Magic came roaring into the world within living memory. Nobody fully understands it. Some study it with academic rigor, cataloguing incantations in leather-bound books. Others simply feel it — raw power flowing through them like a river they can barely steer. Both paths are dangerous. Both paths are necessary.

The Six Schools

Humanity has organized magic into six schools — broad domains of power that help casters understand and categorize what they can do. Nobody knows if the Aether actually works in six neat categories, but these are the boxes people have built, and they’re useful enough. For full spell listings, see The Grimoire.

• Aetheric Manipulation — raw force, energy, elemental power
• Vivimancy — life, body, biology
• Warding — protection, sealing, banishment
• Divination — perception, knowledge, detection
• Transmutation — altering matter and material properties
• Ley Weaving — manipulating magic itself

How Casting Works

Every spell has a fixed casting time — how many counts it occupies on the timing track. When your token resolves, you roll d100 against your casting target number. Roll equal to or under and the spell fires. Roll over and it misfires. How well it fires depends on your margin of success:

Margin (Under Target)	Tier	What It Means
Over target	Misfire	The spell goes wrong. See Misfires.
1–10	Weak	It works, barely. Minimal effect.
11–30	Standard	The spell does what you'd expect.
31–50	Strong	Impressive. People notice.
51+	Spectacular	The magic roars through you. Devastating.

Hard Caps

Your casting target number puts a ceiling on what's physically possible. No amount of luck gets a novice to Spectacular — the math won't allow it:

Casting Target	Maximum Tier	Why
30 or below	Standard	Best possible margin is 29 (rolling 01)
31–50	Strong	Can't roll 51+ under
51+	Spectacular	The full range opens up

After the spell fires, three things happen: you pay exhaustion (which fills your exhaustion track), you check for backlash (the magic fighting back), and the area gains Aetheric accumulation (which starts degrading nearby technology).

The Scholarly Path

You study magic like a science. You carry a spellbook. You prepare carefully, catalogue incantations, and impose structure on something fundamentally wild. When you cast, you know exactly what you're doing — and you decide exactly how much power to channel.

Casting roll: 1d100 (straight roll, no tricks).

Full tier control. When you qualify for a tier, you can freely choose that tier or any lower one. Rolled Strong but don't want to burn the exhaustion? Take Standard. Take Weak. Your call, every time, at any skill level.

Lower backlash. Training insulates you from the raw burn of magical energy. You use the base backlash rates (see Backlash).

Access to all six schools. Study opens every domain. You can learn spells from any school — Aetheric, Vivimancy, Warding, Divination, Transmutation, Ley Weaving. No door is closed to a disciplined mind.

The limitation: you can only cast spells you've specifically learned and recorded in your book. You know 7 + PW spells (minimum 1) and can buy more at 3 skill points each. Lose the book, lose your options. Study gives you breadth across schools but constrains you to your specific selection.

The Wild Path

You don't study. You channel. Magic flows through you like weather — you can aim it, sometimes steer it, but you never fully control it. You don't need a spellbook. You can cast any spell within your known schools. The magic is always there, waiting. The question is what happens when you let it in.

Casting roll: 2d100, take the result farther from your target. Both dice are rolled. Whichever result lands farther from your casting target — whether above or below — is the one that counts. This pushes your outcomes toward extremes. Bigger successes. Bigger failures. You almost never land in the middle.

+10 casting target bonus. Wild casters are naturally attuned. You receive a flat +10 to your casting target number, separate from PW. This is your instinctive gift — you're not weaker than scholarly casters, you're differently powerful.

Tier Suppression

You can't freely choose your tier like a scholarly caster, but you're not completely at the mercy of the dice. As you grow in power, you learn to feel the magic and rein it in. The number of tiers you can step down from your rolled result depends on your casting target:

Casting Target	Tiers You Can Suppress	What It Feels Like
1–25	0	You're locked to what you roll. The magic controls you.
26–50	1	You can throttle back one step. Learning.
51–75	2	Real control. You can rein in most surges.
76+	2 (capped)	Even masters can't fully tame wild magic.

