# Character Creation Challenge 2024: Day 10 - The Magus :: Jacob Hindsmith, Diabolic Armorer tags: #thoughts/CharacterCreationChallenge/2024 #game/rpg/the-magus > [!quote] [[Character Creation Challenge 2024]] > > ![[Character Creation Challenge Image.png]] [[Character Creation Challenge 2024 - Day 09 - Elegy|Yesterday's post]] led to [a pleasant exchange in the Fediverse with someone discussing the nature of journaling games, why someone might like the style or not be compelled by it, and a couple of the elements that I think are really necessary in order to be one.](https://kind.social/@NerdySimulation/111729795895925194) Well, we can't just let that stand, can we? Not without actually dipping into the field ourselves, breaking out one of the purest forms of journaling game in my pocket, and maybe even running through an event or two. ![[The Magus (cover).jpg]] Thus we find ourselves breaking out **[[The Magus]]**, a game about power, the connections between you and other people, and what you're willing to sacrifice to get what you want in order to avoid what you don't want. The mechanics are simple, largely consisting of polyhedral die pool rolls against a target number set by one of your *two stats*. It's the pressure applied by the combination of random oracular systems and the fact that there will only be seven events before the end of the story that lay the goad. Let's get going. I hope that this is not nearly as much work as the last couple have been.^[Spoiler alert: It is! Less work, that is.] ## Chargen In a miasma of familiar feeling, the first thing that we do is generate the parameters of our world. This is nice because it provides a fairly distinct set of choices at every step and always allows for the option: If you have a better idea than anything on the list, write *that* down. ### What is your name? Who are you in life? *It is the Year of Our Lord 2051 and my name is Jacob Hindsmith, armorer to the armed forces of the right royal majesty King Charles. My family has been armorers and quartermasters for generations -- but none carried the spark. Until now.* Why yes, I'm introducing a near future world with magic which seems to be at least somewhat similar to our own. With some fairly obvious departures. Let's see where we end up. ### The World Definition proceeds by asking a series of questions or making an assertion, and then refining it. Head down the rabbit hole. #### What is magic like in your world? > Magic can be an infinitely rare power in your universe, or perhaps it is as common as sunlight. Write three key phrases to describe it, or roll a d12 three times and refer to the table to the right. I have a couple of ideas that I'd like to get onto the page but then we will roll for the last. - *Magic is extremely rare though can run in familial streaks.* - *Arcana is manipulated using scientific methodologies applied to an unscientific tool.* And our rolled one … 12. - *Demons grant access to magic, but often by claiming the caster’s soul.* Not entirely as I was imagining, but that's why we introduce randomness into the experience, right? So that we can have surprises. #### Your talent for arcana reveals itself one day > Whether or not it took you by surprise, your powers manifested one day. Where did it come from? Describe what happened, or roll a d6. This is another one that I'm just going to create from whole cloth because I'm not really into any of the options. They're a bit more high fantasy than high fantasy modern that I'm looking for. - *Magic seeks out those of a certain form of mind, insidious chaos insinuating its way into powerfully structured order. One might call it corruption. Or enlightenment.* ##### HOW DID YOU REACT? DID OTHERS SEE? DID YOU KEEP IT SECRET? WHY? The game gets a bit pushy here, but this is a reasonable thing to do. Let's inject a bit of that journaling into the journal game. > [!quote] **On the awakening …** > > It was in late August, between the pushes into the South American quagmire that passes for their violent politics, when I realized that my work – heretofore passably bland and un-ornamented – had begun to take on certain fantastic themes, interesting chasing, with leering faces staring out from butt stocks, or delicate filigree forming letters I could not read once my fingers had finished. It is good and just that my superiors were not displeased, the word being to encourage individuality in the men, and in no time more were coming to the armory of their own free will to have their arms and armor "get lit" by my hand. > > I appreciated the attention as my efforts were typically among the least recognized among our forces. > > It was when the faces began to speak to me that I may have evidenced some mild concern. From leering and screaming silently, they began to whisper, and the things they spoke of were terrible to behold. I took those fears into my fingers and poured them back into the weapons better, stronger, more able. I poured them into the vehicles, making some almost as if living beings with the desire to protect themselves and the men within. Subtly, subtly, for while it is well to be recognized as an artist and a craftsman, it is probably less healthy for your place in the world to be considered a diabolist. #### Your ambition begins. You realize you can do so much more > Acquiring ultimate power attracts you. Where does this desire stem from? Write down a burning, obsessive reason, or roll d4. Let's push the random button again this time. The set up is starting to get interesting. 