Sorcerer

Starting ability: ✪ Gather Fate OR ✪Gather Light
Key attribute: Spirit, Awareness

Sorcerers practice the “high magic” of physical forces. With precise gestures and careful thoughts, they can manipulate gravity, bend light, and unlock the deepest secrets of matter and energy. Two hands required. Sorcerers need both hands free to work their magic. You can’t use the main Sorcerer abilities or cast spells if you hold anything in either hand, unless an ability or item says otherwise.

Sorcerer-Aligned Lore

When you choose your lore as a starting Sorcerer, at least one must be from this list, and it must be from your origin. For non-Mazrians, this means you’re required to take the lore from your origin. The path to high magic is narrow indeed.

Dark or Light?

You start with one ability: ✪Gather Fate or ✪Gather Light. Each ability serves as the entry point for a discipline of high magic: Dark or Light. These disciplines and their abilities are described in the following sections. If you’re Mazrian and you choose The Hand or Solar Circle as your only aligned lore, you must start with their associated discipline—Dark for The Hand, or Light for Solar Circle. Otherwise, choose which discipline you start with when you start the game. An ability within each discipline allows you to branch out to the other discipline, as long as you have the required lore.⧨ Dark Sorcerers focus magical energy through a theoretical structure they call the Fabric of Fate. This invisible substance pervades all of space and time, and its warp and weft determine the direction that matter falls. ❍ Light Sorcerers focus magical energy through the Eye of Heaven—an all-encompassing, all-seeing, yet invisible physical structure, which some compare to a great jewel of near-infinite complexity, whose countless facets and vertices form regular patterns that mathematically correspond to the countless possible paths of light. The discipline of Light Magic involves the manipulation of the Eye through subtle rotations and translations.

Ask the Guide:

Can I sense the presence of dark or light magic here?
What type of magic powers this Mazrian device?
Why is this island floating in a strange way?

Abilities to Learn

Starting Abilities

✪ Gather Fate

Dark Magic starting ability

Requires two hands. You take hold of the dark fabric that binds time to space. Take -1 awareness or spirit and roll Maneuver with Compel advantage. Gain dark-focus equal to your result. You can then immediately cast a Dark Magic ⧨spell you know as a ➟following action.While you have dark-focus, you can’t regain awareness, you automatically fail to Act First, and you emit a deep, loud wohm- wohm-wohm pulsing sound, which makes it impossible to hide unless you’re in a particularly noisy place. Spells. You start with 4 spells: ⧨Curve, ⧨Dark Grasp, ⧨Fall, and ⧨Rise.

Fate & weight. Many dark magic spells interact with weight. In the Skysea, Weight is measured in imperial talents, with 1 talent roughly equal to 50 pounds or 25 kilograms. The Guide can tell you objects’ weights.

⧨ Curve • 1 dark-focusAs a ↻ reaction, take -1 awareness along with the dark-focus cost of this spell. Roll Maneuver and subtract the result from an incoming Attack composed of solid matter. Halve your result (round down) before subtracting if the attack is fluid in nature, including water, wind, flame, an explosion, or a wraith’s touch. Light Magic attacks are unaffected by this spell.
⧨ Dark Grasp • 1+ dark-focusMake a special Attack to entangle a foe with dark magic. You can target a foe in, above, or below the Fray without penalty; targeting a distant foe inflicts a -2 penalty on your roll, or more if the foe is very far away. If you’re on high, you have Maneuver advantage on this roll. On any hit, inflict -1 grace and spellbind the foe to you. You can immediately cast ⧨Fall, ⧨Rise, or another spell you know that requires a spellbound target as a ➟following action. Spell Die. If you fail, you can spend 1 extra focus to gain a d6 Spell Die, or 2 extra focus to gain a d12. Roll this Spell Die as advantage.Escape. A character can escape your spellbind by using their action to Brace against your grasp. If they beat your strength, your spellbind ends. Your spellbind also ends if your dark-focus is reduced to zero.
⧨ Fall • 1+ dark-focusTarget must be spellbound. Brace against the foe to crush them against solid ground. If you beat their strength:

You inflict fall damage (grace damage equal to their weight).
Until your next turn, the target remains spellbound and rooted in place: they can’t Evade, Outflank, or Move themselves or against a foe, unless they are counterattacking.

