The Spell of Embodiment

Art by Lindsey Crummet

Once again, we're discussing the nature of the divine in the Dragon Quest series. There are two separate occasions in the Erdrick Trilogy where we see a ritual performed to summon a divine entity into the physical plane. The first of these occurs at the climax of Dragon Quest II, in which the high priest Hargon performs a ritual to summon Malroth, the god of destruction, and ends up offering his own life in a ritual suicide to complete the ceremony when the party attempts to cut it short. Going next by release order but not chronological order, in Dragon Quest III we see a similar ritual being performed by gathering six magical orbs at the temple of Leiamland to summon the god-bird Ramia.

I don't think that the developers intended for a connection to be drawn between these two rituals. Summoning rituals have always been a trope in fantasy literature, and they make good climactic setpieces, offering both spectacle and a chance to race against time to stop a villain from unleashing a greater threat. But my pattern recognition can't help but find it rather curious that both these rituals are used to summon gods, not demons or other lesser spirits. As such, for The Saga of the Ortegids, I've chosen to interpret these two instances as examples of the same sort of magic, something I'm calling the Spell of Embodiment. This spell is a very powerful one, and may even be the most powerful in existence - through it, a god can be summoned into the mortal plane, and incarnated in physical form.

There's a few implications this has on worldbuilding. I'd like to point out that the existence of spells like these confirm that ritual magic does exist in the world of the original Dragon Quest trilogy. None of the games have ever let the players use similar spells - unlike in Final Fantasy, "summon magic" isn't really something that factors into the Dragon Quest games' mechanics - but we still see them being used in the backstory and by NPCs. We can assume, then, that the spells that exist in this world are not limited to those that can be used by playable characters. This fits with my goal in this project to investigate what setting the Erdrick Trilogy implies when game mechanics are taken out of the equation - we can assume that the spells available to the player are merely a representation of the in-universe magic system, and not what it's limited to. That's how I prefer my magic systems anyway - nothing kills the vibe of magic and mysticism more than locking it to a prescribed list of consistent fixed effects. There are clearly more spells in this world than those an adventurer might cast on the fly, and they may have different effects or means of being cast.

Secondly, the Spell of Embodiment is clearly more demanding than other spells in the setting - which one would hope would be the case if you're summoning something as powerful as a god. Malroth needs a long ritual in order to summon, and is ultimately invoked via human sacrifice, while Ramia is summoned using a set of powerful artifacts. If we are to interpret these rituals as different expressions of the same power, it seems that summoning a god requires a great expenditure of power. Sacrifice might be one way to harness that power, but the orbs might provide an alternative source of the same mystic energy in the right quantities. It does raise the question of where the orbs came from, and why they possess this much power. Given that they're only found in Erdland, I'd like to assume that they were created by the ancient Aliahanian Empire to harness its advanced magics.

Third, as I've discussed before, there seems to be a difference between lesser gods like Aurhea and the priestesses of Leiamland, who can exist on the mortal realm without issue but seem to have much more localized spheres of influence, and greater gods like Malroth and Ramia that must be summoned through complex rituals. Rubiss is a bit of an outlier - in DQ3, you encounter her imprisoned in a tower in Alefgard, apparently fully corporeal - but she was imprisoned there by Zoma, who appears to be a deity of equal power to her. In fact, I'd argue that, under this theory, Zoma was likely summoned through a similar Spell of Embodiment. We know that he isn't originally from Alefgard because one of the dungeons there is said to be where he clawed his way into the physical realm. This could be the result of the Spell, or it could be something that occurred in an earlier war between gods that led to him overcoming and imprisoning Rubiss. If we assume an event like this took place in the setting's past, it might explain why powerful gods are more limited in their ability to directly interface with the mortal plane of existence. They were more liberal with it in the past, but the results were catastrophic.

