The Lore of Dream

My Sense in Silence Steep

Monosophia

Cast sand while hearing a dream described. You know...

• (1 Secret) ...whether the speaker truly had such a dream.
• (2 Secrets) ...the contours of the dreamer's troubles and hopes.
• (4 Secrets) ...the greatest current obstacle to the dreamer's destiny.
• (8 Secrets) ...the manner of the dreamer's death, though not the hour.

The future is a dream of twisting paths. Destinies and deaths can be defied.

Secrets of Dream

1. Enter a trance while clutching an item of personal significance to a sentient subject. The item must have been out of their possession for no more than [HIGHEST] days, or [SUM] days if you instead have a body part, such as a lock of hair. If the subject sleeps while you are in your trance, you enter their dream. [DICE]-in-6 chance you control the dream, otherwise they dream of what they otherwise would, but with you inserted.
2. Lock your gaze on a creature and take control of [DICE] of their senses until you move, you stop chanting, or they leave your sight.
3. Tell a story laced with Hypnos. Anyone who can hear you has a [HIGHEST]-in-6 chance to be fascinated, in which case they will not do anything that would disrupt your telling or prevent them from listening (e.g. leave the room). They will react with hostility to anyone who attempts to shut you up.
4. Look a creature in the eye to strike them with terror or desire. [DICE]-in-6 chance their better judgement is overwhelmed by this feeling (doubled for beasts), which lasts until you break eye contact.
5. Blow sand at a creature you can see within shouting distance. They have a [SUM]-in-6 chance of falling instantly into a pleasant slumber. Subtract the result of that roll from [SUM]. If the new [SUM] is greater than 0, you can select another target and repeat the effect. Continue until [SUM] is 0 or less.
6. Sleep with an object inside your mouth. You dream its entire existence, sped up to fit within a single night's rest. If you have a specific event from the object's past in mind, [HIGHEST]-in-6 chance to witness that part of its history at normal speed.
7. Don a gossamer veil. If you remove and burn it within [SUM] hours, all who interacted with you while you wore it forget...
• (1 die) ...the details of what transpired. They remember your presence and how they felt, but not exactly what you said or did.
• (2 dice) ...whether it really happened, or was just a dream.
• (3 dice) ...that you were there at all.
8. Pass your hand over someone's face for a [SUM]-in-6 chance to steal the sleep out of their eyes. It takes the form of a shard of smoky quartz. Until they recover it, they are cursed with wakefulness, but they always know the exact direction and distance to the shard.
9. A billowing cloak of mist appears on your shoulders, and the attention of others skips off you like stones off a lake. Any time someone would take notice of you, they must roll [DICE] dice. Unless they roll all 6s, you pass by unremarked. If you are ever noticed, the cloak dissipates and the effect ends.
10. Erect a circle of inward-facing mirrors [SUM] paces in radius (each mirror [DICE] paces high) and burn incense. For as long as the incense is lit, its smoke forms into perfect simulacra of any objects or creatures you envision. These constructs cannot leave the circle, and breaking or removing a mirror ends the effect.
11. Hide [SUM] delicate totems in a pattern (each no more than a dozen paces from its neighbors), and imagine in detail a series of challenges. Sleep within the area, and those challenges will appear in your dreams. If you overcome them, then as long as the totem border remains undisturbed any who sleep within the affected area must conquer the same challenges before they can awaken. If [SUM] is less than 3, there is no effect.
12. Dream of immortality while holding the hand of another sleeper. You awaken inside their body, while your own remains comatose. Attempts to wake your body (with a slap or a splash of water) have a [LOWEST]-in-6 chance to end the effect, and the death of either party involved does so automatically. Otherwise, it lasts...
• (1 die) ...until your host awakens, about 8 hours from when they fell asleep.
• (2 dice) ...until you need to sleep.
• (3 dice) ...indefinitely. Your original body does not age or require sustenance.

Marks of Dream

1. Those around you feel vaguely sleepy. This does not affect capability, but may color their reactions to you.
2. The bags under your eyes are inhumanly dark, and they never fade.
3. You seem to drift rather than walk.
4. Your visage troubles the dreams of all who see you for several nights.
5. Looking directly at you causes mild vertigo.
6. When you are content, strangers who see your face catch a glimpse of the one they most desire; when you are angry, the one they most fear.

