’ll probably need to let the plot writer know; either do that yourself or pass it over to a head of department.

Night Pouch

A “night pouch” is a bag up to 18” deep and 6” wide that can only be opened by the person who cast the “night pouch” spell. The pouch is very similar to the pouch created by the ritual “Secrets for the Shadow Courier”; if you have a player asking about a night pouch, make sure they really mean a night pouch, not a Shadow Courier bag. See Secrets for the Shadow Courier (Night) below if you need to.

If the player is actually casting the night pouch spell, we don’t record that, but we may need to give the player a night pouch ribbon. If the player has an old night pouch ribbon for their character, they can keep using that indefinitely; if they need a new one, we can just give them a replacement. In either case, this is covered in Printing.

Very occasionally, a player might come in to hand over something that was left in a night pouch overnight, as that would mean whatever was in the pouch got sent to the Night realm. If that happens, it will need to be passed over to the Plot team; either sort that out yourself if you know what you’re doing, or pass it up to a head of department.

Other spells

There are several other spells in the game. GOD should never need to do anything about someone casting any of these.

• Operate portal
• Heal
• Mend
• Purify
• Restore limb
• Voice for the dead

New ritual

Rituals are “big” magics. They always require crystalized mana (or something that can substitute for crystalized mana), they’re always affiliated with a specific magical realm (Day, Night, Spring, Summer, Autumn or Winter), and they often involve multiple magicians working together as a coven.

The “New Ritual” page is the page you’ll probably use most frequently in GOD. You’ll land here by default when you click on the “Magic” tab. For most rituals, you can just follow the steps in this section. For complications, see the following subsections.

1. In the “Caster” section of the page:

(a) In the box labelled “CID”, enter the lead caster’s PID.

(b) Press Tab or Enter.

(c) Confirm the name of the caster’s character.

2. In the “Ritual” section of the page:

(a) From the “Realm” drop-down menu, select the appropriate realm.

(b) From the “Ritual” drop-down menu, choose the name of the ritual.

(c) You can almost always ignore the “Ribbon ID” and “Projection” boxes; if these are relevant, the player will tell you they’re using an arcane projection or a ritual text, and you should choose your own adventure at Arcane Projections or Ritual texts below.

(d) Ask if a regio was used. The answer will usually be no, but if it isn’t, tick the relevant box.

3. Ignore the “Date” section of the page, or escalate to a head of department or referee if there’s some reason you think you shouldn’t.

4. Ask the player if they cast the ritual alone.

• If yes, advance to the Targets tab.
• If no, advance to the Participants tab, add additional casters either by entering their PIDs into the CID box and pressing Tab or Enter, or by clicking the appropriate checkboxes under the Participants heading. You can reorder the list of Participants by clicking the column headings. When you have selected all participants, advance to the Targets tab.

Occasionally the system will give you an error saying the character “has no way to contribute to this coven”. If that happens, ask the player how that person is contributing to the ritual, verify that’s an appropriate solution (get help if you need to), and record details of the explanation in the later “Notes” field.

5. The “Targets” section of the page will vary depending on the type of ritual:

• For rituals that take a prepared letter as a target, select the letter ID from the drop-down list, and confirm the name in the drop-down is the person the player is trying to send a letter to. See Call Winged Messenger below for how this process works in more detail.
• For rituals that target a location on the in-character field, you’ll see a free-text box. Enter enough information from the players that – if needed – a ref would be able to find that location; normally this means the nation camp on the in-character field, plus a description of the tent or area in question.
• For rituals that target some sort of specific location in the wider game world, confirm that the target is a valid target for the ritual (some of these rituals are more specific than the drop-down implies) and select the relevant target from the drop-down.
• For rituals that target an eternal, there are too many special cases to list here; go see Contacting eternals below.
• For rituals that target a ribboned item:

(a) In the box labelled “Ribbon Id”, enter the ribbon ID of the target item. Unless they have a very good reason, the player should be able to show you the ribbon itself.

(b) Confirm the ribbon is attached to a reasonable physrep, unless they have a good excuse such as the physrep being heavy armour they don’t want to carry across the field. There’s a fair degree of latitude here, but we do expect players to make at least a passable effort to have an appropriate physrep for the item. If it’s a sword they’ve looted on the battlefield, the best they might be able to do is a dagger or a mace or a hessian sack (preferably with “swag” written on the side…), all of which would be fine, but a teddybear or no physrep at all wouldn’t be good enough.

(c) Press Tab or Enter.

