With Thoth’mora taking his dead twin sister’s head to gain the knowledge within, I figured it was probably a good time to actually finish the spell research rules I’ve been vaguely thinking about since I first made the Maleficar rules.

 

The LotFP spell research rules require you to take a wild guess at how long it will take and spend that much money before the Referee makes a random roll to find out how long it will actually take, and if you didn’t guess high enough you lose all your money and waste all your time and get nothing. Oh and if someone interrupts you to bring in a tray of tea and biscuits you also lose everything and have to start again.

Which is BORING.

 

So, here’s what I’ll be doing.

 

[Basic things to know about my magic system first: Spells are not memorised, you get a random amount of spell points to use each day called Cataclysm, spells use an amount of Cataclysm equal to their level, and when you try to use more spell points than you have left you make a 3d6 Cast the Bones roll to figure out if it works, or how badly things go wrong.]

 

• The basic time required to learn a new spell is FOUR WEEKS, regardless of spell level.
• This can be done while adventuring, not an issue, because Maleficar are sketchy weirdos who would be thinking about this shit like all the time, waking up at odd hours, stopping suddenly in caves with looks of “of COURSE!” on their faces, and also forcing the whole party to take a month of downtime every time the wizard wants to learn a spell is super, numbingly boring.
• You get one shot to learn each spell, no second chances honey.
• Roll 3d6 + your level, vs. 3d6 + spell level, and look up the variance on the table below.

Now unless you roll quite low, you’re pretty much always going to learn the spell, we’re just finding out how well you’re able to use it and what additional things you might have to do to cast it.

 

Before rolling, you can do things to vary your chances.

• STUDY MORE/LESS;
  If you spend 1-3 weeks less than normal, re-roll your highest dice and take the lower result for each week you dropped.
  [Why would you want to do that? Well maybe an army of demon-possessed plague rats is on the march and you’d really like to learn Cloudkill before they get here.]
  If you spend 1-3 weeks more than normal, re-roll your lowest dice and take the higher result for each additional week.
• THROW MONEY AT THE PROBLEM;
  Spending 100sp per level of the spell on experimental components and research material and good drugs will allow you to re-roll any dice with a result lower than the opposing roll’s lowest dice, and take the higher result. Spending double that amount will also allow you to roll an extra d6 if you end up with any doubles.
  You’re likely to only find sufficient quantities of that kind of thing in cities or freakish communes though, so even though you can research spells out in the wild, it’s still easier in the comforts of home.
• STEAL SOMEONE ELSE’S;
  If you possess a deciphered version of the spell, remove the highest dice from the opposing roll.
  [Quick additional rule because if someone wants to walk around with Maleficar skulls hanging off them I’m good with that: If you have a deciphered version of a spell in a spellbook or skull or otherwise, but haven’t actually spent the time to learn it yet, you can cast it while reading from its source if you Cast the Bones.]
• BE INDUCTED INTO THE MYSTERIES;
  If you undertake a journey/perform some esoteric ritual specific to the magic you are trying to learn, as per Tom’s ideas on magic, you may re-roll each dice of the opposing roll, and leave the lower result.

 

	3d6 + Maleficar level vs. 3d6 + Spell level
Variance	Result
Beyond +12	(as below, plus) The spell may be cast spontaneously, it seeps from your very being, no word or motion is necessary, no time. You are permanently marked by small manifestations or physical anomalies relating to the nature of the spell.
up to +12	(as below, plus) Casting only requires half as much Cataclysm, rounded up.
up to +9	The incantation is absorbed within your brain, you can cast it from memory.
up to +6	You require access to your spellbook, casting takes an extra Round.
down to -6	(as above, plus) There are additional requirements to cast the spell. Match the numbers on your dice to the Demands of the Void table. Demands are only duplicated if you rolled a double or triple.
down to -9	(as above, plus) There is a complication in learning the spell, match your roll to the Thaumaturgic Complication table.
down to -12	You fail to comprehend the spell, and open the way to something else. The next time you cast a spell of any kind make a Cast the Bones roll with a penalty equal to the level of the spell you were attempting to learn.
beyond -12	(as above, plus) Your ineptitude causes a zone of arcane madness and manifestation for d6 days, with 6 being permanent. 100' radius per level of the spell you were attempting to learn.

