Spontaneous Generation

(• • Prime, with  • • • Matter   or   • • • Life)                                                Dead Magic  137

In olden days, philosophers believed that animals and most matter could spontaneously generate out of nothing.  Maggots came from meat and horses sprang from the mist of waterfalls.  This rote duplicates such spontaneous generation.  The mage can't pull a gun or a sword out of thin air, but he or she can turn one thing into something that is not, even something radically different.  The mage simply reaches into an appropriate source and the object or creature spontaneously generates.

Spontaneous generation happens only from certain sources -- one can spontaneously generate maggots form meat, mud or corpses, but not form glass or plastic.  Horses may spring form waterfalls or great blazes of fire, but not out of wooden doorways or earthen mounds.  The player should research a few theories of spontaneous generation.  A modern mage must certainly alter this rote; a Virtual Adept might pull a computer chip out of a pile of circuit boards, while an Akashic could grab a spear from a thicket of reeds.

System:  The number of successes determines the accuracy and the quantity of material generated (three successes might mean a newborn foal comes out of the mist of a waterfall while ten or more might generate four grown stallions leaping forth at full charge).  A mage must alter this rote to make it suitable for modern materials like plastics and alloys, of course.