Wandering Mage

Ready?

The first method is perhaps the easiest way to get your hands on some animal bones. Unfortunately, there are a slew of ethical and moral issues with sourcing ritualistic or magical items in such a manner. By purchasing bones, you will have erased any possible connection with the spirit of the deceased animal. You will also be using the bones of an animal that has never lived a life of freedom, nor was their death honorable. The animals within the agriculture industry live under severe stress and abuse for the entire duration of their very short lives, receiving minimal veterinary care or compassion. Their bodies are scarred and tainted. If you use such bones in your practice, you will be inviting this negative energy into your life. There is no way to ceremonially cleanse or bless the bones of an animal that has been commodified and exploited in such a way. They are not suitable for divination purposes.

If the only source of bones available to you is through the commercial sale of animal bodies, you can still attempt to use them. However, reparations must be made to the spirits of the deceased animals. You will need to communicate with the bones to figure out the best ways to do this, including saying a prayer for the animal spirit, making offerings and sacrifices, or carrying out specific rituals and ceremonies. A standard method of reparations is to bury the animal's remains in the ground, letting natural processes occur and allowing the animal spirit to settle. After a certain amount of time, depending on the animal spirit, you can exhume the remains and prepare them for a bone-casting set. This method is not guaranteed to work, as many animal spirits would not be willing to engage with the mortal world after their experiences.

And then the later paragraph.

You can also opt to use the bones from a domestic animal such as a chicken. Your local laws will determine which options are available to you. There are some residential areas where you are legally allowed to slaughter livestock animals, but most regions bar this practice.

What in the god damn... Okay. Alright. I have thoughts. [cracks knuckles]

American Dipper Cinclus mexicanus

And this is honestly the opposite of what I wanted to hear. I was looking for how to deal with avoiding UB in Commander. And I had hoped that UB and non-UB would get different formats. Because I don't want to play with UB all the time. I didn't come to MtG to play an IP blender mashup game. I came for the setting, lore, and flavor of the MtG setting I have come to love. I want to play the game that is about those settings, not a game that's about an IP crossover brawl.

I know I'm probably not alone in this, but I feel like we are not being listened to. I hope @wizardsmagic is listening and gives some space to the players like me in the community, but now I'm just sad it is a lot harder to play the game I like and be a player in the community.

I had recently started going to LGSs for MtG events again, but now I'll be reconsidering continuing that, because who is going to have decks without UB when all official formats allow UB stuff? Not to mention the increase in proportion of UB sets proposed. No point bringing a deck to stores or conventions for pick up games because no one will likely have a deck without UB.

-signed, a sad Vorthos

On the one hand, it’s kind of fascinating that they know to do that.

raccoons and possums and foxes and crows all succeed in an urban environment because they’re opportunistic and observant. and almost none of them would have observed us pounce on one of their species and then start eating it, you know? a lot of them would have observed that we scream and chase them out of wherever we don’t want them to be, but other animals are territorial too. but there’s a number of situations where humans feed whoever’s bold enough to take them up on the offer, and we do tend to pull garbage off of other animals as soon as they slow down enough for us to catch. ‘a human got me but nothing bad happened’ is a much more frequent thing than ‘a human got me and tried to eat me’.  

I mean, I guess in fairytales and myths we’ve got our fair share of stories about dangerous people/creatures who might well kill you or otherwise ruin your life, but to whom people nonetheless turn for help in desperate circumstances. So it’s not like the perspective is exactly a foreign thing to our own mindset, really… It’s just that, y’know, we can’t actually go make a deal with the faeries when there’s something we can’t figure out.

Of the stories I’ve read, the food of the Fae, its origins and effects, are often strange and/or obscure.- Just like our food to most animals.

The Fae are strange beings that seem to know weird things that give them power or an edge over us.- Just like us to animals.

The Fae work and live by strange rules also often nonsensical or obscure to us.- Just like us to animals.

