30 Daimon Spirits for November

Ismekyllon, the Book of the Dead (Might 20)

Theurgical legends claim that there exists a book, or possibly a spirit in the form of a book, which records the lives and thoughts of every person in its pages. By invoking the spirit of the book a theurge can read sections of it and thus gain insight into the lives and thoughts of those long dead.

To summon the book the theurge must prepare a vessel for it. This must be an object intended to hold writing – a book, a plaque, a stone wall intended for inscription etc. The vessel must be pure and unblemished, masterfully crafted, and incorporate resonant material (resonant to the spirit whose pages will be called up, not the Daimon itself). If the vessel is insufficiently high quality the invocation will fail and the vis and time will be wasted.

When the Daimon is successfully invoked the vessel will be transformed to contain the information summoned by the Book of the Dead power. The text will be sized to fit the vessel, which may be illegibly small if the vessel is not large enough. The text will always be in the native language of the spirit whose story has been called up.

Attempts have been made once or twice to use this power to find out the fates of some of the founders. These attempts have universally failed, the reasons for this are not clear and have only raised further questions.

Characteristics: N/A

Personality Traits: N/A

Size: N/A

Combat: N/A

Soak: N/A

Wound Penalties: N/A

Abilities: Penetration 10

Powers:

The Book of the Dead, 10 points (Init -10)

This power imparts knowledge of the full life story of any dead person into a prepared vessel. The life story is from the perspective of the deceased, is always in their native language, and does not explain the beliefs and common knowledge of the deceased’s culture. This may make the information difficult to understand for a theurge as even if they can read the language the story may refer to places, concepts, and beings that the theurge does not know and can only try and piece together from context.

People in final twilight are invalid targets for this power as they are not dead. People who are in heaven are also not, as their stories have been erased from the book. People who have transformed into supernatural beings such as faeries are also not considered dead and cannot be targeted. Otherwise any dead soul can be called up – those in purgatory, hell, the underworld, people who died in the magic realm or Arcadia, and even people who have received church burials (though only if they are not in heaven). This is beyond the understanding of hermetic magi at present.

No spirit of might greater than 50 can be targeted with this power, the invocation simply fails.

The Book of the Dead and Canaanite Necromancy

This Daimon may be of great interest to a Magus seeking the ancient necromancy of Canaan, as it similarly defies the hermetic understanding of necromancy. A filled vessel from this Daimon may be used as a source of insight into Canaanite necromancy (but only once, another vessel only gives insight into this same effect, which does not progress the breakthrough). For these purposes consider the effect to be as follows:

The Book of the Dead, InMe(Te)(Fo) 50, Ritual

R: Veil, D: Momentary, T: Individual

This spell pulls the entire life story of a spirit from its mind and places it into a suitable vessel in writing. The vessel must be something that can contain writing and be constructed with materials resonant to the spirit being targeted.

(Base 25, Veil +3, Requisites/Unusual Effect +2)

This spell has requisites in a technique and form appropriate to creating the writing on the vessel – for example Creo Herbam for a book, Perdo Terram for a stone tablet etc.

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