 

 

	Demands of the Void
Result	(Individual Dice Results)
1-2	The spell drains additional Cataclysm, equal to the number on the dice.
3-4	The spell requires a specific component.
5-6	There must be ritual.

 

 

	Thaumaturgic Complication
Result	(Sum of Dice Results)
14-18	The spell has an Abyssal Side-Effect.
11-13	Pockets of black bile open within your mind, roll on Insanity table.
8-10	Your flesh is corrupted, roll on Transmutation table.
3-7	Part of your body fucking tears itself off, grows extra bits, and wishes your death. It might attack you now, or it might plot your downfall in the shadows. Roll on Body Horror table.

 

 

d20	Component
1	An inscribed Fetish.
2	A raven's wing.
3	Finger bone of a peacefully dead man.
4	The honey-preserved macerated flesh of the Mellified Priests of the Viridescent Ziggurat.
5	The written sentiment of another from time past.
6	A Bog's Head Hawkmoth caught beneath a full moon. (Sickly dark green, the back of their heads resemble the mortifying face of a man left to decay in the waters of a bog, strands hang like muck-covered lichen. They squeak like scheming mice.)
7	The fresh entrails of a toad.
8	A clump of diseased blood-red moss.
9	Dried tentacles of the oily grey-skinned spawn of the leviathan.
10	The hair of a harlot.
11	A copper piece once held by a priestess.
12	Nacreous Milk of the Antelope.
13	Mushrooms sprouted from a corpse.
14	The ashy pollen of the Widow's Blossom.
15	Burning pages of poetry.
16	The legs of a Blue-Bloat Bore Grub, dug from the limbs of an Ash Spider Collossum.
17	Three rotten sparrow's eggs.
18	The tattooed paw of a Bloodmouth monkey.
19	The neutralised honey-thick semen of a Jewelled Mound of Ur.
20	A sleeping rat.

 

 

d20	Ritual
1	Your bare feet covered by water, steam rising from your mouth and nostrils.
2	A fistful of hair torn from your head, thrown upon a flame.
3	A steady rhythm drummed against something resonant, continuing after you've stopped.
4	Obscene symbols drawn in concentric circles around you.
5	You must be naked to cast the spell, not a thread touching your body.
6	You must swallow a living creature whole.
7	Flagellation.
8	A shivering, shaking dance in a mentally-induced fever.
9	Hot wax poured upon your head, running down your face.
10	The tips of your fingers slit, wrists pressed together and brought to your face to mark a circle of blood.
11	Your mouth filled with dirt, exhuming the incantation.
12	Let no sentient creature enter your sight, let your eyes never close.
13	Plunge your hands beneath the soil, let the worms twist their bodies about your fingers.
14	Drink the blood of another.
15	Intermittent regurgitation, the pool of vomit churning into a swirling spire that streams back into your mouth at the culmination of the spell.
16	A spider held on the tongue, swallowed after casting.
17	Urinate in the dust and dirt, take the acidic taste upon the tip of your tongue, spit the final word.
18	Take the knife to your belly, spill your vitals, the wound will close when the casting is done. (Unless you rolled maximum damage, which means you cut too deep, the wound remains.)
19	Hold your hand in the flame of a candle until the casting is done.
20	No blood may be spilt in your presence while the incantation is performed. Make a Cast the Bones roll for every wound you witness.

 

…which means there’s going to be different wizards casting the same spell in different ways, maybe even with slightly different effects, questing around for that particular component they need, asking the Fighter if they can borrow a pint of blood, dancing and spitting.

 

It’s going to be great.

All body parts of dead Maleficar are valuable for use in creating Fetishes, but the true wealth resides within their skulls.

Every day of their lives the Maleficar’s void-touched brain etches patterns into the inside of their cranium, like moth larvae burrowing through the bark of a tree. The longer they live the more ornate and extensive the pattern, which, if deciphered, bears the formula to hitherto unknown magic.

