TRAIL OF CTHULHU Rough Magicks Credits Publisher: Simon Rogers Written by: Kenneth Hite Art. Art Direction and Layout: Jérôme Huguenin Additional Art Direction: Kenneth Hite GUMSHOE consultation: Robin D Laws Special Thanks to: Graham Walmsley 2 TRAIL OF CTHULHU Contents Contents 2 Mummy 15 Disquiet Animals 26 Credits 3 Rat-Thing 15 Immortality 26 Sand-Dweller 16 Time Travel 27 Introduction 4 Serpent-Folk 16 Which Magic? 5 Servitor of the Idiosyncratic Magic Outer Gods 16 Expanded 28 Shan 16 The Rules 28 The Magic Ability 7 Son of Yog-Sothoth 16 Starters 29 New General Ability - Magic 7 Space-Eater 16 Idiosyncratic Investigation 30 The Carter Option: In the Star Vampire 16 Blood 7 Tcho-Tcho 16 Acquiring the Magic Ability 7 Vampire 16 Magick In Theory And Magic From Tomes 8 Xothian 16 Lovecraft 33 Magic Potential For Non-Mythos Magic 16 Lovecraftian Magics 35 Mythos Tomes 8 A Supersensible World 35 Metaphysical Unity 35 Magic From Titans 8 Cast A Deadly Spell 17 The Perry Court Exception: Platonic Illusion 35 New Spells 17 Primordial Lore 35 Places of Power 9 Call/Dismiss Azathoth Draw Upon Place of Power Randolph Carter Works (Ritual) 17 Magic 36 (Incantation) 9 Call/Dismiss Mordiggian Magic From Teachers 9 Will and Mental Power 36 (Ritual) 17 Powerful Formulae 36 Magic From Territory 10 Call/Dismiss Using the Magic Ability 10 Mathematics and Shub-Niggurath (Ritual) 17 Geometry 36 Examples of Spellcasting Contact Hounds With Magic 12 of Tindalos (Incantation) 19 Optional: Magic Contact Sand-Dwellers Character Sheet 37 For Non-Magicians 13 (Incantation) 19 Refreshing the Contact Tawil at-’Umr Magic Ability 13 (Incantation) 19 Conversion Notes 14 Create Binding Sigil Magic and Monsters 14 (Incantation) 19 Byakhee 14 Create Hypertime Gate Dark Young of (Incantation) 19 Shub-Niggurath 14 Dominate (Incantation) 19 Deep One 14 Ensorcel Item (Incantation)19 Dimensional Shambler 14 Runic Target (Incantation) 20 Elder Thing 14 Steal Life (Incantation) 20 Flying Polyp 14 Names To Conjure With 21 Formless Spawn Variations on Old Spells 22 of Tsathoggua 14 Call Hastur 22 Ghoul 14 Call Yog-Sothoth 22 Gnoph-Keh 14 Contact Cthulhu 22 Great Race of Yith 14 Which Sign Is the Eldest? 23 Hound of Tindalos 14 Contact Nyarlathotep 24 Hunting Horror 14 The Spoor of Magic 25 K’n Yani 15 What Full-Blown Lemurian 15 Magi Can Do 26 Lloigor 15 Command the Physical Mi-Go 15 World 26 3 TRAIL OF CTHULHU Introduction “Of what he had done the doctor would never speak. To Mr. Ward he said, ‘I can answer no questions, but I will say that there are different kinds of magic.’” – The Case of Charles Dexter Ward This supplement examines Mythos magic, presenting everything from a theoretical summa of Lovecraftian lore to horrifying new spells and handy lists of magical names to drop and more contradictory variations to bedevil the foolish minds of Investigators who prize consistency. It also presents an optional new ability – the Magic ability – for those Keepers who (perhaps reasonably) wish to further differentiate Stability from magical puissance. Perhaps most significantly, Rough Magicks introduces explicit magic use for the aliens and creatures of the Mythos. This element is nigh omnipresent in the later Mythos and in the works of Robert E. Howard and his epigones, if mostly implied rather than stated outright (with the exception of the Whateley boys, who are after all half-human) in Lovecraft’s tales. The optional rules – especially for the Magic ability – allow you to further tune your Trail of Cthulhu game as you see fit, but the Keeper may, of course, staunchly reject such temptations and ignore them if they do not fit her sense of the game. 4 TRAIL OF CTHULHU Which Magic ? “These revelations came with a godlike manipulates the literary laws of magic involves establishing such a solemnity which left Carter unable to for the effect he wants. The result is wormhole to translate it from one doubt. Even though they lay almost a nest of possibilities that the Keeper place to another. beyond his comprehension, he felt that can select from as she wishes for her they must be true in the light of that game, just as with the variant and 2QO\WKRVHZKRKDYHVXFFHVVIXOO\ final cosmic reality which belies all contradictory views of the gods and Dreamed can do magic – but this local perspectives and narrow partial titans explored in the Trail of Cthulhu includes those who Cthulhu has views; and he was familiar enough corebook. touched or Awakened in his own with profound speculations to be free slumbers. from the bondage of local and partial Like that section, this discussion is conceptions.” deliberately compiled from as many 0DJLFLVVLPSO\DQRWKHUQDPHIRU divergent notions of Mythos magic as psionics. Summoning monsters – “Through the Gates of the possible. Some of them are inferred is a matter of sending the correct Silver Key” from one or another Lovecraft story, telepathic message, Shrivelling others from lesser Mythos authors or is pyrokinesis, and the Elder