4. - *Magic is endlessly interesting. There are so many secrets to unlock! What is the universe like? How can words create reality? You must know.* Compulsion to seek the nature of reality? I can resonate with that. #### You begin your solitary quest > Becoming the greatest magus requires utmost effort and concentration. Perhaps it’s just as well that you begin this journey alone — for you find yourself friendless and solitary at the moment. Write why, or roll d6. This is a fine opportunity to ask the oracle. - *You’ve heard tales of riches and artifacts ripe for plunder abroad, and have decided to embark on adventure.* I have to be honest – that one caught me a little bit by surprise. But I think I can use it. ##### AND SO YOU MOVE TO A NEW PLACE, A NEW BEGINNING. WRITE DOWN HOW YOU’RE STARTING A NEW LIFE > [!quote] **On travel onwards …** > > Once I knew what I was, there was little reason for me to maintain my commission in the army, despite – or perhaps more truthfully because of – the desirability of my particular gifts. The resignation was easy enough; the Kingdom is as weak as it has ever been and the retention of soldiers, even good ones, is of little import. > > I had a little saved up and it was of no effort to add to my own little hoard with enticing little toys of my own creation. There is an endless parade of those who once were in service to His Majesty under arms who, now departed, still require the services of a superior armorer. A rifle that can steal the very breath of a target, an armored car whose bound demons scream on every strike, causing those standing nearby to be incapacitated. It's nothing to describe them as bullets which are poisoned pills or sonic retribution mechanisms. > > Then I was off for Africa, because if anyplace could make use of a sorcerer of death beholden only to demons, it was Africa. A place steeped in history, most of it red with blood. ![[Jacob Hindsmith, Diabolic Armorer.jpg]] ### Promptly the Character And here we are, ready for the first prompt, the implicit timer begins, and we take our basic stats: | Stat | Value | | ---- | ---: | | Power 1 | d8 d10 d12 | | Focus | 0 | | Control | Perfect (no risk die) | And that's that for character generation. The world is made, the character is spoken into being, and we start with the first prompt – or, as always, we can skip this event and do the one immediately after instead. Our choices are: BOND: You encounter someone who makes a deep impression on you they are… Or SPELL: You cast the new spell for the first time, excited to test your skill. What can go wrong? Versus Difficulty 6. I think we'll take … #### Bond > Jacob encounters someone who makes a deep impression on him. They are… > A frog familiar whose master recently passed away. > > Hopeless romantic … > > … And speaks in a whisper.> > How did you meet? > > Together, you are strange folk in a normal town, and you banded together out of instinct. > [!quote] **On Julius …** > > It was my third month in the Togolese Republic, and between selling fell weapons to the inevitable rebel faction, seeking out occult treasures no one else would appreciate leftover from World War I (including an absolutely lovely wasp nest filled with demonic wasps that, if disturbed, would fly out, stinging everyone within three city blocks to death with silver chased stingers, and feed on every bit of copper and gold they could until their bellies gorged and they exploded), it came as a bit of a shock when a frog spoke to me. > > Not so much because it was a frog that could speak – I had become used to and even numb to the demonic voices that whisper from nearly everything – but because it was a frog that spoke in a quiet, almost wistful whisper. > > It claimed, not entirely without support, to be the surviving familiar of a Magus which had lived in the very mountains I was trekking for the impressive period of 100 years but died recently of -- it never really said. It was lonely, it said, and being only a familiar, knew very little of how to get on in the world. > > Upon close examination, I could see the demons bound within it struggling to escape, flesh distending and stretching unnaturally when they thought I was looking elsewhere. But it seemed companionable