Stay the God's Hand

(• Entropy, • or • • • Life) Dead Magic 52

The Mesopotamian gods were unpredictable in the best circumstances, and at their worst their capriciousness could be deadly. The most common sign of having fallen into disfavor was an illness. Often the victim had actually offended a temple official and was suffering from a curse as a result. Ailing individuals requested the aid of a temple physician to diagnose which god was causing the sickness. the doctors removed the curse, demanded payment, and divided the money with the official who had invoked the curse in the first place, leaving them both the richer and the dupe grateful to be well.

Performed as a pair, these rotes allow a mage to discover the cause for a lingering malady and attempt to treat it accurately. The mage lights an offering of incense and recites an appropriate invocation. Then she puts one hand on the victim's forehead and meditates for about half an hour, during which time she empties her mind. Eventually, an idea starts to form, and as the last embers of incense die out, the mage can identify the cause of the suffering. To treat the illness, the mage must request a favor from a higher power, in return for a small service. This "higher power" can be anything or anyone -- from a spirit to a policeman to the mage's boss. If the favor is granted, the answer comes to the mage in the form of a dream or vision. However, if the mage then fails to perform the promised service, she's stricken with the same symptoms she removed from the victim.

System: Either one of these rotes is useless if performed alone. Without knowing the source of the problem, it is impossible to cure it. Likewise, understanding the problem doesn't help if the mage does nothing about it. The caster's understanding of it is limited by his paradigm; what might be an imbalance in the cycle of life and death to a Euthanatos is perceived as a discordant voice in the universal Song by Chorister. The difficulty depends on what the actual problem is; pneumonia or other "natural" causes are more easily detected than vampiric possession, for example. The normal difficulty of the treatment is 8, lower if the mage agrees to perform some exceptional service for her higher power. The cure should fit both the disease and the mage's paradigm, and therefore offer a clue to the root of the problem.