DRU
Druidic
The Living Root
Spells drawn from nature: growth, decay, animal instinct, and the slow patience of old wood and turning seasons.
Magic in Altarmn is not one substance but six disciplines, each with its own grammar and its own cost. A seeker is born into affinity with some schools and must earn the rest through study and repetition.
Spells drawn from nature: growth, decay, animal instinct, and the slow patience of old wood and turning seasons.
The school of the dead and the dying. Necromancy unmakes the boundary between living creature and obedient corpse.
Magic of perception and misdirection. Illusion alters what enemies believe they see, hear, and fear — at reduced cost in rooms attuned to its rune.
Fire, ice, and acid shaped into force. Elemental spells deal damage in a form the target may or may not be able to resist.
Restoration, purification, and the defence of the body. Clerical magic cures afflictions, restores resources, and wards the faithful against dark harm.
Direct channeling of raw magical force. Invocation draws deeply from mana and delivers results without subtlety.
Spells begin as scrolls — physical objects that carry the spell's intention in written form. Any character with sufficient Knowledge can read a scroll and release its effect immediately, paying the mana cost and discarding the scroll in the process.
Permanently learning a spell is a different matter. Only characters whose spirit is tuned primarily to mana — those whose inner reservoir runs deeper than their body's endurance — can absorb a scroll's teaching. The chance is modest at low levels and grows with experience. A high Knowledge score doubles the learning rate. Once mastered, the spell remains forever: it becomes a learned spell that can be cast from memory without consuming any object.
Characters begin with one or two spells granted at creation, drawn from their school affinities. Pure spellcasters receive their first grant as an offensive spell if they have no other known spells.
Every attempt to cast a learned spell is tested. The base chance is drawn from the sum of Will, Knowledge, and Psyche multiplied into a percentage — a seeker who is mentally sharp, widely read, and deeply attuned to their inner spirit is simply more likely to succeed. To this base, the caster adds whatever proficiency they have earned in the relevant school.
Mana is spent at the moment of the attempt, before the dice fall. On failure, the spell does not fire. However, a caster whose Psyche is well developed recovers the spent mana when they fail — the mind is skilled enough to reclaim what it could not direct. A caster whose Psyche is critically underdeveloped loses the mana regardless and gains no effect.
A character with almost no Psyche cannot cast learned spells at all. The spirit is simply too weak to hold the intention together.
Not every magical act is cast from the hand. Some spellcraft is anchored to a place and answers a circumstance instead: rest, sleep, waiting, or the presence of a prepared object. Rituals are this quieter branch of magic. They do not ask for a normal casting action; they change what the room can do when the right moment arrives.
A ritual object is a magical fixture in the current location. It is not a memorized spell and does not resolve like a scroll. Its power comes from being present where the player takes the matching action.
A Dream Catcher watches over sleep. When the player rests in a room where one is present, there is a small chance the rest draws a dream into the room instead of passing quietly.
The ritual can only manifest a dream if the room has an open side space. A crowded chamber may still hold the Dream Catcher, but the dream has nowhere to take shape.
The dream may arrive as a Beautiful Dream, Pleasant Dream, Unpleasant Dream, or Nightmare. Treat the result as a new encounter in the room: a magical consequence of sleep, not a direct spell cast by the player.
Familiars are magical companions rather than ordinary recruits. They can travel with the player and bring their own body, instincts, and combat profile into the party. The clearest example is Canidae, a summoned hound-shape from another plane.
A familiar is a companion presence with a name, a form, and its own statistics - not a piece of equipment counting down toward expiry. Once it joins the party, it travels with the player as a follower rather than remaining as a room object.
Familiars use the companion rules. They can be spoken to from the companion view, told to wait, or dismissed back into the current location. While travelling, they remain part of the player's active company instead of occupying a normal inventory slot.
A familiar may resemble an animal, but it should be treated as magical. Canidae looks like a dog because that is the shape the summoning chose; its loyalty and battlefield role come from binding, not domestication.
Every successful spell cast advances the caster's proficiency in that school. Proficiency adds to the success roll and enriches the spells themselves, building the qualities that define the school's power.
Spells with timed effects last longer as proficiency grows. A ward that lasts three turns at low proficiency may persist for six at high. This affects buffs, defences, elemental auras, and conditions applied to enemies.
Proficiency adds directly to the elemental damage and elemental defence values of spells that carry them. A fire bolt from a practiced Elemental caster burns hotter than the same bolt from a novice reading off a scroll.
Proficiency does not increase raw strength damage, healing, mana restoration, hunger or thirst relief, range, or the mana cost of the spell. These values are fixed by the spell's design. Only duration, elemental force, elemental defence, dodge, melee, and ranged values scale.
Three spells in the world do not kill — they persuade. Each reaches into a specific kind of creature and attempts to rewrite its allegiance. The method differs by school; the stakes do not.
Works only on animals. The spell whispers to the creature's instincts and attempts to shift it from foe to follower. The caster must be close. Success converts the animal into a friendly presence; failure still delivers a strike. The conversion chance is highest when the caster's school mastery exceeds the creature's danger level, and falls when the creature outmatches the caster's experience.
Works only on the undead. Rather than destroying animated corpses, Necrosis severs the hostile compulsion that drives them and bends what remains toward the caster. It is a school of Necromancy repurposed as command rather than creation. A failed attempt still deals contact damage. The same chance mechanic applies: proficiency against creature level.
Works only on humanoids. The most dangerous conversion: taking a thinking, equipped, experienced creature and redirecting its will entirely. The formula is identical — proficiency measured against the target's threat — but the reward and risk are proportionally greater. A controlled humanoid becomes a sudden ally in the middle of a fight; a failed attempt still bites back.
Conversion starts at a fifty-fifty chance. For every level of proficiency the caster holds above the creature's danger rating, the odds improve by ten points. For every level below, they fall by ten. The result is clamped so it never becomes a certainty or an impossibility.
Whether the conversion succeeds or fails, the spell's damage component is still calculated against the target if they are within range. Conversion and harm are not mutually exclusive — the magic is imprecise enough to wound even as it persuades.
Magic belongs to both sides of the dungeon. Certain creatures carry their own arcane capabilities, and they use them under the same pressure of resource, range, and success chance that governs mortal casters.
An enemy can cast a spell only if it carries that spell, has the mana to pay for it, possesses meaningful spellcraft, and the player is within the spell's range. All four conditions must hold. An enemy that runs dry on mana falls back to physical actions alone.
When an enemy spell lands, the player's Will modifies the damage received. A strong Will reduces incoming magical force by a quarter. A shattered Will - driven to its lowest possible value - amplifies the same force by a quarter. Mental fortitude is a genuine defence against spellcasting enemies, not just fuel for your own casting.
A player who has active Mana Shield — a timed magical effect — can deflect incoming spell damage through that barrier before it reaches health. The shield absorbs until its own capacity is spent.
Runes socketed into a room affect both sides of the spellcasting exchange. A fire rune in the floor amplifies fire spells cast within it — whether the player cast them or the enemy did. The dungeon does not take sides.