If the target is airborne, double the fall damage.Spell Die. If you fail, you can spend dark focus equal to the size of a Spell Die: a minimum of 4 focus (for a d4) and a maximum of 20 focus (for a d20). Roll this Spell Die as advantage.

⧨ Rise • 1+ dark-focusSpend focus equal to your weight, or the weight of a willing character or object, and Maneuver yourself. Gain rise-focus equal to your result. This focus is specific to the target of your spell. The target becomes weightless and drifts on high, hovering there in mid-air until the start of your next turn. A hovering character can’t Evade, Outflank, or Stand Fast, and can only drift awkwardly through the air, as if they’re in free-fall. Duration. You must spend 1 rise-focus on each subsequent turn to maintain the target’s buoyancy. If you don’t, the target drifts harmlessly back down to the ground.

You can’t regain awareness while you have rise-focus.
If your grace drops to zero, you lose all rise-focus.

Rising a foe. You can cast this spell on an unwilling character as a ➟following action after you spellbind them with ⧨Dark Grasp.

Using ⧨Rise. Cast this spell on a friend to set them up for a Jump-Attack (YAAH!). Cast it on a foe to temporarily remove them from the Fray, or set them up to ⧨Fall. Casting it on an object may not be useful in combat—foes likely won’t stand directly under a hovering, loudly-pulsing object that you’ve lifted with this spell!

✪ Gather Light

Light Magic starting ability

Requires two hands. Take -1 awareness or spirit and roll Maneuver with Compel advantage. Gain light-focus equal to your result. You can then immediately cast a ❍spell from the list below as a ➟following action.While you have light-focus, you fail automatically to Act First. If you hold light-focus for more than a few minutes, you begin to suffer a splitting headache that causes your mind to fray, and you begin losing your maximum Awareness, as determined by the Guide. Spells. You start with four spells: ❍Flash, ❍Golden Arrow, ❍Illuminate, and ❍Refract.

❍ Flash • 3 light-focusManeuver to conjure a brief, blinding light. Compare your result to the awareness of all characters in front of you who can see you. If you beat a character’s awareness, inflict -1 grace and -1 awareness. Characters unaffected. Your allies aren’t affected by the flash, assuming that you’ve warned them not to look.A character in front of you who is distracted and focusing their attention elsewhere—such as fighting with one of your allies—might not be affected by the flash, as determined by the Guide.❍ Golden Arrow • 1+ light-focusYou draw back your hand and conjure a shaft of glowing yellow light, then release it at a foe. Spend light-focus equal to ¼ the size of your Spell Die: 1 focus (for a d4), 2 (d8), 3 (d12), or 5 (d20).Make a Ranged Attack (-2 penalty) with your Spell Die instead of your Move die. On a lethal hit, the arrow inflicts -1 grace and -6 life.The spell inflicts no damage of any kind if guarded.

❍ Illuminate • 1 light-focusYou conjure a light source that emanates from your hand or head. It can take the form of a halolike aura, a narrow beam, or a diffuse glow, bright enough to comfortably light a large room. The light lasts for a day and a night or until you dismiss it.❍ Refract • 1 light-focusTake -1 awareness along with the light-focus cost of this spell. Maneuver yourself as a ↻reaction to an incoming Attack, bending light around your body to appear where you’re not. If your result beats the foe’s awareness, they miss.This spell can’t protect you from wide area-of-effect attacks, like explosive blasts or a monster’s breath. Illusory spell. This spell has no effect against characters who don’t depend on sight, or who can see through light-magic illusions with abilities like Second Sight.

Dark Magic Abilities to Learn

You must know ✪Gather Fate to learn the abilities in this section. Some abilities have additional requirements.

