OSRs Magica: Muspelli

The Muspelli are are Hyberborian magicians who worship the giants and aim to bring about Ragnarok. They have specific giants as patrons. They learn to take on the form of a giant, at least the size of a bear.

Creating your Muspelli

Muspelli advance and roll HP as other magician classes. They do not memorize or research spells. Instead they commune with a giant to master their transformation into giant-form and improve their ritual ability.

Roll for a patron:

1. Aegir Sea-King. You know Storm's Eye, Twisting the Sight, Threads of Fate, and Dowsing. +1 bonus die on all casting rolls if you are crippled (legs smashed on rocks while swimming)
   
2. Gullveig the Wicked. You know Entrancement, Hex, Summon Animals, and Magic Sensitivity. +1 bonus die on all casting rolls if you are blind (plucked out own eyes)
3. Gymir Frost-Father. You know Storm's Eye, Winter's Breath, Wildfire, and Wilderness Sense. +1 bonus die on all casting rolls if you have three heads.
4. Leikin Hel-Queen. You know Hex, Prophecy, Corpse-Magic, Second Sight. +1 bonus die on all casting rolls if you are enfeebled by a terrible disease.
5. Nidhogg Corpse-Tearer and Fenrir the Devourer. You know Shapeshifter, Summon Animals, Winter's Breath, and Animal Ken. +1 bonus die on all casting rolls if your tongue is slit lengthwise or your voicebox is cut out.
6. Surtur the Black. You know Shapeshifter, Twisting the Sight, Wildfire, and Craft Magic. +1 bonus die on all casting rolls if you are deaf from the roar of his voice.
7. Urdur Fate-Spinner. You know Entrancement, Prophecy, Threads of Fate, and Premonitions.
8. You serve two masters. Roll twice. Good luck!

Now you're going to create your giant form. Then you're ready to go!

Giant-form

Transforming into a giant or back to human form takes 10 seconds, one melee round.

While in the shape of a giant, the Muspelli has increased size and strength, and IP to match, and a bonus die to magical saving throws. They are immune to sleep. Toss in a few more monstrous features, too, like a snake tail, the ability to breathe underwater, multiple heads, venom, a tough hide, a slippery hide, a shell, horns, whatever.

For every hour the Muspelli stays in giant-form, make a saving throw or take 1 damage when returning to human form; when the human form runs out of HP, the Muspelli returns to human form and lowers their level by 1.

Troll-work

A Muspelli can either use their abilities (given at character creation) on the fly, in which case they are cast as spells or modeled as any other task, or they can perform the ability as a ritual in giant-form.

Every ritual has a base difficulty of 3/6; -1 TN if the Muspelli is inexperienced in the ability; +1 TN for competency in the ability, and an additional +1 TN for mastery. Ditto for skills in ritual casting. The ritual succeeds when the caster gets as many degrees of success as the spell has magnitude.

Remember, you can increase the range, duration, or number of targets of a ritual by increasing its magnitude. Each ability has a default listed.

A ritual's period is 15 minutes per spell magnitude.

A Muspelli gets dice on the casting roll equal to their level, plus any relevant ability modifiers, plus the aura of the ritual site (if it has one), plus any extra rites (such as sacrifices and self-mutilations) committed during the ritual.

(In actual AM, you also have to "accumulate power"; roll 1d10 + characteristic + ability - 9, and when you hit the ease factor you finish the casting. So between 1/10th of a point and 10.5 points per hour. So 0 to 2 mags. Should we bother with calculating this? Tbd.)

A Muspelli can ritually cast: Entrancement, Hexes, Shapeshifting, Sight-twisting, Visions, storm-calling, animal summoning, weaving the threads of fate, corpse magic, wildfire, winter's breath. They can cast any of their abilities as a non-ritual, as well.

Ritual abilities

Every ritual ability is hard to learn; without some magical aid, it takes a year of study to learn a new ritual ability or improve an old one.

