Secret Arts

The Basic Nature

It is hard to imagine the world of Heroes of Fantasy without mysterious powers such as deities, demons, magic items and, above all, magic.

What can be achieved with magic, what its possibilities and limits are, how to cast spells and how to learn them, is the content of this extensive chapter of the rules.

Planes of Being

Understanding magic and deities stems from understanding the foundations of the world - the planes of being, or existence. Uncovering these secrets is the highest calling of wizards, druids, priests and other characters wielding supernatural powers. The better your character understands these things, the better it will control the higher powers.

The foundation of all being consists of the elemental spheres of fire, water, air and earth, and also the power of the void (which, however, is not one of the elements). The elemental spheres are inhabited by magical creatures - elementals.

Our world, where we live, is built upon the spheres of the elements. We call it the material plane of being.

Beside our world exists its shadow, called the Interface, or Kraag. It is much closer to the elemental spheres, so in it all magic manifests far more strongly

Above our world is the world of the gods, to whom the prayers of priests are directed.

Light, Darkness, Order, Chaos

The highest powers of our world are these four principles, which wage an endless battle with each other - Light against Darkness, Order against Chaos.

Light is the side of good and peace. Darkness wants to disturb this peace and rule over all beings. Order signifies the balance of these forces. Chaos, on the other hand, prefers imbalance and confusion - it constantly strives for one side to outweigh the other; it thus provokes endless battles, and although it occasionally does good, its deeds are more often absolute evil.

From these basic forces flow the four basic natures of all beings:

— good (acknowledges order)

— neutrality (chooses neither good nor evil, looks after itself)

— evil (acknowledges order)

— chaos

Division of Magic

The whole system of magic can be divided into these known groups:

Mental Skills

Mental skills lie dormant to a greater or lesser degree in every creature; it only has to find a way to awaken them. They consist of hard discipline and endless repetition of mental exercises.

Sorcery

The foundation of wizardly magic is long study and patience, which places considerable demands on the mind of the candidate.

The essence of wizards' magic is understanding the nature of the elements of fire and air. This does not mean the air around us and the fire in the hearth; by elements we mean the lowest primal forces of which our world is made. If a wizard understands the nature of the world from the perspective of fire and air, the wizard can control it through them.

Fire represents energy, the power hidden in matter and in every living creature. Mastering it allows a wizard to cast destructive spells, shape matter and control the life energy of living beings.

Understanding air is much more difficult - it encompasses movement, the flow of time and thought.

Each element, fire as well as air, has its opposite represented by the void. Its concept is much more complex

Sorcery spells are surrounded by a red aura.

Elementalism

Elementalism is based on using the powers of the elements. Unlike magic, where a wizard releases energies from within, elementalists let the power of the elements flow freely.

Understanding the nature of the water sphere in our world allows elementalists, for example, to heal wounds.

The earth sphere encompasses the transformations of matter. Its study finds use above all in the combat spells of elementalists.

Nature spells are surrounded by a green aura.

Magic of the Gods

The gods have no restrictions in their choice of primal forces. They draw their power from the ethereal sphere, from the thoughts of their worshippers. The more followers they have, the greater their power, and it far exceeds the capabilities of mere mortals.

The magic of the gods is closed to characters. Only in folk superstitions do we find mentions of heroes who supposedly managed to attain divinity and master this magic.

Divine magic is white, which may be noticeable when detecting spells.

Alchemy

Alchemists work with substances, which they can transform into others. They can also make use of the powers contained in various mysterious sources, for example bat wings, snake skin, a hanged man's rope, and turn them into products with magical abilities.

They can also distill pure magic - mana, from which they can make powerful magic items.

Occurrence and Frequency

As the Game Master, you must decide what role magic will play in your world. Magic can be common, rare or uncommon. Its occurrence will affect the behaviour of inhabitants and monsters and the course of many encounters.

Magic Is Very Rare

In a world where magic is rare, magic will cause fear and panic in the ranks of enemies, but it can also stir up hatred. The chances that the characters meet a sorcerer or druid are slim, and the same goes for magic items.

In such a world no more than a few dozen or hundreds of beings capable of casting spells will live; wizard schools or shops are out of the question.

Magic Is Uncommon

If magic is uncommon, no one will be surprised when a wizard casts one or two spells. Not everyone will cast spells, but magic scrolls or items will be nothing special.

Magic Is Common

If magic is a common thing in the world, the party cannot be surprised when the first robber they meet knows spells and every other monster is resistant to spells. Here a wizard will be an integral part of the party and many characters will have certain magical abilities from the start.

Deities

The priestly abilities and deities in these rules relate to the world of Illiador (see also the chapter “The Supreme Truth”).

Occurrence of Divine Intervention

The same applies to the occurrence of priests as to the frequency of wizards and rangers.

There are worlds where every god has its temple in every larger city. Elsewhere there may be only false priests who have no abilities, and nothing is known about the true gods, or their faithful are persecuted.

Fantasy worlds without deities are very rare.

Direct Intervention of Deities

The gods should not intervene directly in the lives of the inhabitants. They should do so only through their priests.