Dooms of Dream

1. Without constant stimulus, you fall asleep every few minutes.
2. Your dreams attract malicious entities who enter the minds of anyone sleeping nearby to torture them until they wake.
3. The next time you fall asleep, you cannot be woken. Averting this doom requires a favor from Morpheus of the Endless. Afterwards, you can mesmerize with a glance.

The Lore of Beasts

Lest you become one

Monosophia

Animals are indifferent to you. Even the fiercest creature will allow you to...

• (1 Secret) ...walk past unharmed
• (2 Secrets) ...feed and caress them
• (4 Secrets) ...lead them about with a string
• (8 Secrets) ...slaughter them for meat

Secrets of Beasts

1. Vermin boil out of every crack and crevice for [SUM] paces around you.
2. [DICE] beasts that can see your eyes go from a state of calm to a state of agitation, or vice-versa.
3. Fashion a small totem out of the flesh and bone of an animal. For the next [SUM] days, whoever possesses the totem is hated by that kind of animal.
4. When you would be surprised by danger, you have a [HIGHEST]-in-6 chance of noticing at the last instant.
5. Let loose a primal roar. Foes who have never heard you roar before have a [HIGHEST]-in-6 chance of panicking, and allies who have heard you roar before have a [HIGHEST]-in-6 chance of being inspired with savage courage.
6. Receive answers to [SUM] questions from one animal. Beasts remember things broadly and by their nature; a predator and a grazer will recount the same event in different ways.
7. You take a deep sniff and scent the emotional state of those within a handful of paces. You can detect...
• (1 die) ...fear
• (2 dice) ...lies
• (3 dice) ...intentions
8. When you fail to track a creature, you have a [HIGHEST]-in-6 chance to pick up the trail instead. Alternatively, those tracking you have a [HIGHEST]-in-6 chance of losing your trace.
9. Kill a beast with your bare hands and ritually skin it. You can don the hide for a [SUM]-in-6 chance of taking the beast's form. You must make use of this Secret again to change back.
10. At dawn, bind a beast to you until the next sun rises. You must have once subdued it with your bare hands. As long as the creature remains within [SUM] miles, it obeys you to the best of its understanding. If maintained on the same beast for a year and a day, the effect becomes permanent.
11. Strip nude and daub yourself with beast-blood sigils: your skin turns blades like thick hide. The next [SUM] mortal blows against you bounce off. Ends if you don clothing.
12. Lock eyes with a beast that has consumed a drop of your blood each dusk for a year and a day. When you die, your mind and spirit will be transferred to that beast. The animal may be as large as a...
• (1 die) ...wolf
• (2 dice) ...bear
• (3 dice) ...wyvern

Marks of Beasts

1. Your face elongates into a muzzle.
2. Your legs become back-jointed.
3. Nature falls silent at your approach. Birdsong ceases, dogs stop their barking, and cattle will not low.
4. Teeth and nails grow long, sharp, and iron-hard.
5. Tough feathers sprout painfully from your skin.
6. Your feet become claws or hooves.

Dooms of Beasts

1. Madness besets the creatures around you. If you linger too long, horses will throw their riders and dogs savage their masters.
2. Each dusk, you lose all higher reason and turn feral until dawn.
3. The Ur-Predator catches your scent. It will pursue you to the edge of the world. If you kill it, the pelt lets you transform into any beast that hunts for prey.

The Lore of the Heavens

The abyss gazes also into you

Monosophia

The skies hold not their secrets back from you. Forgo a night's sleep and learn...

• (1 Secret) ...the weather for the next d6 days
• (2 Secrets) ...of any impending local disaster
• (4 Secrets) ...the most portentous event of the past day in all the world
• (8 Secrets) ...the looming fate of kings and nations