Having the Spell of Embodiment in a setting could provide some compelling adventure hooks. Perhaps the most obvious is to have a villain who wants to use the Spell to summon their dark master, or maybe a god that they foolishly believe they can control to further their aims. But it could be just as interesting if the PCs have to perform the Spell in order to combat a threat so great that only a god could possibly deal with it. Either way, gathering items powerful enough for the ritual - either so they don't fall into the wrong hands, or to use them onesself - could provide a good structure for a campaign, giving the party a good reason to scour the world and collect treasure. And if you're looking for a tense encounter, you can't go wrong with the party having to defeat the villain before they can unleash a terrible force of destruction on the world.

Three Demons

If I'm going to use demons - especially big, important, named demons - in my games, they aren't going to be something as simple as bosses to be defeated, with lots of HP and powerful attacks. That's boring. Demons are far more interesting if you stop thinking of them as enemies and think of them more as patrons - forces that could grant the PCs great power if they so wish to seek out their attention, but at a great price. Drawing on their depictions in folklore and mysticism, they're unique beings with their own agendas, exploiting the foolishness and temptations of mortals to corrupt them into acts of cruelty and chaos, and no PC who consults them should do so without it coming back to bite them in the end.

Here are three demons inspired by Goetic traditions and The Book of Ebon Bindings. Their summoning rituals are intended to be handled through narrative tasks and requirements, as described in this post on ritual magic.

Sifunoth, the Great Black Goat of Nowaub

Sifunoth is a Mighty Great President of Hell with forty-four legions of demons under her command. She is known as a patron of witches and is called upon at sabbaths and black masses to teach the secrets of magic to those who beseech her. Her cult is believed to have arisen in the last days of the ancient Nuwapian empire, but the rituals to summon her, and the secrets she is said to teach, have been passed down for generations, and cults to her now exist throughout the known world.

Appearance: Sifunoth typically appears as a large black nanny goat, and can assume the form of a normal goat in order to disguise herself. However, she prefers to manifest as a goat with a thousand writhing, spindly legs like those of a centipede.

Personality: Sifunoth addresses her mortal followers in an perversely grandmotherly tone, showing them cloying displays of affection and offering personal investment in their concerns. However, she is not wont to give good advice, and will always suggest acts of violence and cruelty as the solution to problems.

Summoning Ritual: Sifunoth may only be summoned under a full moon, beneath a clear sky, and when the moon appears directly above the summoning site. A scaffold of wood, eight feet tall, must be constructed, and atop it, three braziers must be lit with six juniper twigs and six aspen twigs each, before an incantation is read in Ancient Nuwapian. Then, the summoner throws themselves backwards off the platform; they may not look behind them to make sure it is safe. If the ritual is performed correctly, they will land atop Sifunoth's back, as she has miraculously manifested just beneath them, and expresses concern for her disciple risking themselves in such a fashion. The ritual takes three days to prepare and twenty minutes to perform.

Blessing: When summoned, Sifunoth will teach her disciple the secrets of magic. She will offer to impart the secrets of a random first or second-level spell from the Warlock spell list; ideally, this should be a spell that would be of use to the summoner and fit their personality and tactics. If the summoner does not think this spell would be useful, she will propose another until they approve of her offer. Then, she will press her forehead against the summoner's chest, and the summoner will instinctively know how to cast the spell. They may cast it three times per day (if first level) or once per day (if second level), using Charisma as their spellcasting ability. They can cast the spell even if they are not ordinarily a spellcasting class.

Price: Those who learn magic from Sifunoth are marked by her favor. They grow coarse black hair like that of a goat all over their bodies over the course of the next week; if they attempt to shave this hair, it grows back the next day. Others will likely regard affected PCs with suspicion and fear if they do not hide this effect.

Ritzenfauer, the King of the Labyrinth

Ritzenfauer is a King of Hell with seven legions of demons under his command. He rules from the center of the Labyrinth of a Thousand Torments, a seemingly infinite maze of corridors, pits, and deathtraps. He is known for his power over life and death, and teaches the secrets of transcending the limits of bodily mortality. Previously, he was imprisoned by an order of Torvaldic monks in the Silver Chains Priory in Togarmah, but was released by a ritual gone awry. Though he will still respond to summoning rituals, he has taken to his freedom and wanders the Mortal Realm looking for those he can lead astray. As a result of his imprisonment, he is resentful of Torvald and his faithful.

