Occult Rituals for Freeport

(Column 2 of 2 for this week!)

The D&D v.3.5 sourcebook Unearthed Arcana provided optional rules for incantations, a form of magic that allows non-spellcasters to wield supernatural power through long, exacting rituals. The ritual system presented in the True20 Freeport Companion adapted the incantation rules to that system, and added a Forbidden Lore skill which was used to cast these occult spells. The d20 Freeport Companion included Forbidden Knowledge rules as well, and was originally meant to include incantations. These rules were cut from the final draft, in part due to a lack of examples. However, a few references to them still remain in the published text, including a full write up of one incantation, "Call Forth the Fiend."

Unearthed Arcana's incantation rules can be found in the d20 System Reference Document (online here). When I compiled my fan errata for the d20 Freeport Companion, I adapted those rules for use in Freeport campaigns; see the Freeport Incantation Rules for d20 page at Tim's Errata Archive.

Since then, I have moved on to playing Pathfinder, and have recently acquired the Occult Adventures sourcebook. The Occult Ritual rules in that book (see page 208) are derived from Unearthed Arcana's incantations. It appears that the stars are now right to discuss how to use those ritual rules in Pathfinder Freeport campaigns, and how to convert existing rituals from previous Freeport titles to these new rules.

In the Pathfinder edition of Freeport: The City of Adventure, Forbidden Lore has been changed from a Knowledge skill to a pool of points that modifies Knowledge checks regarding Things Man Was Not Meant to Know. Freeport's modularity has always been one of the line's great strengths; this new design choice now allows GMs to use occult rituals without forbidden lore, or vice versa.

All of the sample rituals in Occult Adventures are suitable for use in Freeport. The Call Beyond the Veil, Haunted Communion, and Ritual Exorcism rituals should be used in place of the Exorcism and Seance rituals appearing in the True20 Freeport Companion. This leaves only Awaken the Dead and Conjure Demon to convert to Pathfinder.

Awaken the Dead replicates animate dead, but only creates one zombie per use of the ritual.

AWAKEN THE DEAD
School necromancy; Level 4
Casting Time 40 minutes
Components V, S, M (grave dirt, at least 1 pint of animal blood)
Skill Checks Knowledge (arcana) DC 30, 2 successes; Knowledge (religion) DC 30, 2 successes
Range close (25 ft. + 5 ft/character level of the caster)
Target one corpse
Duration instantaneous
Saving Throw none; SR no
Backlash The caster is exhausted
Failure The caster takes 1 permanent negative level
Effect One corpse within range is animated as a zombie. The zombie is fanatically loyal to the caster. It can be destroyed by the usual means of dispatching undead. (If the optional insanity rules from Freeport: The City of Adventure are being used, then everyone present when the zombie rises must succeed on a DC 15 Will save or gain 1 Insanity Point. In addition, the caster automatically acquires 1 Insanity Point for creating a zombie.)

Unlike a standard Occult Adventures campaign, Freeport's ritualists are frequently obsessed with contacting evil outsiders to bargain for their services. Therefore, this setting includes rituals that allow any knowledgeable mortal to risk their soul in attempt summoning a fiend.

CONJURE DEMON

The Conjure Demon ritual is actually not a single ritual, but a category of many different spells used to call a fiend to appear and serve the casters. All are based on the planar binding series of spells, with the spell level determined by the Hit Dice of the creature(s) called: 5th for lesser planar binding (1-6 HD), 6th for planar binding (7-12 HD), or 8th for greater planar binding (13-18 HD). Apply those spells' duration, saving throw, and SR entries to the ritual rather than the usual conjuration benchmarks.

Use the occult ritual rules to determine additional details of each individual summoning. Many fiends seek out any chance to access the Material Plane, so they encourage the creation of rituals that make success easier to obtain. Add casting time restrictions, expensive components, limited targets (one species of fiend), and dangerous backlash in order to reduce the DC to cast the ritual. Many demonic rituals also allow secondary casters, with the most powerful of these spells practically requiring a large cult to perform successfully.

