TROS in the Hammer:Magic Spirits

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There is a teaching story told by the wise women of the People. A young girl asks her mother “How many different kinds of spirits are there?” The mother replies “how many kinds of thoughts can you have?”

Background and Philosophy

Types of spirits

Notional spirits: a notional spirit is a spirit that COULD exist, but does not actually have any contact with the real world. Its not clear whether these spirits ACTUALLY exist before they are summoned, but as every spirit that is summoned seems to already have some kind of place and connection in the spirit society, the general feeling is that they have some kind of existence prior to contacting the real world. It is a very strange kind of existence, though, with no real sense of time or place, only a sense of relationship and purpose.

Contacted spirits: a contacted spirit is a spirit that has been brought into contact with the real world. It is only while in contact with the world that a spirit has any sense of time or location. Some spirits relish this experience, and seek ways to stay in contact; others seem to hate it, and can’t get away from it fast enough.

Prevalent spirits: a prevalent spirit is a spirit that somehow can contact the real world of its own volition. Most spirits are incapable of this; they can only contact the real world when called. But some powerful spirits seem to be able to establish contact of their own accord, for their own reasons.

Anchored spirits: an anchored spirit is a spirit that has one or more physical anchors in the real world that give it a permanent or semi-permanent connection. Anchors always take the form of physical items, although the item could be anything from a ring to a statue to a plant or animal (including humans).

Embodied spirits: an embodied spirit is contacted or prevalent spirit that has a permanent or semi-permanent material form in the real world. Most spirits have to have a shaman help create this form (often as part of anchoring), but some spirits are powerful enough to do this on their own. This embodied form is composed of what the People call os; a kind of solidified energy. An embodied spirit should not be confused with an anchored spirit who can control their anchor (i.e. the Golems of the Gezag).

Spirit characteristics

All spirits are defined by a set of qualities. These qualities are one word descriptors, either nouns or verbs. Spirits start with two qualities for free; one noun and one verb.

Examples:

• Simple Fire elemental - Fire, Create
• More powerful Fire elemental - Fire, Create, Anger, Increase, Wind
• Powerful Oak spirit - Tree(Oak), Strength, Grow, Squirrel, Call, Build, Wood, Protection

Qualities can be related to each other, either by overlap (Heat/Fire) or by superiority [Wood(Oak)]. One of the qualities of the spirit will be its PRIMARY quality: Fire in the case of the fire elemental, Oak in the case of the Oak spirit. A more complicated spirit can have more than one primary quality.

Spirits also have bans; areas they simply cannot affect. Each spirit will have one verb and one noun that are their bans.

Fire Elemental - Decrease, Water Oak Spirit - Bend, Metal

Spirit personality

All contactable spirits (those with at least two qualities) have a name, and are individuals. For example, if you summon two different Fire spirits with the qualities "create" and "fire", they will have two different names, and at least subtly different personalities.

In general, the more qualities a spirit possesses, the more "human" the spirit's personality will seem. The fewer qualities, and the more abstract those qualities are, the more alien the spirit will seem, and the more difficult it will be to contact and communicate with. Spirits with identical qualities will usually have similar personalities, but this is not guaranteed; spirits with few qualities are liable to be very similar in temperment, but spirits with a lot of qualities (even if the qualities are identical) could be very different in personality.

Some philosophers (particularly the theologians of the Pastorate) have speculated that humans are simply spirits with infinite, or close to infinite, qualities. The spirits themselves seem pretty closed mouthed about this issue.

Spirit relationships

All spirits that share a quality are related in some way to each other. Therefore, a fire spirit that has the quality “create” is related to the music spirit that also has the quality “create”. These spirits will recognize each other, and will often have preexisting relationships formed in the spirit world.

Spirits that have the quality as their primary quality, though, are consider spirits of that type, and are related much more strongly to each other. Therefore, all spirits that have Oak as their primary quality are first and foremost oak spirits, and will have relatively strong relationships with each other. This relationship need not be a friendly one. An Oak spirit with the quality of "Growth" will probably be highly antagonistic towards an Oak spirit with the quality of "Decay".

All spirits that share a primary quality can also be considered, to some extent, as aspects of one higher level spirit, a notional spirit called an exemplar spirit. These exemplar spirits have only one quality. For example, all Oak spirits can be considered aspects of THE Oak spirit, whose only quality is “Oak”. As notional spirits, these spirits are believed to exist, and the spirits themselves often act as if they exist, but are apparently impossible to contact by humans; in practice, the simplest spirit that can be contacted is one with two qualities (a noun and a verb) regardless of its power. It could be that spirits with only one quality are simply too alien or esoteric to be brought into contact with the real world.

