My Prince of Nothing sorcery hack

5 years later and I’m doing it again! This time it’s all traits and a couple of artefacts.

Traits:
Upon opening the sorcery skill in this world, you take a trait to represent your sorcerous background.

Schoolman of the Cishaurim Die Trait
You wear the yellow robes of the Cishaurim and gain the Pshuke spellcaster trait. Your school is located in Shimeh where you are respected by the locals and their religion of Fanimry. Your school generally exists outside the politics of the three seas where you are regarded with mystery and fear.

Schoolman of the Imperial Saik Die Trait
You wear the black robes of the Imperial Saik and gain the Anagogic spellcaster trait. Your school is located in Momemn where you are regarded as a tool of the Emperor. The Nansur Empire is home of the Junriuma in Sumna, a holy site, seat of the Shriah, the Inrithi regard you and all sorcerers as unclean and blasphemous.

Schoolman of the Mandate Die Trait
You wear the brown robes of the Mandate and gain the Gnostic Spellcaster and the Heart of Seswatha traits. Your school is Atyersus on the island of Nron where you are never spoken of. Your school is contracted to the land of Conriya where you serve princes and kings as scholars and advisors. The world regards you as mad doomsayers but respects your magic. Your school is at war with the mysterious Consult, a cabal of evil sorcerers that would end the world, but they are in Golgotterath in the ruins of the ancient North surrounded by orcs and blight. About 200 years ago all traces of the consult in the three seas mysteriously disappeared leaving the mandate’s war looking foolish.

Schoolman of the Mbimayu Die Trait
You wear a patchwork robe of many pockets and gain the Anagogic Spellcaster trait and Iswazi trait. Your school is Located in Domyot in the distant land of Zeum. The schools of three seas have no relationship with your school.

Schoolman of the Mysunsai Die Trait
You wear the blue robes of the Mysunsai and gain the Anagogic spellcaster trait. Your school is located in Ce Tydon where you are regarded the mercenary school working for the highest bidder. The Tydonni are a barbarous people only recently adopting the religion that calls you unclean blasphemers.

Schoolman of the Scarlet Spires Die Trait
You wear the red robes of the Scarlet Spires and gain the Anagogic spellcaster trait. Your school is located in High Ainon where your school has installed a puppet king under your magocracy. The three seas hate you envious of your political power. Your school however is envious of the mandate’s gnostic style of sorcery.

Schoolman of the Vokalati Die Trait
You wear the purple robes of the Vokalati and gain the Anagogic spellcaster trait. Your school is located in the far-off land of Nilnamesh where the old religion is still prevalent. The land of the three seas is still a mystery to you.

Wizard/Witch Die Trait
You belong to no school of magic and this makes you a wizard/witch. You learned your craft yourself and have no restriction on your initial spell list in character burning only. Your spells leave a sorcerous mark on you visible to anyone with the Gifted trait. You gain an infamous reputation among all the schools who all regard you as an enemy.

Anagogic Spellcaster Die trait
Your sorcery is powered by fundamental analogies, for example if you conjure a fire it comes from a sorcerous dragon’s mouth. Your sorcery leaves an aura on you called an arcane mark, this is visible to any with the Gifted trait. You are restricted to the following 19 spells:
Bilious Smoke, Dark of Night, Eldritch Shield, The Fear,
Fire Breath, Fire Fan, Flame Finger, Force of Will,
Horror, Mage Light, Persuasion, Philosopher’s Perch,
Pyrotechnics, Rain of Fire, Spark Shower, Thunderclap,
Turn Aside the Blade, Whisper on the Wind, Wyrd Light

Gnostic Spellcaster Die trait
Your sorcery is powered by fundamental truths, if you conjure a fire you are using fire itself at it’s very root and this gives you +2D to cast and resist tax. Your sorcery leaves an aura on you called an arcane mark; this is visible to any with the Gifted trait. You are restricted to the following 28 spells:
Bilious Smoke, Binding, Chaos Ward, Dark of Night,
Eldritch Shield, Emperor’s Hand, The Fear, Fire Breath,
Fire Fan, Flame Finger, Force of Will, Horror,
Lights of St. Andrew, Mage Light, Persuasion, Philosopher’s Perch,
Pyrotechnics, Rain of Fire, Spark Shower, Spirit Servant,
Storm of Lightning, Thunderclap, Turn Aside the Blade, Wall Walker,
Wave, Whisper on the Wind, White Fire, Wyrd Light