Appearance: Ritzenfauer takes the form of a shriveled, withered figure wrapped in a blue or red shroud, his face always obscured by shadow save for a pair of piercing red eyes. When in the guise of a mortal, he always walks with a hunch.

Personality: Ritzenfauer conducts himself in a stuffy, formal fashion, speaking to mortals from a place of power and dignity. He is not afraid to use mortals as pawns to accomplish his goals, and often makes offers to them that he has no intentions of holding up his end of the bargain on.

Summoning Ritual: Ritzenfauer may only be summoned on the Tenth of Winemoon (equivalent to October 10th, or the tenth day of the tenth month in the world's lunar calendar). A sigil must be drawn in black chalk with five candles made from human fat placed equidistant to one another around its radius. Each candle must be lit in sequence after an incantation is spoken in Old Golniri, and the center of the sigil must then be anointed with the blood of three different people mixed in a brass bowl. The ritual takes half an hour to set up, an hour to perform from start to finish, and must end at the stroke of midnight. If the ritual is completed successfully, Ritzenfauer will appear at the center of the sigil and offer his blessing.

Blessing: Ritzenfauer's blessing will allow his disciple to defy the laws of mortality. If accepted, the next time the disciple dies, they do not start making death saves. Instead, they will begin slowly regenerating, their mortal wounds knitting themselves back together over a period of three days. This will work even if the disciple's body was completely destroyed, such as through a disintegrate spell; their body and all equipment will regenerate from nothing. The period of regeneration is painful and the disciple remains conscious throughout the entire process; they cannot do anything more than lying around and moaning in agony until the three days are up.

Price: Ritzenfauer is amused by the fact that mortals are so afraid of their own mortality that they would not consider the greater picture. Although his blessing will work once, should the disciple die for any reason after regenerating, they do not regenerate a second time, and their soul is condemned instantly to the Labyrinth of a Thousand Torments. They do not make death saves, may not cheat Death, and cannot be revived by any means short of retrieving their soul from the Labyrinth directly.

Art by getsugadante

Lagaaz the Festering

Lagaaz is a Prince of Hell with two hundred legions of demons under his command. Like many demons, he is a bringer of pestilence and affliction, and his minions carry it forth unto the mortal realm. However, Lagaaz does not see disease as merely a way to inflict harm on mortals, but also as an incentive to further his own aims. He has the power to heal mortals of disease by taking it on himself, and he delights at inflicting mortals with plagues so that they will sell their souls to him for relief from their misery.

Appearance: In his true form, Lagaaz appears as a horrendously bloated decaying corpse covered in boils and weeping sores. His right leg is the foot of a crow, and his left leg is unnaturally short. He also sometimes appears riding a donkey. If disguised as a mortal, his face is always hideously disfigured with scars and boils.

Personality: Despite his grotesque appearance, Lagaaz does not behave as an afflicted person would - he is, in fact, incredibly spry and full of energy, and his lesions do not seem to bother him. He is a fast talker and a slick con artist, akin to a carnival barker or a used car salesman, attempting to dupe his disciples into selling their souls before they can realize the price of his offer.

Summoning Ritual: To summon Lagaaz, one must exhume four bodies that have died of the same plague after they have been buried in the ground for exactly three days. Their hearts must be cut out with a bronze knife and burned on a pyre with the four bodies arranged around it pointing in the four cardinal directions. As the fire burns, the summoner must walk in a continuous circle around the bodies, sprinkling their feet with water mixed with the dirt from the exhumed graves, until the flames begin to dim, at which point the summoner must stop at the feet of the closest body and hurl it into the fire. As smoke rises from the pyre, Lagaaz will appear inside and offer his disciple to come to him. This ritual takes five hours to prepare, and two hours to perform.

Blessing: When summoned, Lagaaz will invite his disciple to step forward and place their hands upon his corpulent, decaying body. If they do so, they will find themselves gripped by a surge of vigorous energy. They gain Inspiration, and any diseases or other conditions they are subject to are immediately removed as Lagaaz absorbs their affliction into his body. They permanently gain immunity to any diseases and poisons thereafter.

