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?

Δ Template: Almador

“Revere the blood of life.

Revere the blood of death.”

-from the Wisdom of Inor, goddess of midwives

What is a Δ Template? 

Directory of delta 

The Almador is also MOSAIC-strict!

With the exception of level (0), you must have a feature of level (X-1) before gaining a feature of level (X).

(0) Soul Worker

Witness the birth and death of the same person

You can tell the age of any person you see to the year, or the age of a corpse to the day

(1) Hands of Life

Hold a mortal foe’s life in your hands and spare them

A minute of treatment from you is equal to a week’s bed rest and ‘round-the-clock care

(1) Phantom of the Mind

Lay an unquiet spirit to rest without using violence

Your touch can cause or numb pain, up to the worst agony you have ever felt. Your own pain is reduced or increased by the same amount

(2) Generation Sense

Find a pregnant prey animal in the wild. Protect it until its young can walk

Sense life within a distance equal to how far the mother animal could leap in a single bound

(2) Mortal Clay

Perform a short mourning rite for every dead creature you encounter. If you ever fail to do so, you lose this ability until the creature you did not mourn has rotted to clean bones

You know the cause of death of any corpse you see, in detail

(2) Keep the Score

Save more lives than you have taken. If the balance shifts, you lose this feature until you right it

Gaze into someone’s eyes to know the number of lives they have taken and saved

(3) Memory of Pain

Survive a mortal injury

Open old wounds fresh at a touch

(3) Last Moments

Comfort someone close to you in their last moments

Nobody dies while you comfort them with your hands and voice, no matter how grievous the wound

(3) Not One More

Plant a grove of trees, one for each person who has died despite your best efforts

The harmful effects of disease are suppressed around you, in a radius equal to the size of the grove

(4) The Damage Travels

Create new life from your own

Move wounds through flesh at will, from part to part and body to body

(4) Draw the Venom

Survive the bite of a deadly venomous animal

Extract poison from a wound with a touch, storing it harmlessly within your own body. This process takes one heartbeat per year of the victim’s age. You can discharge the poison by inflicting it on someone else with a touch, which takes as long as a snakebite. You can store as many poisons as the number of deadly venomous animal bites you have survived

(5) Soul Traitor

Murder someone you brought into the world

Siphon youth at a touch, one week per heartbeat. Animals and children revile you

(5) Soul Mourner

Try and fail to save someone you brought into the world

Harm is suspended within reach of your voice. Swords break where they touch flesh, flames are cool to the touch, and poisons turn to water. Animals and children are drawn to you

Commentary

I’ve liked Delta Templates ever since I first encountered squigboss’ Pyromancer. The trigger for each power is just calling out for a quest, and the diegetic nature of the abilities forces you to be creative. A full template is supposed to be closer to nine levels than five, but there’s no reason for that to be an ironclad law. This is my first foray into the space, after all.

The Almador is my attempt at a Δ healer, unconnected to the usual trappings of religion. The powers are connected to birth, life, and death, with at least a few that will be very hard for half the population to attain. Still, there’s more than one way to “create new life from your own,” especially in a world of magic and alchemy.

Hekate's Shadow

 

“The safest road to hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”

-C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

What makes “dark magic” bad? The idea that some supernatural abilities are inherently evil is a trope that shows up in all kinds of media, from space opera (the Dark Side of the force) to epic fantasy (the One Ring, necromancy). 

But why exactly are these powers taboo? In many cases the answer leans heavily on the rules of the supernatural system at work. In the Lord of the Rings, use of the rings of power opens the wearer’s mind to domination by Sauron. The Dark Side of the force requires giving in to hatred and anger. The power is shunned because its requirements, or its magical consequences, are something to be avoided.