Let's use the Call Forth the Fiend incantation from "Fury in Freeport" (d20 Freeport Companion, page 158) as a worked example:

CALL FORTH THE FIEND
School conjuration (calling) [evil]; Level 5
Casting Time 50 minutes
Components V, S, M (caster's dung, blood of a freshly sacrificed victim, powdered remains of a good holy symbol worth at least 100 gp)
Skill Checks Knowledge (arcana) DC 28, 2 successes; Knowledge (planes) DC 28, 2 successes; Spellcraft, DC 28, 1 success
Range close (25 ft. + 5 ft/character level of the caster)
Target one skulldugger or two dretches
Duration instantaneous
Saving Throw none; SR no
Backlash The caster takes 2d6 points of damage
Failure Three dretches appear and attack the caster
Effect To begin this ritual, the caster must mix the material components and use them to inscribe a pentagram on a flat surface. Once the circle is inscribed, the remaining time is spent chanting the required invocations. If the ritual succeeds, a skulldugger (see previous column) or two dretch tear a hole in reality and appear in the circle. They bow before the caster and await its instructions. The caster can bid the conjured minions to perform one task subject to the normal limits of the lesser planar binding spell. Should the task be impossible, the fiend is freed from the ritual's effects and may go its own way. Fiends called forth by a successful casting of this ritual never attack the caster.

The DC has been calculated as follows: base 28, plus spell level 5, -1 for expensive material components (this modifier normally requires 500 gp, but procuring the holy symbol and victim add sufficient difficulty to earn the reduction), -3 for limited targets, -1 for backlash = 28.

Note that the DC is higher under the Pathfinder rules. However, the caster only needs to succeed on half of the necessary skill checks (rounded up) for the ritual to succeed, while the v.3.5 rules required the full number of checks (with failed checks adding additional checks and casting time).

TBT: Blue Rose Freeport

This week, Green Ronin Publishing launched a Kickstarter campaign for Blue Rose: The AGE Roleplaying Game of Romantic Fantasy. This new edition will translate the World of Aldea setting from the True20 System (first designed for Blue Rose in 2005) to the Adventure Game Engine (first designed for the Dragon Age RPG). The game reached its funding goal within hours and has been blowing through stretch goals all week. If you're a fan of the sort of character-driven fantasy written by authors such as Tamora Pierce and Mercedes Lackey; a gamer who wants to see a setting that addresses issues involving gender, sexuality, and human rights in a positive, inclusive way; or even just a fan of intelligent psychic animals or the art of Stephanie Pui-Min Law, then Blue Rose will have a great deal to offer you!

Once of the newly unlocked goals is a subsetting by Jeb Boyt, "Game of Thorns," detailing the Pirate Isles and protagonists of a less savory sort than the Sovereign's Finest. Reading this news reminded me of some thoughts I posted online some time back (10 years this week, to be exact) about mixing Aldea and Freeport. I fully anticipate that Jeb's work will make much of this column woefully obsolete, and I'll welcome that. Nevertheless, I've decided to share these old ideas here as my own personal way of celebrating the resurgence of Blue Rose.

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Placing Freeport in Aldea

There appear to be two possibilities for locating Freeport within Aldea:

1. The Scatterstar Archipeligo: Freeport is located within an island chain, but the Scatterstars seem to more extensively settled than is really appropriate for Freeport.

2. The Leviathan's Teeth: This evokes the Serpent's Teeth name, plus Jarzon's coast is known to be difficult to navigate, making this a probable pirate haven. But the core book doesn't describe this specific area. 

[The World of Aldea sourcebook, released later, provided much more information about both these regions, including a number of pirate groups operating in the Scatterstar Archipeligo.]

Blue Rose Backgrounds in Freeport

Freeport has the staggering variety of races common to most d20 games; Blue Rose does not. Certain races common in Freeport translate easily to the backgrounds given in the Blue Rose core book: orcs and half-orcs (and probably hobgoblins) become night people; elves and half-elves become vata; merfolk and nereids become sea-folk.