✪ Density

Mark of AWARENESS

You intuit how the patterns of the Fabric of Fate correspond to matter. You learn the spell ⧨Condense (see below). You also learn how to sense the density of objects at a distance by sweeping your hands methodically across an arc of space, feeling changes in the “texture” of the Fabric of Fate. This sense reveals:

Invisible creatures or objects
Large, solid objects in the distance—islands, conveyances, or objects—hidden beneath the clouds or in the darkness of night
Interior spaces—tunnels, rooms, vaults—within solid structures like buildings or caverns.

⧨ Condense • 4+ dark-focusTarget must be spellbound. You concentrate dark magic around a specific coordinate in space—perhaps a foe’s head or heart. Spend dark-focus equal to the size of a Spell Die: a minimum of 4 focus (for a d4) and a maximum of 20 (for a d20). Then roll the Spell Die. You inflict grace damage equal to your result. Your spellbind then ends.

✪ Geodesics

Mark of AWARENESS

You learn the following 2 spells.

⧨ Fling • 2+ dark-focusYou levitate a loose object in the Fray and magically accelerate it at a foe. (The foe can be beyond the Fray.) Spend dark-focus equal to twice the object’s Weight and make a Ranged Attack with Maneuver advantage. Damage. On any hit, inflict grace damage equal to the focus you spent. On a lethal hit, you also inflict life damage equal to your core Awareness. Area of Effect. You can fling larger objects at multiple foes close to one another—as many foes as the object’s Weight. Roll the Ranged Attack once for all foes.⧨Curve back. When you cast ⧨Curve in reaction to a solid projectile ranged attack and cause it to miss, you can spend 1 dark-focus to cast this spell with the projectile as a following action—redirecting its trajectory at a foe of your choice. The projectile inflicts 1 grace damage.

⧨ Orbit • 2+ dark-focusWith a circular gesture, you spend your turn causing one or more small objects, such as rocks or daggers, to circle around your body, accelerating to high speed. For each object you pull into your orbit:

Spend 2 dark-focus and take -1 awareness
Gain 1 orbit-focus

You can’t regain awareness while you have orbit-focus. Orbiting Defense. Your orbit-focus serves as an active guard bonus. If you guard an Attack, you can spend orbit-focus 1-for-1 instead of taking grace damage. The object(s) intercepts the attack and is knocked to the ground. (You can’t guard Ranged Attacks with your orbiting objects, however.)Reactive Attack. If a foe makes a non-ranged Attack against you, spend 1 orbit-focus to cast ⧨Fling as a ↻ reaction with one of your orbiting objects, interrupting the foe’s attack. You don’t need to expend the ⧨Fling spell’s dark-focus cost. Resolve the ⧨Fling spell before the triggering attack.

✪ Heart of Darkness

Mark of SPIRIT

This ability grants two benefits:

Gain +3 max Life
When you Stand Fast, add your core Spirit, and you can freely convert defense-focus into dark-focus.

✪ Left Hand of Darkness

Mark of AWARENESS

Requires Ancient Mirror, Scrolls of the Sorcerer, Solar Circle, Time, or Wisdom of Adod. You learn the ✪Gather Light ability (see “Light Magic”).

✪ Loom of Future Past

Mark of AWARENESS

You learn the Time lore and its starting ability, ✪Divination.

✪ Topology

Mark of AWARENESS

You’ve discovered how to fold and even pierce the Fabric of Fate. You learn two spells: ⧨Portal and ⧨Tesseract.

⧨ Portal • 12 dark-focusYou pull the air apart, revealing a darkly shimmering portal that you and others can step through. The portal leads to an identical portal that appears simultaneously at a location you choose within your sight. Both portals last for the duration of the Hero Round—long enough for you and your allies to pass through—and then wink out of existence. The portal’s diameter is as wide as the span of your arms, which limits the size of objects and creatures that can fit through it. Dangerous portals. If you open a portal to a dangerous space—for example, the empty expanse above the bottomless Skysea—an ally can try to Shove a foe through the portal while you hold it open. The ally must make their Shove roll with a -2 penalty. Portals below. If you know ✪Density, you can open a portal to an area you can sense with that ability, even if it’s not within sight.

