Sorcery and spell casting play a central role in Silent Möbius. The primary protagonist and her worst enemies all use sorcery and sorcery is the root of the world's problems with Nemesis and the entities. Thus, magic must receive special attention in this port conversion.
Changes
Other than the Collateral Damage system , FS's sorcery system requires few modifiers at all to port into SMFS. The listed difficulty modifier table is entirely appropriate to Silent Möbius, though the Juncture modifiers for sorcery AV's are not required. Instead, certain locations on SM earth are places of power where magic is easier and more potent. Certain magical actions must be invoked in such places for them to take place, the opening of stable portals between Earth and Nemesis being the most infamous, but the permanent enchantment of magical artifacts and the imprisonment of powerful supernatural entities are also best done in places of power. Most power sites have a certain "character", described simply here in terms of three colors. Magics of the appropriate type benefit when cast at a place of power, while magics of counter-purpose suffer a penalty equal to the sites rating.
White -- site benefits holy magics, healing, the banishment of evil, peace and wisdom. Most white sites draw power from the Earth's spirits of light or from the planet's own living soul.
Black -- site benefits evil magics and draws power from Nemesis. Dark emotions fuel darker sorcery: sacrifices, entity summoning and binding and the creation of portals to Nemesis.
Gray -- gray sites are neutral, granting AV bonuses to any magics cast there.
Use the following guidelines:
Places of Power AV Modifier
Minor Site (ancient shrine, site of demon summoning) 1
Major Site (Cult Temple, Hellpit, Holy Site) 2
Unique Site (Stonehenge, Top of Mt. Fuji) 4
Earth +0
Nemesis (black) +2
Styles
Numerous styles of magic are seen in Silent Möbius—western ritual magic, hermetic incantation, traditional Shinto ofuda, Buddhist magic and raw magical power. Take pains when creating a magically active character to describe his or her magical style because each kind of sorcery has its advantages. Shinto magic, for example, allows the easy creation of long-lasting magic with the investment of enchanted ofuda but without these magical props, a Shinto priest is severely limited in power. A hermetic sorceress like Katsumi Liqueur uses extensive incantation in her magic, but rarely requires any other components or ritual. Be creative and choose a mystical tradition that suits—perhaps you summon spirits to work your shticks or you invoke ancient tribal gods—the better defined your magic is, the better defined you character is.
Magic Artifacts
Several powerful magical artifacts make appearances in Silent Möbius and they all have enough personality to deserve individual attention, but I will provide some general ideas for magic devices.
Shticks: Most magic weapon abilities can be described in terms of supernatural creature shticks. "Abysmal Spines" could simply be renamed "Infinite Edge", a power which adds damage to an enchanted sword. The rules for the creation of magical artifacts found in the hard-to-find and out of print Thorns of the Lotus Feng Shui supplement provides a good idea of what it takes to create a permanent magic item (huge pools of Magic points to spend and a crew of fellow sorceress to help are a good start). It also describes how to empower items by permanently binding supernatural creatures into objects so that they either become willing partners in item-form or snarling, hateful magic slaves. Silent Möbius is a rather high-power setting, so artifacts of this type are acceptable Signature Weapons/Items.
A good example of both types of object mentioned above can be found in Silent Möbius, so in example what follows are my interpretations of Grosspolonia and Demon Sword Medium.
Grosspolonia - The Emperor of Swords
Grosspolonia is a HUGE 8 foot sword of twisted, organic design. It combines a fill wrap-around guard with a spiny tentacle/tale lashing out from its pommel which twines around the arm of its wielder to prevent loss during combat. In its resting state, it resembles a warped skull the size of a rugby ball. To its bonded wielder, Grosspolonia is as weightless as her own arm. If the wielder's martial arts skills are inadequate, Grosspolonia can substitute its own value as shown below.
Attributes: Bod 8, Chi 0 (Magic 8), Mind 5 (Per 10), Ref 6
Skills
Creature Powers 15 Info/ Entities 15 Info/ Occult Lore 14 Martial Arts 12
Shticks: Tentacle (tail), Abysmal Spines x2 (enormous blade), Enhance (adds 2 to all Sorcery AV's if used as a magic focus for combat spells), Flight.
Unique Limitations: Bound to Serve the Liqueur family. Bound in sword form; may take action only to defend its bound wielder. Entities will recognize the Emperor of Swords almost immediately and will react accordingly, usually with hate and violence.
