Petty Magic

Introduction - What is Petty Magic?

Petty magic is magic for the layman. It represents those small, everyday spells that can be learned and cast by almost anybody. It is a form of Natural magic, taking and shaping the intrinsic background magic of the world, but in a far more ad-hoc fashion than such magics as Shamanism or Charm.

Petty magic spells all require some combination of bizarre ingredients, complicated incantations or embarassing actions to perform. These may not be strictly neccessary for the spell to work, but they are neccessary for the spell to work for you. Hence the same curse, cast by two different people may appear completely different.

System - so how do I use it?

There are an infinite number of possible petty magic spells available. You are limited only by your imagination and the leniency of the ref. You learn a spell, you spend your EPs, and you can cast that spell once per day. There are no spell points, but you must perform all the required actions in real time.

Casting a Petty Magic spell can be expected to take a minute or two, during which time the caster cannot be disturbed (although skills such as Maintain Concentration are effective) or the spell will fail.

If the ref decides that your efforts were inadequate (your clucking was not enough like a chicken, you didn't shake your ass with quite enough vigour) he is well within his rights to tell you that the spell's effect has been corrupted, and will be something similar but disturbingly different to that which you intended.

Learning Petty Magic

Petty magic works in the same way as skills. You buy a spell for the designated number of EPs, and you gain one use of that spell per day. It's as simple as that.

If at character creation you think of a petty magic spell which you would like your character to have, approach a ref and beg. You will be told if you can have it, and how much it will cost (normally around 5eps per use per day). You will have to justify yourself by composing a short history of where you learned such a spell. Perhaps you were bullied a lot in your childhood and a 'kindly' witch taught you how to curse people to get your own back. If you don't include details of the actions, incantations and ingredients required, the ref will make them up for you (not to be encouraged).

A list of sample petty magic spells has been included below.

It is possible for your character to learn petty magic after character creation. You might encounter someone who can teach you, or you could observe someone casting a spell and try and replicate it (not a simple task - expect some unpredictable results the first few times you cast it)

Petty Magic is considered a seperate skill list, and as such is always considered to have a x1 list-multiplier.

Some Sample Spells - for the unimaginative

A Final Warning - the downside...

Sometimes petty magic can cause unwanted attenion. The Mage's guild has no love of Petty Magic users, regarding them as anything from disrespectful to blasphemous (ironic really). Although their attempts to get Petty Magic outlawed have never really got anywhere (it cannot be seperated in legal terms from the relatively respected art of Shamanism) many of the more conservative mages do treat these 'Petty Mages' with contempt and hostility.