 

When a Maleficar’s head is taken, the inside of their skull will contain an unknown spell of level equal to the highest level spell a traditional Magic-User would have been able to memorise.

This will require you to make some shit up.

 

 

Some spells rumoured to be contained within the lost Cranial Stacks of the Bibliothèque Verrotten:

 

Larval Pit of the Cosmic Hive

Maleficar Level 6

Duration: Instantaneous

Range: Infinite

Components: Fingernails from the intended victim, amniotic fluid, a live wasp.

 

Take the amniotic fluid from one who has not yet birthed, heat it in a copper bowl over an open flame, add the fingernails without ceremony, the aroma will draw the wasp.

When the wasp settles within the bowl drink deeply, and incant the words when you feel its final dying sting.

 

Within the victim’s belly the larvae begins to grow. Within days the nausea turns to debilitating pain, within weeks their belly distends to hold the larval girth, within two months their withered corpus breaths its last.

At the next full moon the cosmic chrysidine digs its way through flesh and gravedirt to unfurl its terrible wings under black sky and knowing stars.

 

(It still remembers the first belly that brought it into this world; yours. It will seek you out, whether to serve you or to lay its own brood within you is yet to be seen.)

 

 

Black Colossus

Maleficar Level 9

Duration: 1 Turn/level

Range: 30′

Casting Time: 2 Rounds

 

The Black Colossus manifests as an oily mass of shadow, crawling up walls, creeping through cracks, digesting flesh with its touch.

HD equal to caster level, it can only be harmed by flame or sunlight.

The Colossus will follow its last command until the duration ends or the caster spends a Round to mentally implant a new instruction. It will destroy anyone who directly tries to harm it, but can be commanded to place itself in harm’s way.

When the duration ends so does the caster’s control over the Colossus. It holds nothing but hate for you.

 

 

Interloper of the Flesh

Maleficar Level 3

Duration: 1 Turn/level

Range: Special

Casting Time: 1 Round

 

The Maleficar swaps bodies with a chosen target. To do this they must either be able to see the target, or be in possession of something that belongs to them.

If one of the bodies is killed, the consciousness it was carrying is destroyed.

When the spell ends, each surviving consciousness is drawn back to its original shell. If the body is dead they are not drawn back alone. Effect as Summon.

 

 

Protoplasmic Seed

Maleficar Level 4

Duration: 2 Rounds/level

Range: 60′

Casting Time: 1 Round

 

A seed of thought-stuff is implanted in the target’s head.

Deep-held terror of something physical seeps into the seed, which quickly swells to merge into the target’s brain matter, cracking their head open like an egg and pouring out in a translucent pink manifestation of their fear, dragging the body along by its spinal cord.

The manifestation will turn on the target’s allies first, but once they are gone it will seek the destruction of every other living thing until the duration ends and the jellied brain matter slops to the ground.

	The Target Fears..
1d10
1	A pile of melding horses, shivering and snapping their teeth.
2	A starving two-headed she-wolf, her dead young still hanging from her womb.
3	A great winged thing from beyond, its body hidden beneath a mass of writhing parasitic worms.
4	Seven tentacles lined with the emerging seeking hands of children.
5	A frog god, its tongue ensnares them to be torn apart by the humanoid amphibian horrors growing from the flesh within its mouth.
6	A broiling mass of polyp-like cells, growing ever wider to smother and digest them.
7	A twisted tower of gnarled stonework, siren songs from within call them one by one to climb its sides and enter it from above. (Target may save vs. Magic, if they succeed move on to the next target, someone must enter every Round.)
8	A giant fish. In the first Round it splits open and turns inside-out, in the second Round 2d10 venomous lampreys emerge from its organs to seek prey.
9	An amorphous mass of flesh carried by the deformed legs of children. Arms and mouths and eyes and parts unknown emerge and retract from its bulk as it lumbers towards them.
10	A young woman in a heavy hooded cloak, clasped at the throat. When she opens it there is nothing but darkness within apart from the dozens of thin tendrils that slosh out and penetrate their flesh, draining them to a husk.

