My playthrough of The Magus: Oracular Edition by momatoes (I'm playing within the frame of 'The Hex', except I ended up using the original epilogues and not the alternative ones)
Focus: 0
Power: 1 (d8, d10, d12)
Control: Perfect
Scars:
What is your name? Who are you in life?
Kazimir Vovk
How does magic survive beyond the veil of modernity? (4, 8, 9)
The ivory towers of academia hoard occult tomes in their decrepit archives; you watch them disappear day after day, sealed where nobody can access them. The birth of the internet was the swan song for others like you; today you try to trace their steps, looking for clues in forgotten newsgroups and old websites left to rot. Feeling and sensation still shine with arcane power; you see their auras light up the crowd like a whirlwind of neon lights.
Whether or not it took you by surprise, your powers manifested one day. Where did it come from? (6)
You do not know.
You realize you can do so much more. Where does this desire stem from? (3)
You need to prove yourself. You need to build a legacy, or else be forgotten forever. And this is the only way within your grasp.
You find yourself friendless and solitary as the moment. Why? (6)
You require a skilled mentor, and no one in your hometown can take on this role.
(0) Intro
I am Kazimir Vovk. Two weeks ago, with no discernable trigger, my eyes were opened to the true nature of reality. I write this record for myself and myself alone—I have seen the glimmer of the ancient among the modern, and fear that this insight will vanish as unceremoniously as it came.
My life before now matters little: stars blotted out by the light of the sun. I have unearthed all I can from the internet, print-outs of newsletters from abandoned listservs stuffed like nesting material into my backpack.
I took little else with me when I left for the city; I spent the seventy-two hour train ride awake and upright, scouring my notes for possible points of contact—someone else who can see the sigils in throngs of strangers, each person a single bee among the hive, a node flipped on or off—interchangeable—
They will be forgotten. I will not.
(1) Bond - Event 1
First, how did you meet? (1) They begged you for help with a pressing issue.
Bond: an insomniac sculptor driven by their magnum opus
Mood: dreading the inevitable
Name: Kalyani
Sprawl: (1) The person you're faced with is just like they would have been in the time of the Magus. How did they stay hidden from the modern world without losing their identity?
What makes them interesting—and how do you feel about them?
Kalyani came to me, an artist in search of patron. What she asked of me wasn't money—I was inhaling the menthol smoke of my last twenty dollars when she approached. She could sense we were both consumed by a terrible passion, and took me to see hers.
I almost didn't follow her. I was, after all, in search of mentor myself. But she stood even closer to the ancient magic than I did, an anachronism with slip-crusted hands.
Her work sleeps on a bed of tarps, in the dilapidated warehouse she's taken as a studio. When the piece is finish, it will surely kill her—or tuck her inside its cavernous clay chest, preserving her even more perfectly than whatever magic has landed her here, as she is now: Pygmalion of the rust belt.
Before I left, she took my phone and typed in her number. If I discover any magic that may help (or hasten) her work, I know where to find her.
d6, d4 (3, 3) = 0 (move to the next prompt)
(2) Spell - Event 2
Name: Life
You cast a new spell for the first time, excited to test your skill. What could go wrong?
Difficulty: 6
d8, d10, d12 (4, 3, 3) = failure (sacrifice a bond)
Vertigo: (5) The feeling inside you has no place in reality. What virtual world do you seek out to express it?
Kalyani thought she'd have more time—she'd already had a thousand years in suspended animation, a thousand years of honing artistic perfection. I saw the spell written out among the crowds, from the window of my motel room; one perfect word in the mother tongue of all languages.
In English, it said Life. I called her. She answered.
In the warehouse my hands sunk elbow deep into the flesh of her creation, the revealed word written on the back of a gas-station receipt, rolled into a slim cylinder.
The creation spasms as it's dragged into realm of the living—it flings me across the warehouse. My glasses lay shattered several feet away, and I see what happens to Kalyani through the blurred veil of myopia.
Whether she is dead or alive, she's no longer here with me. That I know clearly enough.
The living thing rose, too primordial and terrible for the building. I watched as its perfectly formed head slammed against the rafters, shattering—by the time the pieces hit the floor, they were wet clay again. If I am to create life—I must find a more suitable habitat for it.
Without Kalyani, I have little need to leave my room. There is a bundle of code of my laptop—the lines spill out of me as easily as prose, or blood from a head wound—
d6, d4 (1, 2) = 1 (move to the next prompt)
Reflect
How do you spend your time alone? What isolating reality do you face?
You look outside the tower and sense great things to come. What do you see?
The days smear together, ballpoint ink on wet paper. I have yet to seek out the mentor I came here to find—and except for Kalyani, no one else has sought me out. I leave my room only to smoke, though even that is not guaranteed.
There are nights when the lights and lines connecting each passerby are too much, and I perch on the bathroom counter, exhaling into the exhaust fan on the ceiling.
In moments of weakness, I think about my life before—my mother's face is there, in my mind, and yet if I look too closely—lines of computer code run behind her eyes.
(3) Spell - Event 3
Name: Proton
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?