Spirits themselves have a hierarchy, in which “higher” spirits are considered dominant in some way over “lower” spirits. This hierarchy is not always clear, but in general, when two spirits share a quality:

• if they have the same number of qualities, the one with the higher Power Pool will be considered dominant
• if they have the same Power Pool, the one with the FEWER qualities will be considered dominant

Therefore, broad numbers of qualities are not “superior” in spirit society; rather, it is the purer concept that is generally held to be superior. So, for example, a fire spirit with the qualities “create” and “fire” with a power pool of 10 will generally be dominant over a fire spirit with the qualities “create”, “increase”, “fire”, “anger” with power pool of 10, and may even be dominant if that spirit has a pool as high as 15.

Conceptual hierarchies

An additional hierarchy of spirits is the conceptual hierarchy. Spirits whose primary quality encompasses another spirits primary quality will generally be considered to be dominant. So, between a Tree spirit and an Oak spirit of the same power, the Tree spirit will usually be the dominant spirit.

Complexity versus utility

One important point to make when discussing the hierarchy of spirits is the following; to the shaman, a more complex spirit is often more useful than a simpler one. But the more complex a spirit is, the harder it is to contact for a give level of power. There are certainly very complex spirits (with qualities so diverse that they are almost human-like in their personalities) of great power, but these spirits are VERY difficult to contact, and often occupy very strange places in the spirit hierarchy.

The ‘gods’

Certain spirits of sufficient power and conceptual breadth essentially have a god like status, both among the spirits themselves and among certain human cultures. Conceptual breadth does not mean more qualities, but rather the breadth of the individual qualities themselves; Plant is broader than Tree is broader than Oak. For example, Snow In The Branches is a very powerful spirit with the qualities of “Cold” and “Tree” and “Create”. All other Tree spirits, Cold spirits, and Creation spirits treat Snow In The Branches with reverence and fear, and consider it a god. It is a prevalent spirit, who is able to make contact with the real world of its own accord, especially in the cold, forested wilderness far north of where the People live, and is worshipped by the savage inhabitants of those trackless forests.

Esoteric spirits

Attempts have been made to contact spirits with very broad qualities (i.e. “know”, “everything”); these attempts, when they succeed, tend to contact spirits that are so strange that communication with them is impossible. Moreover, the broader the qualities, the less the spirit wishes to remain in contact with the real world; it seems as if the specificity of the real world (i.e. this Oak tree, as opposed to the plantness of all plants) is somehow painful, or at least uncomfortable, to them.

Game mechanics

Command Lines

Example spirit: Desert demon - Heat, Create, Anger, Increase, Wind

When spirits use their power, they choose some of their qualities and string them together into an sentence in English, which we will call a command line. This sentence can include the folllowing:

• nouns/verbs/adjectives that describe target, range, and volume (the qualities that go into making a target number)
• any number of conjunctions, particles, pronouns, etc. that don't really convey any independent meaning on their own but just link the words together.
• always begin with the pronoun "I", indicating the spirit is taking some action.
• a number of quality words as follows:
  • Charms - quick one off effect, can only have one verb quality and one noun quality. Treat these as spells of one.
  • Power - More involved effect, can have up to four quality words. Treat these as spells of three, with +1 to ETN for each word beyond 2.
  • Weaving - Much more involved effect, can use any number of quality words. Treat as spells of many.
• Spirit effects cannot have a duration; they are either instant or maintained.

The part of speech (noun or verb) of the quality cannot be changed in a Charm; it must be used exactly as written. However, in a Power or Weaving, a quality can be used as any part of speech as a more general concept. Example: "Strength" is a quality, a noun. However, in a Power or Weaving it can be used as an adjective ("Strong Wall"), a verb ("Strengthen Wall") or a noun ("Protect Strength").

Example:

• the desert demon might choose "I create heat in the room" as a charm (two qualities).
• the desert demaon might choose "I create a hot wind in this room that increases the anger of the people in the room" as a weaving. (all five qualities).

Limits on Spirit Power

There are a number of limits to the power of spirits. First, there are some things that are simply impossible:

• Matter cannot be created from nothing. A semblance of matter can be created using os, but it is illusory and will dissappear as soon as the effect is no longer maintained. Otherwise, existing material has to be used. Air will work in a pinch, but air is so diffuse it takes a large volume of it to create anything significant.
• Matter cannot be destroyed. It can change form, be separated, moved around, altered considerably, but cannot be destroyed. An example: a spirt could "disintegrate" a target, but the substance of the target is not destroyed. It might be spread out in a thin layer all over the room, but its still there.
• Because matter cannot be created or destroyed, teleportation of any variety is impossible. For matter to go from one place to another, it has to go through the intervening space.
• Time cannot be reversed, slowed down, or sped up. The perception of time by conscious beings can be messed about with, but time itself is immutable.
• Elements cannot be converted. This is far easier to explain from a scientific paradigm; essentially, atoms cannot change form. They can be recombined at the atomic level into new compounds, but you cannot, for example, create gold from lead. This means that objects made from air (as an example) will tend to be fairly simple, composed of various hydrocarbons and oxides.