They are either incapable of direct intervention, or bound by an agreement, or they simply will not stoop to such an act.

Extended Rules

Favour of the Gods

Read more about the gods in the section Illiador: Ás - the World of the Gods.

Secret Arts describe the principle of the priest and his requests for prayers. You, as the GM, represent the god and decide whether to grant the priest's request or not. For this purpose there is also a value you must remember about the priest: the long-term favour.

Long-Term Favour

Subtract the priest's long-term favour from the difficulty of the prayer; in other words, the higher the favour, the more often and more fully the god hears him.

Unlike short-term favour (i.e. how much of the god's favour he has “squandered” recently), or exhaustion of favour, long-term favour does not change from day to day.

If the priest duly fulfils his duties but does nothing extra, his long-term favour is 0.

Increasing Long-Term Favour

If he fulfils them well, completes a special quest and the like, you can increase it, e.g. to +2, then to +5, up to true defenders of the faith, who can reach +10 (exceptionally even more).

Decreasing Long-Term Favour

If the priest does nothing, does not seek new believers or does not perform deeds worthy of him, the god's long-term favour starts to fall; for true passivists it can sink to -10 or even lower.

Punishment

Long-term favour can drop immediately if the priest commits an act that is completely contrary to the god and his principle.

Miracle and Refusal

What is nice about playing a god is that you can answer a prayer even when the priest has exhausted the god's patience (by casting often). For example, at the moment when his life is at stake and he gives himself into the god's hands and humbly begs for rescue.

On the other hand, he may fail even at a simple thing if he does not show humility and interest.

Try to guide the player of a priest so that the priest is a true follower, never forgetting whom he serves and that his power is not his own, but the god's.

Magical and Non-Magical Places

The power of magic is not evenly distributed, so we find areas where magic works more strongly and places where it hardly works at all. The power of magic can also change over time; for example, on Illiador Heriotep is the day of magic.

Anti-Magic Places

Some buildings, underground spaces or entire areas have their own anti-magic power and prevent spells from being cast. This manifests by reducing the chance of success, draining more mental strength or cancelling the spell outright. A place can also have a specific AM value with which it resists the casting of a spell or prayer.

Magical Places

In certain places, magical power wells up and fills the whole space with such energy that the caster tires much less (lower cost), or the area helps (bonus to casting). A special case are the magical intersections of elements (see the chapter World).

Cursed Places

A cursed place lies under a curse that turns it into a place of horror everyone avoids, or where violence often occurs or the undead rise on their own. There is a countless variety of curses, which offers the GM many ideas for adventures.

Holy places

These places are consecrated by a particular deity, or even by the power of several gods. Most often a temple or shrine stands here, but in a wilderness, for example, it may be a place of peace and rest, or an abandoned altar where a god appears to a pilgrim in a dream and gives him a quest.

Keeping Spells and Prayers Secret

If you want to make the game more interesting, you can forbid the players from studying the spells and prayers. They will come across new spells during their adventures, for example they will find books, scrolls, recipes (for alchemists), or meet a wise being who reveals the secrets of some spells to them. The players will then enjoy every new spell, instead of picking the most advantageous and most effective incantations from an extensive list.

This approach brings much that is new into the game, but on the other hand it gives you extra work.

Procedures for Selected Spells

Extradimensional Space

Spells, prayers and alchemist's items that allow characters or things to enter extradimensional space or to teleport are not entirely reliable. If the characters overuse these powers, let some item (and later perhaps even a character) get lost now and then.

A special case occurs when someone wants to place an extradimensional thing into another one (for example two bags into each other). Then it is almost certain that one of them disappears, or something even worse happens.

Transformations

Almost all transformations that significantly affect the body of the wizard / priest / item bearer (for example into an animal, enlarging, shrinking, Invisibility Potion) as a rule do not change the things the person carries. With nature spells it is easy to transform into a fast animal and cover a great distance, but the character will have none of its things - they fall off it when the spell is cast and stay where they were!

If such a spell (item, prayer) also affects the user's things, this is explicitly stated in its description.

Note: Beginning players do not have to observe this rule, but we warmly recommend it to more advanced ones - once your party has more abilities, such spells would become too advantageous for it.

High Magic

High magic spells are unpredictable, and even a successful casting roll need not always mean a clean success - the summoned item looks a little different, falls apart after a while, something else nearby disappears, and so on. The wizard can be sure only on a total success.

A fatal failure is usually devastating - it often ends with the wizard's death, a change in the wizard (psyche, appearance) or a catastrophe (for example a gate opened into the world of demons).

Reincarnation

Many spells and prayers allow characters to take on a new form or transfer their mind into another body. In such a case, follow these rules:

— The character keeps all mental attributes, i.e. intelligence, will, charisma and faith.

— The character gains the physical attributes of the new body - Str, Dex, Con.

— The character keeps its other attributes and skills (Rfx, Wrk, magic) if it takes on the body of a humanoid. In a different body (wolf, lion, slime) it takes on (or rather loses) these attributes.