Every Magic-User develops their own method of writing magical formulae, like some kind of sorcerous cipher, preventing their knowledge from being read by the plebeian unworthy.

Every other Magic-User knows the spell Read Magic, which they can cast and read anything they want.

 

Wait what? When did deciphering a madman’s work become such a throwaway bit of bag of tricks nonsense? If I was a wizard my spellbook would be overflowing with false passages and curses and traps like some kind of nightmare word labyrinth of doom, not presenting itself on a podium for the next first-day-of-magic-school Johnny that comes along. Read MY magic? I fucking think not.

So sure, Read Magic allows you to read magical writings, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to read it right.

 

When Reading Magic, save vs. Magic. Your Referee will probably apply penalties or bonuses depending on what you’re trying to read, and you can apply bonuses by concentrating really hard and using additional Cataclysm points before rolling. The number by which you succeed or fail is applied as a bonus or penalty to the 3d6 roll your Referee now makes in seeecret.

 

 

3d6	Cunning Linguists
14-18	Success
11-13	Success/Librarian's Lament
8-10	Librarian's Lament
5-7	Chaos Reigns
1-4	Tome of Terror

 

	Librarian's Lament
1d20	(d10 if the writing isn't in a book)
1	You birth a wriggling pink rat with a young version of your own face out of your mouth. It scrambles away and out of sight. It will grow to about the size of a pug, it develops translucent flaps of skin to glide on, it keeps showing up to foil your plans.
2	Tiny hideous mouths split open over the surface of the object and begin to scream.
3	Cold pink mist swells up from the object and wafts out in a 30' radius, save vs. Poison or lie down to sleep in a blanket of fog.
4	You read the writing as something utterly different, you have no reason to believe that it isn't right. If it is a spell, the first time you try to cast it a Chaos Reigns roll is triggered.
5	The object bearing the writing bursts into flame like a pile of magnesium.
6	Your eyes snap open wide and fill with churning pink clouds, black at the edges like a storm, dim flashes of light perceivable in their midst. You find yourself blind, groping in lurid darkness, until your eyes settle back on the page. Your eyes are permanently ensorcelled, unable to see anything but writing, but able to decipher any written language or cipher without aid of any kind. You may find that there is a kind of poetry in the fibre of the world itself, but learning to read that will take some time.
7	Get up from the table, go to the nearest bookshelf, close your eyes, pull down a book, flip to a random page, scan down and read the first few lines that catch your eye. For the next 2d4 days save vs. Magic whenever you want to start a conversation or cast a spell, if you fail the only words to come out are those lines over and over again.
8	Vow of Poverty. You just cursed yourself. Precious metals and gems rot within your presence, visibly deteriorating every day, leaving nothing but discoloured muck after a week of being within 15' of you.
9	Five trails of gently floating green lights appear, wafting into your lungs as they reach you. The lights are leading demoniac hounds with the hands of men and voices of children to you from various directions. Every 8 hours roll a d4 per remaining hound, on a 4 they have come to collect you.
10	Your nearest companion compulsively stabs you with whatever blade is closest to hand. A copper serpent slithers from the wound and into your hands, its blood-slicked scales are carven with arcane knowledge. (Hand the player the Magic-User spell list, they gain any spells they can legibly write down within 10 seconds. To cast the spell they must ingest a number of copper coins equal to spell level. The spells use Cataclysm as normal but do not need to be written in a spellbook or memorised.) After 10 seconds the serpent will strike out at whoever is holding it, pumping black venom into their veins if its fangs find flesh.
11	Heat emanates from the page and you absent-mindedly place your hand against it to feel the warmth. The ink burns into your skin like a tattoo. The first lie you tell will become true, and the writing on your hand will change to remind you of that for all time.
12	The book's cover grows course and hairy, legs sprout from the spine and it leaps from your hands, running across the room and up the wall. It points a strange cloaca at you from the base of its spine and expels clumps of bright green mildew at you that burns the skin, flapping away to the other side of the room if you get too close.
13	The edges of the book slice your fingers open before it drops to the floor, leaving tiny rows of perfect bloodless papercuts. They will never heal, and from this moment forth you will bleed prose. It is not for me to know what secrets may be found in your blood.
