The Unseen Craft

Magic can turn a battle, shield a holding, or ruin a man, and it is a blade without a hilt; every Working tests the hand that grips it.

In Dyrhal, magic is rare and widely feared. Most learned voices agree that magic is shaped by the Nine, and that it answers to the sign a person was born under; on what happens when it is pushed past that, they are quieter.

Only the Omen-Born can work it. To be Omen-Born is to have been born under a minor omen of one of the Nine: a candle that leaned, a rook at the window, one of the small signs the midwives still mention afterward. The omen is fixed by the month of birth, and it decides whose Path a caster walks: eight Workings in a fixed order, two at each rank, shaped by the god’s nature, and the Workings of one god do not answer to a person marked by another. Most people in Dyrhal are not Omen-Born, and the gate to the Craft is shut on them for good.

The Unseen Craft also exacts a toll on those who practice it, and magic has a suspicious reputation among commoners and nobles alike. When it solves problems no steel or coin can, it is prized, and the people who can work it are sought and watched.

Magic is limited by Strain, the mounting difficulty of holding the Unseen Craft steady, and by what Strain costs when it is pushed: Fatigue first, and then blood. The more often a caster invokes it within a scene, the harder it becomes to hold safely.

Nothing in the rules stops a caster from continuing to cast. The limit is what they are willing to risk.

How it works ◇ The Unseen Craft, at a glance