Not long ago I received my copy of Momatoes’ game The Magus (“Oracular” edition), which I backed on Kickstarter. It’s a gorgeous print edition put out by Nessun Dove (though it’s also available via itch.io) and seriously, I have very few gaming books I think are more beautiful. Hell, I think I have very few books of any kind that are. It also came with an oracle deck and that, too, is just gorgeous as well as full of tons of interesting, compelling prompts.
The thing is, it’s a solo game, and I have a terrible track record with solo games. I back them because they sound amazing, then receive them, and onto the shelf they go. Probably the biggest reason is that I’m always busy, though the fact my desk is a perpetual mess doesn’t help. Anyway, I am looking to break the habit, so like with Jeeyon Shim and Kevin Kulp’s Wait for Me (of which I posted a playthrough back in 2020), I figured one way to break the habit would be to commit to posting a playthrough of it. If it works, I’ll probably do the same with some other solo games I have.
I’m also going to treat this game as a creative writing prompt. Sometimes constraints are useful in writing fiction, and the shaping of this game by oracle cards and prompts might just furnish me with the skeleton of a story that I could flesh out later, even if it doesn’t stand on its own. So, I think I’ll allow the events to breathe, and answer questions beyond the ones prompted in the game text, even if only a few, just to see where the narrative takes me.
So anyway, that’s what this post is: a playthrough of The Magus in its entirety. Hopefully it makes for interesting reading, though of course it’s intended as a game, and the main pleasure for such things is always for the player of the game. Still, there’s a Journal component to the game, written in first person, so maybe it’ll be an interesting read. I guess that if you want to find out, you should check out the rest of this post!
For the purposes of this post, I’m using three fonts. One is for headers. One is the normal body font of this site (for journal entries). The other, this one, indicates mechanical changes I’m noting for the character. Those will be indented, so that they’ll be impossible to miss.
Setup
My name is Peire. I’m told I have an ancestor who was some sort of Parisian aristocrat who was run out of town and went into hiding in the south of France. I have no idea if that’s true, but I’m the teenaged son of a merchant in Avignon, a layabout who is not expected to ever do anything but take over in my father’s business someday… a fate that I do not relish.
In my world, magic is granted by strange gods, or so old Cebelia says. She’s an old vagabond woman who wandered into town one day, and who immediately approached me, telling me that I could have power—true power—if I wanted it. I don’t know why she chose me, though she claims she “saw it in me.” I thought she was a fool, until she showed me a spell, a minor one. A bird was transformed from a lark to a sparrow in her hands. Instantly, I had to know more, and what she had to teach me was fascinating. I have never been one for studying, but with magic, I can’t stop.
But I know that my family will go mad with terror if they discover it, church-going and God-fearing folk as they are. I can see how their eyes would look, gazing at me in horror and disappointment, with disgust and rage. I could not bear to see that, so I took a sackful of gold, and the clothes on my back, and took to the road. I walked, and walked, somehow avoiding scoundrels and temptations alike, until I reached Marselha. I found myself rooms and then began to study in earnest.
Stats:
Focus: 0
Power: 1
Control: Perfect
Scars: None
Spells: None
Bonds: None
Event 1: Madeleine
The first event is a Bond event.
One day not long after my arrival in Marselha, I was making my way down the shit-clogged street, when I happened to glance down an alleyway. There was a girl there, of about my age, eyes wide with terror, being dragged down the alley by a none of other than a member of the city watch. I locked eyes with the girl, and saw her pleading silently for help, and so I did. I rushed over and knocked the guardsman in the back of the head, disorienting him just long enough for the girl to slip free, and together we fled back out of the alleyway and into the city, until we could run no more.
It was only then that I noticed the smell on the girl, and realized she was a fishmonger. As we spoke, the story poured out of her: her father, she said, was seriously ill. Well, more than ill: something had happened to him, and she had stolen a medical text to see if she could find anything that could help him. As she described his “sickness”—scaly skin, webbed fingers and toes, bulging eyes—I realized that the remedy he needed was not medical but magical, and I told her so. It was only then that I realized I still did not know her name, and I asked her it. She told me it was Madeleine.