Secrets of the Heavens

1. The vault of heaven becomes your eye. Until you take [DICE] breaths, you see as if looking down form above, from horizon to horizon. At such scale it takes time to pick out anything specific.
2. Your voice booms like thunder for the next [SUM] words you say. Eardrums burst and noses bleed. You cannot speak until [DICE] sunrises have passed.
3. Whisper in someone's ear. They have a [HIGHEST]-in-6 chance of being afflicted with lunacy. Each dawn, you must roll again, subtracting 1 or every dawn that has elapsed.
4. Strange things (frogs, worms, snails) rain from the sky for [SUM] minutes in a radius of [DICE] miles.
5. For as long as you hold your breath, your weight is reduced [SUM]-fold.
6. You bring the spheres where'er you walk. Any surface above you (ceiling, tree canopy, etc.) becomes as the sky for [SUM] paces around. The effect moves with you, and lasts...
• (1 die) ...until you take a breath
• (2 dice) ...a minute
• (3 dice) ...an hour
7. As long as you stand still and chant, a being you indicate is favored or disfavored by the Stars. Any time they fail (succeed) at an action that they might reasonably have succeeded (failed) at, they have a ([HIGHEST-minus-1])-in-6 chance of succeeding (failing) instead.
8. Peer through a ring of meteoric iron. Sunlight hitting what you see is magnified [SUM]-fold. If you so much as blink, the effect ends.
9. Speak a message of up to [SUM] words to the Moon, visualizing a single recipient. If they are also looking at the Moon, they hear your message spoken from above.
10. Until you take a breath, your vision has...
• (1 die) ...the clarity of the Stars. Darkness is to you as a bright cloudless night.
• (2 dice) ...the radiance of the Moon. You see the unseen.
• (3 dice) ...the fury of the Sun. Your gaze scorches like midsummer noon.
11. During a storm, roll [SUM] dice. Otherwise, roll [DICE] dice. For every result of 6, lightning strikes a point of your indication that you can see.
12. Advance or reverse the course of the spheres by [SUM] hours. This is not time travel; you are "merely" moving the Sun, Moon, and Stars.

Marks of the Heavens

1. Your eyes are orbs of starry night.
2. The weather within a few paces changes to match your mood.
3. You glow faintly in darkness, and shadows pool around you in the light.
4. Your shadow points in the wrong direction.
5. Within a few paces, all sounds not made by you are muffled.
6. Your hair follows the lunar cycle: thick and luscious at the full Moon, bald as an egg at the new.

Dooms of the Heavens

1. You are weightless while you sleep. If not held down, you will float away.
2. A baleful star appears above. Those who gaze too long upon it are haunted by twisted visions of your face. Some will hunt you.
3. A meteor holds your death. The next time you show  your face to the open sky, it strikes you with unerring accuracy. This doom can be averted through a favor from a ruler of the upper air. Afterwards, you can fly.

The Lore of Flesh

The body keeps the score

Monosophia

cw body horror

With a few moments' examination, you can...

• (1 Secret) ...tell the provenance of any wound or scar
• (2 Secrets) ...determine the cause of any overt symptom
• (4 Secrets) ...detect any affliction, even those that give no outward sign
• (8 Secrets) ...enumerate every disease, poison, or injury the subject has ever suffered

Secrets of Flesh

1. Increase your strength and resilience to [SUM] times normal. Every heartbeat, you suffer as if you had starved for [DICE] days.
2. You can safely store or retrieve up to [HIGHEST] handfuls of material inside the body of a willing or helpless living being you touch. More than six inside a human-sized creature causes problems; a horse could hold twice that.
3. Detach a body part. For [SUM] hours, it continues to function based on the last instruction it received (an eye looks, a hand grabs), then it goes dormant until you reattach it. If left alone too long a part will starve.
4. Sculpt your face into a new shape, limited by your skill and the tools to hand. Lasts for [SUM] hours, after which your face sags like dough for [DICE] days.
5. One poison or disease affecting you is...
• (1 die) ...suppressed for a day.
• (2 dice) ...cured.
• (3 dice) ...contained and weaponized. Transfer it to someone else with a touch.
6. With you assisting in a medical procedure, the probability of success improves by [SUM]x10 percent. Your methods are bloody, off putting, and wholly unorthodox.
7. Move wounds through living flesh (including from one creature to another) as through...
• (1 die) ...tree sap
• (2 dice) ...honey
• (3 dice) ...water
8. Injuries, poisons, and diseases affecting up to [DICE] living beings you touch are suppressed. You suffer their combined effects, diminished [SUM]-fold.
9. Enjoy [SUM] weeks' worth of natural healing in as many heartbeats. [DICE]-in-6 chance of unwanted scarring or mutation.
10. Regrow a severed appendage over the course of (7 - [HIGHEST]) days. You can choose the form of the replacement, although it must be biologically feasible.
11. Move [SUM] years of age between two living creatures, a process which requires [DICE] hours of uninterrupted contact.
12. Open your body like a mouth and envelop a living creature. If the target has exposed skin, [DICE]-in-6 chance that you absorb their flesh into yours, killing them instantly and granting you [HIGHEST]-in-6 of their skills and/or Secrets. You can excrete the extra bulk or use it to fuel your vitality.