That cap at 2 tiers is deliberate. A master wild caster has significant control — but the magic always has the last word. You can never squash Spectacular all the way down to Weak. The wild path always retains an element of unpredictability.

Higher backlash. Raw, uninsulated contact with the aether burns more often. Wild casters add +5% flat to every backlash tier (see Backlash).

Fewer schools, but complete access within them. You access a number of schools equal to your PW modifier (minimum 1). But within those schools, you can cast every spell — no spellbook, no memorization. Your connection is narrow but deep.

The Trade-Off at a Glance

Aspect	Scholarly	Wild
Casting roll	1d100 (straight)	2d100, take farther from target
Casting target bonus	None	+10 (natural attunement)
Spells available	Learned spells only (7+PW base, spellbook)	Every spell in your schools
Tier selection	Choose freely at or below qualified	Suppress 0–2 tiers based on skill
Backlash risk	Base rates	+5% per tier
School access	All six schools	PW modifier schools (min 1)
Spell selection	Specific learned spells (breadth)	All spells in your schools (depth)
Power ceiling	Reliable but bounded	Unpredictable, swings to extremes

Backlash

Magic is not tame. Every time you cast, there's a chance it bites back. Backlash is separate from misfire — a misfire means the spell went wrong, backlash means the raw energy burned you. You check for backlash on every cast, whether the spell succeeded or misfired. More power channeled means more risk.

After casting, roll d100 for backlash. The higher the tier you channeled, the greater the chance the magic bites back:

Tier	Scholarly	Wild	Accumulation
Weak	5%	10%	+1
Standard	10%	15%	+2
Strong	15%	20%	+3
Spectacular	25%	30%	+4

When backlash triggers, two things happen:

1. Physical burn (always): You take 1d4 physical HP damage. Not exhaustion — the magic is hurting your body. Armor doesn't help. It's internal, raw, and painful.

2. Wild effect (25% chance): Something strange happens. Roll d100 — on 25 or under, the GM rolls d10 on the Wild Effect table below.

The Wild Effect Table

Wild effects have three escalation tiers. Each effect leaves aetheric residue — a trace of the warping that lingers in your body after the visible effect fades. Residue clears only when you take an uninterrupted long rest after the effect has worn off. If you roll the same number on the Wild Effect table while residue from a previous instance is still present, the effect escalates. A third occurrence while residue is present makes the effect permanent.

d10	Effect	Base (1st)	Escalated (2nd)	Permanent (3rd)
1	Caster’s Mark	Eyes glow faintly for 1d4 hours	Eyes glow brightly for 1d4 days, visible in darkness	Eyes permanently luminous — always visibly marked as a caster
2	Thermal Flux	Temperature shifts sharply around you for several minutes	Extreme shift for 1d4 hours — frost forms or things smolder near you	Permanently radiate unnatural cold or heat — affects those nearby, can’t be hidden
3	Aetheric Ring	Sharp ringing sound emanates from you, everyone nearby notices	Ringing persists for 1d4 hours, −10% to Stealth	Faint persistent hum permanently — Stealth always at −10%, animals react to you
4	Poltergeist	Nearby small loose objects levitate briefly then drop	Objects within arm’s reach rattle and shift for 1d4 hours, −10% to Conceal and delicate work	Small objects always drift and shift around you — −10% to Conceal permanently
5	Sense Burn	Lose sense of taste and smell for 1d4 hours	Lose taste, smell, and touch sensitivity for 1d4 days, −10% to Awareness checks	One sense permanently dulled — AW reduced by 1
6	Tremors	Hands tremble for 10 minutes, −10% to fine motor tasks	Hands tremble for 1d4 hours, −10% to all PC-based rolls	Permanent slight tremor — PC reduced by 1
7	Veil Slip	Brief vivid hallucination — you see something that isn’t there (GM describes)	Hallucinations recur for 1d4 hours, −10% to AW checks	Permanently see things at the edge of vision — AW reduced by 1, but GM may occasionally feed genuine supernatural glimpses
8	Static Discharge	You shock the next person or metal object you touch — startling but harmless	Crackle with static for 1d4 hours — metal sparks, −10% to Social interactions, nearby tech glitches	Permanent low-level static field — tech in your hands always slightly unreliable, −10% to tech-related skill checks
9	Voice Shift	Voice changes pitch or timbre for 1d4 hours — unsettling to others	Voice deeply unnatural for 1d4 days — −10% to Persuasion and Social rolls	Voice permanently altered, recognizably inhuman — SP reduced by 1, but +10% to Interrogation
10	Bleed	Nosebleed — dramatic-looking, socially alarming	Bleeding from nose and ears for 1d4 hours, −10% to SP-based checks	Bleed unpredictably from small capillaries when stressed — BR reduced by 1