She is a strange girl, lovely in a way I’ve never seen before. It is foolish to say, but she makes this city feel somehow like home… perhaps only because she is the first person I’ve really sat down and spoken with. Or perhaps because I’m the romantic fool my father always accused me of being. I see it in my mind’s eye, her father cured, and the admiring eyes she will cast upon me. Oh! To be admired, for the first time in my life!
Stats:
Focus: 0
Power: 1
Control: Perfect
Scars: None
Spells: None
Bonds: Madeleine the Fishmonger
Event 2: Subtle Mind
The second event is a Spell event (#5).
The grimoire was in a tower far from Marselha. It was a walk of several days across the hillsides and fields of Provençe, and when I arrived I found myself filled with terror. This was the tower of Gaussem de Bornelh, great magus of centuries past. Doubtless, I believed, it had lain abandoned since Gaussem’s time, and perhaps whatever magical traps he had laid in those days remained untriggered, waiting for an intruder such as myself. The building was, after all, imposing. Even to look at it was unsettling, and I to hold it in my gaze was in itself difficult—it had a tendency to fade and blur and seem to disappear before me. I wonder if perhaps those without any magical training might not even see the thing in the first place.
The door was unlocked, and swung open with a creak when I touched it. The tower within was dark, a thick layer of undisturbed dust upon everything within. I ascended the stair, and made my way through its chambers: the bedchamber, the scrying chamber lined with mirrors, the summoning chamber with its circle of silver inlaid in the floor, and the laboratorium with its countless equipments. All these things were the accoutrements of a magus, the materials of a magus’ work, and I felt ashamed of myself. I’d fancied myself “on my way” with my little alembic and my handful of books and grimoires in my rooms in Marselha. I was in the foothills, a great mountain lay before me, and I had been congratulating myself on my ascent so far. What a fool I was.
But I persisted in searching the place, and then I found the library on the third floor. There was a desk within the room, and upon that desk, a grimoire. The grimoire. It had been left open, and somehow its pages were free from the dust that coated everything else in the tower. My eyes wide, I sat at the desk and turned a page of the book… and the page turned back to where the tome had been left open.
Well, then, this page longed to be read. Pausing, I asked myself whether this might not be a trap, some sorcerous cunning acting against me across the centuries. Would the page be my destruction? But I remembered what Cebelia told me: that to become a magus involves risk, because risk lives at the heart of magic. I exhaled softly, steadying myself, and turned again to the book.
The spell was named “Subtle Mind.” It was a spell of purgation, of preparation. A spell of permanent effect, one that granted to the magus what the spell itself termed “the ghost mind.” From what it described, it would allow the magus to see the presence of magic, to feel its flows in the world, to attract the preternatural around him to himself. It was, in short, a spell for a budding magus, perfect for me. I couldn’t believe that it was mere luck: I was struck by the sense that Gaussem himself had left the book open to this page, alone in this tower centuries ago, in the hope that someone else might learn from it. That his magic might survive him, into some future time.
And so, I went about the tower, gathering the herbs and polished gemstones and dessicated bits of beast and tree required for the casting. Then, as the sun set, I read the incantation aloud, hoping I would not destroy myself in the process.
1 Power: die roll of d8, d10, and d12 against a Difficulty of 7.
Roll Outcome: 4, 9, 12… which means 2 successes.
Result: You succeed, and even recover unusual artifacts and discoveries kept secret by the dead mage. Gain 1 Focus or resolve an existing Scar. (Taking 1 Focus.)
As I read the final words of the spell aloud, a strange pain began to spread through my head. When it reached my eyes, I had to shut them against the brightness. It was only minutes later that I could open them again, and when I did, I found the entire tower luminous all around me.
I was seeing magic itself. This seclusium of the Gaussem’s was, indeed, a fount of magic! Like any spring spews water, this site spewed magic. No wonder he had placed his tower here… or, had it become a fount of this sort because he had built his tower here? This, I somehow knew, was closer to the truth, and with a sigh of relief I realized that I need not remain in this dusty old place. That I could build my own fount of magic, wherever I pleased.