(d) Confirm the name on the item shown matches the name printed on the ribbon.

(e) Repeat for any other targets.

• For rituals that target something associated with a character (either the character directly, armies via their general, character resources via the owning character):

(a) In the box labelled “CID”, enter the target character’s PID.

(b) Press Tab or Enter.

(c) Confirm the name of the target’s character.

(d) Repeat for any other targets.

• For all other rituals, you shouldn’t need to specify a target.

6. In the final Ranks section, the system will attempt – with varying degrees of competence – to check whether the players have actually achieved sufficient ranks to cast the ritual. Most of the time everything will be fine, there will be no warning pop-up. In that case, you should just tell the players how much the ritual will cost from the “Mana Crystal Cost” line, then take that many crystalized mana cards off them.

If there is a warning pop-up, or the players disagree with the mana cost, that could be because the players have made an error, because the players are doing something the system can’t (yet) handle to increase their ranks or decrease the cost, or because the system calculation is just plain wrong for some reason. That should be rare, but see Ritual calculations down below for how to handle the scenario.

7. In the notes field, enter anything unusual about the casting. In particular, note why you skipped past any warning messages, e.g. “CID 2458.1 was able to contribute to the casting by using a Volahov’s Robe, ribbon ID 23456”, or “Players achieved an extra three ranks of lore by consuming a Radiant Transcendence potion”.

8. Click “Process”.

9. Check the top of the page for any instructions and follow them as appropriate.

Ritual calculations

Calculating whether a ritual can be cast, and if so how much it costs, is unfortunately complicated. There should be ritual calculation sheets available to help, with brief instructions on the bottom. If you don’t have that form to hand, use the process below plus a piece of paper.

(Once you’ve got the hang of things, you don’t need the paper, or to follow this process in full, but I’m assuming if you’re reading this you want the step-by-step guide!)

1. First work out the magnitude of the ritual being cast.

• All rituals have a base magnitude. For example, “The Sound of Drums” is a magnitude 11 ritual.
• Some rituals can have multiple targets which increases the magnitude. For example, “Rampant Growth” is a magnitude 10 ritual with a single target, but additional targets can be added, increasing the magnitude by 8 each time, so casting the ritual with three targets would make it a magnitude 26 ritual. Generally, the ritual casting interface will account for these changes correctly.
• Some rituals have mechanisms to reduce the magnitude. For example, “From the Mouths of Babes” is normally a magnitude 8 ritual, but is only a magnitude 2 ritual if an apprentice takes part in the casting. The ritual interface cannot currently account for these sorts of changes; you will need to account for them manually and record the details in the “Notes” section.
• Sometimes players may have some other special mechanism that increases or decreases the magnitude of a ritual, for example a magical artefact that makes it easier to cast a particular ritual.

The ritual interface cannot currently account for these sorts of changes; you will need to account for them manually and record the details in the “Notes” section. Write down this number as the target magnitude for the ritual.

2. If you’re doing this without the form, write out the name or PID of each of the casters across the top of a piece of paper, and label rows with “Lore”, “Regio”, “Other”, “Mana” and “Ranks”.

3. In the “Lore” row, for each caster, record the number of ranks of skill they have in the realm that the ritual is in. This will almost certainly be given correctly by the “Skill” column on the ritual casting page.

4. In the “Regio” row, write “1” for each character if a regio is being used, or “0” otherwise.

5. In the “Other” row, write down the additional ranks for each character that are granted because they’re using a potion or magical artefact or similar that increases their ranks.

6. In the “Mana” row, write down either the sum of the “Lore”, “Regio” and “Other” rows, or three times the number in the “Lore” row, whichever is smaller.

7. In the “Ranks” row, for each character who has the ritual mastered, write down double the number in the “Mana” row, and for each character who does not have the ritual mastered, write down the same number as in the “Mana” row.

8. The total of all the numbers in the “Ranks” row needs to be at least the magnitude of the ritual, or the ritual fails.

9. The numbers in the “Mana” row are the maximum amount of mana each ritual caster can contribute. If the total of the “Ranks” row is higher than the required magnitude, the players will probably not want to spend mana unnecessarily.

(a) Go through the list of characters who do not have the ritual mastered, and reduce the numbers in the “Mana” and “Ranks” rows either to zero or to the lowest number that still means the ritual can be cast.

(b) If there is still spare ranks, go through the list of characters who do have the ritual mastered, and reduce the amount of mana they’re contributing too, until you have reduced the numbers as far as they will go.