⧨ Tesseract • 12 dark-focusYou enfold space and time around you and up to 6 characters close to you. You appear inside a cube-shaped room with floor, ceiling, and walls made out of translucent material. You can only see blurred light from outside. You spend about 60 seconds inside the tesseract—plenty of time to catch your breath—after which the glassy walls fade and you reappear in the same place outside. To outside observers, only a second passes while you’re in the tesseract, during which they might notice your form(s) blurring and shifting unfathomably. If you were in battle when you entered the tesseract, you and your allies must Act First as you exit it to act in the first round.

✪ Warp & Weft

Mark of SPIRIT

Requires The Hand, Scrolls of the Sorcerer, or Time. When you Gather Fate, add your core Spirit to your result. You can cast ⧨Dark Grasp, ⧨Fall, or ⧨Rise simultaneously against a number of targets up to your core Spirit. Multiply the spell’s focus cost by the number of targets. Make one roll for each action and apply it to all targets.

✪ Untether

Mark of GRACE

Reduce your current and max Awareness by:

1, if your weight is 4 or less
2, if your weight is 5–8
3, if your weight is 9–12
4, if your weight is 13 or more.

You detach yourself from the Skysea’s gravity completely and suspend yourself in freefall. Your weight functionally becomes zero. While Untethered, you grasp the Fabric of Fate with subtle gestures to pull yourself in any direction, moving nimbly through the air like a spider along an invisible web. You can balance in mid-air as if your feet were touching the ground, and you don’t suffer fall damage. In battle and other time-sensitive situations, you can take -1 grace to Untether yourself at the beginning of your turn before taking your action. You can re-tether yourself to the Skysea’s gravity in the same way. Regain the max (but not current) Awareness you spent to Untether yourself.

Light Magic Abilities to Learn

You must know ✪Gather Light to learn the abilities in this section. Some abilities have additional requirements.

✪ Gray Magic

Mark of AWARENESS

Requires Scrolls of the Sorcerer OR The Stone. You’ve delved into the obscure branch of Light Magic that connects light to magnetism. You learn the spells ❍Attract and ❍Repel.Items affected by gray magic include anything with bronze or starmetal components: all swords, maces, and heavy shields, as well as typical speartips and arrowheads used by Kananites and Mazrians or bought with imperial credit. Spears and arrows from other origins, as well as shoddy or otherwise makeshift weapons, may not have metal components, at the Guide’s discretion.

❍ Attract • 1+ light-focusBrace against a foe in the Fray who wields a metal armament or wears metal armor. If you beat their strength:

You disarm them (if they hold a metal armament), or
You Shove them in a direction of your choice (if they wear metal armor), inflicting -2 grace.

Spell Die. If you fail, you can spend 1 extra focus to gain a d6 Spell Die, or 2 extra focus to gain a d12. Roll this Spell Die as advantage.

❍ Repel • 1 light-focusTake -1 awareness along with the light-focus cost of this spell. Roll Maneuver with Brace advantage as a ↻reaction and subtract the result from an incoming Attack with a weapon or projectile with a pointy end made of metal.

✪ Heart of Light

Mark of SPIRIT

This ability grants two benefits:

Gain +3 max Life
Gain +1 overflow Awareness when you rest.

✪ Light of the Blue Moon

Mark of AWARENESS

You’ve mastered the magic of light at the blue end of the spectrum. You learn the spell ❍Blue Spear (see below). You can also narrow the aperture of the Eye of Heaven, enabling you to see a form of invisible light that passes through many solid objects.

Denser objects, like bone and stone, appear opaque.
Less dense objects, like skin and plaster, appear ghostly and transparent.
You can see through thin plaster or wooden walls of houses and skyships.

This magic overlays your normal sight, but can’t resolve distant details.❍ Blue Spear • 4+ light-focusA beam of blue-white light streaks toward a foe and terminates in a blast.