14	The book decomposes into hundreds of tiny paper mite crabs, they swarm over your arms, digging into your flesh, searching for orifices. If more than 50% of them find their way inside you, gain a spell of a random level, but you can no longer eat anything other than paper, mumbling incoherent script when you are hungry.
15	The page splits horizontally and unfolds, then vertically and unfolds, then horizontally.. again and again until the page is 15' wide. In the centre is a sketched doorway, the handle is so realistic you feel that you could reach out and grab it. If you open the door roll 1d6. The door leads you.. 1. Into the chambers of a disrobed person of note who does not take kindly to the intrusion. 2. Into a room piled high with glittering treasures. Anything you take will immediately adhere into your skin, and it will take part of you with it if torn away. Opening the door will lead you back into the room where the book lay. 3. Into the lair of a great black serpent, slumbering after feeding. Shapes like hands push out the skin of its distended belly and you hear far-off whimpering. If it wakes, its yellow cut-glass eyes flash with hate and it will regurgitate its meal before attacking, bathing them in a hot flush of digestive juices that melt their limbs and prevent escape. Otherwise, it intends to digest them slow, they may yet survive, you have but to release them.. (Within the snake's belly is: 1-2. The person who originally wrote the words. 3. A buxom lass sacrificed to the serpent, sacrificed for consorting with devils. 4. A foolhardy adventurer brought here in search of a sacrificial hoard, collected over centuries. 5-6. A mewling litter of children, they imprint on the first person they see as their mother with animal intelligence, they are stronger and more agile than they look) 4. Into a dimly lit subterranean room, connected by secret stair to the lavish home above. Yellow wax drips from walls and altars, icy fingers caress your spine as the light flickers over strange stains, a hand-written tome rests on a dais, dedicated to the glory of the Yellow Queen. 5. Back where you just came from. You watch yourself move towards the book, attempting to read its secrets, watching it unfurl into a doorway, stepping inside.. The more you allow things to progress as they were the more of you there are, watching yourself watching yourself in neverending sequence until you stop yourself from reading the book, at which point every you that stepped through the doorway is un-happened, sucked back out of reality in pockets of agony. 6. Into your chrysalis deep below the earth. There you will sleep for years to come, until the changes are complete, until your terrible maniacal glory can be loosed upon the world.
16	The book shrieks and tears itself in half, blood falls to the floor instead of paper fragments, the missing half regrows, the books tear themselves in half, blood falls to the floor... The books continue to replicate in this way until there are several hundred, shrieking in a pool of blood. The blood tastes like learning.
17	Tendrils snap out from the crease of the book, penetrating your chest and belly, churning as some drain and others pump. Your organs liquefy and drain out with your blood, and in its place your body fills with fluid like liquid golden light. You glow like a pinkish-gold beacon, and take a -5 penalty to saves vs. Magic, but cannot be poisoned and gain a d4 bonus to Cast the Bones and Conduit of the Cosmos rolls.
18	You read the words aloud and all who hear them age d20 years. Save vs. Magic, if you fail you continue to read. Repeat. Anyone who reaches the age of 90 during this time falls apart like disintegrating paper.
19	Violet light flashes from the pages, in your temporary blindness you can hear the resonance of your own thoughts. When you look back at the book you are staring at your own placid face, when you cry out it is the face in the book that opens its mouth and screams, not the featureless mess of words plastered around your swollen eyes.
20	The pages of the book begin to flip back, growing faster, pulling at the air around you, the flurry of paper flipping between the covers of the book consists of more pages than the book could possibly have contained. The pull at the air around you grows stronger, small objects begin to lift from the floor and disappear between the pages, your feet begin to shift..

 

Read the rest…

Void Dancers feel hear and see the music colour and flow of the energy all around them. They’re practically magic idiot savants, they can’t Read Magic, they don’t understand it, they just feel it. Void Dancers don’t memorise or read spells, they just need to be able to dance.

