Vis through worship

Games Discussion Ars Magica
1

Hello all

My long running Ars campaign has come to an end with the departure of Ryce Mageslayer to mythic lands (Australia) and i'm deep in the process of writing my new campaign.

My campaign uses the rules set for Ars Magica but i've changed the setting to a more high fantasy one. You can read details on this earlier post.
[url]https://forum.atlas-games.com/t/a-whole-new-world/2351/1]

Much has changed since i wrote that post and the world and background are now heavily fleshed out.

One thing remains that i'm scratching my elegantly coiffed head over. Vis generation.

I've already identified several methods for getting vis into the game. Like Ars vanilla, it manifests in magical auras. In my setting aura are long thin ley lines that "Pool" where the lines cross. Where big ley lines or multiple lines meet, the pool is big and strong, where only two small lines meet, the aura pool is small and weak.
Priestly characters also start with the personal vis source virtue, a reward of power from their devout worship of their deity.
Lastly, and this is the one i'm needing help on, priests can salvage vis from the worship of their flock.

My idea is that a priest prepares an altar consecrating it in a manner similar to opening a talisman. He then leads his followers in worship to his god and the altar collects and focuses that energy and outputs it as vis. This vis won't be anything he can carry around, it'll never leave the altar but the priest will be able to access it to for rituals and enchantment.

What i'm struggling to work out is some kind of mechanic for this. I want the vis to be slow to gather, requiring seasons or even a year of worship before its ready. But how can i tie this into the congregation? Obviously the more people you have praying, the better. Larger grander churches with more, devout worshippers should generate more vis than a pokey backwater church.

I'd also like some kid of mechanism to include professional "chanters" that basically do nothing but pray. This goes to my idea of priestly magic being strongly linked to the "Word" of the deity, which is why all priests in the setting have range limited to voice. These chanters should be trained to sing the praises of the god and add some kind of boost to the vis gathering process, but i'm not sure how i might integrate this. These chanters might even be novitiate priests.

I'd appreciate any ideas anyone has, the last post threw up a lot of great stuff that i've integrated into my setting.

2

an idea concerning the mechanics: What if it takes say 10 or 30 years for the vis to manifest after singing. This would cause some inter-generational investments (Sing for our children, like our fathers sang for us) and problems with atheism (because not singing would not immediatlyy change anything)

style-wise:
If I wanted professional vis-singers, I would create tree-singers who have the ability to sing so that magical plants can grow.

3

1 pawn per 1000 prayers wopuld be OK IMO. For a congregation of 100 people that gather on sundays and special holydays, that would be around 60 chanting days. 60x100 = 6.000 chants per year. Or 6 pawns of vis from the altar. More chanting people get you more vis.

3 Professional Chanting Dudes chanting dayly at your altar means 1000 cvhants more in a year = 1 pawn of vis
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Catedrals, with 20 priests chaniting dfatyly can generate easily 20 x365 7300 chants plus the congregation. Say, 200 on average. That is 19300 chants. Add a couple regular chanters (6 for example) and you get 20 pawns of vis in the cathedral.

For each 5 points of True Faith that the worshippers have, you generate a further pawn of vis.

You can spend vis in a pyramidal fahion to increazse aura by 1 point per year.

Faily consistent system I would say. From the top of my head, but it would seem OK, methinks :slight_smile: Hope that helps.

Cheers,

Xavi

4

Nice one Xavi, I like the 1000 prayers to a pawn of vis, although given that my players will be leading a refugee band of 1000 i don't like the idea of them getting a pawn of vis a week from sunday prayers.

Modifying it a little might get this.

A small church in a village could expect to draw 100 worshippers every sunday. Such a church might give 1 pawn of vis annually. That seems about right for your local village priest.

A big cathedral might attract 1000 worshippers, or 10 pawns of vis a year. Thats a good amount, especially considering the personal vis supply of the priests and other methods of gathering vis.

A chanter might add one pawn of vis each annually. Hence a cathedral that could employ 10 novices to do nothing but chant the glories of the gods for a year would get an extra 10 pawns of vis. This makes them FAR less powerful than even a basic apprentice doing vis extraction (who can get at a minimum, 4 pawns of vis a year) but also means they don't have to be gifted.

Chanters should need to be professionally trained, not some guy off the street. Maybe music (Holy chanting) at 5 as a minimum. Along with some complusory church knowledge like theology that should make them sufficiently specialised to the degree that a trained craftsman would be.

Whatta ya think?

5

I don't know. You might want to enable even a village priest to pull off a ritual (4 pawns) a year (e.g. on Easter). If you have it at hand, check The Dragon and The Bear for ideas.

6

I agree with the village priest being able to pull off a ritual a year, but bear in mind that Priests ALL have the personal vis source virtue. this works similar to the altaridea in that it is a manifestation of their gods power as vis provided to them via their faith.

So even a priest without a village church could get off a ritual a year. A village priest would also be able to stockpile beyond this using the faith of his congregation to "charge up" his altar.

7

Do you have RoP: The Divine?
I do not remember the machanisms but it describes the effects of aura generation by ritual and worship. Maybe you can apply this set of rules to vis generation as well resulting in an amount of divine vis equal to the auras strenght manifesting in the altar at easter.

8

Salvete Sodales!

Well, a pawn of vis/week would be much for a normal Ars-campaign, but in such campaigns you are rather rarely in charge of the survival of a small town's population. If the two-legged vis sources expect divine support in return for their faith - e.g. pester the religous characters with demands for curing their diseases, handing out protective blessings etc. - then the vis produced will mostly be used up for just these purposes. So, as long as you find sensible solutions to make characters burn vis, there is no need to be stingy with it.

Vale,
Alexios ex Miscellanea