10. Add up the new total of the “Mana” row, and take this many crystalized mana cards off the players (or equivalents, e.g. Vis cards count for three crystalized mana in the relevant realm).

Special rituals

Contacting eternals

Eternals are magical beings. Players – in particular mages – often want to contact them. There are a selection of standard rituals for doing this, plus a couple of other options. They’re all processed as if they were a ritual, however.

1. Start by logging in and going to the “Magic” tab, which should load the “New Ritual” page.

2. Ask the player how they’re sending the message.

• If they’re using a named ritual, then:

(a) In the box labelled “CID”, enter the PID of the person sending the message.

(b) Press Tab or Enter.

(c) Confirm the name of the caster’s character.

(d) Fill in the realm and ritual name as appropriate, or, in the vanishingly rare case of an arcane projection or ritual text, see Arcane Projections or Ritual texts as appropriate.

• If they’re an archmage using the “Plenipotentiary” power:

(a) In the box labelled “CID”, enter “0.1”.

(b) Press Tab or Enter.

(c) Confirm the name that appears is “Ref Dummy Character”.

(d) Select the realm as “Autumn” and the ritual as “Plenipotentiary”.

• If they’re doing something else, check the details. If what they’re doing makes sense and there are no instructions to the contrary (e.g. in the ref notes on the page for the relevant ribboned item):

(a) In the box labelled “CID”, enter “0.1”.

(b) Press Tab or Enter.

(c) Confirm the name that appears is “Ref Dummy Character”.

(d) Select the realm as “Autumn” and the ritual as “Another Missive”.

3. Complete the participants list as normal for normal rituals, and ignore it for anything cast by Ref Dummy Character.

4. The path now diverges according to the contents of the “Targets” page:

• If the “Targets” page has “Set Target Eternal” at the top:

(a) Select the appropriate eternal from the drop-down, or – if they’re not listed – enter the eternal’s name in the “Name” box

(b) Click through to ranks.

– If the players are casting a regular ritual, they will need to meet the rank requirements as normal. The system will attempt – with varying degrees of competence – to check whether the players have actually achieved sufficient ranks to cast the ritual. Most of the time everything will be fine, there will be no warning pop-up. In that case, you should just tell the players how much the ritual will cost from the “Mana Crystal Cost” line, then take that many crystalized mana cards off them.

If there is a warning pop-up, or the players disagree with the mana cost, that could be because the players have made an error, because the players are doing something the system can’t (yet) handle to increase their ranks or decrease the cost, or because the system calculation is just plain wrong for some reason. That should be rare, but see Ritual calculations above for how to handle the scenario.

– If the players are doing something that involved Ref Dummy Character, you can ignore any warning messages about ranks achieved.

(c) Click “Process”

(d) You should now get a page with the details of the casting. Check the top of the page for any instructions and follow them as appropriate.

(e) Click the “Message” tab at the top of the page.

(f ) Click “Set Response”

(g) Type out the message in the “Message” section; don’t touch anything in the lower “Plot Response” section.

(h) Click “Save”.

• If the “Targets” page has anything else, such as a space for a target ribbon or a target character:

(a) Complete the targets as normal; the player should be expecting to provide these.

(b) Click through to ranks. The system will attempt – with varying degrees of competence – to check whether the players have actually achieved sufficient ranks to cast the ritual. Most of the time everything will be fine, there will be no warning pop-up. In that case, you should just tell the players how much the ritual will cost from the “Mana Crystal Cost” line, then take that many crystalized mana cards off them.

If there is a warning pop-up, or the players disagree with the mana cost, that could be because the players have made an error, because the players are doing something the system can’t (yet) handle to increase their ranks or decrease the cost, or because the system calculation is just plain wrong for some reason. That should be rare, but see Ritual calculations above for how to handle the scenario.

(c) Click “Process”

(d) You should now get a page with the details of the casting. Check the top of the page for any instructions and follow them as appropriate.

(e) Click the “Notes” tab at the top of the page.

(f ) Click “New”

(g) Set the title of the new note to something like “Message text”.

(h) Type out the player’s message in the “Note” box.

(i) Click “Save”.

Secrets for the Shadow Courier (Night)

Secrets for the Shadow Courier essentially replicates the effect of the “night pouch” spell (see Night pouch above), but longer lasting and with the ability to create a pouch that can only be opened by any given character, rather than only by the person who cast the spell. As a result, players will sometimes incorrectly refer to this ritual as “night pouch”.