Difficulty: 6
d8, d10, d12 (8, 5, 11) = 2+ Successes (gain 1 focus)
Focus: 1
Vertigo: (2) The feeling inside of you is impossible to conceal, or understand. What do others see when they look at you?
My original fears have been assuaged: my sight only grows stronger. I cannot go out during the day anymore, as the light inside my skull is blinding. At night, things are easier— though I must wear dark sunglasses. Others can see the yellowed, incandescent glow leaking from my pupils.
The most recent word revealed to me is the most fundamental: Proton. When spoken, I'm able to see the fabric of reality, even brush it with the tips of my fingers. At first, I thought I had a seen a truth never before revealed—
But now I think I've seen a truth, deliberately covered up. Someone is reading my emails. Someone is bugging my motel room. I found the device in the bathroom vent. When they planted it, I can't fathom—I haven't been outside in weeks.
I need to leave. In my haste, I left some of my notes behind, but nothing is ever fully lost to me.
If they were true, I'll find the fragments written between the atoms.
d6, d4 (1, 1) = 0 (move to the next prompt)
(4) Bond - Event 4
How did you meet? (2) They sought your opinion or support on a very delicate issue.
Bond: a student seeking to usurp their teacher
Mood: envious of better peers
Name: Juliana
Sprawl: (6) The person you're faced with has betrayed themselves. What compromise must they accept to keep on existing?
What makes them interesting—and how do you feel about them?
Juliana is a middling academic crushed under student loan debt for a degree she will never finish.
She sought me out because she too has discovered the true nature of reality. Where it came to me easily, almost unbidden, she has spent a decade of caffeine pills and pencil lead revealing it from first principles.
Like Kalyani, she would be better suited for a different time and place than this one. Perhaps in the dimly lit passages of history, there would be no peer review, no post-doc advisor. She could speak the truth, and she would be heard and understand on the basis of her theory's elegant simplicity alone—
Or perhaps she would've been a heretic, torn apart by four horses.
She asked me to kill her advisor; I told her I have no magic that can take a life (yet). Instead, I looked over her notes. She is cleverer than her peers think her and not as clever as she thinks herself.
d6, d4 (5, 3) = 2 (move forward two prompts)
Reflect
How do your bonds connect and humanize you? What makes them indispensable, even those who you don’t fully understand? What would it take for you to understand? Can you?
Your actions are making a difference. Whether for better or worse, only the gods know. How has the world noticed?
Though I do not ask her to, Juliana visits me often. I suspect she is after my notes, whatever scrapes of deeper truth I may reveal to her—
Still, her company eases as ache I had not realized dwelled in my gut; that swollen abscess of shame and regret, nurtured in those lonesome months after what happened to Kalyani. After what I did to Kalyani.
Juliana is no stranger to sacrificing others for her own sake, but that is not what we discuss. I believe we could understand each other in that way; I also believe neither of us have in interest in that type of understanding.
What the Proton spell has revealed to me, however—within that, there is fertile ground to found between us.
The spell, though—the spell is having side effects. There is a fraying in the threads of reality. I have stopped posting my thoughts online. I move between motel rooms. I rip the wires of recording devices out of my walls.
People see what is happening, deep fissures in the fundamentals of physics. I am afraid of what will come once more of them realize I am the cause.
(6) Spell - Event 5
Name: Nether Coronation
In the process of mastering this spell, you accidentally summon a wretched, shadow creature—nameless, fearless, it seeks to possess your body. What do you do?
Difficulty: 7
d8, d10, d12 (6, 3, 8) = 1 success
Scar: haunted by the shadow
Vertigo: (3) The feeling inside you affects everyone around you. How do you see it reflected in the crowd, and why do you still feel alone?
I have made contact with the layer of reality below our own—and something else has made contact with me. The creature dragged itself out of my laptop, forced its static hands into my mouth and down my throat, intent to wear my body like a rumpled t-shirt.
Nether Coronation grants control over shadows when cast; not just shadows made by light, but the shadows of our reality, marks on the next layer down.
A three-dimensional creature casts a two-dimensional shadow, which I can now grasp, manipulate, twist like a paper doll. (The danger, of course, is in how easily paper rips.)
A four-dimensional creature casts a three-dimensional shadow—I believe that was the being which tried to crawl inside my skin. My last piece of code compiled and started to run while the process was (quite painfully) half-completed.
I was able to seize the shadow, pull it out like so much fishing line, avoid this mirror fate of Kalyani's—yet the creature still lives. It still haunts me. When I am around others, their shadows twist towards me, writhe and convulse.
I cannot be around others anymore. The danger is too much—
The danger has always been too much, but this time the lesson stuck: broken off fingernails in the lining of my stomach.
d6, d4 (1, 1) = 0 (move to the next prompt)
(7) Bond - REJECTED
Nurture an existing bond: (2) They were there when you needed them. They didn’t need to do it. And yet you are all the better for it.
I have been ignoring Juliana's calls, and then she was outside the door of my current motel room. She was stubborn, her fist so relentless that the knock-off Kinkade painting trembled on the wall.