The Fae can easily obtain vast amounts of things we consider rare/precious/desireable, and have no problem with dishing it out wantonly for no other reason than amusement.- Just like us to animals.

The Fae sometimes are amused by having us around, but only on their terms and IF it amuses/intrigues them.- Just like us to animals.

-they have wild and unexpected parties where you’d least expect to find them, but if you’re bold enough to entertain them they’ll feed you and caress you and play with you all night.

-time runs strangely in their realm. their homes are summerlands: warm and bright, no matter the season. there is always fruit on their tables. but not everyone who comes in from the cold is let back out again.  

-their games are cruel and complex and unfair, but if you can beat them by their own rules you will access riches beyond imagining.

-sometimes they just fucking fuck with you, the fuckheads.

-they will absolutely steal your children away. when your children return— if they ever do— they will come back strange. they will know things they shouldn’t. they won’t know things that they should. your strange children might survive, might even prosper, might take wives and husbands and have children of their own. but they will always be marked by their time away from your world.

-the price for pissing them off is always death. sometimes just you. sometimes your whole community. 

The time it took to go from Akros to Setessa went by far quicker than Mavren had anticipated. There were only two other Champions that he had to meet with now. The next was the Champion of Karametra, their god of family and of community.

As they traveled, his mind felt a little less burdened by the nervous spiraling that usually consumed it. Having taken the time to mourn what was and could have been had... helped. He felt a bit more at ease. Now he had the wisdom of two gods to keep carrying forward, and he was ready for the third and fourth.

Of course, Menea and her wisdom as acting Champion of Pharika and Aoidi of Kruphix was also with him, but those were lessons and teachings he felt he was more continually trialed with, rather than schooled in brief.

"I do not require anything, thank you," Mavren said, holding up a hand. "I have a more specialized diet." It was a more polite explanation than the alternative in a land where vampirism didn't exist.

I don’t consider myself a heathen in any way, or part of any organized group. Just a ragged-ended pagan.

I do what feels right. What Loki wants, He gets. Same for any god I follow, or any spirit at all. It doesn’t have to be ~elegant~ or classy food, hell, it can be dollar-store frozen pizza. If He wants it, He’ll get it. And if it’s what I have to offer, and He likes it, then why should any mortal give a fuck what kind of offering it is?

I personally don’t give a shit about trying to act like old Nordic peoples. Hell, I don’t consider Loki a solely Nordic god at all. Yes, the Loki persona comes from that tradition, and it is a good and rich one indeed. But my personal UPG sees Loki as an archetype, and the Norse trickster whose name I use for Him is just one of His many faces.

Even if this was pried from the petrochemical clutches of some heinously cheap, clearance section, plastic grocery store container exactly as we see it, like some magical confection creation that disregards the laws of time and decomposition, it may still hold serious value for the OP. I literally moan when I drink pure cherry juice. Like, I make audible noises without realizing it. It only came to my attention because people were laughing. I would gladly offer cherry juice to any deity regardless of their traditional offerings, because I am saying “This juice. Oh man. This JUICE!!!! I want it. I want it sooo damned bad. But You get it all/first/now. Enjoy!” Maybe this dessert is just as valuable to the OP.

My mother actually hoards a particular kind of pop-tart in her office at work, because she can only find it in the US and doesn’t want us to eat them. She keeps them in a locked drawer in her office. If she were to leave one out as an offering, I would consider it a tremendously more meaningful offering from her than if she lit some incense, or left out a plate of apples and spices. Because she doesn’t give a fuck about those things. These pop-tarts require trips to another country, and she guards them with a freaking lock and key! An offering is a sacrifice; if you are taking something that you could just as easily eat yourself, and enjoy to the point of making audible noises, but instead give it over to the gods, you are sacrificing the physical food, but also your emotional satisfaction in order to please Them.