There are also a number of functional limits, which make things very difficult, although not necessarily completely impossible. They primarily take the form of maintanence times, where a particular effect will need to be maintained in order for its full effect to come about.

• Memories take time to create and/or erase. See the effect level section for more details.
• Disintegrating matter (i.e. simply tearing it apart) is quite quick; any destructive effect of this sort must be maintained for a number of seconds equal to the mass of material in lbs being disintegrated divided by 100. If the resulting time is 2 seconds or less, the spell is instantaneous. So, your average human being can be smeared into goo as an instant spell, but demolishing a castle wall is going to take time.
• Non-living, relatively homogenous objects take time to create. In general, any effect which is creating an object from available matter will have to be maintained at least its own mass in lbs divided by 10 in seconds. This means that objects of 20 lbs or less mass can be created as instantaneous effects; all others will need to be maintained.
• More complicated forms of matter (for example, a fine steel blade) takes more time to create; assume that it takes anywhere from its own mass in seconds to its mass times 100 in seconds for very complicated substances. The 100 times mark also applies to items that are intended to at least mimic something that was once alive, like most food stuffs. An object that looks and tastes remarkably like a 2 lb cooked sirloin steak can be created in 200 seconds (3 minutes), but that object isn't actually a cooked sirloin steak.
• Life, while not impossible to create from scratch, is incredible difficult to create because of its complexity. Assume that, for any life form, creating it from scratch requires an amount of time equal to its mass in lbs * 1000 in minutes. Therefore, a small dog (10 lbs) can be created (from appropriate matter), but it will take 10,000 minutes (167 hours, or 7 days) of solid maintanence to do so. This is obviously faster than raising a dog from a puppy, but its still not quick. This same rules apply to any kind of non-damaging manipulation that creates or removes significant mass in a living creature. As an example, let us say you want to restore an arm to an amputee. A persons arm weighs roughly the same 10 lbs as the small dog, above, and therefore would take the same 7 days to regrow.
• It seems like it should be technically possible to restore a dead person to life, or create an exact duplicate of a person. There are problems with this...big problems. If it comes up in play, I'll deal with it then, but to save space I will just say big problems.
• Moving objects around is a common effect, but there are limits to the acceleration that can be placed upon objects, related to the amount of force that can be applied. In general, small objects can be accelerated much more rapidly than larger ones. Rather than try to present formulas, here are some examples:
  • An object the size of a pebble or arrow can be accelerated very rapidly and stopped just as rapidly. This also means that arrows, sling stones, etc., can be halted in their flight or sped to dangerous speed as an instantaneous spell.
  • An object the size of a human being can be accelerated at a slower rate; roughly human running speed per round (2 seconds). This means that a running human can be halted in his tracks in one round, and a charging horse in two or three.
  • A boulder size object can be accelerated slower still, taking a number of rounds to get up any rate of speed. As a general rule, however, created something from scratch will always take longer than moving existing materials around to make something. So, for example, building a stone wall out of existing stones using movement effects would take less time than creating a stone wall from scratch out of dirt and air.
• Note also that moving objects endure any of the problems associated with their movement. So, you might be able to move at 60 mph, but if you are moving through a forest can you dodge the trees fast enough?

Ambient Power

There is a limit to the amount of power/energy that can be draw upon in any one physical area, called the ambient power. The ambient power is measured in dice, and is usually around 30 for any given area. The ambient power replenishes at the same rate (1 per two hours) as the spirits Power Pool. Whenever a spirit draws power (using the Mana effects) they draw down this ambient power. If a number of spirits are operating at the same time, the ambient power can dissappear very quickly.