Spend between 4 and 20 light-focus.
This focus determines the size of the Spell Die you roll for both the beam and blast attacks (round down to nearest polyhedral)

Beam. Make a Ranged Attack (-2 penalty) with your Spell Die instead of your Move die. On a lethal hit, the beam inflicts –8 life. On any hit with the beam, the blast automatically hits the target too. Blast. As a ➟following action, make a special Attack with your Spell Die that targets everyone close to the point where the beam terminates— including the beam’s original target if you missed them. On a hit, the blast inflicts –6 grace.If a foe blocks the beam with a shield, the shield loses 6 durability.Missing wide. If your beam misses a target above you, the beam shoots straight up past them and out into the Sea of Heaven, without a following blast. The Guide has final say if and where the blast occurs.

✪ Light of the Red Moon

Mark of AWARENESS

✪ Light of the Red Moon • Mark of AWARENESSYou’ve mastered the magic of light at the red end of the spectrum. You learn the spell ❍Red Sword (see below). You can also widen the aperture of the Eye of Heaven, enabling you to see heat. This reveals:

Warm-blooded people or creatures hiding in darkness or foliage
Distant warm objects, like hot-air balloons, beneath the clouds or in the night sky
Remnant heat signatures from entities who were recently active in an area (handprints on walls, bare footprints on floors)

This magic overlays your normal sight, but can’t penetrate solid objects like walls. Catching sight of subtle heat signatures requires a few minutes of uninterrupted concentration.❍ Red Sword • 4+ light-focusSpend focus equal to the size of a Spell Die: 4 for a d4, up to 20 for a d20. You gather light into a wide plane of glowing heat, then sweep it across the Fray. Make a special Attack, rolling your Spell Die as advantage, against all characters in front of you in the Fray who aren't behind cover. This spell can only be blocked by armor and shields, and can’t be countered. Damage: –2 grace, or –6 grace on a lethal hit. Burn. If anyone hit by this attack carries wooden armaments, roll the Spell Die again to ignite and break them. The foe suffers an extra –2 grace for each armament burned. Angles. You can cast this spell at foes above the Fray or below you, as long as they could reasonably intersect a flat plane that emanates from your hands.

✪ Light of the Silver Moon

Mark of AWARENESS

You’ve learned to redirect light, creating illusions. You learn the spells ❍Appear and ❍Vanish (see below). You can also twist the orientation of the Eye of Heaven, enabling you to see polarized light. This reveals illusory effects within your field of vision.

❍ Appear • 1+ light-focusYou weave an illusory object of bent light into being. As part of casting this spell, Deceive with Compel advantage to determine how convincing the object is to onlookers. The object. You must have seen the object before. The focus cost is twice the object’s Weight in imperial talents (1 talent roughly equals 50 pounds or 25 kilograms)—so a very small object costs 1 focus, while a hot-air balloon costs 20 focus. The Guide tells you an object’s Weight. The illusion. The object can appear anywhere you can see, and you can make it move in simple rotations or translations. You must expend 1 focus at the start of each subsequent turn (no action required) to maintain the illusion. But the illusion dispels instantly if you take any other action besides Gather Light or Deceive, or if someone touches it.Living illusion. If you take -1 spirit along with the spell’s focus cost, you can create an illusory person or creature you’ve seen before. Making a typical person appear, for example, would cost 6 focus (2 × 3 Weight), and -1 spirit. The illusion can’t talk, but can move and gesture in a lifelike way.

❍ Vanish • 4+ light-focusYou weave light into a shimmering robe, then drape it over yourself, bending light around you. As part of casting this spell, take the Evade action.Then spend light-focus equal to the size of a Spell Die (round down to the nearest die size). Roll your Spell die and add it to your Evade result. You don’t need cover to hide when you Evade with this spell. However, this spell doesn’t help you hide from characters who can see through illusions or rely on senses other than sight. As with nonmagical hiding, the effect ends after you take any action.

✪ Light of the Sun

Mark of AWARENESS

You learn the Solar Circle lore and its starting ability, ✪Blessing of the Aureole.

