Drow Magic. Sorcery Of Endless Night.pdf - RoseRed

BLACK CEREMONIES
Black
Ceremonies
Even before they were cast down for their
heresies against the elven gods, the elves who
would become the drow were infamous for
their wild reveries, orgies of blood and lust dedicated
to celebration and worship of the primal forces of
nature. As centuries passed and the worship of the Dark
Mother of Spiders became more open and widespread,
these reveries took on a more overtly religious tone.
Guided by priestesses, the participants ecstatically
worshiped their patron goddess, their writhing dances,
bloodletting and feasts quickening the pulse of the earth
and awakening dark, divine energies. The priestesses
and priest mages of the church of the Dark Mother
quickly learned to tap these energies for their own uses,
to direct them to both power their spells and to work
great magics which even the most powerful arcane
and divine spells could not accomplish. Eventually
the reveries became nothing more than elaborately
structured rituals; perfected and codified in the Tome
of Magnificent Ecstasies, they were used to ensure the
growth of crops, to punish the enemies of the drow and
to power great engines of war and death in the War of
Elven Tears. It was during the last waning years of
that cataclysmic war that the rituals earned the name
the black ceremonies.
The drow have not been lax during the long millennia
of their entombment in the Dark Beneath, nor have
they allowed knowledge of the Tome of Magnificent
Ecstasies to slip into history. They have created new
black ceremonies and refined the old, perfecting
ceremonial magic to a degree which no other race
can match. The performance of black ceremonies has
become an integral part of day to day life and it is by
their power alone that drow civilisation is able to keep
its ravening hordes of enemies from tearing it apart in
an orgy of blood and fire.
Ceremonial Magic?
Ceremonial magic is a relatively new concept in d20
fantasy gaming, a method of spellcasting which is
neither purely arcane nor divine, but rather a mixture
of both. At its simplest, ceremonial magic is a method
of commanding magic which is dependent on the
successful execution of complex rituals designed to
harness the raw power of reality itself.
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Why Use Ceremonial Magic in Your
Campaign?
Whenever a Games Master is given the chance to
integrate a new rules system into his campaign, the
first question he must invariably ask is 'Why should
I?' the second inevitably 'What will it accomplish?'
To the first; the rules governing the use of ceremony
magic presented here fill in a large gap in the
existing fantasy gaming experience. The use of
long rituals and elaborate ceremonies to create
powerful magical effects is an idea that has gone
relatively unexplored until now. Meaning that a
Games Master who wished, for example, to close
out an adventure with a confrontation with a group
of drow attempting to chant down the sun was left
to his own devices. While Games Master fiat is, of
course, generally sufficient to resolve the issue, it can
lead to dissatisfaction if the players come to resent
what they see as ‘arbitrary’ decisions.
As to the second question; the rules for ceremonial
magic are largely intended to remove some of the
burden from the Games Master. By laying out actual
concrete guidelines for creating and performing
ceremonial magic, the Games Master need no
longer make up rulings on the fly. In addition,
these rules open up new vistas for adventuring,
providing a more mythic feel to your game. Ritual
magic has long been a part of legend, folklore and
more modern fantasy tales and now it can be a part
of your game.
Ceremonial magic is inspired loosely by ancient,
real-world religious rites and more directly by fantasy
fiction, where the idea that a group of like minded
individuals can, with some effort and the proper
materials, use their focused will to enact changes in the
world around them. Unlike standard divine and arcane
magic spells, which can only be wielded by a precious
few, ceremonial magic can, in theory, be utilised by
anyone, provided they can collect the proper materials
and follow the proscribed steps. In practice, however,
ceremonial magic works best when it is at least guided
by someone with a solid understanding of magic – this
is why most ceremonial magic is conducted by priests,
witches covens, sorcerous cabals and the like.
Mechanically, ceremonial magic is a system intended
to supplement the spellcasting rules presented in
Core Rulebook I. While the rules presented in that
book do a good job of presenting rules usable by