But before I took my leave, I made my way through the tower, seizing upon anything that exuded a profound amount of magic: scattered tomes, a crystal, a pair of goblets, a dagger engraved with a scaly winged beast. Shoving all these things in my pack, I spoke aloud to Gaussem, in case some residue of the former magus remained, watching. I spoke my thanks, and my respect, and then I took my leave. As I made my way down the hill and back toward the road to Marselha, I turned back once. The tower was gone, or it seemed gone, though a faint glow lingered on the hilltop, a sign of magic still there. No matter: I had taken from the tower what I needed, and now it was time for me to return, to begin down the road of establishing my own “tower” as it were.
I walked happily, even in the dark, knowing I was finally truly on my way.
Stats:
Focus: 1
Power: 1
Control: Perfect
Scars: None
Spells: Subtle Mind
Bonds: Madeleine the Fishmonger
Event 3: Madeleine Again
The third event is another Bond event (#7).
I have been distracted from my studies, but by the best distraction of all: Madeleine. Thoughts of her creep into my mind as I work out formulae, as I revise theories and lore from the few grimoires I have managed to accumulate. They’re trash, but they hint at secrets. Secrets beget thoughts of other secrets, and my mind inevitably turns to her. So strange, since I had not imagined I would see her again in this bustling, enormous city.
And yet I did. She came to me, indeed, and when she did, I found myself more pleased than I dared trust myself to be.
Yet all my self cautioning was for naught. When she offered to take me down to the beach and reveal a secret to me, I misunderstood her. Meeting her at midnight by the old statue near my home, I felt a strange excitement creeping down the streets with her, and then setting out along the shoreline until she took me to what she called her family’s “hidden place.”
But it was not to be a night of love, as I’d imagined. No, when we reached the spot, it was a kind of cave in the earth, a dark pit with a rocky mouth, covered with a large stone—the two of us were able to move it, just barely. Inside, there were very rough stairs cut into the stone, descending into the darkness. Madeleine opened the sack she’d brought along, and out she brought a torch. As she fiddled, working at lighting the thing, I snapped my fingers and whispered the one cantrap that the old vagabond woman had taught me, and the torch burst into flames. Wide-eyed, Madeleine smiled and said, “I knew I had chosen wisely.” She led me down the steps and into the cave.
The walls… they were carved and painted. Inscriptions, so very many of them. “What is this place?” I asked her.
“The witch’s hole,” she said. “This place was the home of the witch who cursed my family, generations ago. My great grandmother killed her, hoping that it might break the curse she’d placed on my great-grandmother’s grandmother… but it didn’t. The curse lingers still… and…” By the firelight, I saw her more clearly than I ever had: a slight roughness to her skin, a slight bulge to those eyes in her sorrowful face. It was here in her already, the incipient curse within her, waiting to manifest at the worst possible time, and I saw then the wickedness of magic used in excess. The pain and suffering of generations, stemming from a single act, whether justified or no.
From her, I learned what evil magic can do. But I also learned what good it can do. She looked into my eyes, and said, “If you study these markings, do you think… do you think you can undo the curse?”
I told her I did not know, but I would try. What I did not say aloud, was that I hoped I could, and I hoped it might kindle in her heart the same flame that had begun to burn in my own.
Stats:
Focus: 2
Power: 1
Control: Perfect
Scars: 0
Spells: Subtle Mind
Bonds: Madeleine the Fishmonger
Reflection 1
Madeleine… thoughts of her distract me. I thought, at first, this was a shameful thing, a weakness on my part, but now I realize that it is a weakness that keeps me human. I’ve spent so many months thinking about transcendence, of going beyond the limits of the human realm. But she, she is of the human realm. When I transcend all human things, I shall transcend her, shall I not? Why does my mind cling to her, specifically, a girl that smells of fish and the street, a common market girl no more fit for a lover or bride than she is for sharing in my studies? And yet I feel as if I can only know the answer to this question by seeing whatever it is between us through, seeing it through till its conclusion. I fear its conclusion.
Event 4: Eyes of Obliteration
The fourth event is a Spell event (#9).
