The casting of magical rituals was once a lengthy and time-consuming process; one which often required the combined efforts of entire covens or wizard circles to complete. All of that changed, however, when wizards first discovered spells.
The earliest spells were dangerous and unstable — parasitic horrors from a primordial proto-plane of raw magical essence which feasted memetically upon the sanity of those they infected. But whether by accident or design, a small band of wizards managed to tame the spells to their own purposes. With proper training, they learned that these living parasites could hold complex rituals in a state of pressurized memetic potential. And then, by infecting themselves, they discovered that they could release the entrapped rituals upon command.
Magical rites that had once taken hours, days, or even months to cast could now be unleashed in minutes. (And later, as their arts improved, in mere moments.) The world was transformed.
The parasites, of course, were consumed in their casting. And so, every morning, wizards find themselves preparing fresh spells and then infecting their minds with them. It takes years of practice to perfect the finely honed balance required to sustain even a single spell-parasite in your mind without being driven mad by its thought-consuming proclivity. The ability to sustain multiple spells in that state of mind-rending follows more quickly, but it is always a delicate balance between power and madness for those who would follow such a path.
Generations passed before the spell parasites mutated again: Those possessed of rich, magical bloodlines began to be born infested with the parasites. Women died in horrific, unspeakable childbirths… the nature and fate of their spawn better left unspoken. Fears of plague and mass extinction followed.
But then a state of symbiosis was once again found with the new form of the parasites: Some children were born infested with parasites, but appeared otherwise normal. Some felt that the parasites had mutated into a more benign form. Others whispered worries, hurled epithets, and named them plaguebearers.
Time, however, would eventually name them sorcerers: Unlike their wizardly brethren who were forced to carefully prepare each spell before infecting themselves with it, the roiling mass of parasitic entities running rampant through their bloodstreams allowed these sorcerers to unleash extemporaneous magical assaults. Some found that they could literally “burn out” their infections by simply expending their parasites in overwhelming magical onslaughts. (Unfortunately, not all of these outbursts were controlled ones.) But other sorcerers discovered that as long as they were careful not to burn out all of the potential of the parasites they hosted, a symbiosis of sorts could be maintained as the parasites regained their strength each day.
Some name the world a better place for the perfection of these magical arts. Others still watch the plaguebearers warily, worried that some greater horror may emerge from the thought-eating worms which roam unchecked through the minds of all magicians.
And then there are others who whisper that spells may be but a lesser order of beings from that distant proto-plane of magic. If so, what greater terrors might be unleashed from such a place?
Wow. Definitely going to steal this.
Heh, nice. 🙂
Awesome idea…just awesome
Wow, as the others said, prime work, and as good an explanation as any as to why spells disappear, though, how would you explain divine spells?
I like this. It’s a nice twist on a classic D&D mechanic, and it adds interesting implications for use at the game table.
Nobodez, my understanding was that the ‘greater terrors from the proto-plane of magic’ could be called gods, and that divine spellcasters were those who had learned to negotiate with them directly.
Nah, i would still say that divine spells come from the gods, as boons to their clerics and paladins who can perform ‘miracles’ in the name of their deity.
Druids and rangers for instance have always drawn their power from plants and natural world in my settings. Not from a divine source.
Bards would be a tricky proposition thoguh…a little of both i guess…some boons from bard-ish deities and some spellworms…
Amazing!
*ahem* Stolen.
As an aspiring writer, I have learned that having good sources is a must. You’re the top.
This is pure awesome, in a distiled form. You rock, dude!
You can just see the campaign hooks (for high level characters) writing themselves, can’t you? Or the nice way you could use this background to set up a tension between arcane and divine casters where both sides think they are completely in the right.
Nice work
Ohhh, gorgeous. I have a very bored player barely tolerating being a low-level mage; something like this would instantly make the rest of the day day following his five-minutes-of-usefulness so much more exciting to play.
Bards are still fundamentally arcane spellcasters, but they cultivate a different subspecie of parasite, one whose diet is more sensitive to verbal/acoustical elements of thought than kinesthetic/procedural. As such, the methods of preparation are taught as oral tradition or songs rather than written down, and releasing the magic safely always requires vocalization, but the associated gestures are error-tolerant enough that light armor isn’t a problem.
Among the sorts of people who treat sorcerers as maggot-souled Plaguebearers, true bards (distinct from nonspellcasting troubadors) are reviled as Logophages, who hunt down the world’s finest music in order to feed it, piece by piece, into the aliens’ maw. There are songs which can no longer be sung, melodies which died because some bard went too far and burned that particular sequence of notes right out of the world.
Nice!
blatantly stolen for campaign.
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