enough and I was tired of only having my tools to speak to. > > I named him Julius, after the ruler. He accepted it with a bit of a sigh. I did not ask why the sigh, merely tucked him into my pocket, clambered back into the Range Rover, and set course for the next warlord with whom to ply my trade. Informative! Now to pick the next Event. We'll roll a D6 and the D4 and take the absolute difference. We got a 3 and a 3, which means we simply move on to the next event or choose the one after. Both of which are SPELL, interestingly enough. We can cast one for the first time or discover an uncomfortable truth. Let's be honest, when have I ever picked anything but the uncomfortable truths? Event 3 it is! ### Spell (Event 3) > You discover an uncomfortable truth that will certainly anger, hurt, or disillusion many. Your safety may be at stake. What is it, and how does it complicate your life? **vs Difficulty 6** Here we roll our Power pool, looking for dice coming up 6 or greater. We currently have perfect control so there won't be any risk die. 7, 8, 4. > **2+ SUCCESSES** You do what you feel is right, and it works out - mostly. > > • Gain 1 Focus or resolve an existing Scar. Hey! New spell! And 1 Focus, which can be used for rerolling a die later! This is where we get to randomly generate the spell and then write the journal. Hmmm, Hunger … > [!quote] On the Hunger of the Carbonized Soul … > > Julius and I had been doing rather well for ourselves in the Gambia, not the least reason being that English being the native tongue by command of the State, I was comfortably sipping tea as if I were at home. > > The tea was a gift from a client who found himself at loose ends, desiring tools for his particular form of rulership which hinged on, primarily, terror and disturbance. He had offered me a relic containing knowledge of a circle which I judged to be slightly beyond the reach of my fingertips and passed on with a shrug. Being both a man of action and of the world, said client made a second offer of fine tea which his compatriots and employees had acquired in the course of their business arrangements. Nothing finer could be offered; no citizen of the Commonwealth would turn down the offer of fresh, good tea, and so I didn't. > > It was the tea, or the face deep within the tea, that told me the first rumor of the Hunger of the Carbonized Soul, a blasphemous rite which was named during the height of the slave trading business, used by African tribes further inland to command and compel their brothers and sisters to march to the West, to the sea, there to be sold. This was, as can be imagined, not knowledge that the polite in society acknowledged, even ignoring the occult significance. It was in my mind that I should have this thing perhaps to turn to other uses – or perhaps the same. > > Julius, for his part, counseled against it, noting rightly that such things once stirred up – like my wasps – were hard to put back down again. He, he said, dreamed of a better day to come where man's inhumanity to man was best left to rot in the jungle alone within its own misery. > > You can imagine the laugh I gave him. He had the good grace to look abashed. > > It didn't take me long, driving the Range Rover as far as I could (which was quite far indeed, given the modifications I had ensorcelled), and after that pressing on on foot, hacking and burning our way through the dense foliage. I had expected a temple; what I found was barely a hole in the ground, but in it I went and within found traps and blind tunnels galore, but eventually a large bronze and animal skin shield, upon which was written in a demonic tongue the proper demons to summon, threaten, and propitiate to work the Hunger of the Carbonized Soul. > > I tested it on the Range Rover on the way back to the seafront villa we had been staying in and as I had suspected, it worked just as well to encourage more efficient travel in that black belching engine as it did the black men and women forced along before their brothers. > > It is a cruel world and one must be cruel to meet it. ## Exunt It is at this point that one would rinse and repeat if you wanted to continue playing. Again, there is a maximum of seven Events in any game so the timer is constantly going. There are a goodly number of Events in the book and they do escalate in complexity and difficulty as you go. Along the way you court Calamity if you lose sufficient amounts of control – and that's never good. I am extremely pleased with **The Magus** as a journaling game. It's fast, it's lightweight, it's evocative, it acknowledges that you are the player and can choose how to play however you want, and it's just *solid*. No points for realizing that I have difficulty writing characters who are antiheroes at best. Everybody knows it. You're not special. Go grab a journal and a copy of **The Magus**! You'll appreciate it. Out.