I gasped when I saw it there on a wall deep within the cave: “Eyes of Obliteration.” As I copied down the sigils from the stone, I felt a power course through me, alive, humming with energy and will, and I realized spells themselves are living things, creatures of potentiality eagerly poised on the cusp of being, creatures born of the minds of the strange and nameless gods that grant us their power.
1 Power: die roll of d8, d10, and d12 against a Difficulty of 8.
Roll Outcome: 1, 9, 1… which means 1 success.
Result: You follow your heart, but someone or something has terribly lied to you, and you feel your decision impair you. Gain the “Bewitched by the Ring” scar.
From what I understood of it, despite its dramatic name, it was a spell for obliterating magic, specifically enduring spells of a particularly difficult nature, and for abjuring enchantment from dweomered objects. The finer details escaped my understanding, but at first glance it seemed like precisely the spell I could use to break the witch’s curse.
I copied it down with haste—though not so much haste as to muddle the writing—and then I sat down, studying it carefully by the torchlight.
“What is it?” asked Madeleine, and I told her, directly, what I believed the inscription to be: “A spell that banishes curses, like the one placed upon your family.”
She grew excited, and begged me to cast it upon her, holding my hands and kissing me softly upon my mouth. What could I say? How could I not cast it? When I did, I felt a pain in my eyes, a blinding light, and when I looked about me, the inscriptions on the cave walls glowed incandescent. I turned my eyes to Madeleine, and saw her as she would be, with the curse banished, radiant in the darkness, bright and shimmering in the gloom.
In my mind, a voice whispered a phrase—a latin phrase—which I knew to be the prayer-key to the spell. I knew that if I but pronounced it, Eyes of Obliteration would blast away one enchantment. I fixed my eyes upon Madeleine, blinding though her radiance was, thought of the curse upon her family, and spoke the word as clearly and firmly as I could.
GaussemMadeleine cried out, shutting her own eyes and cringing as some sensation passed through her body. Perhaps the same one I was then feeling, akin to being in the waters of the sea when an immense wave rushes in, irresistible and all-encompassing. The light coming off her flickered, grew brighter, and with a cry she proclaimed, “I can feel the magic leaving me!”
The brightness grew ever more blinding, her cries ever more desperate, and then, suddenly, it was over. The spell was complete, and we both stood there, panting, unsure what had come over us or what it meant.
The sun had begun to rise by the time we returned to the city. I slept through the morning, and into the afternoon, and all the while I was plagued by dreams of the cave, of the inscriptions on the walls, of the sensation of living energy I’d felt copying down the incantation. Cebelia, the old vagabond woman who introduced me to magic, appeared in my dream and warned me sternly that to study magic is to invite the capricious gods into our lives, into our very bodies, and that the spells themselves are consummate liars, angelic with their promises and demonic with their executions. “Do not cast a spell again, until you know you have control of it,” she warned me, and then she hobbled off into the mist once more.
When I woke, I began to fear that I’d made a grave mistake with the spell, for it was not in my bed that I found myself, but rather laid upon the grass, not a hundred feet from the cave, amidst a strange ring of stones I hadn’t noticed there before, My head was pounding, and my body felt battered. It was all I could do to rise to my feet and make my way back to the city.
Stats:
Focus: 2
Power: 1
Control: Perfect
Scars: Bewitched by the Ring
Spells: Subtle Mind, Eyes of Obliteration
Bonds: Madeleine the Fishmonger
Event 5: Dancing Victory of Life
The fifth event is another Spell event (#12).
When I woke the next morning, I found the grimoire open again to a page I had not seen before. “You want me to study this page?” I asked it, half-expecting it to flap its pages in assent, but of coursemy question got no response at all.
I settled down to study the page, and discovered the spell was one of great power. From what little I could understand in the scribbled annotations, it was a spell that would grant me power over life itself, the ability to slay at a glance, or to infuse life back into a body not long dead. Greedily, I studied its pages, and began to prepare to try it. When I found a rat in one of the cupboards, I knew I had a subject upon which I could test the spell.
This spell required few materials for the casting: a bowl of water, a sharpened blade, a clear mind foremost. I recited the incantation, slashing the blade into the water with utmost concentration, and the rat collapsed, expiring in an instant.
