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Arcane power is achieved by understanding the mystical framework that the cosmos is composed of and exploiting it. To grow in arcane power is to comprehend more and hone the skill of acting on that comprehension.
Animancy: The manipulation and alteration of mortal souls. Animancers achieve through arcane understanding what is normally limited to the divine, twisting the natural order to their own ends. Although it can manipulate living souls, Animancy is more often used to contact and exploit the less defended souls of the dead, leading to the colloquial and derogatory name of necromancy. Most individuals known as necromancers have the Curses and Death Domains in addition to Animancy, leading to a misconstrued idea of Animancy’s true uses in the common people.
Uses: Animancy can let you speak to the dead, empower your own soul, heal the Undead, control Undead, create undead, alter the Undead, steal souls, swap bodies and gain magic from souls.
Biomancy: The manipulation and alteration of life and the physical body. Biomancers shape the physical form in permanent ways, leading to physical alterations that require Biomancy or other magics to undo.
Uses: Biomancy can diagnose illness, change your appearance, encourage growth, turn people into animals, raise Species limits on physical Talents, restore the body and create morphogenic plagues.
Chronomancy: The manipulation of time. A chronomancer can alter the effects and flow of time, as well as perceive it with greater clarity.
Uses: Chronomancy can let you see into the future, alter or stop the flow of time, delay the effects of Spells and travel through time.
Cognomancy: The manipulation and alteration of the mind. Cognomances are feared for their ability to violate the privacy of the mind and supplant free will. While much good can be achieved through Cognomancy, these fears are not unwarranted.
Uses: Cognomancy can let you resist mind control, communicate with any sapient creature, influence others, create illusions, speak telepathically, raise Species limits on mental Talents, control minds, alter memories and project your consciousness.
Hedge Magic: The jack of all magics, and mastery of none. Hedge Magic is not a deep understanding of cosmic principles, but instead a broad training in many common arcane techniques without the need for a strong grasp of the theory behind them. Despite often being looked down on by academics and professionally trained specialists, Hedge Magic is the most common first Domain learned by arcane practitioners. What it lacks in focus it compensates for in utility.
Uses: Hedge Magic lets you create numerous minor effects (cantrips), use telekinesis, create light, reveal hidden objects, decipher codes, set alarms, create magic armor, scry on distant locations, locate objects, become invisible and teleport.
Hylomancy: The manipulation of physical matter. Hylomancers are highly prized for their ability to rapidly work materials and even create them, allowing solid structures to be rapidly erected or excavated. However, hylomancy is as effective at destruction as creation, if not more.
Uses: Hylomancy lets you learn about a material, restore broken items, change the properties of a material, reshape matter, create matter, move through solid materials and destroy matter.
Kinesomancy: The manipulation of forces and energy. Kinesomancy is known as one of the most purely destructive of arcane practices, with practitioners often seen as the explosion obsessed brutes of mages. While this is frequently warranted, it takes no less raw skill to engulf your enemies (and allies) in a fiery conflagration than is required by any other magical pursuit.
Uses: Kinesomancy lets you damage creatures and objects at range, cause damaging explosions of energy, redirect energy from other sources (heat, electricity, inertia, etc.), create force armor to protect yourself, create energy barriers, turn yourself and others invisible, use telekinesis and cause soul damage.
Metamagic: The manipulation and alteration of magic itself. Although almost never learned as a mage’s first Domain, Metamagic is one of the most respected skills amongst arcane practitioners. It has minimal effects on its own, but shines when dealing with other magic, including Divine and Nature Spells. Many mage collages require a specific degree of mastery over Metamagic for a mage to graduate.
Uses: Metamagic lets you detect magic, identify magic, set triggers for a Spell to activate, exchange Magic Resource points with other casters, dispel the Spells of others, see magic, see invisible creatures, see through illusions, see through shapeshifting, store Arcanum in items for later use, create magic items, suppress the magic of others in an area (anti-magic field) and convert one Magic Resource to another.