Menea’s garden was out of the mile-wide radius of her sister’s affects on the local plants and wildlife. Unlike the petrified wood and stone of Hythonia’s lair, Menea’s garden was verdant and luscious year-round, no matter where the island of Skathos drifted. It was a large garden, vast and surprisingly watery in some areas. It was not coiled into something unnatural and uniform, but rather grown freely, with things finding their places due to the shared blessings of Pharika, Karametra, and, before the invasion, Nylea. There were a handful of manually-created things scattered around, like the stone work altar and its connected shrines or the beehives that Menea had put together. Its year-round abundance was due in part to her care and respect for the nymphai who lived there.

The first to greet here were the Aurai, the nymphs of cooling breezes, who swept away the humidity of the night and her travel down to the garden. She greeted them, then greeted the Anthousai (the flower nymphai) and the Meliai (the nymphai of honey, bees, and honeydew), then the Dryades (the nymphai of the trees in her garden) and the Leimenides (the nymphai of the water-meadow itself). Though they rarely emerged from their sources, the nymphai were constant presences.

Menea’s first order of business was to don her protective gloves and tend to the beehives in the garden, ensuring that excess honey was removed and that all of the bees were well. Her second order of business was to check each of her trees and alchemical plants for signs of illness, rot, or pests. Finding none, she turned her attention to her working altar. The stone had a small alcove carved into it to protect some of her tools from the rain. She pulled one of the two wooden boxes out and set it atop the altar, then opened it. Inside were some bottles of ink distilled from basilisk blood, some quills made from donated feathers from Aoidi, some rolls of parchment that she acquired during her last visit to Meletis, and a sealed bottle of honey-rich wine.

The first thing she did was finally break the seal of the wine. She poured some into the carved bowl of the shrines, starting with Pharika. “Hear me Mother Pharika, goddess of all that slithers, bane and benefit ever intertwined, god of affliction and recovery, blesser of snakes and lover of secrets. If ever I have poured a libation for you or done acts in your name, grant me your blessing to discover the formula I need to aid Mavren Fein with his bloodthirst.”

The second libation went to Karametra. “Hear me Karametra, god of harvests, goddess of nature and family, caretaker of those who are close. If ever I honored you through the laws of xenia and hospitium, guide me to the plants I need in order to aid Mavren Fein with his bloodthirst.”

The final libation was for Nylea, and this was altered from the direct prayers to the living gods. “I honor Nylea, god of nature and the hunt, creator of beasts and monsters, queen of the deepest wilds. I honor you, Nylea, though you are gone, and I will remember you during my task.”

With the libations poured, Menea reached now for the writing tools, unrolling the parchment across the stone surface of her altar. She broke open a sealed pot of the basilisk blood with her teeth and set the cap aside, dipping her quill into the ink. Basilisk blood held the secrets of many alchemical concoctions and, upon being used, often resulted in those secrets coming to light. Menea closed her eyes and allowed the divine power of Pharika to flow through her veins.

The quill and ink touched the parchment.

Mulberries.

Menea stared down at the first word of the recipe she had divined and felt the urge to facepalm. Why had she not considered black mulberries already? Especially when she of all people knew their story? She scanned the rest of the recipe, then got to work.

The second box under her altar contained her alchemical supplies – her mortar and pestle, her everflame candle, bowls and cups and measuring devices. She retrieved plant matter in something of a frenzy, only just lucid enough to calculate measurements and record results. The black mulberries did most of the heavy lifting in the final recipe, buoyed by honey wine and a few careful measurements of the poisonous rocket larkspur and the far more culinary saffron crocus. The final ingredient was the bloody red seeds of a pomegranate. Together, this made three bottles of...well, Menea hadn’t quite figured out a name for it, but “faux blood” would do the trick.

Cleanup took longer than the actual alchemical work did, but it was still well under the five hour guess she had given Mavren. When she looked up to calculate the time based on the moon’s position, she realized it had been a mere three.

Now came the true test. She made her way back up towards her sister’s cave with the bottles safely wrapped up. This would only be worth it if it truly served to help Mavren.

"hmm, Azure! Truth or dare?"