They can only learn spells that have been cast around them, be taught by another Void Dancer, or interpret their own. Learning a spell doesn’t cost them anything, but takes twice as long unless they’re alone in the wilderness or somewhere intensely magical. Decrease the time by a day for every time the spell has been cast around them.

They can’t use or make their own Fetishes, but they’ll wear them, they think they’re pretty.

 

Saves as Magic-User, d6 HP.

Starts with d4+Wisdom mod spells.

Always roll for their own Cataclysm limit.

 

They’re like this.

 

 

Spells

 

Between the Walls

Void Dancer level 2

Duration: Instantaneous

Range: 30′

 

Smoky tendrils and hands emerge from the walls or floor, seizing the victim and dragging them back within the wall/floor. This in itself doesn’t hurt them, they find themselves somehow squeezed within the matter of the wall, and they can free themselves with a successful Strength check.

But something inside the wall gnaws and invades their flesh, causing 1d4 damage every round until they escape.

 

 

Danse Fièvre

Void Dancer level 5

Duration: Until the Void Dancer stops

Range: 10′ radius/level

 

The Void Dancer’s movements become frenzied and infectious, 1d4+caster level beings must save vs. Magic with a penalty equal to caster Charisma modifier or shudder and shake in cavorting delirium until such a time as the Void Dancer stops.

The Void Dancer can drive another 1d4 beings to save or join the rhythm every round until an attempt fails to lure new dancers.

 

 

Plague Toad Monsoon

Void Dancer level 3

Duration: Turns equal to caster level

Range: 200′

 

The heavens darken and break open, spilling a flood of noisome rain and misshapen toads in a 50′ radius. The toads leap onto anyone they can find and gum at their flesh, causing deformities to sprout wherever their awful mouths have touched. The toads will die and rot after an hour.

 

 

Song of Sinew

Void Dancer level 2

Duration: Instantaneous

Range: 30′

 

Knit or unravel d4hp of flesh. (Heal or Hurt)

Here’s the ring that Michael found in Flesh+Plague+Doom that ultimately led to his death.

Have fun!

 

Whispers on the wind call to you, moaning your name, begging you to come see, calling calling, only you can hear it.

Save vs. Magic to ignore the lure of their call.

Following the voices leads you crashing through the trees until you come to a clearing, you see yourself lying on a patch of black earth, your throat distends beyond your chin, your flesh bulges and pulsates and body parts grow where they should not be, you choke and gurgle and claw at the air, a liquid like fat mixed with blood and melted flesh drools out of your mouth and ears, you look up at yourself with blood-veined eyes and shriek into the wind.

This other you can be touched, but if you close your eyes or turn away they will have disappeared when you look back. Instead you will find yourself on your knees, your hands black from digging in the earth. Within the hole is a skeletal left hand wearing an iron ring on its marital finger, the ring bears an almost growth-like mound of metal.

Save vs. Magic to resist immediately putting it on.

(Unearthing the rest of the skeleton will show it to be horrifically deformed)

 

The moment the ring slips onto your finger you catch a glimpse of the inner workings of flesh. You know in a way that always was that you have powers over the flesh of others that can be imposed as often as you desire.

 

Abandonment of Flesh

Duration: Instantaneous

Range: 60′

d4hp of the victim’s flesh clumps and falls away from their body, pulsing across the floor until it is gone. It doesn’t leave a wound, it’s simply gone.

 

Your Vessel Runneth Over

Duration: Instantaneous

Range: 30′

The victim must save vs. Poison or their organs expand and grow until they tear their way out of the body in d6 rounds. If the save is successful the caster must save vs. Poison or suffer the effects themselves.

 

These spells can be cast as often as desired regardless of class.

However, after every casting there is a 2 in 6 chance the ring will melt slightly into the wearer’s flesh, inflicting a random deformity/mutation.

At this point the ring cannot be removed unless the finger goes with it, and after suffering 4 more deformities the wearer will have devolved into a mindless slavering consort of the Flesh Mother.