Spell Cancellation & Interruption

Voluntary Cancellation

You can abandon a spell mid-cast at any time before it resolves. The power was already flowing when you cut it off, so it's not free:

• Pay exhaustion equal to half the Weak tier's cost for that spell (rounded up)
• 10% chance of backlash (1d4 HP damage if triggered — burn only, no wild effect check)

Fixed cost, predictable, easy to remember. Sometimes aborting is the smart play — especially if the tactical situation shifted while you were casting.

Casting Interruption

Spells take time on the timing track. That means enemies can hit you while you're casting. If you take any damage between declaring a spell and its resolution, you must make a concentration check to hold it together:

Roll d100 under (PW + 4) × 10

PW	Concentration Target	Odds
−3	10%	Nearly impossible
−2	20%	Hard
−1	30%	Difficult
0	40%	Coin-flip minus
+1	50%	Even odds
+2	60%	Favored
+3	70%	Reliable

Failure: the spell fizzles. Treat it as a cancellation — half Weak tier exhaustion, 10% backlash chance. The power dissipates. Wasted effort.

Voluntary abort: instead of rolling concentration, you can choose to just let the spell go. Same cancellation costs, but you don't risk a worse outcome.

Exhaustion Overflow

Here's where it gets dark. When a spell's exhaustion cost exceeds your remaining Exhaustion Points, the spell still fires. Your EP drops to zero — you're mentally Incapacitated — and the overflow converts to physical HP damage at half rate. The magic is tearing your body apart to fuel itself.

This is a deliberate design choice: a desperate caster can always reach for one more spell. It will cost them dearly, but the option exists. Heroes sometimes need to burn themselves down to save someone else.

Misfires

Roll over your target and the spell doesn't just fail — it goes wrong. Every spell has a unique misfire effect. This isn't "nothing happens." The magic was flowing. You lost control. It has to go somewhere.

• Force rebounds on the caster — 1d6 damage, hurled backward
• Mend inverts and drains the target instead of healing them
• Reveal shows false things — doors that aren't there, threats that don't exist
• Barrier forms a cage around the caster, trapping them for 1d4 rounds
• Kinesis — you lose control of your own body, stumble, and scatter your belongings

A misfire still costs exhaustion — equal to the Weak tier cost of that spell. The power was spent. You just didn't get to aim it. You also still check for backlash — the energy flowed through you whether you controlled it or not.

Push It

After seeing your result, you can try to squeeze more power out of a successful cast. You rolled Standard but you need Strong. You grit your teeth, dig deeper, and push.

You can push your result up by one tier. It costs you:

• Exhaustion: half the tier you qualified for, plus the full cost of the tier you're pushing to
• Backlash: double the pushed tier's normal rate
• You can never push past your hard cap — if your casting target doesn't allow Spectacular, pushing won't get you there
• One push per cast. You can't push twice.