What is magic? What are the eldritch commentators, some come from real- Sign is a powerful post-hypnotic secrets of blasphemous lore to which world magical practitioners’ theories, compulsion implanted on Lovecraft’s narrators and sorcerers and some just sounded cool to me. Cthulhu billions of years ago and drop darksome hints? While HPL involuntarily transmitted to his could get away with allusions and Unlike that section, some of these followers telepathically. Anything mystifaction, both Keepers and players theories have rules implications: with a brain can train itself in can benefit from just a little grain of if magic is only possible with the psionic disciplines, though some definition. Whether you’re a player intervention of Yog-Sothoth, then species (and some specific beings) taking the role of a reluctant adept, or would-be wizardly Investigators need have far more potential than a Keeper putting herself in the mindset to hunt up the Contact Tawil at-’Umr others. of a twisted immortal wizard, it helps spell on p. 19 tout suite. But that said, to know just what the Lovecraftian mad magi and deluded Investigators :KHQWKH(OGHU7KLQJVGRPLQDWHG magus thinks is actually going on alike can believe some, none, or all of the globe, all their technology behind all the sonorous chants, the following – and somewhere in the was fundamentally biological. prehuman runes, and coruscations of countless spheres, they might all be The crinoids controlled not just unearthly ultraviolet. true. the shoggoths, but their stone buildings, their metal tools, Defining even real-world magic has 0DJLFLVDK\SHUVFLHQWLILF their weapons and prisons and baffled not just magicians and occultists, discipline of visualizing and experimental power plants but anthropologists, theologians, and manipulating trans-dimensional and everything with a vastly historians for centuries. Attempting to energy fields. Acoustic signals complex set of network and fully define Lovecraftian magic would (words of power) and geometric circuit protocols embedded in seem to be a simpler task. Indeed, we matrices (sigils and gestures) the very genes of their servants. make just such an attempt later on in act as control systems, which The Elder Things maintained the this book (see “Magick in Theory and have transcended mere material control codes and distributed Lovecraft,” p. 00). But really, we’re all technology. The energies bleed switching relays for the system better off not knowing. between universes through in a specially designed plankton pinpoint wormholes, often fog stored in the oceans. These Just as Lovecraft artfully contradicts dependent on specific patterns relays transmitted signals and himself on the nature and history of of stellar and cosmic radiation. information using quantum dipole Cthulhu or the Old Ones, so too he “Summoning a monster” merely connections between certain 5 TRAIL OF CTHULHU Rough Magicks molecules. When the shoggoths technologically, and it is merely but at a higher (or lower) energy rebelled, the system crashed hard. tangent to the weak gods of Earth. state, often wielding great local Pieces of it rewrote themselves, It relies on signifiers, secrecy, and power, but only perceptibly in gained partial sentience, went rotes, and is more connected to short bursts. berserk, and programmed perception than it is to mentation. themselves to nest and reproduce. Hence, beings that can “see” 7KHDERYHLVWUXHRQO\HYHU\ Some of them evolved into into more dimensions are more spirit is an avatar of Nyarlathotep. mammals, and then into humans. naturally gifted magi. The magus’ Hence, only those who have Magic, on Earth anyway, consists will is what focuses his perception, communed (knowingly or of “tapping into” the surviving and brings about effects. unknowingly) with Nyarlathotep shoggoth “circuit diagram,” which can work magic. Or their is in almost all terrene matter, not 0DJLFLVSHUFHSWXDOJUDYLW\ descendants – a fine option for least in DNA, crystals and igneous The more important the entity, Investigators with In the Blood as rocks, and metal. the more it warps reality in its their Drive. vicinity. Said vicinity includes 7KHDERYHVFHQDULRLVRQO\RQHRI where the entity is looking – even 1RHYHU\VSLULWLVDIDFHWRI the times that a similar disaster human physicists are beginning Yog-Sothoth. Hence, to work has happened. The first and worst to understand that observation with more than local spirits, the was the crash of the Azathoth is action is location – where magus must contact the Opener entity, which dropped whole it’s been, and where it’s being of the Way to get permission universes into a mere three or four asked to look. Hence, magical (Clearance? Code words?) to dimensions and left barely sentient spells invoke powerful entities communicate information across subroutines mindlessly throwing to boomerang off their “gravity dimensional boundaries. off leaked power and short-circuits well” and create the potential across billions of galaxies.