People were gathered out in the hallway. I can't do this to her, she said. I can't block her out now. We were so close. Something terrible has happened at her advisor's lab. Something worse has happened at the Large Hadron Collider.
Kazimir. Kazimir! Kazimir, open the door, you motherfucker—
I pulled my feet up onto the bed, because I could see her shadow oozing under the door, stretching out tendrils towards me.
After she left (but before I did) I burned any notes that I couldn't take with me.
(move to the next prompt)
(8) Spell - Event 6
Name: Beauty of Despair
(Alternate Complication) A random, existing scar rears its troubling head and causes distress. Same difficulty; unless you succeed with distinction, the scar simply transforms to something different.
Difficulty: 8
d8, d10, d12 (7, 5, 5) = failure (lose a level of control)
Control: Cracked
Scar: haunted by the shadow a wound across the sky
Vertigo: The feeling inside you demands to be expressed. How do you turn it into a tangible mark on the city?
I have discovered a new spell, scrabbling with my fingers between the cracks in reality. Beauty of Despair. I found the words through a tear in reality, a gash into the vacuum, a space between protons—
My desperation is what allows me to cast it. Only when I've stretched myself to breaking will I be able to mend things again. I can knit the wound closed, fresh new skin, free even of clean, pink scar tissue—the world will be made anew. I can see the spell, I can grasp it, I am grasping it when—
The shadow's hand reaches through the hole and grasps me back; we are locked together, hand around wrist, and it pulls itself through the gash. Every choice I've made before now, right or wrong, had been on purpose. This one was instinct. I hold the magic in my hand. I throw water onto an grease fire.
The shadow is gone when I awake on the floor; I know it is not dead. I look outside my window, and a jagged cut stretches from one side of the horizon to other, the dome of the sky split into two wretched halves.
Cars idle in the street as passengers step out to stare, agape. I'm not sure how long I've been looking. Long enough for previous entirety of my life to feel like a passing daydream.
The engines go quiet, one by one, as their batteries die.
d6, d4 (6, 4) = 2 (move forward two prompts)
Sacrifice Someone
The nature of your betrayal: (4) You make a deal with the devil to gain power in exchange for their soul.
Once I have the power to fix things, none of this will matter. Kalyani and Juliana will be swept away, and the world will be born anew. No lingering sins I must atone for: not 'like it never happened' but truly, it will have never happened.
None of this will have ever happened. I can fix everything. Nothing is verboten.
I sent the shadow to claim her. When Juliana knocks on my door, I know it's that creature puppeteering her body—I can see in her eyes she's still in there, an insect pinned behind glass.
We sit on the bed. The creature uses her hands, tilts my head back, brushes my hair away from my face, vomits printer ink into my mouth; fledging bird, not long for the nest.
The thing leaves and takes Juliana's preserved corpse with it.
Power: 2 (d10, d10, d12)
Reflect
If you have no Bonds, something has replaced your pathos. Or buried it deep, beneath the soil of you ambition. How did it happen? Where did your heart go?
Go back to the origins of this world, your three keyphrases on magic. At least one of these have changed, forever. What is it? (Feeling and sensation still shine with arcane power; you see their auras light up the crowd like a whirlwind of neon lights.)
My heart is in a pile of clay in a foreclosed warehouse. My heart is on the cross-country train, too wired and broke to rent a sleeper car. My heart is my mother's face, which I can no longer recall.
The are no longer strings between people, no sigils revealed in the shape of the crowd. The rip in the sky is a doorway to nothing. People tilt their heads back and drown when it rains.
Feelings are pale, smooth river stones: eventually, they all erode into sand.
(10) Bond - Event 7
First, how did you meet? (4) You were lonely and they were there
Bond: the priestess who inherited the shrine
Mood: hope beyond all hope
Name: does it matter?
Portent: The creature you've found only reveals itself to those who know where to look. What mundane thing conceals it?
What makes them interesting—and how do you feel about them?
There was a shrine here once, where now there's a parking lot.
I was there alone—everyone else still alive was inside. The edges of the rip in the sky pulsed. I knelt down, plucked the single flower growing through the cracked asphalt, and she put her hand on my shoulder.
When I look at her, her shadow is still. Her face is serene. She's old, older than anything—waiting here (not for me, not specifically, but I am the one who's come).
I don't have to do what I know I'm going to do.
Sacrifice Someone
The nature of your betrayal: (2) A spell goes awry.
I stand up. She smiles at me, tender-eyed.
With the word Proton, I reach between her ribs. In the soft lining around her heart, I feel the note—I pull it out.
There, written on a scrap of paper, is that first word, in the mother tongue of all mother tongues: Life.
I am writing this not for myself, but for whoever may remember me: I didn't have to do any of this. I could've stopped. It was always my choice.
I just want you to know that I know that.
Power: 3 (d10 d12 d20)
Epilogue
Despite—or perhaps, because of—your yearnings, you must leave.
CHOOSE: ...because there is nothing left
If you achieve power 3, you become keenly aware that you can use your magic to do anything—even undo the past.
The choice is yours.
The choice is mine. None of it ever happened.
I'm sitting on the train—I've forgotten where I'm going.
The wound is gone; there is no scar.