Pushing is a gamble. Sometimes it saves the day. Sometimes it puts you on the floor. Know your limits before you reach past them.

Ritual Spells

Some magic is too vast and complex for the timing track. These spells take minutes or hours to cast, require preparation and focus, and can't be used in combat:

Spell	Time	What It Does
Scry	10 minutes	See a distant place or person
Shape Flesh	30 minutes	Transform living tissue
Circle	30 minutes	Inscribe a bounded magical zone
Transmute	1 hour	Change the substance of matter

Ritual spells still require the casting roll, still cost exhaustion, and still risk backlash. They just can't be hurried. Some magic demands patience.

Learning New Magic

Your starting spells and schools are just the beginning. As the campaign unfolds, your caster will encounter magic they’ve never seen, meet practitioners of schools they’ve never studied, and face problems their current repertoire can’t solve. Both paths can grow — but they grow in fundamentally different ways, just as they do everything else.

Scholarly Casters — New Spells

A scholarly caster’s spellbook is never finished. New spells can be learned during play, but learning magic is an experience, not a transaction. You don’t just spend points and gain a spell. You find a teacher, earn their trust, spend weeks studying, pour real effort into the work, and then roll to see if the theory clicks into practice. Each new spell should feel like an achievement — a story the player remembers.

Four things are required:

A source. You need something to learn from. A mentor — a caster who knows the spell and is willing to teach you, which means building relationships, joining factions, or earning trust. Or research — access to a library, university, or private archive with magical texts, which means teaching yourself from written theory. Harder, but you can find spells nobody nearby knows how to cast. Or discovery — a scroll found in ruins, a spellbook fragment recovered from a dead caster’s pack, an inscription on a vault wall. You must decode it first, and misreading a formula can cause a misfire on your first cast attempt.

Downtime. Learning a spell takes roughly 1–2 weeks of focused study and practice. This can’t be compressed into a long rest. Learning from a patient mentor in a quiet library is different from deciphering a water-damaged scroll in a besieged city — the GM determines what’s reasonable given the story.

A Scholarly Casting check. Roll against your casting target. Success means the spell is learned and added to your spellbook. Failure means partial understanding — the theory is there but the practical execution isn’t clicking yet.

XP. The cost depends on familiarity with the school:

Situation	Cost on Success	Cost on Failure
Spell in a school where you already know at least one spell	2 XP	1 XP
Spell in a completely new school	3 XP	1 XP

On failure, the 1 XP isn’t wasted — you learned something, just not enough. You must find more downtime and try again, with continued access to your source or a new one.

Wild Casters — New Schools

Wild casters don’t learn individual spells — they already have access to every spell in their schools. Their mid-campaign growth comes from expanding which schools they can reach, and that kind of growth doesn’t come from a library. It comes from the Aether itself.

Gaining a new school costs 7 XP and requires a narrative quest — a profound magical experience that reshapes how the caster relates to the Aether. This isn’t something you can do in a tavern. The magic must be felt, viscerally and dangerously, in a moment that cracks open a new part of your awareness:

• Surviving a catastrophic Wild Zone storm
• Making direct contact with a ley line nexus
• Communion with a Veil entity — terrifying and not fully understood
• Channeling through an unknown magical phenomenon during a crisis
• A near-death experience while casting that opens something you didn’t know was closed

The adventure is part of the cost. PW determines how many schools you start with at character creation (minimum 1), but mid-campaign school acquisition is not gated by PW. A wild caster who plays long enough and seeks out the experiences can eventually access all six schools. At 7 XP per school, reaching all six from a single starting school takes 35 XP — a long campaign of dedicated investment, and it should feel like one.

No Path Switching

Scholarly and Wild cannot be switched. The two paths represent fundamentally different relationships with magic — one is discipline imposed on chaos, the other is instinct riding the current. You cannot unlearn how you feel the Aether. This choice is permanent and defining.