This ritual is recorded as normal, and doing so should generate a ribbon on the ribbon print queue. Fetch the ribbon, give it to the player.

Call Winged Messenger

This ritual allows players to send messages to regular, mortal NPCs. Technically it can also be used to send messages to regular, mortal player characters, but it’s very rarely used for that purpose, as it’s slow (we just put the message in the relevant player’s pack at the next event, so there’s at least a one-event delay) and expensive (it costs three Iridescent Gloaming and one or two crystal mana, compared to a few rings for an IC courier). It’s also a ritual that has multiple steps and often causes confusion, both for crew and players.

For players, there’s a pamphlet available, the GOD Guide to Call Winged Messenger. Feel free to give copies out to anyone who wants one; if we run out it’s easy to print more. It’s also useful for GOD crew to read, so we know what the process looks like from a player perspective. For GOD crew, there are multiple steps, each of which is individually straightforward, but – particularly if you’re dealing with a confused player – it can be helpful to understand how they all fit together!

1. So the player can write the letter in the first place, they need to have 3 Iridescent Gloaming in their character inventory. They’ll need to hand this in at GOD, and we need to record it; see New Entry under Inventory in Character processess.

2. Once the player has the Gloaming in their account, send them to write their letter. They can do this on the player PCs, or on a device of their own that they can connect to the PD Wi-Fi. Now the Gloaming is in their account, there should be a button to write the letter on their character page.

3. Once the player has written their letter, they should come back to us to get us to print the letter phys-rep.

(a) Load the character inventory and check the only item in the inventory is the letter.

• If they do have anything else in their account, this becomes awkward and either needs much longer instructions (that I’ve not yet written out) or for someone who’s comfortable wrangling awkward bits of the interface to sort it, which probably means Adam or Matt.
• If they don’t have anything else in their account, click the “Book Out” button. This will add the letter to the print queue; see Printing

(b) Give the player their printed letter physrep.

4. The player will need to go away and perform the Call Winged Messenger ritual, or find someone who can perform it for them. When someone comes back to record that the ritual has been cast, we record it as normal per New Ritual above. It doesn’t have to be the same character writing the letter as sends the ritual; anyone can write a letter, but only a mage can cast the ritual to send it.

When you’re recording the ritual, the “target” will be the specific letter that’s being sent. If the player got us to print the letter for them, check the letter number and who it’s being sent to on the letter cover sheet; if they didn’t pick up the printed letter, get them to confirm the ID number and the name of the person they’ve selected.

A side note on inventories

The fact that letters get put into inventories when they get written, but not everyone asks us to print them, means that some letters get sent while they’re still in a character’s inventory. This doesn’t make sense, but it’s a side-effect of how the PD database works.

This means that when a player next comes to an event, the letter that they’ve already sent gets booked out of their inventory and put into their character pack with the rest of their character resources. After E1 2023, Adam has started clearing out these items from inventories, so this should stop being a problem and this will just be a historical note. It’s included in the manual at least until we’re confident Adam’s new process here works as expected.

Swim leviathan's depth

TODO

Arcane projections

An arcane projection is a text that players can create in downtime (or occasionally obtain by other means). It’s essentially a custom ritual generated as a one-off, rather than one of the standard rituals. This section only covers how to record when someone casts an arcane projection; for a more general overview of what arcane projections are and how they work, see Arcane projections below.

Arcane projections are distinct from ritual texts: an arcane projection can only be used once and provides 10 mana towards the casting, whereas a ritual text can be used repeatedly but the caters must pay the entire cost in crystal mana (or alternatives such as vis). For casting from ritual texts, see Ritual texts above.

From the “Magic” section of the crew pages:

1. Get the players to give you the arcane projection they’re casting. This should be a piece of paper with a number at the top similar to “E26”, and a ritual name.

2. In the “Caster” section of the page:

(a) In the box labelled “CID”, enter the lead caster’s PID.

(b) Press Tab or Enter.

(c) Confirm the name of the caster’s character.

3. In the “Ritual” section of the page:

(a) From the “Realm” drop-down menu, select the appropriate realm; this should be listed on the arcane projection.

(b) Ignore the “Ritual” drop down.

(c) In the first “Projection” box, select the “E” number from the top of the paperwork.

(d) In the second “Projection” box, which should have been populated when you selected the “E” number, select the name of the ritual being cast.

(e) Ignore the “Ribbon Id” box.