Pshuke Spellcaster Die trait
Your sorcery is powered by the waters of Indara, it comes from passion, not academics. As part of the training you are ritually blinded but may take the Spirit Familiar trait for 1 point to gain a snake familiar to see the world through their eyes. Your sorcerous skills are rooted from Will. Your sorcery leaves no arcane mark meaning that to the Gifted there is no evidence of sorcery on you or the world. You are restricted to the following 18 spells:
Chaos Ward, Delerium Tremens, Eldritch Shield, Emperor’s Hand,
The Fear, Force of Will, Horror, Lights of St. Andrew,
Mage Light, Mask, Persuasion, Philosopher’s Perch,
Turn Aside the Blade, Wall Walker, Whisper on the Wind, White Fire,
Witch Flight, Wyrd Light

Heart of Seswatha Die trait
Mandate sorcerers touch the heart of Seswatha as part of their training. Seswatha founded the Mandate from the remnants of his own school, the Sohonc. The affected sorcerer is possessed by a piece of Seswatha, you always dream of horrific times from Seswatha’s life when he battled the Consult, then known as the Mengaecca, in wars ancient and otherwise forgotten. This keeps the war with the consult alive, a daily reminder. Seswatha is jealous of the mandate’s Gnosis and any attempt by other schools to extract this knowledge through coercion or torture is made at a +4Ob, Seswatha suffered worse in his lifetime.

Iswazi Die Trait 2 pts.
Your method of spellcasting differs from the standard wave hands and speak words. Choose an alternative method of casting spells. It must be florid, loud or consumptive.

Sorcerous Artefacts:
Chorae
The chorae is a small iron stone inscribed with ancient runes. It gives the bearer the Eldritch Sink Trait as long as it is against their skin. If it comes into contact with one who has cast spells they are killed, turned into a pillar of salt. Sorcerers can see chorae even when they are hidden from view.

Wathi Doll
A small doll that contains a soul. It can be animated by a Gnostic Sorcerer using the Spirit Servant spell. It will activate upon the touch of one with the Gifted trait regardless of their ability to cast spells.

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This is the coolest BW hack I’ve seen in ages.

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Thanks, going to put it forward for a Burning Wheel game I’m starting on Roll20 tomorrow. I’ve not run online before but I thought I’d put it forward while this COVID-19 crisis is in full swing.

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Love this. My first BW campaign attempt was set in Momemn. I wish I had had this at the time!

Our Wednesday night gaming group had our first Roll20 game last night. We supplemented Roll20 with a Discord chat because typing is much slower than talking. Overall, it went very well once we’d worked out the correct dice-rolling code.

I believe there are BW character sheets already configured for Roll20, although I’m not sure where; I believe @Mark_Watson has GM’d Burning Wheel through Roll20 before, so might have some thoughts.

I agree with Luke. This is so laden with potential, and implied detail.

Not sure if you’re aware, but it’s from a series of books: https://princeofnothing.fandom.com/wiki/Prince_of_Nothing_Wiki

I recommend them, if you have a strong stomach. Pretty much the grimmest grim dark around.

I was reading The Unholy Consult on a plane one time. I kept audibly gasping and furrowing my brow. I can only imagine what the person next to me thought. Man, I hope they didn’t read over my shoulder! (or hope they did!)

Weirdest thing is whenever I hear grim dark described I always think “that’s not for me, I can’t see the appeal”, and somehow this series is by far my favourite.

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To be fair, it’s not typical grim dark. It has a lot of really original takes on fantasy tropes and weaves in a ton of philosophical concepts due to the author being an actual philosopher, as you can probably tell from this hack alone. My only complaint is that at times I had no idea what was going on. Like, did that just happen, or is that how everyone perceived it, or is he being metaphorical?

I do want to go back and do a full re-read at some point because, without spoiling too much, Bakker likes to play around with how atemporal beings would interact with a world of otherwise linear time and how being outside time makes causality do weird things, and I’m curious how clever he was with that from the beginning. And to see if I can make sense of the parts that confused the shit out of me.

Also, HBO needs to option it as their next big fantasy series. If GoT caused clutching of pearls, this would probably lead to congressional hearings.

Very Nice!

Re: Roll 20
There’s a built-in character sheet that you can select when you create a new game or edit an existing one.


It has pre-made macros, and most of the core rules are accounted for, like armour, wounds, tax, beginners luck.

It hasn’t been updated in a while, but you can make bug reports on GitHub https://github.com/Roll20/roll20-character-sheets/tree/master/Burning%20Wheel

Good luck and have fun!

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