Price: Lagaaz has removed his disciple's afflictions and taken them into himself - however, the ritual must be continued in order to maintain that state. Once a month, Lagaaz's disciple must murder a person who is innocent of any crimes and who does not hold any antipathy toward them and hang their body from a tree as a sacrifice to the demon prince. In addition to compromising the moral fiber of the disciple, this often necessitates they keep moving, as the disappearance of the sacrificial victim will surely be noticed, particularly when their body must be displayed in so conspicuous a fashion. If a month goes by without such an offering, the disciple is stricken by every disease that Lagaaz has absorbed into his body; they have Disadvantage on all attack rolls and ability checks; automatically fail all saves (including death saves); and will die in three days. If they commit a murder within these three days, the effect is immediately revoked.

We Need More Nutcracker Adventures

We're closing in on Christmas time again - and if you look around the TRPG community, you're bound to stumble over more than a few queries from people looking for advice on Christmas-themed adventures and encounters to send their players on to celebrate the season. And more often than not, the first thing anyone is going to recommend is Krampus - either encouraging the DMs to make use of the concept themselves, or taking their pick from a sea of Krampus-themed modules out there.

The Aquabats episode can stay, though.

Look, I get it. I can see why Krampus became such a popular choice. For a lot of people, fighting monsters is a key part of D&D, and there aren't many other notable Christmas monsters out there. But the oversaturation of Krampus has made him completely lose any appeal to me. In the last couple of years, Krampus has gone from being a fun bit of trivia to being one of the things about Christmas that everyone knows, and that more people have done something with than I can count. He's played out. He isn't fun and new and exciting any more, and hasn't been for years. Surely there are other sources we can draw from to create a scenario with an unmistakably Christmas feel that still wouldn't be out of place at the tabletop.

As a matter of fact, there's one in particular that's worth a look. The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, by E.T.A. Hoffmann.

Raise your hands. What do you know about the story of the Nutcracker? Well, there's a Nutcracker in it. He's given to the protagonist by Herr Drosselmeyer and fights the Mouse King. There's a Sugarplum Fairy involved in there somewhere. The music goes "da da da da DA DA dadada," you know the one. A lot of people are familiar with the iconography of the Nutcracker story, but can anyone tell me what actually happens in it?

No? Didn't think so.

Did you know that the Mouse King has seven heads, for one? Yeah, that's a detail from the original book that gets left out a lot - and it's theorized that it may be a reference to the phenomenon of rat kings, so that's one evocative image to draw on.

Did you know that the Nutcracker wages a nightly war between the toys and the invading mice, who want to eat all the candy and chew up the toys in the house?

Did you know that there's a kingdom of dolls that the Nutcracker rules over, with forests of sweets, gates made of sugared almonds, gingerbread men who suffer from toothaches, and a castle made of marzipan (under repairs because a giant named Sweettooth ate part of the roof)? 

Did you know there's a subplot about the Nutcracker having to find a sword that can slay the Mouse King (this, by the way, is solved by having the protagonist's brother give him a sword from one of his toy soldiers, who he punishes for not fighting the mice earlier by "forbidding them from playing the Hussar's March for a year;" no word on whether or not they listen)?

Did you know that three chapters (that's about one-fifth of the book, for reference) are devoted to the origin of the Nutcracker, and it's begging to be mined for inspiration?

See, as the story goes, it all began when Lady Mouserinks, the Mouse Queen (just go with it) led an army of mice to eat the fat that was supposed to be used for a sausage at a king's banquet. In response, Herr Drosselmeyer - who happens to be the court inventor - made traps for the mice, killing the children of the Mouse Queen. This, incidentally, is how mousetraps were invented.

In response, the Mouse Queen - who apparently commands great magical powers despite being, by all accounts, the size of an ordinary mouse (you'll see what I mean later) - placed a curse on the princess to turn her into a nutcracker. According to the court astrologer, this curse could only be lifted by having her consume the magical nut Crackatook, after it was opened by the teeth of a man who had never in his life shaved or worn boots, who must then close his eyes and take seven steps backward. You know, ritual stuff.

