Wardens Sorcerers

Sorcerers

• Powers •

Sorcerous Arcana: The Arcana of the sorcerous entities magicians may call upon.

• Advantages •

Grimoire General • Ranked

You possess a grimoire of arcane lore. You may decide what it contains: it either contains a single rare Arcanum set of your choice, or three rare spells of one or more universal Arcana. Each rank in this adds another Arcanum or set of three spells to your Grimoire. You may purchase this Advantage multiple times; each time you purchase it is a new grimoire.

Magical Library (Benefit) General • Ranked (up to 6)

You possess access to an archive of arcane lore, useful for designing your own rituals. Every rank past the first one adds a +1 to Expertise: Magic rolls while using this library. Only the owner of this library may benefit from this bonus. (Multiple characters may "pool" their ranks in this advantage, in which case they are all considered "owners" of the library.)

Prepared Rituals (Benefit) General • Ranked (up to Power Level)

You routinely prepare useful rituals to call upon when in need. For each rank in this Advantage, you may have up to one Ritual pre-cast but unactivated. These rituals may not have a DC of higher than your Routine Check with Expertise: Magic (so, Skill rank + 10 maximum).

• Complications •

All sorcerers must take the following Complication.

Power Loss: Spellcasting

In order to use your magics, you must be able to speak and gesture. If you cannot do both of these, you cannot use your Sorcerous Arcana. (You may still have other magical abilities that you can use, however.)

A sorcerer is someone trained in the invocation of great powers, drawing upon them through the use of occult techniques, notably the use of names of power, incantations, and gestures intended to create sympathetic connections between the entity in question and the world around the sorcerer. The sorcerer uses their own soul as a funnel to harness and concentrate that power, and then unleashes it into the world as a spell.

Innate Magic

• Not everyone is capable of casting spells. There must be some innate magic present to allow a sorcerer to learn spells and arcana.
• The Boon: In many sorcerers, this is an innate magic of some kind: some kind of magical effect, big or small, which not only is useful, but also tells a sorcerer's mentors that they have the potential to wield other kinds of magic as well. This innate magic is called a boon.
• Relics of Magic: In place of a boon, some reliquarians are granted the ability to use sorcery by dint of their bond with their relic. Relics long associated with magic frequently grant this benefit.
• Place Magics: Some places have a strong essence of magic, and the Invested of those places frequently gain the power to use sorcery from their connection to those places.
• Legacy Magics: Likewise some cultures known for their use of magic might imbue an Invested with some degree of magical capability.

Arcana, Spells, and Rituals

Each sorcerous entity has a body of arcane knowledge associated with it. These aren't answered prayers or petitions to spirits, however: these are sacred names and other occult "hacks" that allow a sorcerer to tap into that entity for power. Those many of these secrets were taught to sorcerers by those self-same entities, not all of them were. Use of an entity's arcana does not presuppose either the approval of that entity or the alignment of the sorcerer with that entity's aims.

• You can choose to learn single spells individually, but knowledge of a spell unlocks the potential for use of the other spells in that entity's arcana. (In game terms, each entity's arcana is considered an Array.)
• There are no "generic" spells in the setting. All on-the-fly magic is either the result of an invocation or a ritual.
• Rituals can use the spells from arcana, but they do not have to. Most earthly magicians know a few rituals of their own that they can prepare beforehand. Rituals that do not draw on the arcana use the ambient magic of the earthly realm itself.
• It is believed that truly skilled sorcerers may eventually develop their own rituals into new arcana. This is why several of the arcana are actually sorcerers from the past or who still exist in some form: they developed a corpus of rituals that they used frequently and when they gained in power sufficient to do so, they compiled those rituals into spells within their own arcana.

Known Sorcerers

The Iosan Sibyl Oracle on the Run Many sorcerers know the magics of Ios, whose eyes see all. But Ios invests a single earthly sorcerer at a time with her greatest gifts: the power of visions of startling truth and clarity. A step above mere divinations, these visions reveal a greater web of interconnections that only the Sibyl can decipher. Of course, such power means that unlike oracles of old, the modern Iosan Sibyl does not have the luxury of retiring to a sanctum. Instead, she is relentlessly pursued by those who would take advantage of her visions and insights, if they could just get her into their grasp. And so the Sibyl remains on the run, one step ahead of those who pursue her. She does not seek sanctuary with even the gentlest and kindest of esoteric folk for two reasons: first, because any who offer her shelter risk attracting the ire of those who desire her power, but also because she has seen that even the best of folk would eventually fall to the temptation to mis-use her abilities.

Chandi Proprietress of the Dvaravat xxx