Entrancement

Entrancement is mind magic; compel the target to do something. By default, every Entrancement ritual has a range of eyeshot, lasts for as long as the caster concentrates, and targets an individual. Remember, targets get a saving throw when the spell is cast, but extra degrees of success translate to penetration against the save.

Uses Presence as a source of bonus dice.

Entrancement guide

• Magnitude 2: Innocuous Talk to me
• Magnitude 3: Questionable, meet me alone at night
• Magnitude 4: Dangerous, put your weapon away
• Magnitude 5: Heinous, kill your fellows
• Magnitude 6: Suicidal, jump off a cliff

Example entrancement rituals:

• Witch's Thrall, magnitude 6. Become a thrall for a decade. Command is thrown off if the target is asked to do something heinous or suicidal.
• An Axe Age, a Sword Age, magnitude 9. Turn a whole city berserk upon itself; each target returns to their senses when they have taken a life.
  

Hex

Fuck somebody up with magic. Uses Mind for bonus dice. By default, targets an individual within a league and a moment.

A hex is more powerful the longer it takes to kick in. The default hex takes a month to kick in. 3 penalty dice if you want it to happen now, 2 if it's within the day, 1 if it's within the week. Or 1 bonus die if it's within the year, and 2 if it's within the generation.

After you've cast the ritual you still need to deliver the hex; draw a symbol on the target or their property, or audibly curse them.

Hex guidelines

• Magnitude 1: Auto-fail a task, get a cold
  
• Magnitude 2: Struck blind
• Magnitude 4: Debilitating illness
• Magnitude 5: Reduce all stats by 3, give them ague
  
• Magnitude 6: Just fucking kill them
  

Remember, targets get a saving throw against this sort of thing! But also remember, if you have increased penetration from extra degrees of success, you get some effect even if the target saves.

Shapeshifting

• Magnitude 2: Turn into a mouse
• Magnitude 4: Change into a 1 HD supernatural creature
• Magnitude 5: Change into a 3 HD supernatural creature
• Magnitude 6: Change into a 6 HD supernatural creature
  

Twisting the Sight

Uses Mind. By default, lasts until sunrise, filling a room-sized area with the illusion.

Magnitude 2: simple static illusion

Magnitude 3: Complex illusion with lots of moving parts, like an animal.

Magnitude 5: Extremely complex scene with lots of moving parts.

Example spell: Vision of Glaesisvellir, magnitude 8. Gives an entire valley the semblance of bliss and tranquility. It even feels warm! (You'll still freeze to death if you take off your coat.) Lasts until sunrise.

Prophecy

Deliberately summon a vision to answer questions about the past and present. Uses Presence. By default, pertains to an event involving 1 person in the last 12 hours and within a league.

More important questions, affecting lots of people, are actually easier to answer than difficult questions. Crop failure in a village is 2 magnitude, a theft from a farmer is 3.

The syntactic complexity of the answer increases the magnitude of the spell. +1 magnitude each if the question requires a full sentence, a proper noun, a lengthy explanation.

Eye of the Storm

Raise storms! Uses Body. By default, only affects a few feet around the caster, until the sun rises.

Stormcalling guidelines:

• Magnitude 1: On land, a thick fog; at sea, a sudden squall
• Magnitude 2: On land, rain; at sea, a violent storm
• Magnitude 3: On land, torrential rain; at sea, a gale, sailing quite impossible
• Magnitude 4: On land, a deluge, flooding, crops destroyed; at sea, a tempest, even ships at harbor damaged or destroyed

Example spell: Lay a town to waste, magnitude 6. A region 2 leagues wide, centering on the caster, is beset by storms for a full month. No trade or farming is possible, and many ships in the harbor are simply destroyed.

Summon Animals

Roll with presence; every magnitude of spell is 1 HD of creatures in the group summoned. By default, summon the animal to you, and don't have it stick around.

Example spell: Corpse-Plage, magnitude 3.  Summons millions of maggots to a spot within eyeshot. More and more keep worming their up for a full day They are gonna cover an area hundreds of feet across and eat everything, and they're disgusting.

Example spell: Summon Wyrm, magnitude 6. Summon 5 HD wyrm in the nearby harbor (within eyeshot).

