Dawson/Magic

Magic, the darkest magic.

My soul swims in it...

“David Lo Pan, Big Trouble in Little China”

Basic Info

• Blue-Collar Warlock: His materials are inexpensive, commonly available and generally what’s on-hand. His magic is fairly straightforward, working-class and without many frills. Summoning spirits and calling hellfire to your hands is great but it doesn’t keep gas in your bike. So he had to find something to pull in cash. He’s the guy who would spend his evenings pouring over Chinese take out while piecing together a carburetor set out on a table before heading out for a midnight hookup or a late night conversation with the thing that lives in the fire. He’s usually trying to find some way to get a payday to keep the wolves at the door.

• Dangerous Books: Books aren’t generally considered dangerous. However, those books that teach how one could build a bomb should probably be restricted from those angst-ridden teenaged eyes that might want to blow up a school. More importantly, books shouldn’t teach a curious teen how to achieve the same effect without needing the bomb at all. All it took was some candles, a bit of chalk, some wine and a three drops of blood and his life changed forever.
• Talks to Fire: Some wizards can talk to snakes. Others have whole conversations with their familiars and things over afternoon tea. Daws, however, talks to fire. Or rather, he talks to whatever lives within the fire. He’s not quite sure what it is but the first ritual he performed was how to create a ‘sacred flame’. He did and, like the ritual explained, the fire turned green. Uncertain if it was the odd combination of materials that might have chemically altered the fire he decided to ask it a question, just like the ritual said he could. It answered.

Paradigm

Magic is compelling a bonfire to answer.

Magic is calling a mountain to awake.

Magic is commanding a thunderstorm to strike.

It is drawing upon the power of the ancients in your words and gestures. It is in runes carved in bone to break down walls and doors scrawled in blood to seal them - forever. I'm talking about magic that is as old as time - magic that moved stones to measure the sun and honor the moon. Magic that let man walk on four legs by wearing the skin of a wolf. Magic that would connect one end of the world to the other through the smoke of council fires that died out long ago.

The world has forgotten the Old Ways - the blood magic of the old crones, the spirit talking of the shamen and the weather witching of the storm-singers. The world says fire does not speak. The world says thunderstorms don't just show up when you want it and mountains don't move for men. Well...the world is fucking -wrong-!

The path to the Old Ones power isn't gone. You have feel it down in your bones. You gotta stand at the top of a tower during a thunderstorm and tell it "I own you"...and mean it.

The trail is broken and for those who walk it - they spend their lives trying to find pieces to a puzzle scattered to the winds two thousand years ago. The path means piecing together the broken remains in old motels with prostitutes, bar basements with bouncers, abandoned buildings with alcoholics, and crazy old ladies at the laundry. It ain't pretty but it'll get you there. Magic has a price.

Power is still out there for some if they're willing to break the rules of the world. Don't let anyone else sugarcoat it for you. What would you give to turn your world around?

Approach

• Untrained: A lot of what he's learned has been self taught, discovered in the loose pages of his old gang leader's notes or from the 'Fire that Speaks'; his guide. That being said, he has learned a thing or two from other sorcerers (witches / warlocks) along the way. He's been a bit stand offish with some of the Mystical societies that he's heard of mostly because of his dealings with spirits has left their mark upon him and people tend to get weirded out by his otherworldlyness.

• Traditionally Untraditional: When around the truly awakened, his magic seems to lend him towards one of three very different traditions: The Dreamspeakers, the Verbena and more recently the Hollow Ones
  • Dreamspeakers: for his affinity towards spirits - though he doesn't possess their cultural roots nor does he come off as the do-gooder that they seem to commonly be seen as.
  • Verbena : for his old world approach to magic - though he shares no affinity for life, more of the opposite. His foci, however, are straight-up, old school witch. Fire, blood, bones, sex and circles should put him squarely within their sights.
  • Hollow Ones : He does cobble together whatever seems to work for him in a mishmash of styles and foci, but he's less poetic and blaze about life and more angry.

Eventually he found a teacher within the Dreamspeakers who helped him figure things out though he still has close ties to with the Verbena and Hollow Ones he met while trying to understand his path within magic.

• Dances in the Shadows: Fire seems to draw out a hidden face from him. By the flickering light of fires that drive back the night so that he can dance in that middle ground between the two; between light and darkness. Morally he's sort of straddling the grey-ish areas of good and evil. He's not out to butcher the world but some people just need killin - and he doesn't lose any sleep about it.