An hour later, there came a knock at my door. I’d been sitting there in stunned shock all that time, but I rose and answered the door. Outside, there stood a young waif, a girl of perhaps twelve years, filthy and bedraggled in her patched rags. She looked at me with concern, and said, “You must forget that spell.”
I laughed. “What spell?”
“The Dancing Victory of Life,” she said. “My master knows that you have uncovered it, and cast it. You have taken a life with it, albeit a small one…”
My laughter ceased, my grin disappeared. “Your master?”
“Yes. She told me to warn you, you must forget the spell, be rid of the grimoire, for it is dark and dangerous magic. The one whose tome you found it in was undone by it, in the end, and so will you be if you use it overmuch. Better to abandon the spell.”
This, I did not trust. I smiled, and told her to tell her master to worry about himself or herself—she would tell me no more of the master, but only beg me to “forget” the spell. I sent her away, but she returned the next day, and the next, with gifts and threats, with promises and warnings. I began to wonder whether the magus who’d sent her perhaps wasn’t just jealously attempting to drive me from the path—what if the spell were, indeed, poison to the soul?
The grimoire did not answer, and I knew I could only learn the truth by casting it again.
1 Power: die roll of d8, d10, and d12 against a Difficulty of 9.
Roll Outcome: 6, 3, 8… which means 0 successes.
Result: You follow your heart, but someone or something has terribly lied to you, and you feel your decision impair you. Gain the “Bewitched by the Ring” scar.
The next day, I was ready when the inevitable knock came at my door. I whispered the words of the incantation, then said, “Come in,” and, as the door opened, I stabbed the blade into the water. The action was so quick that I did not register what I was seeing until the body slumped and fell to the floor.
It was not the waif, today, but Madeleine. I rose, panicked, horrified at what I’d done. What had I been thinking? Quickly, I tried the spell again, attempted the resurrection promised in its pages, but nothing happened. Again and again, I slipped the blade into the water and withdrew it, the action that the grimoire promised would infuse life into the dead, until a scribbling upon the facing page caught my eye. “Cannot undo itself,” it read, a simple few words that broke my heart.
There was nothing I could do for Madeleine. She was gone, truly and forever.
Stats:
Focus: 2
Power: 1
Control: Perfect
Scars: Bewitched by the Ring
Spells: Subtle Mind, Eyes of Obliteration, Dancing Victory of Life
Bonds: None.
Event 6: Midnight Visions of Stone Heartbreak
The sixth event is another Spell event (#14).
I have not left my room in days, not since dumping Madeleine’s corpse in the street in the dark of night. I have just been here in in my rooms, studying this grimoire of Gaussem’s, though it stubbornly refused to divulge any more of its secrets to me. I’d thought myself its master, but now I suspect the tome leads me down the path, and wonder if it was penned by Gaussem himself, or if it was his guide to becoming a magus. Perhaps the waif had been right, and the the tome and its spells had destroyed him? That is, assuming it wasn’t some sort of elaborate trap all along, one laid to destroy any who dared trespass into his home, and to destroy those foolish enough to attempt to follow in his footsteps. I was no longer certain the grimoire would lead me where I hope it might, and yet I returned to it again and again.
Finally, reading its pages by moonlight last night, I discovered on one page luminous writing upon one of the tome’s illustrations. It had been secreted there, written in some sort of ink that only showed by moonlight. The spell was called “Midnight Visions of Stone Heartbreak.” The spell is meant to give the caster power over the minds of others, power to peer into them, power to sway them, power to break them. It is a terrifyingly powerful spell.
1 Power: die roll of d8, d10, and d12 against a Difficulty of 10.
Roll Outcome: 4, 5, 10… which means 1 success.
Result: The spell attracts the attention of a baleful supernatural force whose power outclasses mine. Do I flee, stand my ground, or offer it allegiance? Based on the roll outcome, the being is amused by my decision (whatever it is) and promises to return soon and take what is its own by conquest… but for now, it leaves me with a small gift that devastates many people.