(f ) Ask if a regio was used. The answer will usually be no, but if it isn’t, tick the relevant box.

4. Ignore the “Date” section of the page, or escalate to a head of department or referee if there’s some reason you think you shouldn’t.

5. Ask the player if they cast the ritual alone.

• If yes, advance to the Targets tab.
• If no, advance to the Participants tab, add additional casters either by entering their PIDs into the CID box and pressing Tab or Enter, or by clicking the appropriate checkboxes under the Participants heading. You can reorder the list of Participants by clicking the column headings. When you have selected all participants, advance to the Targets tab.

Occasionally the system will give you an error saying the character “has no way to contribute to this coven”. If that happens, ask the player how that person is contributing to the ritual, verify that’s an appropriate solution (get help if you need to), and record details of the explanation in the later “Notes” field.

6. The “Targets” section of the page will vary depending on the type of ritual:

• For rituals that take a prepared letter as a target, select the letter ID from the drop-down list, and confirm the name in the drop-down is the person the player is trying to send a letter to. See Call Winged Messenger above for how this process works in more detail.
• For rituals that target a location on the in-character field, you’ll see a free-text box. Enter enough information from the players that – if needed – a ref would be able to find that location; normally this means the nation camp on the in-character field, plus a description of the tent or area in question.
• For rituals that target some sort of specific location in the wider game world, confirm that the target is a valid target for the ritual (some of these rituals are more specific than the drop-down implies) and select the relevant target from the drop-down.
• For rituals that target an eternal, there are too many special cases to list here; go see Contacting eternals above.
• For rituals that target a ribboned item:

(a) In the box labelled “Ribbon Id”, enter the ribbon ID of the target item. Unless they have a very good reason, the player should be able to show you the ribbon itself.

(b) Confirm the ribbon is attached to a reasonable physrep, unless they have a good excuse such as the physrep being heavy armour they don’t want to carry across the field.

There’s a fair degree of latitude here, but we do expect players to make at least a passable effort to have an appropriate physrep for the item. If it’s a sword they’ve looted on the battlefield, the best they might be able to do is a dagger or a mace or a hessian sack (preferably with “swag” written on the side…), all of which would be fine, but a teddybear or no physrep at all wouldn’t be good enough.

(c) Press Tab or Enter.

(d) Confirm the name on the item shown matches the name printed on the ribbon.

(e) Repeat for any other targets.

• For rituals that target something associated with a character (either the character directly, armies via their general, character resources via the owning character):

(a) In the box labelled “CID”, enter the target character’s PID.

(b) Press Tab or Enter.

(c) Confirm the name of the target’s character.

(d) Repeat for any other targets.

• For all other rituals, you shouldn’t need to specify a target.

7. In the final Ranks section, the system will attempt – with varying degrees of competence – to check whether the players have actually achieved sufficient ranks to cast the ritual. Most of the time everything will be fine, there will be no warning pop-up. In that case, you should just tell the players how much the ritual will cost from the “Mana Crystal Cost” line, then take that many crystalized mana cards off them. The arcane projection text counts as 10 crystal mana, so you need 10 fewer mana than the form states.

If there is a warning pop-up, or the players disagree with the mana cost, that could be because the players have made an error, because the players are doing something the system can’t (yet) handle to increase their ranks or decrease the cost, or because the system calculation is just plain wrong for some reason. That should be rare, but see Ritual calculations above for how to handle the scenario.

8. In the notes field, enter anything unusual about the casting. In particular, note why you skipped past any warning messages, e.g. “CID 2458.1 was able to contribute to the casting by using a Volahov’s Robe, ribbon ID 23456”, or “Players achieved an extra three ranks of lore by consuming a Radiant Transcendence potion”.

9. Click “Process”.

10. Check the top of the page for any instructions and follow them as appropriate.

11. Take the arcane projection text off the players, and destroy it.

Ritual texts

Ritual texts are pieces of paper that give details of a ritual, and allow anyone holding them to cast or learn the ritual on them. Players cannot typically create ritual texts.

For learning ritual texts, see Learning new rituals or recipes for items in Character processess. For casting from ritual texts, read on.

From the “Magic” section of the crew pages:

1. Get the players to give you the ritual text they’re using. This should be a piece of paper with a ribbon ID number printed in the corner.

2. In the “Caster” section of the page:

(a) In the box labelled “CID”, enter the lead caster’s PID.

(b) Press Tab or Enter.

(c) Confirm the name of the caster’s character.

