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HARMONIC MAGIC


Created by Jane Winter


Cost 15 points

PRE-REQUISITES : Psyche and Endurance of at least Amber-ranked

This is a power from 'The Last Enemy' game possessed, as far as is known, only by Beltaine and her and Tamarind's daughter Chalice. It is an innate ability rather than something that can be learned. It consists of the ability to directly channel and control psychic and magical effects, both her own and that of others, by means of song.


The power has three aspects, which must be brought in order:

VOICE (5 points) - The prerequisite for all her spell-singing abilities. On its own, it allows 'Siren'-style effects, giving her the ability to affect the emotions of others, and to entrance an audience. This is Psyche-based, but only very low-ranked Psyches (those at Human or Chaos level) are likely to be significantly affected. Some types of Chaos demons seem to be particularly susceptible to this power.
As a basis for the other Harmonic Magic abilities, it allows magical effects to be created without the need to hang complex, structured spells.
 
SPELLSINGING (5 points) - The ability to cast spells by 'singing' them. This does not require the hanging of spells in artefacts as a normal sorcerer would, just the singing of the spell parameters or lynchpins as a few brief musical phrases.
The downside is that in practice this is slightly more tiring than using normal Magic, because all of the effort goes into those few seconds of casting, while normal mages get to rest between expending energy on hanging a spell and actually casting it later. Lengthy periods of meditation are required between prolonged bouts of spell casting. These take roughly the same time as hanging and maintaining spells do for other sorcerers. Such meditation is greatly helped by the use of an appropriate psychic focus. In Beltaine's case her Soulstones performed this function.
Longer songs and song cycles can also be used to perform slow magical rituals.
Another limitation of this power is that the spell-songs known to the person with this power are essentially fixed. Although the singer may be able to slightly adapt their songs to different effects, creating new ones is basically impossible, or at least very slow.
 
SONGS OF WEAVING (5 points) - This allows the singer to manipulate and interact with magical energies through song. Magical qualities are sensed as musical sounds, complex tone clusters and harmonies. This ability includes such things as being able to find the harmonic 'key' that would let one through a magical trap or warding without damaging or triggering it, or being able to dispel things by finding and singing a 'counter-harmony', rather than having to construct a Dispel spell. It also allows the singer to alter the effects of other people's spells without necessarily unravelling them, although this is subject to the usual problems of trying to play with magic performed by people who may be more powerful, or have a higher Psyche, than them. The time taken for this would typically be several minutes or more - longer than a Power Word or casting a hung spell, but usually very much faster than casting a normal spell to do the same job from scratch. Manipulating or dispelling ones own magical creations is, however, much faster - one could, for instance, dispel one of ones own spells with just a brief phrase, not much longer than a single lynchpin, equivalent to the Dispel Word of a normal spell.

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