Of course, being a fool, I copied down the instructions, the gestures and sigils all, and then gathering the necessaries, I cast it. The result was crippling, for a moment: every mind, every heart in the city spoke its secret thoughts into me. Murderers’ secret satisfaction, and the shame of starving thieves, the sorrow and disgust of the women who walk the streets by night, the weariness of the stall-vendors in their sleep. It was a cacophony of thoughts and feelings, took much for me… and out in the darkness beyond the lights of the city, beyond its walls, I felt something take notice of me, focus in on me, and mark my presence.
Quickly, I turned my mind to Madeleine, hoping to direct this spell’s power at her alone. To my astonishment it worked, but her heart, too, whispered a secret to me: the secret of her betrayal. There was one detail that she had not disclosed to me, a secret that astonished me, terrified me. How could she lie to me? How, deceiving me so, could she live with herself?
As I stood at the center of one of the circle-sigils in my rooms, pondering this betrayal, I heard a sound like the swishing of a thousand silks, the whispering of dust in air shifting around a nameless presence.
“You,” came a voice, deep as the seabed and ancient as the skies. “I see you.”
“Begone,” I snapped.
The thing smiled, its great fangs white in the dark, and it whispered, “Yes, little one. That is the power you imagine you hold. Iatrokus’s power, and in using it, you become Iatrokus’ property. It stepped forward, out of the shadows, and looked at me with its many eyes gleaming, and then it stepped closer. I was unable to move as it slipped very close, its mouth near my eye, a choking reek in the air—its hot breath on my skin smelt like death and honey and flowers and smoke all at once—and it whispered, “Iatrokus will come again, to take what is its property. Until then, little one, a gift.”
Then it was gone. I shuddered uncontrollably, struggled my way back toward my desk, baffled by the thing’s words. What gift?
Then I saw it. A small black box upon the grimoire’s pages. With shaking hands, I opened the box, and peered inside.
Within, there was a ring of gold, inscribed all over with tiny sigils, exuding palpable power. I closed the box, lay down, and tried to sleep, but I haunted by visions of its potency, of how its potency could be mine, if I but slipped the ring onto my finger. Finally, I concluded that sleep would not come for me that night. With trembling hands, I took the box and slipped out into the streets, those still-busy streets of the night city—anything to avoid being alone in my own dark rooms.
With hands still trembling, I slipped the ring on, and made my way through the streets, and as I went, silence followed. The silence was eerie, and with each passing minute, I grew more afraid. It was only after I’d walked through several squares and turned to make my way back that I realized whence the silence had come.
Every soul I’d looked upon during my walk lay there on the cobblestones, dead. I felt a throbbing around my finger, the ring pulsating with the power it had gathered from them. I slipped the ring off, and hurried home, but I did not manage to sleep until long after the sun had risen. And what thought haunted me until then, I am ashamed to set down here, but I must:
I wondered how to extract the power from the ring, and make it mine own, the better to face this entity Iatrokus when it does finally return.
Stats:
Focus: 2
Power: 1
Control: Perfect
Scars: Bewitched by the Ring, Plaything of the Dark Ones
Spells: Subtle Mind, Eyes of Obliteration, Midnight Visions of Stone Heartbreak
Bonds: None
Reflection 2
Here, this was what I have become. I was alone in the world again, and a terrible force now huntted after me. I felt only pity, pity for myself, in my circumstances. If only… if only I could have had Madeleine back. Would I have walked away from the grimoire, from magic altogether? No, I knew that I would not have done that. Already, I could feel the coldness within me toward her, growing like frost across a windowpane. She was is no different from the money I’d spent for these rooms, or the hours I’d spent walking to the tower of Gaussem: just something to be spent in pursuit of greatness. I would have sacrificed her in an instant, if I had not lost her as I had. I knew it, and I let go of my illusions of otherwise. The thought occured to me that she—she was perhaps the key to it all. That if only I could have sacrificed her, I would have triumphed, and become a true magus.
I slept fitfully, and Cebelia came to me in my dreams, though I cannot remember what she said. Doubtless, some baleful injunction, a warning about the risks of magic. Old fool. I knew without her telling me what I needed to do. I would search the grimoire until I find the spell that would bring back my innocent, sweet, sacrificial lamb. I would find a way to resurrect Madeleine.
