#low magic

Else is an endless city of rampant technology, commerce, and vanity. Long since have they traded magick in the world for Cybernetics and Wealth. A city of wonders and horrors in equal measure. Existing just beyond the inter-dimensional haze.

A city where you’re trapped.

Lured or stolen, you’ve been taken by a Lord or Lady of Else… and all you want… is to get back to what you left behind, or the chance to start again.

For me, when I moisturize after showering, I recite Psalm 23 while rubbing in my face moisturizer:

"The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever. Amen."

And then when I moisturize my hands and arms and whatever else, I recite this thing that I pieced together from a few different psalms:

"I am like a tree planted beside streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither; everything i do prospers. Wealth and riches are in my house; my year is crowned with bounty; my carts overflow with abundance. For the Lord will satisfy the hungry soul, and the needy soul he will fill with good things. Amen."

A: Lead an ark fleet of 100,000 refugees fleeing a cataclysmic continential destruction in a low magic fantasy world (you have no magic among you) to an unhinhabited continent on your choice of 100 tamed members of a (capable of realistically being abundant on this world IE not like, the world turtle from discworld or something) fictional non-sentient flying species (with enough supplies and equipment to make it, but only if not too much goes wrong) (with renaissance era technology, though you keep your current knowledge), if you make it and set everything up for the refugees to survive you may choose to return to the real world at the time you left it.

B: Lead a non-FTL capable ark ship (that can move 1 lightyear every 25 years at top speed) of 2.5 million refugees fleeing a cataclysmic planatery biosphere collapse in search of a new world, the ship is equipped with enough stasis pods for everyone and enough supplies to last 10 years out of stasis, as well as enough equipment to start a colony, the ship uses fusion power and you have access to the technology of an approx 150 years in the future civilization, if you make it and set everything up for the refugees to survive you may choose to return to the real world at the time you left it. (poll under keep reading)

Low Magic Environments

PDFs of this and more can be found over on at my Patreon here!

This is a mechanic I thought up about 3 years ago. But it was tied into some worldbuilding, which while cool, was beyond the purview of my work here. But here we are, I stripped the mana wastes (which you may recall was mentioned in my grey dragons a while back) which otherwise includes more random spell regen from the 'internal magic' casters and all spellcasting results in raw magic manifestations :)

The mana wastes are also where mana crystals would come from (from the magic seeping into the environment and crystalising which also causes the rest of the fuckery and a reason to enter the aforementioned low magic area. But once again, too much worldbuilding. But feel free to tell me if you want me to explore that concept here.

And now to plug my stuff. I release homebrews weekly over on my Patreon. Anyone who pledges $1 or more per post don't have to wait a month to see them, and also help fund my being alive habit.

At the moment, they have exclusive access to the following:

Harnessing Magic without Spellcraft

Dragon Domain

Drakes

College of Yipping

I also have three classes over on DriveThrueRPG to check out:

The Rift Binder. A class specialising in summoning monsters and controlling the battlefield.

The Witch Knight. A class that combines swords and sorcery in the most literal way.

There were two main forms of magic in their world. High magic which was used by most witches and wizards. They required incantations and a focus to be used at full strength. Then there was Low Magic which consisted of connections. Wards, runes, and elemental all fell into low magic.

Once there were just as many who could use low magic as there were who could use high magic. A war long forgotten that he didn't know the specifics of had practically wiped it out.

Newt had been a rare exception to the normal of their world. He was born with a black and green band around his wrist. Runes were etched into the band that no amount of research helped him decipher. Even before he knew what it meant he was forced to wear a wristband over it. He was forbidden from telling anyone of its existence.

Hey y’all! So I know my blog is a teeny-tiny little pebble in the pool of all of witchblr out there, but I’ve been having a time for the last...oh...year and a bit...trying to really grasp the deepening pull of witchcraft in my life, but without quite knowing the direction of it, you feel me? I’ve been traversing deeper into my heritage practices (Mediterranean Strega, Celtic witchcraft), which has been good, trying to sort out my feelings around Divinities and spirits (and what the difference is, and if I even believe there really is a difference?), where I stand on low magic vs high magic (decidedly low, folk, and land-based), and what it means to be a witch, for me, and the considerations that come with it (including appropriation, racism, terfs, etc), and how to work witchcraft with serious and exacerbated mental health issues (thanks COVID! Oh, and special thanks to my parents on this one too!).  I think I’ve figured out the next leg in my practice. Deeply and vocally localizing my practice. I do a lot already with my local area, I know it well, but I haven’t documented it, I don’t go posting about it, and it’s not something I really write down, but I think it’s important for me to chronicle it, to think more deeply about it than the sort of inherent knowledge one gets from being a witch in a place, and deeply root, as it were, instead. I also think it’s a great opportunity to put some helpful how-to’s out there, and to build out a more authentic practice for my region for anyone who may be new to paganism and witchcraft. I read a lot of books and listen to a lot of podcasts about witchcraft in North America, and generally, when they say North America, they mean the States. I want to change that. I want to make sure Canada and Canadian witches have a way to localize their practices. So I’m going to do my best to do it, from my little corner of things. I’m going to start a Local Practice series, based on Calgary, Alberta. Some post topics I’m considering:

Animal allies

Seasons and weather

Spirits and land wights/Genus Loci

Places of power

Elements and encountering them

Local folklore, magic, and correspondences

How to build a local practice

Identifying your biome

Plant allies

How to hunt and gather your research and sources

(as a note, I am approaching this from a settler white pagan perspective. I intend to honour the land of the indigenous people of Treaty 7, on which I work and live, and that means identifying and honouring Indigenous local culture, and not appropriating their practices, traditions, or spirits. Indigenous practices are closed.)