Alchemy, Rituals, and Talismans 101

Alchemy is an ancient zebra magical school that proposes as its main philosophy the combination and refinement of ingredients in order to emphasize and concentrate their natural magical properties into something that is useful to zebra-kind. Its main product is the potion – a suspension of magic in a fluid and usable form that can be stored and used whenever it’s needed. Alchemy is widely considered the easiest to learn of the three major branches of zebra magic, which has led to most zebra mages being known as alchemists and most zebra recipes being recorded as recipes, regardless of whether or not they are, in fact, actually a recipe. Despite its primarily chemical nature, the potions created by alchemists do have magical as well as mundane effects. This is believed to be the result of the incantations associated with brewing that are written into each recipe, which frequently use beautiful poetry, and in particular rhyme and common word-sounds, to focus the ambient energies of the brew into a specific desired form.

The talismanic zebra tradition focuses on the concentration of magic within an item, and then the shaping of that magic to achieve some specific goal. Talismans have a very prominent place in zebra folklore as items of power; in zebra historical myth, talismans were usually depicted as tokens that created or enabled heroes to accomplish super-equine tasks. Their creators, the Talismaneigh, were given positions of high respect and honor within zebra society. Despite their elevated position within zebra folklore, only those tribes closest to Equestria’s borders had regular access to the gemstones needed to create most talismans; only simple and relatively weak talismans can be created without a magical gemstone as a focus. The rarity of the more powerful talismans and the recipes used to create them has greatly reduced the rate at which these artifacts are being produced, but for those able to obtain the sufficient recipes and ingredients zebra talismans are still considered among the most powerful and longest lasting magics known to pony kind.

Rituals are the most complex and difficult to learn or teach facet of zebra magic. They focus energy from one or multiple casters or willing participants into achieving some outward goal; a well-known ritual spell is the consecro de proditore, which literally translates from zebra as “the traitor’s curse.” It is cast by three powerful mages to affect the color of a zebra’s stripes even from an indeterminately long distance away, physically marking them as a traitor or as one not to be trusted. It is very powerful, to the point where even a traitor’s descendants bear visible signs of the coloration change in their coat and marking changes. Ritualistic magic is arguably the most powerful magic in this respect – it is exceptionally long ranged, and undeniably extremely effective. Despite its obvious advantages, most ritualistic spells are not offensive, are too difficult to learn, or were too difficult to employ effectively in combat to have made a noticeable effect on the war effort.

Starting Recipes

Zebra that learn magic – and not all of them do, mind you – start with up to 5 known recipes, based on their character’s starting rank in the magic skill divided by 10, rounded down (it can be raised up to 52 at character creation, before accounting for traits or hindrances). They can learn any level 1 or 0 recipe that their mentor may have known. If their starting situation was such that they weren’t likely to have a mentor to teach them, then they may have learned their magic by other means – hearing the lyrics of recipes on holotapes, seeing them inscribed on some ruined monument, or even having received the lyrics in a dream (like the first zebra mages are said to have) are all perfectly reasonable means for them to have learned how to perform these spells.

Depending on their background and how a character learned magic, players should have their character choose one of the three dominant magical schools to focus on. At least as far as formal magical education and apprenticeship is concerned it is unlikely for a zebra to have been taught recipes from more than one school at character creation. This should guide their choice of starting spells, as there is a single spell from each tradition in the 0-level bracket and multiple options in the first level bracket.

Many zebra starting out in wasteland villages or the remains of stables are likely to have learned only what their ancestors considered practical knowledge to pass down and preserve – recipes like purge, survival stew, and potions of restore health are the most common choices among most of those who preserve the traditions of alchemy, for example. Talismanic mages similarly have passed down locator talismans and the use of guardian fetishes as ways to keep their friends and loved ones safe. Ritualists passed down their spells to resist the terrors of the wasteland and the fears of isolation. The reason behind a spell’s continued passing down through generations is important in determining what spells your zebra should know at their introduction.