Event 7: Wish
The seventh event is yet another Spell event (#17).
I woke to find the grimoire open again, upon my desk. It all but demanded my attention, so that it was the first thing I saw when I woke that following afternoon. The spell on the page was titled, “Wish.” And from what I could tell, it grants the caster’s wish, if the cast performs the rite correctly. I recite the words of the simple spell, chanting them carefully, and at the end, whispering Madeleine’s name, my intent bright in my mind.
Then, instead of a bright flash, there is a flicker of darkness, and then silence.
1 Power: die roll of d8, d10, and d12 against a Difficulty of 11.
Roll Outcome: 1, 3, 4… which means 0 successes. Spend Fortune to reroll the d12: result, 7. Spend last Fortune to reroll it again: 10. Failure.
Result: The spell can alter reality—undo any regret, revive any death, create any world—and only at the cost of your soul. Failure: You still gain the spell, but at any cost: the worst possible outcome occurs. Sacrifice a Bond.
As I rose from my body, I watched a body fall to the stone floor of my room, lifeless and still. I drifted into the air, drawn away by some force I could only barely resist, and slowly I realized that the body was my own, was me. And yet here I was, floating above it, barely resisting that almost insensible tug of some force trying to draw me away.
Stats:
Focus: 0
Power: 1
Control: Perfect
Scars: Bewitched by the Ring, Plaything of the Dark Ones
Spells: Subtle Mind, Eyes of Obliteration, Midnight Visions of Stone Heartbreak, Wish
Bonds: None
All the while I heard the grimoire calling out for many hours. But it was not calling out to me, nor gloating at my fate. Instead, it muttered, in a low and inhuman voice, “Madeleine… Madeleine… Madeleine…”
Then, suddenly, the door to my rooms was thrown open, and in strode Madeleine. She looked at me, and gasped in shock, pausing to touch me and finding me cool already. Then she sat for long minutes, hand over her mouth, stare blank.
Event: Conclusion
The grimoire continued to call her name, inaudibly, persistently, and after some time she turned to it, and turned to my notes beside it. She picked up the notes—I had not realized she could even read—and scanned them, and I think she realized what spell I had cast, and why. She turned her eyes to the grimoire, and to my astonishment, she began to read the page to which I’d left it open, the page containing the Wish spell. Did she understand it? Did she realize that the spell could destroy her—indeed, destroy the world, if she were ill-equipped to cast it? She, a fishmonger’s girl… She shut the book, and took it in her hands, and rose to leave, and I understood then what she planned to do with it.
No, no! I attempted to shout, but I was mouthless and voiceless. I strained to make her feel my presence, to hear me, but she seemed to be oblivious to my presence, as she took up the book and rose, looking about the room, with a smile—a strange smile that suggested something I did not dare think about. Gazing down at my corpse once again, she said, “You broke the spell that kept us from the path, and for that, I thank you, you fool.” Stop, I screamed voicelessly, stop now! But all my straining did was weaken my resolve against that other force that drew me away, calling me toward it. I found myself slipping away, through airless expanses over the houses and fields, among great trees and shadows, until I found myself in the depth of that cave she’d led me to with the inscribed walls, hovering before a great gloaming figure of inkiest black.
I recognized it, and it me. It smiled mockingly at me, and then in a booming whisper, it said, “Now, you will repay me for all you learned from my book, little one. And so now, we begin.”
Notes
An early result in the game suggested that Madeleine had been lying to me with her story about the curse upon her familial bloodline. Was she herself the witch who’d been cursed so long ago, or one of the witch’s descendants? I’m not sure, so I tried to bring this out in an ambiguous way in the end.
Also, I could not find a rule for what to do if called to Sacrifice a Bond while my character has zero bonds. (Maybe I just missed it?) When Wish failed, I was instructed to sacrifice a Bond, but I had none remaining. I figured I’d try to honor the spirit of that by making “the worst that could happen” even worse than mere death. In that final scene, the narrator loses Madeleine doubly: he suspects that she will be destroyed by the grimoire just as he was, and he also learns that she’d been keeping a fatal secret from him—possibly lying to him and using him, in fact—to reinstate her own access to magic.
