Magic Mondays – Black Death Incantation

It’s Cyber Monday and that means that The Runed Age Corebook is 15% off on DriveThruRPG!

Now with that done, this week we show you the Black Death incantation.

Notation: Sustain the Creation of a disk of Carbon in the shape of a ring 100 times as large as the array and 10 times as wide and as thick as 0.001 times the array’s circumference. Push that Carbon at a speed of 1 m/s and Rotate it anticlockwise at a speed of 32 m/s and apply the effect of the Destruction of Humans to the Carbon. Cast from Waist

Incantation: Behg Ob Kôltos Ant Rônde Ant Mürklen Cob Dün Ydruch Non Ob Drahaii Ant Omkirdi Non Schniv Ant Schniv Ant Schniv Ant Schniv Ant Schniv Cob Non Fîtî Meing Dün Ob Môk Ant Omkirdi Cob Kîtî Non Môk Dün Anhal Non Ob Hohd Ant Mürgrot Non Skehrem Cob Ent Fin Gorbehl

Class: Incantation

Description:

It’s not a pretty array, nor an easily digestible notation and it certainly is a tongue twister of an incantation. But what it lacks in elegance and simplicity, it more than makes up for it in power, spectacle and raw, unadulterated evil.

The Black Death is and does exactly what it name implies. When cast, this incantation creates a flat disk in a ring around the caster that is immediately broken up in the tiniest fragments and sent flying around the caster at the gale-force speed of 115 kilometres per hour and slowly pushed outwards at the gentle pace of 1 meter per second. If any of the smallest bit of this smoke tornado touches a human, it vaporises it. Even a whiff of this smoke can cut straight through the stoutest man. If that isn’t bad enough, the creation of this smoke is sustained, meaning it will continue for as long as the caster will it. With this single incantation, a caster can create a tornado large enough to rip roofs from houses, break windows, tip cars and kill an entire town.

As to the mechanics of how a flat doughnut of carbon could become this monstrosity? That relies on two inbuilt mechanisms of the runes and arrays. Firstly is what the Carbon rune actually is. When it is is used in an array to simply push and pull and contain it, the rune affects all types of carbon, from coal to graphite to diamonds. However, when created, the rune can only create one sort of carbon: amorphous carbon, or simple coal.

Now for a bit of calculation. The average human has a waist diameter of around 30 cm, this means that the created carbon ring has a diameter of 30 meters and is 3 meters wide but only 3 mm thick. That is one fragile disk doughnut. As soon as it is created it is pulled violently to one side and pushed outward, ripping it apart. But that may not be enough to create smoke, but would probably only create a tornado of coal pieces.

What helps the smoke process along is the fact that the creation of the carbon is sustained, meaning every millisecond a new ring is formed, again and again, over and over. As physics tells us, no two objects can occupy the same space at the same time but that is exactly what this array is trying to do. What is the result? A ring that is constantly exploding and destroying itself as millions of rings try and occupy the same space. This is what turns it to smoke and is also the reason for the Push rune in order to keep the smoke from harming the caster in the continual explosions that are occurring.

And lastly, new this week is the spoken words for our two new runes. Rotate is Drahaii, and Invert is Omkirdi.

Now have fun and go be evil!

If you want to get more arrays and incantations, check out our Journal of Array Design over on DriveThruRPG, now also available as a deck of magic cards.