✪ The Light Within

Mark of AWARENESS

Requires ✪Gray Magic. You learn to perceive the Eye of Heaven’s influence inside the confines of matter. You learn the spell ❍Take Heart (see below). You can also extend your hands in front of your eyes, peering deep through the Eye of Heaven. For a brief instant, you can see the surface of an object magnified to an extreme. This spell reveals the molecular structure of materials and living cells. This magic appears to have little practical purpose, but perhaps it will help you uncover some hidden knowledge. ❍ Take Heart • 5 light-focusAs part of casting this spell, make a Ranged Attack against a foe in the Fray with you. This spell inflicts no damage. Instead, you gain heart-focus equal to your result, minus 2 (from the ranged penalty), minus the foe’s [grace + guard against ranged attacks].If this subtraction results in a negative number, reduce any focus you’ve accumulated so far—the attempt can reverse progress you’ve made—though you can’t end up with less than 0 heart-focus overall. If you take any action other than casting this spell or Gathering Light, you lose all the heart-focus you’ve accumulated.When you accumulate heart-focus equal to the foe’s Weight, the foe dies instantly as their still-beating heart bursts out of their chest and flies toward your outstretched hand, like starmetal to a loadstone. Limitations. This spell doesn’t work if the foe wears metal body armor. Nor does it work on heartless creatures like Shinarians, wraiths, and the spawn of Yom the Cnidarian.Lore Synergy. If you know Medicine lore, you have Maneuver advantage when you cast this spell against Kananites, Mazrians, and Zordin. If you know the Monsters lore, you have Maneuver advantage when you cast this spell against spawn of Yom that have hearts.

✪ Mind of Metal

Mark of AWARENESS

✪ Mind of Metal • Mark of AWARENESSRequires ✪Gray Magic. You learn ❍Awaken Blade and ❍Awaken Shield. You can cast these spells before battle breaks out!

❍ Awaken Blade • 4 or 6 light-focusWith sharp, commanding gestures, take -1 spirit and -1 awareness (or more) and Compel a metal blade to awaken. You have Maneuver advantage on this roll. Gain blade-focus equal to your result as the blade rises menacingly.

Spend 4 light-focus for a dagger, or 6 for a straightsword or sicklesword.
The blade gains the awareness you spent to cast this spell.

You can’t regain awareness while you have blade-focus. Until you spend blade-focus, the blade hovers close to you and follows you around. Spend 1 blade-focus to mentally command the blade to take an action. You can do this immediately after casting the spell and on any subsequent turn. The blade acts as a separate character. It can move freely through the air in any direction, Attack foes, and Outflank (for -1 awareness), but can’t take any other actions. It doesn’t suffer life damage and has no other statistics besides those listed on the table, plus the Awareness you gift it. Duration. When you run out of blade-focus, the blade falls and becomes inert and the spell ends. You also lose all blade-focus if the blade’s grace or awareness fall to zero. You can only have one awakened blade at a time. If you cast this spell on an already-awakened blade to extend your control, you only need to spend light-focus cost (though you can grant it more of your awareness). Lore Synergy. If you know The Dagger or The Sword, the awakened blade can use abilities from the lore, provided it has awareness to spend.

❍ Awaken Shield • 12 light-focusWith strong, steady gestures, take-1 spirit and -1 awareness and Compel a heavy metal shield to awaken. You have Maneuver advantage on this roll. Gain shield-focus equal to your result. While you have shield-focus, you can’t regain awareness, and:

The shield hovers close to you and follows you around.
You benefit from the shield’s +3 active guard bonus
If you would suffer grace damage from an Attack or Brace, you can reduce your shield-focus by an equal amount instead.

You can only have one awakened shield at a time. If you lose all your shield-focus, the shield falls to the ground, inert, and you regain +1 max Awareness. If you cast this spell on an already-awakened shield to extend your control, you only need to spend its light-focus cost.

✪ Right Hand of Light

Mark of AWARENESS

Requires Ancient Mirror, Time, The Hand, Scrolls of the Sorcerer, or Wisdom of Adod. You learn the ✪Gather Fate ability (see “Dark Magic”).

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