Also, I wanted to honor the instruction that suggested that Iatrokus would eventually return to collect what was rightfully his. But since my character was dead, it had to be his soul, and instead of returning to the mage’s rooms, Iatroklus summoned him into his lair in the very same cave where he learned “Eyes of Obliteration.” I thought it might also be a nice twist if the grimoire itself that was at the heart of the story turned out to be somehow tied to Iatroklus, so I wove that into the ending. Hell, with the cave and the grimoire linked, there’s even room to conjecture that this is all fallout from some long-ago feud between magic-workers (the “Witch” and Gaussem) or something like that.
This is a much darker ending that the game seems to intend: the last page of instructions suggests the ending should be uncertain, but implies that the mage should be alive, and simply be leaving the place where they are (and possibly giving up on magic). Still, my ending is at least a little uncertain, and the mage definitely has moved on. So, yeah, while character death seemingly isn’t supposed to happen, it sort of fits the way everything built up in this particular playthrough of the game.
I think one’s outcome depends a little on the die rolls that determine one’s progress through the story: personally, I ignored the fact that I could choose to fulfill the next event instead of the one I rolled at any time, which meant I rolled a lot of Spells and only one Bond, which was pretty disastrous for my character. (Especially since I lost my one bond dramatically when I messed up a Spell roll.)
I’ll be playing this game again, and I may even post my results when I do so. I think there’s a little more strategy to the game than I expected—the strategy being in choosing events, and not just in deciding when to sacrifice Bonds for Power.
That concludes my first playthrough of The Magus. It was fun, and darkly atmospheric, and I hope the playthrough was reasonably interesting to read. As I noted above, I’ll definitely be playing it again, though I’m not sure that I’ll post future playthroughs here. It won’t be the next solo game I play, though. I have several waiting to be played—including Tim Hutchings’ Thousand Year Old Vampire, Charlie Menzies’ Don’t Play This Game (which just arrived at my home yesterday), Jeeyon Shim’s The Shape of Shadows as well as her and Shing Yin Khor’s Field Guide to Memory, J. Li’s Twain, and… well, and probably others I’ve forgotten about. So, yeah, it might be a while before I play this again, but I am quite sure that I will, eventually. I’m especially interested in the various variant games included in the back of the book, which also look interesting and fun.
I stretched out play over a few days, and I think that’s really the best way to do it. I specifically started the following Event at the end of each session, going as far as to come up with the name of the new Spell or Bond, and then stopping to let the idea marinate until the next session. That worked well for me, and I’d recommend trying it if you find playing all the way through in a single sitting to be a bit much.
While playing it, I really came to appreciate just how wonderful is the Oracle Deck that came with the game. It has a ton of prompts on the cards, as well as compelling images on the backs of the cards, and I’m sure there will be ways of integrating it into other solo (or even conventional, group-played) games, such as be using the mood prompts, or possibly using the nouns and adjectives to establish emergent themes or setting details. The book, as I’ve stated, is flat-out gorgeous, and I think the game’s procedures are pretty good prompts for an interesting emergent narrative, especially since they force the player to make some really tough decisions.
I also want to emphasize once more that the book is just plain gorgeous. It’s also very well-written: it’s a simple text and doesn’t take long to read, but in general it’s easy to understand, and logically organized and explained. I’m especially curious how the two-player version of the game works out in play, though I’m likelier to play the Hex (modern fantasy) variant of the game next, I think. Of course, for those who might only want to try the game once, I’d suggest the digital version over at itch.io. There’s even a digital oracle card app you can use to play, apparently. (I haven’t tried that yet, since I have the printed cards and book here on my desk.) Of course, if you’re going to pay $25 for the digital version, you may feel like the print edition is worth the extra. I guess that’s up to you.
Anyway, it’s a great, dark game of magic and sacrifice, and I hope it’s a roaring, and well-deserved, success for Momatoes. If you’d like to get to know a little more about the author, check out this video. She seems cool. She’s on Bluesky, too.