Use in Combat

The use in combat of many zebra recipes is not obvious, and this fact is made all the more true by the fact that, unlike unicorn and alicorn magics, not all zebra recipes are even deployed in the same way.

All zebra recipes have a method of use ascribed to them in their entry – some have multiple methods, depending on how they’re prepared. Each type of method of use is outlined below, along with a corresponding AP and action cost for use in combat (if the recipe has some product that is usable in combat). Note that with the exception of cast, all of these variations require some degree of preparation ahead of time (cooking a consumed item or brewing a potion, for example).

Potions tend to have physical items as their output, which can be either thrown, drunk, or applied to weapons or characters. Throwing a potion functions similarly to throwing a grenade, and uses either the Zebra Magic or the Explosives skill (player’s choice). The base range increment on thrown potions is 10’, and is altered by anything that would alter grenade thrown range increments. Talismans have to be used in specific ways, such as being worn or being built into a weapon. Ritualistic spells tend to take specific materials and participants to make them usable in combat.

Gaining New Recipes – Zebras (and Zony Shamans)

Zebra magic centers around three different and very distinct foci – alchemy, talisman creation, and soul magic (also commonly referred to as either star magic or necromancy). Each spell in the zebra spell list involves and focuses elements of one or more of these foci.

To preserve their knowledge, zebra magi pre-war usually recorded their spells as recipes, a tradition handed down from the alchemy-focused mages. These recipes often require specific specialized ingredients, but most zebra potions are actually based around a common solution that is given different magical properties by the power inherent in the words of the caster. Rhymes and repeated word-sounds are extremely effective in this regard.

A zebra can learn a spell in one of three ways. The first and most obvious way is from a recipe. Using a recipe requires two things to learn a spell – the recipe, and enough ingredients to perform the recipe’s instructions. Once they’ve performed the recipe at least once, they can repeat it as needed at any point in the future –recipes are inscribed in an instructive lyrical poetry that is designed to embed into the zebra mind, which is why pony alchemists were never able to use or combat their end products effectively.

They may also learn spells from mentors. A good mentor can teach another zebra any spell that they themselves know. If they have the ingredients to perform the recipe, a mentor can teach the spell to their student in under a day, sometimes as little as 4-6 hours. If not, it can take anywhere from several days to a week to successfully confer the spell’s lyrical poetry into the student to the point where they can recreate it without fail.

The final way a zebra mage can learn a new spell is by experimentation. This method only works for potions and talismans – the purely chanted ‘ritual’ spells associated with soul-magic cannot be learned in this way, and must instead be learned by either one of the other two means or under extraordinary circumstances. The first soul magi are said to have learned their spells from dreams, for example.

Learning a spell via experimentation can only teach spells closely related to ones already known, but costs three times the ingredient cost of the spell you’re modifying, and may require one or more special ingredients. A suggested list of spells that can be learned via slight alterations to an existing spell is specifically not included with each zebra spell, and for good reason. If your GM decides that “create flamer fuel” is close enough that experimenting with it can develop a plant growth serum, then that’s their call to make. The trappings and methods associated with zebra magics are vague and not well understood even in the best of cases–just try to stay internally consistent. Similarly to unicorns who learn spells in this way, this costs the next level-up perk for the caster (unless, like some unicorns, they’re trying to develop a spell that’s never been seen before). This is the only method of gaining a new spell for zebra that costs the mage their next level up perk.

If your zebra character is looking for something and doesn’t see anything quite like what they want on the zebra spell list, be conscious of the fact that the zebra spell list is not, strictly speaking, exhaustive –spells listed therein are only those documented as used by zebra slightly before and during the war. There are likely hundreds of spells they were capable of that simply were never recorded – to say nothing of their megaspell research! Just make sure your GM is alright with the spell you’re trying to make, and try to keep it reasonable. In this way, spells that aren’t currently listed can be discovered by any of the three methods listed above.