3. In the “Ritual” section of the page:

(a) From the “Realm” drop-down menu, select the appropriate realm; this should be listed on the arcane projection.

(b) Ignore the “Ritual” and “Projection” boxes.

(c) In the first “Projection” box, select the “E” number from the top of the paperwork.

(d) In the “Ribbon Id” box, enter the ribbon number printed on the document.

(e) Ask if a regio was used. The answer will usually be no, but if it isn’t, tick the relevant box.

4. Ignore the “Date” section of the page, or escalate to a head of department or referee if there’s some reason you think you shouldn’t.

5. Ask the player if they cast the ritual alone.

• If yes, advance to the Targets tab.
• If no, advance to the Participants tab, add additional casters either by entering their PIDs into the CID box and pressing Tab or Enter, or by clicking the appropriate checkboxes under the Participants heading. You can reorder the list of Participants by clicking the column headings. When you have selected all participants, advance to the Targets tab.

Occasionally the system will give you an error saying the character “has no way to contribute to this coven”. If that happens, ask the player how that person is contributing to the ritual, verify that’s an appropriate solution (get help if you need to), and record details of the explanation in the later “Notes” field.

6. The “Targets” section of the page will vary depending on the type of ritual:

• For rituals that take a prepared letter as a target, select the letter ID from the drop-down list, and confirm the name in the drop-down is the person the player is trying to send a letter to. See Call Winged Messenger above for how this process works in more detail.
• For rituals that target a location on the in-character field, you’ll see a free-text box. Enter enough information from the players that – if needed – a ref would be able to find that location; normally this means the nation camp on the in-character field, plus a description of the tent or area in question.
• For rituals that target some sort of specific location in the wider game world, confirm that the target is a valid target for the ritual (some of these rituals are more specific than the drop-down implies) and select the relevant target from the drop-down.
• For rituals that target an eternal, there are too many special cases to list here; go see Contacting eternals above.
• For rituals that target a ribboned item:

(a) In the box labelled “Ribbon Id”, enter the ribbon ID of the target item. Unless they have a very good reason, the player should be able to show you the ribbon itself.

(b) Confirm the ribbon is attached to a reasonable physrep, unless they have a good excuse such as the physrep being heavy armour they don’t want to carry across the field. There’s a fair degree of latitude here, but we do expect players to make at least a passable effort to have an appropriate physrep for the item. If it’s a sword they’ve looted on the battlefield, the best they might be able to do is a dagger or a mace or a hessian sack (preferably with “swag” written on the side…), all of which would be fine, but a teddybear or no physrep at all wouldn’t be good enough.

(c) Press Tab or Enter.

(d) Confirm the name on the item shown matches the name printed on the ribbon.

(e) Repeat for any other targets.

• For rituals that target something associated with a character (either the character directly, armies via their general, character resources via the owning character):

(a) In the box labelled “CID”, enter the target character’s PID.

(b) Press Tab or Enter.

(c) Confirm the name of the target’s character.

(d) Repeat for any other targets.

• For all other rituals, you shouldn’t need to specify a target.

7. In the final Ranks section, the system will attempt – with varying degrees of competence – to check whether the players have actually achieved sufficient ranks to cast the ritual. Most of the time everything will be fine, there will be no warning pop-up. In that case, you should just tell the players how much the ritual will cost from the “Mana Crystal Cost” line, then take that many crystalized mana cards off them. The arcane projection text counts as 10 crystal mana, so you need 10 fewer mana than the form states.

If there is a warning pop-up, or the players disagree with the mana cost, that could be because the players have made an error, because the players are doing something the system can’t (yet) handle to increase their ranks or decrease the cost, or because the system calculation is just plain wrong for some reason. That should be rare, but see Ritual calculations above for how to handle the scenario.

8. In the notes field, enter anything unusual about the casting. In particular, note why you skipped past any warning messages, e.g. “CID 2458.1 was able to contribute to the casting by using a Volahov’s Robe, ribbon ID 23456”, or “Players achieved an extra three ranks of lore by consuming a Radiant Transcendence potion”.

9. Click “Process”.

10. Check the top of the page for any instructions and follow them as appropriate.

11. Give the players back the ritual text.

New campaign effect

Never use this

Search effects

The “Search Effects” interface allows you to search for a ritual that was cast at some point in the past. It is mostly useful if you are trying to unpick something that has gone wrong, which probably means you want to be talking to a head of department if you’re interested in it.

Arcane projections

TODO: general process, also checking why APs were rejected &c‥