Albums
Well, it turns out that all those people screeching
about rock music and the Devil were on to something, after all. Who would have thought it?
OK, not really.
You aren't going to find Satanic messages by playing your records
backwards - um, records? Big black
disks made out of vinyl? Come on, you
know: the things used by rap DJs to do
that scratching thing. What, they've
got electronics for that now? Crud...
wait! Jukeboxes! They come in jukeboxes ... oh, right. Those got converted over, too. God, I feel old.
Anyway, they had these things called records that
had music on them, and you could set up the turntable - no, not the
thing that comes in the microwave oven - and the needle - oh, just look it up
in the encyclopedia. May I finish?
Thank you. Anyway,
you could take the records and play them backwards. This was supposed to let you hear messages from the Devil. Of course, you wouldn't have the faintest
idea what he was supposed to be saying, because it'd be backwards and stuff, and
it was a real pain to set your average record player up that way, and there are
frankly much easier ways to sneak Diabolical propaganda past the watchful gaze
of Heaven, so you'd have to be really, really lame to even think that this
would work.
Sorcerers generally tend to be really, really lame.
As per standard operating procedures with those
guys, they managed to get everything at least three-quarters of the way wrong
and were only accidentally right about the rest. The truth is, Sorcery is where you find it, provided that you can
combine obsession with (unwarranted) overconfidence and flavor it with a touch
of humorlessness. They were sure that
they could get power from music albums, and lo, they did.
Subject, of course, to the usual pitfalls.
Sorcerous rituals gained from record albums - and it
had better be records: cassette tapes and CDs just don't work, although a few
Sorcerers out there claim some success with 8-track tapes (go ask your parents)
- follow the usual rules for research (i.e., it takes at least a month and
requires a lot of time that might be better suited to maintaining a social
life. Or personal hygiene); in this
case the research requires listening to the same album, over and over and over
again, preferably at the highest volume that the researcher can stand. If everything goes well, the Sorcerer will
be able to puzzle out the hidden rituals found in every track of the album and
reproduce them. It sounds simple
enough, but as this is Sorcery, there are problems.
First and foremost, there's the minor issue that the
researcher will not necessarily know what ritual he or she will end up with: it
will often have something to do with the lyrics and/or melody, but
there's no guarantee. There's also no
guarantee that the Sorcerer will actually be able to perform the ritual,
either. Both of these are
problematical, but the real kicker is that if the Sorcerer cannot pick and
choose which ritual to study: he or she must learn them all at the same time
(read: save up enough experience points to pay for every ritual all at
once). This can often lead to Sorcerers
learning rituals that they don't particularly feel like knowing, or even
rituals that are quite unwise to even admit to knowing. Another problem is that every ritual
requires a specific activation item (unless otherwise noted): no item, no ritual. Finally, there's some debate about whether
Hatiphas' dislike of the practice is a good or bad thing: it mostly depends on
whether or not she catches you at it.
The Demoness of Sorcery does not like competition.
So, why do Sorcerers still do this? Well, there are advantages to learning an
Album. For one thing, there's little in
the way of equipment needed (just a record player and a set of vinyl
disks). For another, Albums also tend
to be eclectic in nature, although many have themes: successfully researching
one can often give a Sorcerer some badly needed metaphysical breadth. On the practical side, the underlying
similarities of a particular set of Album rituals can be beneficial to Sorcery
(a Sorcery roll using an Album ritual gets an automatic +1 to the CD). These are all things to consider when
deciding whether or not to research an Album.
But, really, the most important part is that it's an excuse to keep
playing heavy metal music over and over and over again, sneering all the while
at the unenlightened fools.
Do not underestimate the attractiveness of this to
your average Sorcerer.
If a player is running a Sorcerer in your game, he
may want to create Albums of his very own.
This can actually be worked with.
First of all, it's recommended that the GM pick
which album gets turned into an Album.
The player shouldn't get a voice in this, and indeed should not know
which album is to be converted until it is actually in the CD player
(What? Do you think that I still
own a record player? Geez, I'm not that
old). At that point, the player gets to
write down one quick ritual for every track on the album. The player must come up with each ritual
before the end of the equivalent song, may not stop or pause for any reason,
should not be allowed to go back and fix up things later and must write out the
skill/level prerequisites, description of the ritual's effects, time to cast,
necessary activation item and Essence cost.
If he fails to follow these rules, the entire project is scratched and
the character must start over.
This should adequately reproduce how bloody
dangerous the whole thing can be - especially since it's needless to say that the
GM always retains full command authority to amend and alter the resulting
rituals, and is encouraged to be amusingly creative when it comes to dealing
with loopholes.