Threads of Fate

Tbd, this one is tricky.

Corpse-Spells

Temporarily revive corpses. The corpse can't have had an Abrahamic burial, its head must still be on, and it must have some flesh left. The ability takes 15 minutes, even if it's not done as a ritual. Roll with Presence.

Higher degrees of success mean the corpse will get up and walk around. Your average walking corpse is level 3.

• Magnitude 2: speak to the dead. They don't have to answer truthfully
• Magnitude 3: Speak to the dead, forcing them to answer truthfully
• Magnitude 3: Animate a corpse, forcing it to follow orders to the best of its ability. Corpse becomes dormant while out of eyeshot
• Magnitude 4: Animate a corpse, put it under the caster's direct mental control (see out of its eyes etc). Once it completes its orders it will wait motionless for more.
• Magnitude 4: Animate a corpse, give it +1 level and a special ability (for instance, ghoul paralysis).
• Magnitude 5: Ditto, another +1 level and another special ability
  

Example ritual: An Army of the Dead, 6 magnitudes. Raise up to 100 dead men until sunrise.

Wildfire

Control flames and smoke. You can't actually start these fires with magic, just control them. The magic is silent, you just need to use your hands.

By default, all these uses have an immediate effect, and then immediately stop. So if you double the size of a fire, in an instant it goes back to its normal size unless you increase the spell's magnitude by increasing its duration. (But the fire's effects will still last. If the bigger fire sets additional fires, they'll stick around while the magic fire returns to its initial size.)

• Magnitude 2: Cause a fire to spread in a natural fashion, double the amount of smoke; increase the intensity/heat of the fire, and its damage, by half; halve the size of a fire
• Magnitude 3: Double the size of the fire, cause it to move unnaturally
• Magnitude 4: Double a fire's heat and damage, cause it to act totally unnaturally (hovering in the air, changing colors), crack the earth's crust to allow lava to seep out
• Magnitude 5: Direct the flow of lava in a natural manner
• Magnitude 6: Direct the flow of lava in an unnatural manner (uphill for instance); cause a volcano to erupt.

Example spells:

• Surtur's brand: magnitude 5. For as long as the caster concentrates, they trail a fire behind them, spreading it to anything within earshot. No control over the fire once it's set, unfortunately.
• Fetid Breath of the Earth-Fires, magnitude 8. Crack open the earth to let loose poisonous smoke, affecting an area 150 feet in radius. Everybody in the area has to save or take 2 damage from choking on the smoke. Everybody in the area is impaired.
• Surtur's Mighty Exhalation: magnitude 10. Cause a volcano to erupt, deafening everyone in eyesight of the mountain, hurling boulders for miles, releasing clouds of poisonous smoke and superheated vapors, and spilling magma down the sides of the mountain.
  

Winter's Breath

Create ice and snow by banging on a drum. By default he magic lasts for, either the amount of time the caster drums, or, 1 to 12 hours, depending on the month (cold magic in cold months lasts longer, figure it out), but like with all other magic, you can increase the duration of the magic by increasing its magnitude. The spell only lasts its max duration during winter (from 1/1 duration to 1/12 duration, depending on the time of year, cold magic cast in cold months lasts longer). After the spell ends, the ice melts like normal.

The spell affects a circle 100 paces across.

Roll with Body.

Example magnitudes:

• Mag 1: a mild chill, wilts plants, makes breath into steam
• Mag 2: heavy frost, crust of ice on ponds, snow flurry
• Mag 3: snowfall, 1 inch per hour
• Mag 4, snowstorm/blizzard, 4 to 12 inches of snow per hour, freezing even the sea

Example spells:

• Fimbulwinter, magn 6. Trap a small town in snow for a year (if cast during winter, down to a month if cast during summer). Four-foot drifts of snow, but it's not actually too cold, barely below freezing. No crops are gonna make it though.
• Sea-borne castles of ice, mag 7. Creates 100 or so icebergs, each the size of a small ship, lasting for a month. Good luck sailing through that!