Level of Effect

Then, the Seneschal and the player negotiate the level of the effect (1-3). Here are some rough guides to help determine the level of effect, based on the vagary charts in the book:

• Sculpture: as written, except as modified by the limits above.
• Movement: see above for limits on speed, otherwise as written.
• Growth: see above for limits on the rate of growth or reduction without damage. Maturing (i.e. aging) is not directly possible, but the equivalent (an overall degradation in quality and health) is. Dividing - as written.
• Glamour: as written.
• Conquer: changed completely. Instead see, the following:
  • Control - controlling the actions and thoughts of another person
    • lvl 1 - Generally control the gross motor actions of a living being
    • lvl 2 - Completely control the actions of a living being, but the being is aware that it is happening, as if they were a passenger in their own body.
    • lvl 3 - Control the intellect as well as actions of a being; the being will remember the actions, but will feel as if they were the one doing them. This goes to the extent of manufacturing rationales for the various actions.
  • Memory - altering and messing with the memories of another person
    • lvl 1 - Wipe memories. This leaves a "hole" in the persons memory which will usually be obvious if it is called attention to. Erasing memories takes maintainence time, based on the duration of the experiences that caused the memories. Divide the time of the memories by 1000 to know how much maintanence is necessary. Therefore, roughly a half hour of memories can be wiped as an instanteous spell.
    • lvl 2 - Create memories. These memories will seem authentic to the target, but will not be integrated. That is, the person may have two identical sets of memories for the same time period. Again, this takes time; divide the length of the memory by 100 to calculate the maintanence time. Therefore, roughly 3.5 minutes of new memories can be created as an instanteous spell.
    • lvl 3 - Edit and integrate memories. This creates memories which fit seemlessly into the existing memories of the target. This takes the amount of time it would take to both wipe the current memory and add a new one (multiply by 0.011). So, roughly 3 minutes of edited memories can be created as an instaneous spell.
  • Urges - controlling the emotions and metabolism of a person
    • lvl 1 - invoke or control minor emotions/bodily functions. For example, catch a persons eye erotically, make them have to go to the bathroom, etc.
    • lvl 2 - invoke or control significant emotions/bodily functions. For example, make a person fall in love with you, cause a woman to conceive, induce vomiting.
    • lvl 3 - completely control the emotioins/bodily functions of a person. For example, make a person leap on you in a fit of lust, tearing their clothes off in the process, cause a person to experience dramatic illness.
• Summoning, Banishment, Imprisonment - as written, sort of. NOTE: Need more details here eventually.

In the interest of game balance, the following levels of effect apply to any life damaging effect, if they are greater than another appropriate measure above: Lvl 1 - Damage will cause shock and pain. Lvl 2 - Damage will cause shock, pain, blood loss, and possible permanent loss of function on complete success, but not immediate death. Lvl 3 - Damage will cause death if completely succesfful, shock, pain, blood loss and possible permanent damage even if only partially successful. These levels are set in stone; there is NO way to get around them, even if the damage is fairly indirect (such as dropping objects on peoples heads).

Also in the interest of game balance and simplicity, any effect whose sole mechanical purpose is to provide bonus or penalty dice to an attribute of a character within human limits (i.e. 1 to 10) as a maintained effect is a lvl 1 effect, regardless of its source or mechanism, with the successes becoming the bonus or penalty. Permanent modifications will likely require higher level effects. An example: using "control" and "wind" to add bonus dice to a person's strength for a jump roll is a lvl 1 effect, as would be "increase" and "strength", "move" and "person", "lift" and "man", or whatever.

Effect Target Number (ETN)

Combine this level of effect with the other parameters (target, range, volume) as sorcery to determine the effect target number (ETN). Modify the ETN by -1 for each of the primary qualities the spirit includes.

Example:

• the desert demon is going to create heat, as above. A level one effect might require everyone in the room to roll End versus the 5+number of successes or be fatigued while they are in the room. A level two effect might require everyone in the room to roll the equivalent of a Blood Loss Roll vs. 7+number of successes every three rounds as long as they are in the room, and take a penalty equal to 10-Endurance on all physical activity. A level three effect would cause all flammable objects in the room to combust, and all persons in the room to continue to take number of successes in damage levels (randomly distributed) every round in wounds.

Casting and "aging" rolls

Spirits use a power pool, which is identical to the sorcery pool, and modify the power pool for powers and weavings in the same way it is modified for spells of three and spells of many. Casting time is the same as for sorcery.

Spirits are not affected by "aging", per se, but they do have a relatively limited amount of substance/energy with which to work, and are affected in a game mechanics sense in an identical fashion to human beings using sorcery per the rule book. Therefore, they still have to make "aging" rolls as per the sorcery rules, and risk unconsciousness normally. Track the months of "aging" normally, and when enough months are accrued, the aging rolls and attribute effects may begin to occur. Other effects of aging (hair growth, finger nail growth, wrinkles, etc.) do not occur. Functionally, the only concern is being knocked out.

All spirits can "cast" the equivalent of Mana I, Mana II, and Mana III.

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