Formulas & Mysteries
Magickal knowledge comes in two tiers, and they behave completely differently. Learn the difference early, because it decides how you collect, trade, and protect what you know.
Two tiers of knowing
Formulas are the composable base — the shared grammar of correspondences. They are the science of magick: knowable, teachable, writeable, and recombineable. Most of what you will ever cast is formulas.
Mysteries are the secret rites that exceed the base system — revelations, lost grimoires, things the gods whisper and the daimones remember. A mystery is not composable. Each is itself, whole, or nothing. Every mystery breaks at least one rule of formulas — an effect with no material cost, a rite that works while polluted, a working that reaches beyond your grade, a petition that cannot be ignored. That broken rule is what makes it a mystery.
Formulas
A formula is a working written in the shared grammar: an intent, a set of correspondences (the sympathy chain — material, symbol, hour, place), a form (sigil, spoken, object, gesture), and a cost.
To own a formula you must do two things:
- Write it into your grimoire (or steal, borrow, or copy the page).
- Practice it — one working performed at leisure under supervision (or alone, if you are reckless). Practice spends the materials and dynamis; a clean failure teaches you nothing and costs you the materials.
Once owned, a formula is yours until you lose the grimoire and stop practicing.
Composition is the craft. Own two or more formulas of the same school and you can compose a new working: take an intent you know and assemble links from the formulas you know. Composition is improvisation — it always triggers the roll, even at leisure. Missing links lower your preparation quality a step each; invented links count as missing, and if your guess is wrong, the GM applies the risk of the closest formula you know. Write it down afterward, practice it, and it becomes a new formula — this is how the science grows, and discovery is a reward in itself.
You cannot compose a working whose effect exceeds your grade, and you cannot compose goetic effects from theurgic formulas or vice versa. The grammar is shared; the addressees are not.
Grimoires and fragments
Your grimoire is your treasure. A rival's grimoire is the best dungeon on the map. Fragments — a single formula, a torn page, a whispered stanza — are common loot, and finding, stealing, and assembling knowledge is the reward loop of this game. A formula written nowhere is safe because it is only in your head — which is exactly why the trade in stolen secrets never ends.
Mysteries
Mysteries are learned only from their source — the grimoire, the cult, the vision, the teacher — and they differ from formulas in three ways:
- Not composable. You cannot recombine a mystery or borrow its correspondences for another working. Learn it exactly, or not at all.
- Not safely writeable. Most cannot be copied. Some are danced, sung, or dreamed; some are inscribed only in blood or on flesh. Copying one corrupts the copy — and often the copier.
- Always have a source with teeth. The god who revealed it, the daimon who guards it — the rite carries their conditions: taboos, favors owed, prices due. Use a revealed mystery while in the patron's disfavor, and you have committed an offense.
| Rarity | How hard to find | How long to learn |
|---|---|---|
| Common | Any competent practitioner may know it | Days of practice |
| Rare | A named source — a private grimoire, a cult's inner chamber, a specific daimon | Weeks, and the source's terms |
| Lost | Exists only in rumor and fragment | Months or a quest; often the rite's own ordeal |
Lost mysteries are adventures: half a formula found in one city, the missing stanza sung by a ghost in another. The priests of Athena are said to guard a mystery called the Weavers' True Thread — a working that lets a single thread of fate be seen, and pulled, and seen again — and no one alive has read more than a fragment of it.
Loss and forgetting
- A formula not written in your grimoire and not practiced for a season is half-forgotten: performing it costs one extra dynamis. Written and practiced, it is safe.
- A mystery cannot be forgotten — but it can be taken: a god may withdraw a revealed mystery from a disgraced petitioner; a daimon may eat the memory of its rite. Then the knowledge is gone from the world until someone re-reveals it.
- Grimoire loss is a disaster. Every formula you owned and had not repracticed this season is gone. Write twice what you cannot bear to lose — most practitioners get one mercy like that in a lifetime.
Owning a mystery makes you a target. Cults kill for what you know; temples burn it; daimones want it back. That is the price of the deepest knowledge, and it is worth every drachma of it.