Table XXIV: Zebra magic types in combat – turn cost breakdown.

*Some rituals have a longer time listed for their usage, especially those requiring multiple casters.

Table XXV: Zebra ingredient rarity by area type; the MFD listed is that required to find the most common level of ingredient.

Ingredients

While unicorn magics are limited by their ability to channel magical energy (referred to as magical strain, or more often just strain), zebra aren’t limited by this. Instead, zebra mages and alchemists are limited by their ability to find the proper ingredients necessary to channel magic in the specific ways they desire. Each spell has a listed ingredient cost that corresponds to the typeof basic ingredients required to prepare (or cast) that spell.

The number of the listed type of ingredient required to actually perform a recipe varies, and is determined by way of die roll modified by the skill of the alchemist. For each recipe you’re preparing, roll 1d4+1. Subtract 1 for every 25 ranks in the magic skill your alchemist possesses, minimum 1.

But how do you get these ingredients? Zebra ingredients themselves are usually small, otherwise valueless things – a bit of bloatsprite wing, a shard of radscorpion chitin, a scrap of cloth, some moss, a pinch of dried brahmin dung, a bit of water, etc. – that can be recovered from the environment by any character who knows what they’re looking for, but on their own are usually not worth anything to anyone. They tend to have weights between 0 and 1. Such ingredients can be found in almost any setting by either a survival roll or a zebra magic roll, taking a minimum of 30 minutes to search. The MFD for either roll is the same; the difficulty of finding low-rarity ingredients in a given setting is displayed in table XXIV on the previous page. The MFD for the roll increases by one step for each level of increasing rarity (medium rarity ingredients are one step harder to find than low rarity ingredients, and are in turn one step harder to find than high-rarity ingredients, etc.). Higher rarity ingredients are harder to find, and take an additional 30 minutes per level of rarity above low to find. The type of ingredient your alchemist is searching for should be declared before they roll. How the roll results are interpreted is ultimately up to your GM, but it is recommended that, if searching for a higher-rarity ingredient and the roll is only good enough to find a lower-tier ingredient, the character should be able to find the lower tier ingredient and spend the same amount of time searching as they would have had they succeeded in finding the higher rarity one.

Alchemists who have trouble finding more rare ingredients can substitute ingredients of lower rarity at a 4:1 conversion rate; in other words, four ‘low’-rarity ingredients can be used in place of a single ‘medium’-rarity ingredient. This commutability cannot be used to substitute out ingredients more than one-rarity step away – sixteen ‘low’-rarity ingredients cannot be substituted out for one ‘high’-rarity ingredient, nor can sixteen ‘medium’-rarity ingredients be substituted for one ‘very high’-rarity one.

On the other side of the spectrum, a single higher rarity ingredient can be used in place of any lower rarity ingredient. In this way, recipes requiring only low rarity ingredients can still be performed if you lack low-rarity ingredients, as long as you have any ingredient of a higher rarity level.

Finally, there are special ingredients, which follow a different set of rules than standard ingredients. These ingredients cannot be substituted out, and must be used for a recipe requiring them to work.

Special ingredients, listed separately from the basic ingredient cost, must be obtained and added in addition to all other ingredients; they’re not included in the base ingredient cost listed for the spell. All special ingredients are listed as items in the equipment section where relevant and appropriate. They usually have a value and are considered trade goods. Again, special ingredients cannot be substituted out of a recipe, or the recipe will not work correctly (if it does work, the results will probably not be those you were hoping to achieve).

After all of the ingredients are assembled for a given recipe, that recipe can be performed. Most zebra magics require preparation ahead of time. The amount of time it takes to prepare a recipe varies based on its method of intended use, as indicated in the table below. To use a recipe in more than one way that does not require approximately the same amount of preparation time, you must prepare that recipe twice.

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 847