Opsomancy: The manipulation of the senses and creation of illusions. Despite being academically recognized as the practice of creating illusions, opsomancers are often colloquially referred to as conjurers or summoners. While the objects and creatures they make are nothing more than short lived constructs of spellwork, the average citizen cannot tell the difference between materialized illusions and true creation.
Uses: Opsomancy lets you make illusions, make solid illusions, create living creatures that obey you and create multiple bodies for yourself.
Topomancy: The manipulation of space. Topomancers are prized for their ability to transport messages and materials over vast distances, often being used to accelerate the movements of groups between cities or nations.
Uses: Topomancy lets you store items in a personal inventory, teleport, enter other realms, move a group at greater or reduced speed, open portals, change the range on Spells and create personal realms.
Divine power is achieved through authority over the cosmos. Every soul has a minor degree of authority, and greater divine power is gained by either increasing your soul’s innate authority or borrowing the authority of others. The need to acquire the authority of other souls is known as the Soul Struggle, and it dominates the landscape of the Pale Mountains and Celestial Realms.
Blessings: Power over the concept of good fortune and benevolent intent. Blessings are one of the most commonly used tools of the priesthood across all organized churches. Every god has a need to bless their servants and allies.
Uses: Blessings lets you purify food, cure minor disease, encourage crops, enhance beneficial Spells, give good fortune, improve Initiative, make beneficial Spells last longer, make objects to store Divinity for later use, create divine magic items, increase Talents and use beneficial Spells on large areas.
Curses: Power over the concept of bad fortune and hostile intent. Curses are often associated with followers of unsavory gods, but are actually used more widely than most think. Every god has a need to curse their enemies.
Uses: Curses lets you spoil food, stunt crops, sicken people, enhance harmful Spells, cause misfortune, decrease the Initiative of others, extend the duration of harmful Spells, cause extended sleep (even to creatures that cannot sleep), create cursed items, reduce the Talents of enemies and make harmful Spells spread from one target to another.
Death: Power over the concept of death and the suppression of life. Death is often misnomered necromancy, especially when a practitioner also utilizes Animancy. In truth, it is a Domain with many beneficial uses, despite being most often used to destructive ends.
Uses: Death lets you sense disease and imminent threat to life, put creatures to sleep, blight land and the creatures within, reduce a creature’s Health (not just cause damage), prevent resurrection, kill with a touch, resurrect a creature by killing another, kill with a glance and prevent your own death.
Divination: Power over the concept of knowledge and insight. Divination is a very common Domain for divine practitioners to dabble in, allowing much greater connection to their deity and the opportunity for more direct guidance. However, very few masters of Divination exist, levels above 4 being exceptionally uncommon.
Uses: Divination lets you detect and identify magic, communicate with your god, speak to and be understood by any sapient creature, see through lies, see the past of an object, see magic, see invisible creatures, see through illusions, see through shapeshifting, scry on distant locations, locate objects, see into the future, share your magical senses with others and learn forgotten secrets.
Healing: Power over the concept of healing and restoring life. Healing is the most prized of divine powers, most priest learning it, but very few ever mastering the practise. Priests who can completely cleanse disease are highly respected, and those capable of returning the dead to life are guarded as national treasures.
Uses: Healing lets you negate wound penalties, heal damage, remove disease, recover Resources quickly, restore lost Talents and Abilities and resurrect the dead.
Protection: Power over the concept of protection and guarding. Divine warriors often focus on Protection to help defend both themselves and others from harm. It is uncommon for those who live out their lives in a stable society, but nearly all divine practitioners who brave the wider world (and especially the battlefield) have some mastery of Protection.
Uses: Protection lets you negate damage, survive extreme conditions, hide from magical observation, set alarms, summon magic armor, stop specific sources of damage, resist magic, shield a location from magical detection, forbid a group from entering a location and summon a powerful guardian spirit.
