Ritual Magic

Most of the books in a wizard’s library aren’t spellbooks. They are reference books, arcane almanacs, glossaries and grammars of the occult. Academic treatises, collections of observations and experiments, annotated transcripts of debates on the finer points of thaumaturgical craft. A wealth of knowledge and learning, more than you could fit into even the most erudite mage’s head. When you want to perform truly powerful magic - ritual magic - there’s no substitute for a good library.

Like other parts of this game, occult libraries are divided up into Tiers. The examples below use the Runes of Power ritual, which invokes elemental energy from sigils inscribed in advance, to illustrate how the magnitude of a ritual working can vary depending on how much time you’re willing to spend preparing and what kind of library you have access to.

Tier 1
No library at all. The mage is limited to the magical theorems and formulae they have committed to memory, and the kind of spells they can work out in their own head. Preparing the ritual will take about 10 minutes.
If you were casting Runes of Power: Inscribe runes to light up your campsite, heat a cooking pot, dissipate poison gas, or deliver a discouraging shock.

Tier 2
A few essential reference tomes and magical dictionaries. This is about as big a library as you can comfortably carry in a backpack, and it costs 2 Supply to produce. Preparing the ritual will take about an hour.
If you were casting Runes of Power: Inscribe runes to blast open a door, release a powerful bolt of lightning, or conjure a wind wall that turns aside arrows and gases.

Tier 3
A modest collection of common magical texts, perhaps filling a shelf or two. A hedge mage or dabbling occultist could conceivably assemble such a collection over time. Preparing the ritual will take most of a day.
If you were casting Runes of Power: Inscribe runes to rend a ship’s hull, tear a hole in a modest building, or summon a disruptive whirlind.

Tier 4
A basic library of the occult, filling a small room and furnished with the grimoires and spellbooks required to perform serious magic. Might be found in some noble’s private collection, or the home of a successful small town wizard. Preparing the ritual will take about a week.
If you were casting Runes of Power: Inscribe runes to crack open a thick stone wall or totally level a modest building.

Tier 5
A respectable arcane library, filling a large chamber and containing many and varied books of arcane lore. The tower of a well-known, established wizard or an arcane collegiate in a large town might have such a library. Preparing the ritual will take about a month.
If you were casting Runes of Power: Inscribe runes to blast a hole in a castle wall or reduce multiple buildings to rubble.

Tier 6
A treasure trove of magical knowledge, supplemented by rare grimoires, original magical research, and secret knowledge gleaned from the ancients. The kind of library that every mage dreams of having access to. Preparing the ritual will take about a year.
If you were casting Runes of Power: Inscribe runes to destroy a mighty fortress in the blink of an eye.

Preparing a Working

To cast a ritual, a mage must turn to their library. They consult their grimoires and their tomes and their treatises, determining which components and words and places of power and astral conjunctions will be required to achieve the desired effect. When these preparations are complete, they have created a working.

To prepare a working, the mage first tells the GM which of their rituals they wish to cast and what they hope to achieve. The GM will then set a Tier for the working, which determines what kind of library will be needed and how long the preparations will take.

Creating a working doesn’t necessarily require any rolls, although you might need to roll to speed up the preparations, push the limits of what a ritual can do, or prepare a working without a suitable library. In that case, you might roll against the risk of making a mistake in your haste, for example, or misremembering some occult principle without the books to verify it.

The working is a set of precise instructions for casting the ritual: how and where it must be cast, which words must be spoken and which sigils inscribed, which occult components will be needed. You don’t necessarily have to cast a working the moment you finish it, but each working can be used only once. The precise arcane calculations that go into a working are useless once the critical moment has passed.

Conditions

When you prepare a working, the GM might set one or more conditions on it, depending on what you’re trying to do. Simple workings are flexible and open-ended: runes to heat your cooking pot can be drafted in advance and inscribed whenever you wish to use them. More powerful or subtle workings come with caveats. If you want to level a fortress, you might need to wait for certain stars, secure the blood of the castellan’s line, and spend weeks carving runes in carefully chosen locations throughout the surrounding countryside.

The GM might impose one or more conditions, depending on the Tier of the working:

Rituals

As long as you have prepared the working and all of the conditions are met, you don’t necessarily need to roll any dice to cast a ritual. Some rituals do require some skill or precision to cast correctly; in that case, the risk you need to roll against is given in italics.

Deep Gazing. The mage specially prepares a reflective surface, such as a still pool or a mirror, to heighten the limits of their Second Sight. This allows them to see far more than simple auras and emanations. The subtle patterns and ghostly mirages that appear can give insight into the properties of an item, the nature of an enchantment, or the innate powers of a creature. The more detail you want to glean, the more elaborate the ritual will need to be. Roll against the risk that you fail to fully grasp what you are seeing.

Far Dreaming. The mage sends their own dreaming soul to walk freely in the moonlight. It can pass through solid objects as if they were made of smoke. While dreaming, you may not interact with physical objects; you cannot be perceived or heard by those without the Second Sight; you may not enter an inhabited place unless an invitation has been extended to you; you may not cross running water; and you may only travel by foot (i.e. you cannot fly or teleport). More powerful workings may allow you to bend or break these rules.

Runes of Power. The mage draws or carves numerous delicate magical runes into some surface. When the trigger spell is spoken in their presence, elemental energy is conjured from the runes: flame, frost, wind, light, or lightning. The intensity and duration of the effect is determined by the mage when they prepare the ritual. Roll against the risk of inscribing the runes incorrectly.

Spectral Bottling. The mage uses a specially designed copper vessel to capture a person’s ghost at the moment of death. The vessel cannot be opened without releasing the ghost, but other magics can be employed to put it to a useful purpose. Roll against the risk that the vessel is flawed or leaky.

Star Writing. The mage leaves a message amongst the friendly “witch stars”, also known as the “wandering stars”, which lasts for about a week. Those they wish to discern the message will see it written in the stars when they look at the night sky. Normally, messages written in the stars can only be perceived by those in the local area, but more powerful workings might reach further and last longer.

Weatherworking. Armed with a special silver net woven in an intricate and elaborate pattern, the mage works the wind and changes the weather over a long period of time. Gentle weather is easier to work than violent weather; storms are notoriously slippery. The bigger and faster the change, the more powerful the working will need to be. Roll against the risk of losing your grip on the weather.