Dwarves, gnomes, and halflings have no equivalents in Blue Rose. Either remove those races and characters from Freeport, change NPCs of those races into humans (or possibly vata or rhydan?), or convert these races' abilities into True20.

Freeport has limited precedent for the presence of rhydan as hero characters. Druids and rangers' animal companions and paladins' special mounts might be replaced with rhy-bonded companions. Dolphins are an obvious option for an aquatic campaign (especially as allies of sea-folk). Beyond this, intelligent animals without humanoid companions do not really fit into the Freeport setting as written. GMs are free to modify these assumptions, of course!

If using the backgrounds in Blue Rose, humans in Freeport would most likely be Aldins, Islanders, or Jarzoni. Others would be rare, but possible. (And Freeport almost certainly has one or more backgrounds unique to itself.)

Using Blue Rose Gods in Freeport

From the start, Freeport was designed to be inserted into any campaign world with minimal effort, by leaving the background fairly generic: few specific details of geography outside the immediate islands, most gods identified by sphere rather than name, etc.

I've recently reread the history chapter of Blue Rose, and decided to figure out how the gods mentioned in Freeport would match up to those of Aldea. Freeport itself has four favored gods, those of Knowledge (NG), Pirates (CN), the Sea (N), and Warriors (N), plus a host of other gods with much smaller followings.

Gaelinir (Light) is god of both learning and the sea, while Braniel (Twilight) is associated with the element of water in general. There are two possibilities here: 1. Gaelinir has separate temples to two of his aspects, or 2. He is the Knowledge God, while Braniel is Freeport's Sea God. (The former fits Gaelinir's portfolio better, while the latter fits their respective alignments better.)

The Warrior God is likely Anwaren (Twilight). The Warrior King also has an aspect related to madness, which could more closely tie this god's followers into the secret cult wars afflicting the city.

The Pirate God, Harrimast, does not have an obvious match. As suggested in Freeport: The City of Adventure, he may be Freeport's unique aspect of a better-known mainland god. If this is the case, he may be related to either Braniel or Anwaren, or possibly an Exarch of Shadow in disguise.

Two gods are given greater detail in the Freeport Trilogy and Freeport: The City of Adventure: Yig and the Unspeakable One. In Aldea, Yig is likely an aspect of one of the Gods of Twilight, perhaps Maurenna (civilization) or Selene (arcane arts). The Unspeakable One is either an Exarch of Shadow, or something even more alien.

Other gods mentioned in the Freeport line include (but are not limited to):

• Death: Most death gods would be aspects of Selene.
• Justice/Retribution: Aulora. Alternately, this could be a sect of Jarzon's Church of Pure Light, which would fit well with the fact that this temple of crusaders has had a difficult time operating in a pirate city.
• Luck: Athne (good fortune) seems to be the closest match.
• Magic: Selene.
• Murder: This could be one of many Exarchs of Shadow, but most likely Tyrexxus (wrath).
• Orcs: Krom is almost certainly an orcish [night people] interpretation of another god, perhaps Anwaren (war).
• Rogues/Trickery: This may be a Shadow-perverted cult derived from Selene's (secrets).
• Smiths: Goia.
• Sun: Hiathas.

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Afterword

At that time that I originally composed the notes above, I didn't continue my thoughts to the point of answering a few critical questions that would be necessary for actually running a Blue Rose Freeport game. The foremost of these was how to adapt the serpent people to Aldea. Green Ronin partially solved that problem themselves a few years later, when they released a version of Death in Freeport that used the True20 System rules set that succeeded Blue Rose. 

Well, if the new edition and "Game of Thorns" stop short of introducing Freeport's unique brand of Lovecraftian pirate horror into Aldea, then I may just have to tackle converting the serpent people into AGE myself. Ye be warned, 'lubbers...