Relics, Rituals & Prayers

Magic in the Dark Caribbean is old, rare, and unreliable. It comes in four flavours that work in genuinely different ways — do not mix them up at the table.

Ancient Relics

Artifacts dug out of tombs or hauled off the seabed. Use your action to activate one. The effect just happens.

Then, after it works, test SPIRIT DR12. Fail and you are stunned for a round and the relic is dead until dawn. Fumble and the relic is destroyed permanently and you lose d2 HP.

The order matters: you always get the effect, and then you find out what it cost.

Arcane Rituals

The dangerous kind. Every dawn, roll d4 + Spirit for how many castings you have that day. Casting takes your action and a SPIRIT DR12 test.

Succeed, and spend a casting. Fail, and you roll on Mystical Mishaps — a d20 table that ranges from "hundreds of harmless crabs swarm you and grant -2 armor" through "you have simply forgotten this ritual forever" to "nothing happens... until the Kraken appears in d6 days". And you cannot try that ritual again until dawn.

You can improve your odds: take a minute instead of an action for -2 DR, take an hour for -4, work with other casters to roll twice and keep the better, or spend your own blood at -1 DR per hit point.

Rituals always fail if you are carrying cold iron or touching metal. On a wooden ship full of nails, cannons, and cutlasses, this is a real problem and you should plan for it.

Prayers and Spells

Zealots pray and Sorcerers cast, and both work the same easy way: no roll, no test. It costs your action and one of your daily uses, and it happens.

Zealots get d2 + Spirit prayers a day, rerolled at dawn. Sorcerers get d2 + Spirit spells, resetting at sunset, and their spells have three ranks — rolling a spell you already know upgrades it instead of adding a new one.

This is the trade: rituals are powerful and might ruin your life, prayers and spells are reliable and rationed.

ASH

Not magic, but it belongs here. ASH is the dust of destroyed undead, and eating it means rolling a d20 you cannot take back. The good results are extraordinary — permanent ability gains, two actions a round, seeing in the dark. The bad results include instant death and losing a limb to rot.

There is no safe dose. There are only people who have not rolled a 1 yet.