Magical consequences—that’s a crucial idea. In many cases it’s not the abilities themselves that are evil, the evil comes from what it takes to access them. Think of the powers that only Sith can use in the Star Wars universe: Force lightning? Force healing? Nothing particularly evil about that. Sure, the lightning isn’t useful for anything except violence, but don’t the Jedi spend an awful lot of time training with laser swords? (And using mind control… more on that later)

Contrast this framework with something like necromancy. In some fiction, raising the undead corrupts a wizard directly, but not always. Instead, the reason this particular form of magic is so reviled is because of what it does. Disturbing the rest of a corpse offends broadly-held human ideals of the sacred, along with violating cleanliness taboos. You don’t need to add any extra spiritual consequences or magical mutation: the nature of the power and the morality of the power are intertwined.

I think this second form of dark magic is much more interesting from a TTRPG standpoint. Lots of games play around with the first form: corruption points, a sanity meter, consequences if you cast too many forbidden spells, etc. That sort of thing falls flat for me. 

In fiction, you can make up for the disconnect between effect and morality with scene dressing: this ritual involves pentagrams, chanting, and dark robes, so of course it’s evil. Aesthetics don’t provide quite as much cover at the table. Players start to wonder: how come the druid can summon a wolf to the fight with no problem, but if I summon an imp to do the same I’m risking my immortal soul? Isn’t the enchanter’s mind control a lot more questionable than my blood-magic tracking ritual?

People choose evil because it’s the easy way to power. In the real world, as in fiction, it’s much simpler to achieve your goals if you care about nothing else and no one else. As Lex Luthor says of Superman: “He has morals. He has ethics. He is unrelentingly good. Because of that, I will win.” In the space of all possible actions, morality and power are anticorrelated, because morality constrains action space. 

Let’s think about magic in the same way. “Evil” spells are so not because of any second-order consequences, but simply because of what they do. Necromancy is one example. Mind-control is another. Good gravy, what a violation! To reach into someone’s brain, the last private bastion of the self, and grab the reins? I’d be right there in the crowd with the torch and pitchforks.

The best dark magic for a TTRPG is tempting because it’s an easy way to power. What if killing someone with magic is one of the easiest spells to learn, but it immolates their soul and denies them the afterlife? What if permanent mind control requires only a night’s work (this is where orcs come from, btw).

Players are usually willing to avoid “evil” magic when it’s clearly labeled by the system. “This spell gives corruption points? No thanks, I don’t want to turn into a tentacle monster.” When the label is in-fiction only, things get more… interesting. “This spell is widely considered an abomination? What does that mean in game terms? Nothing?!? Of course I cast it!”

Be careful when playing around with game world ethics. Definitely talk out the themes involved during your Session Zero, and have robust safety tools in place before you start highlighting the moral implications of magic—especially existing spells from well-known systems. The reason it’s possible to have fun with Charm Person is precisely because we don’t think about how horrifying it is, or how much therapy the victim—and they are very much a victim—would need afterwards. Keep in mind also that even if one player is very enthusiastic about exploring in this direction, the others may not be.

Still, “dark magic as the easy road” is a powerful tool when used correctly. When the party is down and out, surrounded and on their last legs, will they give up and keep their consciences clean? Or will they grasp at whatever power they can, even if the memories will haunt them for the rest of their lives? Perhaps wicked deeds can serve the greater good. Does that help them sleep at night? Is it any consolation when the hard-eyed peasants bind them to a stake?

The worldbuilding possibilities are just as rich. How does society treat mages if a ten-year-old can kill a man with a snap of his fingers? What if he can destroy a village? A kingdom? N.K. Jemisin explores this idea in depth in her Broken Earth trilogy, but there’s no reason a TTRPG Narrator can’t do the same. Wizard towers are hermitages to signal their distance from populated areas, and fortresses for when the locals decide they’re not far enough. Orcs are the degenerate form of a mind-controlled servant: repellant yes, but oh so terribly convenient.

Perhaps there are also spells that twist the caster’s mind and warp their body. Incantations that drag one’s soul directly down to hell. But where’s the fun in that?