Despite the court searching the world for years (which includes meeting the King of Dates, the Prince of Almonds, and "the Society of Natural Sciences in Squirrelton"), they can't find the nut, nor a man who suits the requirements, until Herr Drosselmeyer heads home to Nuremburg, where it turns out that his cousin, a puppet-maker, has the nut (he found it when he got in a fight with a nut seller who was blocking his door, and a cart ran over his bag of nuts in the commotion, breaking all but one). The king promises his daughter's hand in marriage to whoever can crack the nut, but everyone who tries breaks their teeth on it - except for Herr Drosselmeyer's nephew, who happens to have never shaved or worn boots. He manages to crack the nut, but after handing it to the princess and lifting her curse, he takes the required seven steps backward with his eyes closed...and, with his seventh step, squashes the Mouse Queen. Who goes on to sing this.

Oh, Crackatook, hard nut, now I must die,

Hee hee, pee pee.

Nutcracker, young man, you too will die.

My seven-crowned son will avenge my death,

And take from you your living breath.

Oh, life, so vibrant and red, I - squeak!

I am very mature.

Anyway, with her dying breath, the Mouse Queen places a curse on the nephew that turns him into a nutcracker - the same one given by Herr Drosselmeyer to his goddaughter - and ever since, the Mouse King has been out for revenge for his mother's death!

Let's recap. The story of the Nutcracker is full of strange monsters, curses, magic items, bizarre locations, rituals, fantastic races, and grand quests...in other words, the perfect material for a campaign! Don't just take my word for it, give it a look yourself.

I'd love to see people do more with the Nutcracker when it comes to Christmas-themed modules. In fact, I've been workshopping one of my own based on the story. I can't promise a release date any time in particular - real life gets in the way, you know the drill - but I think there's plenty in the story that can be mined for a hexcrawl. Watch this space!

In the meantime, though, this week's Friday Encounter will carry on the Christmas spirit, drawing inspiration from another famous Christmas story. And there's more holiday fun on the horizon!

The Magic of Rituals

I've found that it's hard to hit a sweet spot when it comes to designing magic systems for games. In many cases, setting rules and mechanics to what sorts of spells and magical effects can be used and how they work makes sense for the purposes of gameplay, but on the flip side, making magic follow too many rules can make it feel less...well, magical.

To me, the defining feature of magic is that it can't be explained by science. It's wondrous and exotic and strange, and the more rules are attached to it, the less magical it becomes. I find that, per rules as written, magic in D&D runs the risk of falling into mundanity if players are too accustomed to thinking of their spells as reliable tools they can fall back on. This is especially bad if you treat things like spell slots and discrete and identifiable spells as diagetic representations of how magic actually works from an in-universe perspective. It worked for Jack Vance, sure, but to me, a wizard who talks about how many spell slots he has left per day is only one step away from a Jedi throwing around his midichlorian count, and nobody wants that.

I prefer to think of magic systems in games as a way of streamlining the abstract. Magic doesn't really work exactly the way it does in the game rules; that's just a way to represent the complicated business of manipulating the fabric of reality itself. Spells taken from a list are just the sort of tricks and enchantments a particular magician has mastered and knows how to reliably perform, and spell slots are just a representation of how much mental stamina one can call upon before needing time to rest. However, all that is is reflavoring things, and that doesn't really fix the problem of magic being too defined and mechanical. I do like the 5e Sorcerer's metamagic abilities, which make magic more fluid, multifaceted, and customizable, implying there isn't a finite list of magical effects that can be achieved. And there is a part of me that's contemplated rewriting the magic system entirely to something more like Ars Magica, as some bloggers have done - but I'm not quite that insane.

But what if magic was divorced from game mechanics entirely?