Marks of Flesh

1. Spines, horns, and bony protrusions sprout scattered across your body.
2. Your unnatural bulk is unmistakeable.
3. Your voice grows wet and guttural.
4. Silent screaming faces press against your skin from the inside.
5. Blood seeps from your pores, leaving a trail behind you and crimson marks on anything you touch.
6. Fused joints loudly break and heal with every move you make.

Dooms of Flesh

1. Rumors of your deliciousness spread among the flesh-eaters. The rumors are true.
2. You shed feral tumors that hunger for human meat.
3. Your own vigor betrays you. Rapid growth of bone, fat, and muscle, enough to crush you under your own weight before the moon is out. Escape this doom by consuming the flesh of a god--a minor one will do. Afterward, your wayward tumors mature into loyal servants.

The Lore of Fire

 We enter the circle at midnight

Monosophia

By rubbing your palms together, you can produce…

• (1 Secret) …sparks

• (2 Secrets) …a candle flame

• (4 Secrets) …a torch flame

• (8 Secrets) …a bonfire

You can be burned by fires of your own making.

Secrets of Fire

1. Fires within [SUM] paces burn faster or slower. Down to a smolder or up to an explosion that extends [HIGHEST] paces.
2. Blow through a flame to extend a cone of fire [SUM] paces for as long as you exhale.
3. Sculpt fire, within a space no greater than the span of your arms. It continues to burn, but the flames hold the shape you give them for [SUM] minutes. (Make a torch into a fiery sword.)
4. Material that would normally be flammable becomes resilient to fire (or the reverse); up to [DICE] times the amount of material that could be carried in a single arm. This effect lasts for one exposure to fire. (A person takes two arms to carry, unless you’re freakish strong.)
5. Swallow a burning coal without harming your throat. At any time, you can breathe out a cloud of smoke [SUM] paces in radius. All dice remain committed until you do so.
6. Call a fire to leap from its current home within [SUM]x10 paces to a new roost that you touch. The new home must be large enough to hold it; a bonfire will not migrate to a torch.
7. Remove [DICE] of the following from a single fire (lasts until the fire goes out, max [SUM] hours unless cast with 3+ dice):
• Heat
• Smoke
• Light
8. Light one flame from another. For [SUM] hours, you can project your sight, hearing, voice, and image through the link between the fires. If you use a Secret of Fire while touching one of the flames, you may choose for it to take effect as if you were standing in the other flame. If you use 3 or more dice, the effect instead lasts for [LOWEST] days.
9. Carefully prepare two ritual pyres. Light one while standing atop it to vanish and appear in a roar of flames atop the other. If the other pyre has been disturbed, you are instead consumed. Even on a successful transport, you suffer burns based on [HIGHEST]:
• 1: As if walking into a bonfire.
• 2-3: As if leaping through a bonfire.
• 4-5: As if jumping over a campfire.
• 6: As if standing a pace from a campfire.
10. Thrust your hand into the heart of a fire. It compresses into an uncut nugget of red glass in your palm. The fire erupts again when the glass shatters or after [HIGHEST]…
• (1 die) …heartbeats
• (2 dice) …hours
• (3 dice) …days
11. Imbue a fire with mind. It lasts for [SUM] hours, as long as it has fuel. The fire is friendly toward you, and has the size and intelligence of…
• (1 die) …a mouse
• (2 dice) …a dog
• (3 dice) …a man
12. Feed a part of your body to the flames, and use no Secrets of Fire for [SUM] days. You suffer no ill effects from the body part’s loss until the fire goes out, which it will not do unless extinguished. You also gain another benefit for as long as the body part burns, based on the number of dice invested and the body part sacrificed:
• 1 die
• Hair, fingernails: no effect (an everburning torch)
• 2 dice
• Eyes: you see the unseen; once you make eye contact only you can break it
• Tongue: your words cannot be ignored; you can rile up or terrify a crowd even if you don’t share a language
• Limb: replaced by one of ash, scorching to the touch and impervious to pain
• 3 dice
• Heart: your wounds burn closed; submerging you in water suspends the regeneration, but only extinguishing your heart can kill you
• Brain: burn out someone else’s mind and jump into their body; keep your Secrets

Marks of Fire

1. You radiate heat like a kettle of boiling water.
2. Flames burn behind your eyes. 
3. Your hair turns fire-orange and ignites harmlessly when your heartrate rises.
4. Dark-edged luminous cracks cover your skin, like a field of lava or smoldering embers.
5. You always smell of smoke.
6. Your shadow shows a mass of writhing flames in human form.