• Grimoires: Not everyone can have a library stacked with ancient tomes but not every secret needs to be bound in goat skin. Composition journals and spiral notebooks are more his speed. Most of the occult stuff out in the world is absolute crap worthless but but he’s started collecting those few things that seem to work. His books of rituals look like a gothling took a class in scrapbooking; full of pages torn from books, handwritten scrawl, diagrams in marker, cheap photocopies, etc.

• Sanctum: His dabblings with magic hasn’t gotten him incredible amounts of money but he’s well on his way. Without a house or a place that he could claim as his own, he’s had to make accommodations. He’s created a small altar in an old basement of a forgotten building in a neighborhood that’s been erased from memory. The altar was made from wooden shipping crates, a dirty, red blanket as a cloth, candles and a black-handled knife he uses for some of his ritual work. Everything can fit in a gym bag and he can move the boxes back in place when needed.

• Got Friends On the Other Side: He's a summoner of spirits - typically not the ones found in nature - unless you count the elemental forces. He calls upon servants of darkness, flame, the occasional ghost and such but he's also been known to summon a spirit of healing should a member of his crew need a quick patch.

Rituals & Tools

I still dream of that night.
Not of the sorcerer, not of his blade...I dream of the voice.

Was it a god? A demon? Some conjurer's trick?
I don't know but the sorcerer called, and a voice answered

“Varys, Game of Thrones”

Tools

• Fire: is at the heart of nearly everything he does, magically. It was through fire that he made his first contact with a spirit and by that initial bargain he has learned more and more ways to strike out at the people and things that piss him off.
  • Candles: Those times when he can’t use a bonfire to add to his magic he uses candles as small points of fire set around the circles he uses to focus his power.
  • Fire Pit: A few scraps of wood from an old shipping pallet, is usually enough to pull together enough fire for his average magical working - the stuff that’s more brute force than fine and precise work.
  • Bonfires: This is for the BIG magic; the stuff where he’s calling up spirits, offering sacrifices and looking to make deals.
• Bones: As a physical manifestation of death, he uses bones (skulls, knuckles, femura, etc.). Skulls are his favorite focus, vertebrae are good to hold candles and femora are great for wands and to twin around for a magical circle.
• Blood: Sacrifice is important - but usually only for the big stuff. Sometimes it’s his and sometimes it’s from someone else.
• Sex: Sex can make you feel powerful - feel alive. And if it doesn’t then you need to find someone else to do it with. Sometimes it’s about using it to help get what you want - sometimes it’s the only thing you want. But the sex he uses isn’t what most would call compassionate; it’s fuel. So he usually has to find someone who will stick around because they’re being paid - or want something from him.
• Drugs: Everything from a 40 ounce to a bit of heroine can alter your personal reality - even if only for a moment or two. Ancient man has been using mind-altering things to glimpse the other world so it’s just a matter of taste. He doesn’t use these often, not for his magic, because he doesn’t like the feeling of being out of control. It leaves him weak for too long.
• The Moon: The moon is very important as it's what dictates what forces are flowing in the world. Under the full moon, the night is illuminated and thus the darkness is lessened. It's a night for summoning things to gain knowledge, to reveal secrets and such. Things done under the New Moon, when there's almost no light and the darkness is at its height, is for summoning things that are secretive, powerful and dangerous.
• Circles and Symbols: Sometimes drawn in chalk, or dug into the ground and filled with gasoline (as a combination with fire) or possibly even laid out with bone, the simple power of a circle can help focus one's energies. Combine the circle with specific symbols (triangles, pentagrams, etc.) at various points around or within the circle to help enclose, protect or forbid certain spirits.
• Writing and Inscription: He has more than a few notebooks filled with his work but he's also a big fan of enchanted skin art. Infusing tattoos with the power to increase your speed, stamina or strength? He uses the old school tap-tap with a needle and a ball point pen; prison tat style.

Rituals

Name: Summoning Circle
Path: Enchanting
Level: 1
Effect: -1 to occult difficulties for the purpose of sum/bind/ward.
Concept: A permanent magical circle used to aid in summoning rituals.
Notes: Effect could be -2 if made for specific targets (spirits, Ghosts, etc.)
Desc: A circle of various materials, several feet across set into the floor or ground.