Gaining Special Attributes

Mastering magic, priesthood or alchemy involves many years of demanding study. Characters who have developed these attributes since early childhood (wizards, priests, druids, etc.) can use them from the start of the game.

A special situation arises when a player decides to develop these abilities in his character later. Opening them is up to your judgement: in general, these abilities could be gained later by a character who has a connection to them and whose player shows considerable effort and roleplays the character well.

Preliminary Study

A character who aspires to gain a special attribute first develops related skills and shows interest in the given field:

Sorcery

The character collects magic scrolls, visits wizards, increases intelligence, will and anti-magic. It gains the skill Exploration of Mysteries and learns the wizards' language.

Elementalism

A future elementalist stays where the element is, typically a water elementalist at sea, an earth elementalist in the mountains, etc.

Priesthood

The character becomes a follower of a god. It often attends services. It fulfils quests given by the temple that serve to spread the faith. It increases its will and charisma. It opens the skill Scholarship.

Alchemy

A person who aspires to alchemy collects alchemical recipes and procedures, learns herbalism, seeks out and studies finished alchemical products. It increases its workmanship and intelligence.

First Steps

Once the character fulfils the greater part of the set conditions, it gains its first, very limited, abilities (the lowest spells and recipes), and has a -5 penalty to the skill.

It gradually learns (spends exp) up to the required amount (20 to 50 exp); in the meantime it can gain further simple spells (prayers) and its penalty decreases. At the end it gains the full ability without penalty and can develop it as if it had had it from the start.

For a certain time (about 3 sessions) all learning in the school will cost the character 5x as much experience, then 4x, etc., until after 10 - 15 sessions it reaches the normal learning cost of a character who had the ability from the start.

Drawing Closer to Darkness

A character who uses necromancy will want to use these spells more and more often, wants to cast dark spells instead of ordinary ones, and its character worsens (violence, evil, power). At higher levels of magic there is a chance that Darkness will consume it - its magical might increases (Mag, Int, Wil, AM), but it becomes completely evil, is harmed by white spells, plants around it wither, animals cannot bear it.

Characters Wielding Mighty Powers

As the GM you may think that mighty wizards, priests, druids or alchemists could rule the world. It could be so, but these persons are aware of their abilities, and the better they are, the harder they are to find - in the service of the mightiest rulers there is no one with magic (priesthood, etc.) higher than 20.

Sorcery

As magic, intelligence, school and Exploration of Mysteries grow, a wizard begins to realise many connections he did not see before - if he casts a fire spell, it may grow colder elsewhere. If he casts a high magic spell, something may disappear somewhere. If he uses psychic magic, the enchanted characters begin to behave differently than before once the spell ends.

He begins to reflect on the true nature of magic and the world.

The mightier he is, the more he realises all this, and he would rather use his natural abilities instead of spells than disrupt the course of the world. He knows that a certain amount of magic in an area is natural, but the more magic and the stronger the spell, the greater its influence on the wide surroundings.

Truly mighty wizards ponder for many days before they cast a spell, and would rather try to do it another way (of course, if their life is in danger, they use their abilities to the full, but in most cases they avoid such situations).

If they want to arrange something (depose the ruler of a land, destroy a renegade wizard, drive out a demon), they prefer to manipulate others into solving it without the help of magic (or wizards with low magic and thus little influence on the world). If a wizard with magic 30 banished a demon, he would almost certainly succeed, but the power of his magic could cause a side effect that would be harder to fix than the original banishing of the demon. He would rather disguise himself as a sage, find a heroic knight and send him to slay the demon.

Priests

The higher the priest's initiation and faith, the more he realises that the might and power he has is lent to him by his god, and he uses the god's power directly. If he is not very restrained and draws on the god's power too much, it may be partly or completely denied to him. Low (and cheap) prayers intended for beginning priests may no longer work for him - the god thus protects his weak faithful and leaves the mighty priest to fend for himself.

A priest of high initiation understands that the god's power comes from the very principle the god has chosen, not only from his worshippers (they practise this principle). He can use his non-magical abilities to support this principle - a priest of the god of trade will care about prosperity, trade and money, a priest of the god of war will stir up unrest and wars, a priest of the goddess of love will spread understanding, love and so on.

The last thing high priests want is a conflict between the gods. They therefore try to restrain the less initiated in their struggle with opposing cults or creatures who do not share their faith. But they act carefully, hinting and guiding, because revealing the great truths could lead to misunderstanding, loss of illusions and anarchy. Many simpler inhabitants (and priests too) like the division of the world into Good and Evil, Light and Dark, and do not understand that the world is much greyer and that even deeds evil from their point of view can, in the long-term view of the world, help save much.

Alchemists

Alchemists may be the first to arrive at an understanding of magic and its laws (they work with all primal forces), but because the nature of their work is often based on profit or simply the joy of uncovering mysteries, they are the last to realise this truth.

It then depends on their nature whether they will be more restrained in drawing on ingredients and making items or not. However, if they do not start controlling their power, the magic of their items and ingredients may change them or even destroy them.