Whenever enough new folks join the Dreamland RPG Facebook group or Discord server, I’m going to be posting new Dreamland material (the FB and/or Discord folks get to vote on what it is). In celebration of the Discord reaching 300 folks, here is a brief post on magic in Dreamland.
The Pillars of Magic
True magic in human hands (beyond simple sleight of hand and fortune telling, and the occasional crafting of magic items) is one of the rarest things in Dreamland. Magicians are incredibly rare, and many people waste their whole lives trying but failing to gain magic power, in contrast to creatures such as fairies and djinn who use it effortlessly.
Dreamland has no distinction between “divine” and “arcane” magic. Some priests can use magic, but not many. Priestly magic does not come from their faith or the direct intercession of their gods, but from secret spells which the gods convey in omens or dreams, leaving it up to the priests to determine how they should be used. Responsible priests guard their magic rituals closely, teaching them only to fellow clergy in solemn rites.
True magicians are of a higher level. The mightiest human mages are the Green, Blue, Yellow, Red, and Violet magicians, each linked to one of the Five Pillars of Dreamland. Experienced dreamers can become one of these types of magicians: they are Advanced Roles available to dreamers of level 3 or higher, assuming they have met certain prerequisites.
The idea of defining magic by colors is not universal throughout Dreamland, but it is practiced in many places. Not all wizards dress or adorn themselves in their associated color, but some do. Magic by its nature is incapable of being systematized, but a few sages and ancient texts have managed to pass on magical wisdom.
The Five Pillars are not the only sources of magic. Dreamlander wizards also work with other elemental/symbolic forces, some unsuitable for player characters because they are weaker than the innate magic all dreamers have. These include pink, gray, crimson, orange, olive, brown and lilac magics.
Other magics are tied to forces rare in Earth’s Dreamland, such as meteoric iron, or factors/colors found only in distant regions of the cosmos. These include ulfire, jale and dolm magics.
Blue Magicians
The Blue Magician is one of several Advanced Roles available to high-level dreamers. The other types of magicians will be described later.
Prerequisite: You must have three Mystery Memories (Full or half-forgotten) and have become Old (though you need not currently be Old); or three Mystery Memories and have spent downtime studying under a magician.
It is whispered that even the gods fear Time. Some say that Time is a Great One named Sish or Kai, but others say Time is stronger than the gods of the world, even stronger than the Other Gods. Blue Magicians try to control Time.
Blue Magicians study the ruins of ancient civilizations, the stones of Zaccarath and Babbulkund, learning everything there is to know about the processes of decay. Through magical study they rediscover twentieth-century understandings of the age of the universe, and surpass them.
The first essential power any Blue Magician learns is immortality, arresting their process of aging, though they can still be killed by violence and disease. They then learn the power to arrest time in other objects and creatures. With a wave of their hand, a Blue Magician can send an entire city into a timeless sleep, preserving them for eternity, or until whenever the Blue Magician wishes them to awaken. They may do this to move the city into the future, to save something that intrigues them until they have time to study it later, or to forever preserve their beauty.
For all their power over entropy, one puzzle remains out of reach of even Blue Magicians: the power to reverse time. Though Dreamland is scattered with dream-reflections of lost cities of the past, not even a Blue Magician can truly travel back in time or remake the dust of lost things; yet almost all Blue Magicians combine science, technology and magic in pursuit of this mysterious goal.
Equipment
Magician’s robes • Staff or wand • Hourglass, clock or watch • Books of ancient lore • Alchemical equipment (beakers, burners, glass bottles and pipes) • Scientific equipment (microscope, centrifuge, scales, portable battery, etc.)
Skills and Powers
1D6 Wisdom (discipline)
1D6 Wisdom (magic)
1D6 Legerdemain
- Mysterious Magic: Mystery Words give you ×2 on Wisdom and Legerdemain, and on removing the Old Impairment.
- You can see demons and other invisible forces.
- You can know any human language for 6 Words, or any beast language for 8.
- You don’t age. You are immortal unless killed.
- You know the age of any object or creature by merely looking at it.
- You can preserve any creature or object you can see or touch in timeless, unaging stasis. Creatures thus affected appear to fall asleep, though if their eyelids are opened or they are moved around they remain frozen like statues in their new poses. Preserving a small object costs 2 Words; a human-sized creature or object, 4; a large creature or object, 8; a small site or group, 12; a horde or town,16; a city, 22. Mystery Words give you ×2 on this. The kiss of someone who is In Love with a sleeper breaks the spell. Dreamers can resist with a risky Wisdom (discipline) challenge of 1D6+6. If a nondreamer target is especially powerful, you must make a risky Wisdom (discipline) challenge to succeed in the spell (1D6+target’s STB). You can undo the stasis at will.
- You can spend 3 Mystery Words in place of a half-Memory to create a Mystery marvel. You are still limited by your Personal Pool total. To do so, you must perform a magic ritual taking about an hour.