Demonic Casting

So this is completely unrelated to the GLOG and spells as spirits, despite being so very, very similar. It's also unrelated to the recent post on The Seven Deadly Dungeons. That's also incidental. No, I'm actually stealing my ideas from a children's novel series called the Bartimaeus trilogy. It's pretty good. Anyways, here we go.

This turned out pretty well, I think

Magic requires three things. Knowledge of the words, circles, and runes required to summon a demon, and the necessary materials (chalk, salt, incense, etc.), obviously. I mean, people can't just cast spells. But people also can't just read a book, draw some circles, and cast Raise Dead on their first try, because the third thing magic requires is that the caster does not mess anything up. A horribly misdrawn rune or incorrect offering may result in nothing appearing, but the tiniest hole in either of the required circles for summoning and the demon is released into the world. This is a bad thing. Demons do not naturally exist in this world, although there is the occasional rift where bits of there consciousness can leak into a mortal mind. Despite this, there are parts of the world plagued with demonic energy, where everything is twisted and warped by the extradimensional presence. Demons can only be brought into the world by humans, so every barren wasteland or viridian hellscape is a monument to the hubris of some fool who sought to summon something they could not control. Despite these dangers, the world as we know it today would not be able to exist were it not for the foolhardy experiments of magicians.

Back in ancient times, one man had dreams of another world, one without substance, only energy and consciousness. Upon waking from his dream, the man drew a figure that had been burned into his mind by some spirit from this other existence. This was the first magic circle. When the man spoke the name he had been given, a demon ripped it's way into our world.

The demon's name has been lost to history, but it paved the way for the study of magic. As the demon wrought chaos upon the land, it's summoner began the study of demonology. Years passed, and the demon eventually vanished, but the world was forever changed.

What does all this mean? How will the players interact with this lore? Well, first of all, every magic item has a personality. There has to be a demon maintaining that pocket dimension for your Bag of Holding to work. Still, many magic items function without much input from their bound demons, so it's not like everyone has to bargain with their bag every time they want to get something out of it. A scrying disk, or +1 sword, on the other hand, may require some sort of payment, since they require action on the part of the demon.

As for mechanics, obviously any traditional MUs and Clerics are out. This could go two ways, really. Make a Summoner class (which I might make later) or just let people summon if they know the proper ritual for the intended demon. Summoning would require time and a chance of failure proportional to the power of the summoned demon. A simple way of measuring it would be HD-in-10 chance of failure for an untrained person, maybe, and HD-in-20 for the class.

In the end this is mostly just a blog post talking about an interesting idea I had though, so like, make your own mechanics if you want.