The Nine and Thirty Kingdoms: Invocation as Magical Power Source

Continuing to describe the magical power sources… The next up is Invocation, which very similar to Words of Power. Both use speech and/or symbols to call up and direct magical power. The difference is that Words of Power are impersonal and indifferent, while the gods have personalities and plans. Magicians typically aren’t beholden to the deities they invoke. A magician in a sense is just using invocation of deities as a means to an end, but has no faith or devotion to those invoked names. They still run the risk of attracting undue attention.

Worship is a more elaborate form of invocation. Like chanting Words of Power, invoking deities through extended prayer and ceremony takes longer. Take the max spell level of all spells being prepared as the minimum number of hours needed for prep. Roll 1d6: on 5+, the magician finishes in the minimum amount of time. Otherwise, add 1 to the result rolled and multiply by the max spell level to get the number of hours needed for the ceremony. Unlike chanting, the delay is caused by the whims of the deities involved, not the difficulty of reciting the prayers. If a magician has offended one or more of the deities invoked, add 1d6 for each. Rather than tracking each magician’s relationship with every deity in the world, assume that any affront to a god of fire offends all gods of fire and record when the gods of fire are angry at the magician.

The most extreme form of invocation includes sacrifice. For deities, this means offerings on an altar dedicated to that deity. The cost of an altar equals the cost of a spell book, which means each altar is rated for a max spell level and must be upgraded to be used for higher-level spells. Each spell prep session requires an offering worth 1/20th the value of the altar (so, a 4th level altar costs 16,000 coins and requires 800 coins worth of offerings each time it is used.)

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