Wrath: Power over the concept of destruction and righteous vengeance. Wrath is learned by the warriors of a faith, both those who formally battle opposing armies and those who hunt down abominations, foul Spirits and heretics.
Uses: Wrath lets you Smite the living with Divinity as you would the Undead, cause extra damage on attacks, cause soul damage, replace Strength with Divinity when causing damage, strike an enemy with lightning, command anyone who can hear you, give people a supernatural disease, banish Spirits and Ghosts, destroy everything in an area and cause a massive flood.
The power of nature is not taken or even wielded. It is the product of being part of the cosmos and the forces that define it. The closer to union with the cosmos you become, the more you are shaped by the forces of nature and the more they work with you rather than against you. A character with Primal 12 is barely separate from the cosmos around them, on the edge of being simply one more expression of its natural cycles.
Animal Companion: Connection to a bonded animal. Your companion grows in power as your connection deepens, allowing even weak animals to reach mythic heights. This is the origin behind everything from wizards’ familiars to dragonriders.
Uses: Animal Companion gives you a loyal animal you can speak to telepathically that grows in power alongside you and eventually gains supernatural abilities.
Commune With Animals: Connection to animals and the ecosystem. While it may have situational uses, many have mistakenly assumed highly civilized areas are devoid of animal life, before being eaten by rats or pecked to death by pigeons.
Uses: Commune With Animals lets you speak to animals, influence animals, control the minds of animals (see Cognomancy), see through the eyes of all animals in an area, call nearby animals to attack, be trusted by a species of animal, possess an animal and merge with the entire ecosystem in an area (animals only).
Commune With Plants: Connection to plants and fungi. A master of Commune With Plants is formidable in a city and a living nightmare in the forest.
Uses: Commune With Plants lets you speak to plants and fungi, use plants and fungi medically, move yourself and others without leaving tracks or being slowed by plants, deal soul damage with sticks, animate plants as your own limbs, shape wood, create wooden armor that is as hard as steel, spy through plants, create a temporary plant companion (as Animal Companion), possess a plant and animate it, create a living forest army and merge with the entire ecosystem in an area (plants only).
Cycle Of Life: Connection to the cycle of life and death. Most often used to lay the Undead to rest, rectifying the aberration.
Uses: Cycle Of Life lets you roll Primal to damage the Undead, heal your and others, prevent creatures from becoming Undead, dispel Spells, live longer, be immune to disease, reincarnate dead creatures, age a target, reincarnate a living creature against its will into a newborn and be reborn automatically upon death.
Shapechange: Connection with primal flesh and form. A practice almost entirely inward focused, shapechangers can be formidable warriors and devious tricksters. To them the body can be any tool they could need.
Uses: Shapechange lets you grow physically stronger at the cost of social capacities, adopt anatomy from other species, resist soul damage, become an animal, shapeshift into other people, become a plant or fungus, gain innate supernatural powers and become an element of the natural world.
Universal Domains are sets of Spells that can be approached from multiple angles. It is more accurate to think of a Universal Domain as three Domains, an Arcane Domain, a Divine Domain and a Nature Domain, all of which have the same Spells in practical terms.
Spirit: Manipulation of spiritual essence. Spirit facilitates the summoning of and negotiating with Spirits. Arcane casters approach this by directly controlling spiritual essence, while Divine casters call upon the authority of the higher realms. Nature casters barely recognize Spirit as a magic practice, treating it more as a social skill facilitated by a deep connection to the Spirit World.
Uses: Spirit lets you see Spirits, see into the Reflection, touch incorporeal Spirits (and punch them!), cause soul damage to Spirits, enter the Reflection, travel to other realms, command Spirits, summon Spirits, create magic items, establish your own Spirit Realm and take on the form of a Spirit.
Combination Spells are Spells that are not part of a single Domain, but instead possible to learn by any character who has the required combination of Domains. If you have a concept for a Spell that is not included in any Domain, you can work with the Storyteller to determine what Domain levels are required to learn it as a Combination Spell.
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