Dooms of Fire

1. Whenever you are more than an armslength from fire, you start to suffer from hypothermia.
2. Your touch is the touch of flame. Better get fireproof robes.
3. Your flesh is a delicacy among fuels. The fire wants you. It needs to consume you. It will seek you out. This doom can be avoided through marriage to a greater fire spirit, such as a true phoenix.

Monosophia

Three men can keep a secret if two of them are dead

Economists divide goods into two categories: rival and non-rival. Rival goods are ordinary things, resources with a limited quantity; each one that you have means one that someone else doesn’t have. Non-rival goods don’t follow this rule. The archetypical example of a non-rival good is knowledge. If you learn a better basket-weaving method, teaching someone else doesn’t make you any worse off, not as if you’d had an apple and given it away. Information is more like fire, the common wisdom goes. You can share it freely without fear of reducing your own stock.

 Wizards know better.

Oh, that stuff is true for most knowledge, to be sure. Basket-weaving, writing, dancing, history. Common skills and ken. But there are exceptions. There are some subtleties to the world so deep that they do not abide by natural laws of cognition, not mere secrets of the universe but Secrets of the Universe. These forms of knowledge can be acquired, transferred, or stolen, but they cannot be shared. To tell such a Secret to another is to lose it yourself. The knowledge leaps from your mind to theirs like a living thing and curls up contentedly inside its new home.

Among the few who study such arcana, these Secrets are called monosophia. Most folk would call them magic.

Unraveling cosmic mysteries for fun and profit

One thing I’ve always wanted to change about GLoG-style magic is the way mishaps and dooms work. They’re a fun little concept: the more power you put into a spell, the more likely you are to suffer a backfire; or, eventually, to meet a messy end. More than you can chew, mankind was not meant to meddle, etc. All good.

But the thing is, the mishap and doom tables are divided up by class. Muscle Wizards have the Muscle Mishap Table; Bubble Wizards have the Bubble Mishap Table. When you pick a class, you’re also picking your set of upsets and disasters. And unless you pick up a template from a different wizard type, the options don’t change.

Can we do better? What if each flavor of magic had its own list of mishaps and dooms? Roll a double while casting Fire magic, and you roll on the fire mishap table. A triple on Beasts magic? Pick up a Doom of Beasts. If you only cast one kind of spell, it works just like GLoG class-bound tables. But if you dabble in several lores, you might get Marks of a few different kinds.

Oh yeah, Marks. That’s another thing I want to change: Marks instead of mishaps. This one’s not so much because I don’t like existing system. Mishaps are fine. They’re fun. But I think I’ve got something better.

In the Black Company series, all the most powerful mages are warped by the powers they wield. The act of twisting creation also twists you, body and soul, into something new and strange. Let’s gameify that. Instead of fire-themed mishaps, you gain Marks of Fire: your eyes burn, your skin is hot as a kettle, you always smell of smoke. These are the things that make passersby avoid you, whispering one to the other: “There goes a wizard.”

I’m going to write up several Lores, at least five. The finished ones are listed below:

• The Lore of Fire
• The Lore of Flesh
• The Lore of the Heavens
• The Lore of Beasts
• The Lore of Dream
• The Lore of the Sea

Magic Dice (MD) are standard d6s. You have a pool of them. Roll some or all of your pool each time you use a Secret. Each MD returns to your pool on a 1-3, or is expended on a 4-6. Your pool replenishes at dawn.

This is only a fragment of a game, of course. A fragment of a magic system, even. How do you get Magic Dice? How do you get Secrets, for that matter? Scoop knowledge out of the skull of a decapitated lich, snatch insight from a falling star, that kind of thing should do the trick. The classic method, of course, being to kill your mentor and steal from them.

As for the power to use them? Be creative. Here are some classic ideas; each one is worth a Magic Die:

• Cast off the name you were born with. Take a new one. Expunge all record of your True Name

• Die and be brought back. 