Damage: Sword Body (Str + 8. That's +4 for the sword, and +4 for the abysmal spines)
Demon Sword Medium
Medium is a hateful device, promising power and revenge but feeding off its wielder's hate and gradually usurping his will. A character under the influence of Medium will slaughter her friends, family and any innocents who stand in the way of her goals, or rather the goals the sword has persuaded her to take for her own. The sword is not huge, but what it lacks in mundane killing power it more than makes up for magical punch. Medium can choose to use its own Sorcery AV to invoke any of its wielder's magical shticks it its rating is superior. Its Enhance boosts its host's sorcery and its own.
Attributes: Body 5, Chi 0 (Magic 10), Mind 5 (Will 8), Ref 5
Skills
Creature Powers 12 Info/ Dark Lore 14 Martial Arts 12 Sorcery 15
Schticks: Enhance (x3. Add 4 to all sorcery AV's dealing with black magic), Body Burrow (Possession), Domination.
Limitations: Bound into sword form and unable to take any real action without a wielder to act as proxy and channel. Can only Body Burrow its host, and only after successfully Dominating them into a number of destructive and evil acts equal to the wielder's Willpower. Hateful and evil to the core.
Damage: (Str +4) from blade, but prefers Sorcery.
Essentially, select 5 creature schticks for your magic device and choose some interesting skills. The GM will then invent a Limitation for your weapon, so don't get greedy or you'll get stuck with a Demon Sword Medium.
Sorcery Schticks
Most of the listed sorcery shticks don't really require any modification, though several new Special Effects are described below.
Blast: Note: remember, Blast will be most often subjected to the Collateral Damage rules.
Force Wall (Barrier): All SMFS magic wielders with Blast automatically have this special effect. It allows a sorcerer to erect a stationary wall or bubble of force which must be battered down to penetrate. A Force wall can take a number of wounds before crumbling equal to the Outcome of the caster's sorcery check against a difficulty based on the wall's size:
Wall Size Difficulty
Small (protect 1 person, block a hallway) 10
Medium (protect a small group, seal a room) 15
Large (protect a small crowd, seal a house) 20
Huge (protect a large crowd, seal a building) 25
The wall lasts for the caster's Magic in sequences unless it is maintained consciously as a continuous action. Once erected, spending a Magic point will restore it to full strength or all it to persist for the caster's Magic rating (after the point is spent) in hours. A Force wall is stationary, but the caster can choose to make it permeable to certain things when it is cast, so for example, it could be made permeable to magic if mundane foes threaten or to matter if people must pass through it.
Movement
Most sorcerers engage in the traditional "anime leap" now and again, and several fly about or are seen standing in impossible places—impossible without spells of Movement that is.
Highwire: With this special effect you can stand on the most precarious footing-- hair-thin ledges, the tops of light-posts, inch-thin girders and the like. Make a Sorcery check against a difficulty of 8. Success mans you can perch on virtually any point you desire for a number of minutes equal to the outcome. This is usually plenty of time to dramatically survey your enemy from a tree-top or brood over the city from the point of an unfinished sky scraper.
Leap: A limited form of Flight. Leap a number of meters equal to twice the difficulty of a Sorcery check you make with no upper cap on the difficulty you may choose. This can be combined with Highwire for a +2 to the difficulty allowing you to leap, then perch where you land.
Collapse: You use your sorcery to destroy the stability of a building, Collapsing it. Use the collateral damage rules. If used on a "named" building or one containing important named characters, then the building might tremble and windows might break but no one inside (other than any unfortunate Innocent Bystanders) will be hurt.
Matter shield: This is identical to Force Wall above, save it may only be used to defend against physical attacks such as bullets, shrapnel and blows but not including any magical effects, energy attacks or gases.
Summoning< BR> This is a very common power among Silent Möbius sorcerers, even if they use it only to banish creatures and not bring them forth.
Teleportation: With the special effect you can essentially "summon yourself", bridging the gap between locations with your sorcery to travel near to instantly. The shot cost for all teleportation is 8 and you don't vanish until the last shot of that, so its not terrible practical in combat. You can transport yourself to any location in the world you have been, can an make a shot at traveling to places you have only heard about or seen pictures of. The difficulty of the teleport spell is as follows:
Location is Difficulty
Within Sight 5
Within 1 km 10
Within the City 15
Within the Region 20
Anywhere in the World 25
Well Known (your own home or office) -2
Known (a bar you frequent) +0
Casually Known (a place you saw on TV) +5
Barely Known (someone told you about it) +10
You can bring others along with you for the cost of 1 Magic point per person. You automatically carry your personal belongings with you when you 'port, but can carry an additional 10kg for each +1 to the difficulty.
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