Wednesday 8 January 2020

Lazy Sorcerer Origins for My Game


Spicy Soiree of the Saucy Sorceress.....ok so i really use a sorcerer class in my bx type games and I like it as a alt magic system. So as I'm using sorcerers as a more common magic to cover lots of roles. Almost any village might have one sorcerer possibly only a few levels and many keep it a secret or join up for a while with other sorcery groups for a while before going own way. Many 1st lv sorcerers keep it a secret and possibly family helped hide it. Especially where witches are feared or used as scapegoats.

Witches I mostly use as a legal term for unlawful user of magic not a class.
especially on your neighbours or kin. But most often they will be like one of these....
Cults are often referred too as witch cults because they have secret beliefs and goals and they cast spells on people. They have no official sanction or education and are not forsworn to possibly enemy powers.

Wizards
Wizards go to school and study hard often close with a master
Wizards need literacy or symbols or other symbolic marks making language
Wizards build towers and several of them make a school and lots make a university
Wizards work hard to study and use occult knowledge to learn more powers
Wizards use spell components while casting spells
Wizard familiars guide and encourage masters to follow extremes of alignment
Wizards establish guilds, magical orders and schools dedicated to occult science
Wizards think sorcerers are wasted talent and lazy idots

Sorcerers

Sorcerers innate magical spell powers are from bloodlines or making otherworldly pacts
Sorcerers need to learn to control and understand powers when young and awkward
Sorcerers are worldly preferring lives of indolence and vice cults in a pleasure dome
Sorcerers grow in power gaining new abilities after a fever and dreams
Sorcerers burn incense, use perfumes, drink and take drugs when resting to recover magic
Sorcerers familiars know their master body and soul belongs to the outer powers
Sorcerers start cults but after a while they burn out and split up and many go own way
Sorcerers think wizards are try hards and bossy bores

I'm still a bit vague here on power source in reality...
Are blood borne sorcerers ancestral patrons basically born with a patron
I do like letting wizards study sorcerers for new spells...
Sorcerers often talk crap about magic and make stuff up like con men as them mostly did not have a legit university schooling like a wizard has.

Instead of meditating quietly for 8 hours learning spells sorcerers might
-abuse of drugs of all kinds in a expensive binge
-ritual sex or orgies but this gets expensive
-chanting while drinking self unconscious
-meditating with mandalas and lots of trinkets
-
entering dream trances for otherworldly contact
-study an artwork or make a mandala in a trance
-dancing in a trance possibly with a simple instrument and chanting. Other art forms are possible
-eating and fasting are two extremes, depends if you want to be large or scrawny
-burn expensive oils, herbs, candles and incense and other offerings
-consult star charts and pour over occult books and wildly speculate or make up stuff
-starvation and physical ordeals like sitting on spikes or walking over coals
-dancing preferably to music possibly with chanting

Sorcerers might gain minor mutations based on patron with new spells like horsns, pointy nails, sharp teeth, skin colour....Also though gain tatoos or witches marks as you gain spells

d12 Backgrounds For Sorcerers. 

1 Born with a exotic supernatural being in your bloodline often related to the types of spells and alignment. You began to have dreams and found clues of your heritage and sought others like yourself. Many who taught you were charlatans and mystery cults before learning the basics of self control for yourself. Elemental, Diabolic, Demonic, Draconoic, Faerie are common lines. Your family of others with the bloodline are your clan allies
2 You joined a witch cult and you showed talent and got to make a pact with a planar patron being often a minor divinity, demon or spirit that guides you. These have strong alignments but it is possible to change patrons. Joining the inner circle you were driven out by rivals in the cult and have struck out on your own finding other outcasts to hone your craft
3 Powerful beings have inscribed to with symbols and magical tattoos. Others of your breed know of these tattoos and can add new ones or even change them. The loose organisations of tattoo sorcerers have various speculations on how it works, The process is very painful but not as bad as the first times something made marks on you.
4 You stumbled across books and whispers of strange rituals possibly from a cult but you went out on your own to make a pact with some being away from the controlling eyes of organised cults. More a loner but you did pick up some technique from  other loners you met. Your other world patron is not too demanding 

5 You joined a organised cult promising powers and love and euphoric states of ecstasy. But the master saw you had real talent and took you to the inner circle. Keeping you close with other talented youths for training you aided the master obtain sex, drugs and influence before the whole thing collapsed and you all had to scatter
6 You were given free schooling tests and more tests and a sect sent you to school recognising some ability in you. The school has trained and educated you to serve the nobility of the region but put the schools schemes first. Well versed in temple rites and titles and robes your sect eventually are out to see the world on your own
7 You were found among orphans and tested and taken to a mercenary sorcerers guild who trained you as a battlefield sorcerer. Assisting veterans you have seen war, looting and the harsh life of the military and privilege it earns. You have gone freelance to make your own fortune and see if their is more to profit
8 You contacted some being in your dreams and bargained your own pact with it. An obscure and secretive being it is only making small efforts in the mortal world and is happy for you to dwell in secrecy 
9 Children born under certain auspicious stars are taken or watched by a secret order and monitored to see if they have the arcane power within. The chosen ones are taken to the secret lodge and raised as agents in the orders cause. Sent out into the world to study it you may receive bidding from the order to do some strange bidding.
10 You were taken by an old sorcerer as a child and raised as their student. The teacher was mean but made your powers mighty enough to walk out of that secret hidden hall
11 You were selected to inherit a terrible power handed down from a old a dying sorcerer into you and other chosen through a ritual. The old sorcerer dies and power flowed into your peers and your body in a painful ritual. The sect that does this did expect you would be obedient and grateful for giving you powers
12 You were feared by others for your occasional odd abilities when a older sorcerer met you and took you away into a life of adventure that lasted years. They introduced you to elder powers within your blood. Eventually you realised they were abusive and patronising and you want your own path. They are displeased by your decision you are ambivalent and wary of their intentions. Its gotten awkward

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