• Make a pact with a spirit of terrible power. What do they demand in exchange?

Mortal and Immortal MAGIC

“The ur-mage Klemto, it is said, traded his ties to the earth for an ageless body. Long did he rule in the craglands, until his apprentices removed his weighted boots while he slept, sending their once-master floating into the heavens…”

MORTAL MAGIC…

• …DISPLACES

o a weight on your shoulders

o a gap in your memory

o a knot in your soul

• …is DISCOVERED

o mighty bloodline

o ancient tome

o favor of the gods

o alchemical accident

• …is CIRCUMSCRIBED

o does only what mortal labor could

o sacrifice tools or materials (a pickaxe to magically dig a tunnel through stone, oil to start a fire)

o one task at a time

• …RETURNS

o dusk

o dawn

o moonrise

o death

IMMORTAL MAGIC…

• …COSTS

o your eye

o your name

o your birthright

o your empathy

• …is SOUGHT

o anyone can bargain with the eternal

o greater boons must be begged of higher powers—but are these spirits real, or just different faces of the infinite?

o those most desperate face the highest price

• …is BOUNDLESS

o unshackle the soul

o turn back time

o snuff the stars

o (The greater the boon, the higher the cost)

• …EVANESCES

o the gift remains

o the magic fades

The Lore of BEASTS

• Commonly asked of the eternal

• Mortal mage can harness the abilities of an animal instead of humans

• Lore of the crow allows magic flight

• COST is always the wizard’s humanity—never again will they be accepted by civilization

COMMENTARY

“Mortal magic” is almost entirely lifted from a great OSR blogpost that I have lost track of—if you know what I’m talking about, let me know! It reminds me of my favorite limit on “Wish,” too: “anything a person could do in a year.” Build a tower, yes. Kill a king, sure. Destroy the moon, no.

Immortal magic, on the other hand is deliberately open-ended. If you’re using it in a game, this is a roleplaying challenge, not something to solve with the numbers on your character sheet. What ancient power might be willing to help you? What do they demand in exchange?

RULES

Oh, you want an actual magic system out of this? Well, why not. We’ve been doing great stealing thus far, so let’s steal a little more. Take the Magic Dice terms from the GLoG ([DICE], [SUM], etc.); those are good. No spells, though, they don’t fit the paradigm. No Mishaps or Dooms, either. Keep it simple. Still terrifyingly powerful, though. Use these rules at your own risk.

MOSAIC-strict: MORTAL MAGIC

• Power represented by Magic Dice (MD, d6s)

• Get an MD when you consume a source of power

o Heart of a dragon

o Soul of a mage

o Fragment of an ancient artifact

• Roll to perform a single task with magic

o Performed as well as [SUM] people working at [DICE] x normal speed, with your level of skill

o Sacrifice tools to use them in the task (a pickaxe to have your magic dig through stone, a sword for your magic to defend you)

o On a 1-3, the MD return

o On a 4-6, the MD are lost until the next (pick one and stick with it)…

 …dusk

 …dawn

 …moonrise

 …death

• Magic CONTESTS

o Both sides roll, the winner can use the difference between their [DICE] and [SUM] and the loser’s

o Example: 

 Vlahal and Cohstr are having a Wizard’s Duel

 Vlahal rolls two MD and gets a 3 and a 4

 Cohstr rolls one MD and gets a 5 

 Vlahal rolled one more MD than Cohstr, so his final [DICE] is 1

 He also got a higher [SUM] (7 vs 5), so his final [SUM] is 2

 Vlahal’s magic strikes at Cohstr with the force of two people attacking at normal speed. En garde!

Is this too vague? Maybe. Game-able magic systems that don’t package their effects up into spells are hard. The more open-ended the abilities, the more narrative they become. In my experience you have to abstract something, either the economy of power, or its nature. Traditional Vancian spells do the former; this is a stab at the latter. It’s open to abuse by clever players, sure. Whatever. It’s magic!

The original post I got took these ideas from (would that I could remember where I saw it!) had a deliberate bronze-age flavor, and I agree. These rules conjure up an image of sorcerer-kings raising massive ziggurats, bargaining with djinn for immortality. Keep in mind, too, that a “task” doesn’t have to be physical! How many foes could a silver-tongued mage sway to his side, if there were five of him negotiating in double time?