Book of Magic Design Journal #4

Mystic Texts
A special kind of “magical item” is the mystic text, whether an actual bound book or a collection of scrolls or other writings. Such texts provide valuable insights into arcane lore and may be treasure troves of spells and rituals.

Possession of a mystic text may be a prerequisite to spending earned power points on a particular spell for a character’s Magic array. Magicians often search far and wide for scraps of hidden lore for just this reason. Likewise, the design phase of a magical ritual or invention could involve researching in different texts, with the Knowledge skill check representing finding the right passages and diagrams, rather than coming up with them from scratch.

Lastly, a powerful mystic text might be a Device unto itself, so potent that reading from it or even just possessing it provides its owner with various powers. For example, a mystic hero might derive some or all of her powers from reading spells out of an ancient and powerful book like the Manual of the Modrossus. The tome may provide the Magic power or simply the spells (Alternate Power feats) that draw upon the reader’s raw Magic.

The following are some sample mystic texts and how they may be used.

The Butterfly Dictum
Cause and effect. Seemingly irrelevant choices or accidents may have dramatic results in the end. The Butterfly Dictum is a set of chaos-magic disciplines encompassing this concept, setting into being a chain of events resulting in the magician’s will being done. This phenomenon is best known to non-occultists as the “Butterfly Effect” after Edward Lorenz’s paper “Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil set off a Tornado in Texas?” (presented to the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1972). Interestingly enough, in a 1963 paper, Lorenz used the flap of a seagull’s wing as the basis for this theory; some magicians believe his interest in the concept brought him into contact with the Butterfly Dictum and led him to change his example.

The butterfly has, throughout many cultures, been seen as a strange otherworldly thing, transient and only partially of this world. The Butterfly Dictum has roots in several ancient practices, most notably among the Haida (where Butterfly is the dreamer companion of the trickster Raven), the Japanese (where the butterfly is unattainable beauty and whimsy), and the Aztec (for whom the butterfly always played a strange, otherworldly role). Masters describing this form of magic have always used the butterfly or moth as a symbol of the way a magician must approach the world—lightly flitting from one endeavor or topic to the next, resting overlong on none of them, the way a butterfly flits from place to place.

The Butterfly Dictum itself is also unusual because the original text—written on a manual typewriter from the look of it—is missing. It exists only as collections of photocopied pages and, presently, scanned graphics files. The book also has a tendency to find its way into the hands of those able to use it, although not always to use it well. It leaves them just as easily when the time comes.

The ideas and practices contained in the Butterfly Dictum primarily relate to chaos magic as a means of influencing luck and probability. Casual understanding shows the potential for lucky breaks and winning streaks, but a deeper reading opens up virtually limitless possibilities, since influence over the possible and the improbable is what the text is all about.

The Locarno Diaries
The Locarno Diaries are a collection of six journals hand-written by the 17th century Swiss clockmaker Hans Locarno, also known as Lord Deosil, the Master Mage of his time. Weyan the Wheelright particularly favored him, and the Diaries are filled with his meditations and journeys into the mysteries of the workings of the White Hand. All the various spells attributed to Weyan can be found in the Locarno Diaries, along with designs for a number of fantastic clockworks, some of which are of unknown purpose.

More curious are a number of cryptic prophecies written in each of the volumes of the Diaries, similar in style to the works of Nostradamus a century earlier. Many mystics have found truth in these passages and claim Lord Deosil possessed a profound ability to foresee the future. Some claim he couched his prophecies in metaphor and symbolism to ensure only the worthy would discover them, but a few wonder if the renowned precision of the Master Mage is seen even in his writings, a kind of painstakingly planned domino effect worked out across the centuries, intended to bring about certain key events in order to ensure or prevent certain things in the present day, part of the great clockwork mechanism of destiny.

Adrian Eldrich has the first and third of the Locarno Diaries and copies of the second and fourth, the originals of which are owned by private collectors. The fifth and sixth volumes are missing and would be of tremendous value to anyone who finds them.

Manual of the Modrossus
This legendary tome of arcane lore is the most powerful collection of spells and rituals for good ever known. Its origins are shrouded in antiquity, but it has passed through the hands of most (if not all) of Earth’s Master Mages over the millennia.

The Manual is a heavy book of ancient vellum pages covered with illuminated script in a variety of languages, many of them completely unknown to modern scholars. It is bound in deep blue leather, said to be dragon-hide, with brass cover-caps, a locking clasp, and the sign of the Modrossus—a circle inside a triangle—on the cover in brass. In spite of its apparent age, the Manual is actually far older and virtually indestructible by mortal means. Among its unusual properties is the fact that the last page of the book is always blank; there always appears to be space to write new text, and Master Mages have added to the Manual over the years.

The Manual was lost for a time in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, claimed by the Cult of Kar’Kradas after the untimely death of Master Mage Violet Pennyworth. Adrian Eldrich later reclaimed it from the Cult’s vile clutches, and it now resides in a warded vault in his sanctum in Freedom City.