The Book of Ebon Bindings is a fascinating book. Published in 1978 as part of the Empire of the Petal Throne line, it's one of the first third-party supplements for D&D. It's also one of the first system-neutral RPG materials. The book is a collection of spells revolving around summoning and controlling demons. But none of it is in the form of game rules.

That's because The Book of Ebon Bindings is written entirely in the form of an in-universe grimoire, putting it somewhere between a rulebook and a literary hoax. In order to transport yourself to another location, you don't expend a 4th-level spell slot with material, somatic, and verbal components. You have to make a circle of white ashes, draw the Symbol of the Rising Planet and write the Name of Tsu'untla in red chalk, erect a pedestal on which is placed a box of black wood, a round censer, a dagger of iron that has never tasted blood, and a wax candle, and release a drop of blood from your finger at each step taken around the circle to summon Lord Ge'en, the Eater of All. In order to cast the spell, the PCs have to go out into the world and do that stuff.

The dedication on display in Ebon Bindings is truly impressive - there's absolutely nothing that indicates it's a work of fiction or intended for gameplay; even the introduction is written as though by a translator explaining the choices they made rather than by a game designer describing its utility at the table. You could put it next to the Key of Solomon and someone unfamiliar with Empire of the Petal Throne would think that the two works belong to the same genre.

It's a fascinating concept for a book, and one I'm surprised we don't see more of. I'm amazed that something like this somehow went completely unnoticed during the Satanic Panic, and I respect the sheer audacity it must've took to publish something of the sort. But it also highlights how rituals are ripe for possibilities with gameplay.

If the PCs have to perform a ritual, it comes with its own quest hooks, necessitating that they gather the components before they can even cast the spell at all, and some of those might require expeditions of their own. Alternatively, there can be a level of resource management in keeping the components for a ritual at hand, and what might be available to the PCs might limit what options are available for spellcasting. Even determining what needs to be done for the ritual itself could be a quest, entailing poring over tomes of lost arcane knowledge and having to decode their text. The consequences of failing a ritual, or making a mistake in one step or another, could create more problems for the players. If enemy casters must perform rituals as well, it gives the PCs the chance to interfere in their efforts and stop a powerful spell from being cast before it's too late. And, above all, it restores the mystic, unknowable qualities of magic and makes those front and center in gameplay.

There's plenty of spells in 5e that can be cast as rituals. Perhaps, if a DM wants to encourage players to use rituals, they could remove the option to cast these spells on the fly, forcing players to think in terms of having the time and materials to set up the spell they want to cast. It would likely impact the pace of a campaign; rituals take time, and setting them up would take even more time, so magic-users wouldn't be able to act as quickly. I personally feel like using a mix of immediately castable spells and rituals that require a longer period of preparation (particularly for more powerful spells) is the right middle ground to circumvent this, but I suppose a DM and a group that's prepared for the challenge could run a campaign where all magic is done through rituals.

But an added benefit of using the narrative to determine if, how, and when a spell can be cast means you're not bound by game mechanics. If there's no numbers, stats, or tags associated with casting a spell, you can get them from all kinds of sources, whether they were designed for the edition you're playing or not. You can use narrative rituals from any game in any system, or even from sources outside of roleplaying games. See a neat ritual in a movie? Your PCs can cast it - all they need are the right components and the right actions.

You can even go straight to the source and have players go through the steps of setting up rituals from actual historical grimoires. Because these sorts of things tend to have fallen into the public domain, you can find plenty of texts online that can be pilfered from, and in each you'll find plenty of spells that you can have your PCs do just by performing in-universe actions. If your players want to learn who has stolen a certain object, have them suspend a sieve from a rope that was used to hang a man, spin it around a brass basin filled with water while stirring it with a laurel twig in the opposite direction, and recite the right incantations until the culprit's face appears in the water. If it worked for 14th century Italians, it'll work for your party.

It seems like such a simple solution to the problem of magic you would expect it to be proposed more often. In fact, this sort of thing was being done for almost as long as RPGs as we know them were a thing. When it comes to devising a magic system that feels more magical without throwing too many new rules at the players for them to understand, you can't go wrong with rituals - especially when you can get plenty of adventure out of them in the process.