Making Your Practitioner

You need three things before your first scene: a name, a road (or two), and a first project. The name is yours. The road is where your power comes from. The project is what you are making when the campaign begins — because in this craft, you are always making something.

Your numbers

Three of the six abilities drive the craft:

The other three matter only at the edges — holding a trance against pain, precision under fire, carrying offerings. Do not dump them, but do not build for them.

Your grade and your trackers

Every practitioner starts at grade 1 — Myesis, the threshold: the first initiation (if you walk theurgy) or the first binding (if you walk goetia). Your grade is the flat bonus on every working, the gate on what you may attempt, and the measure of what the world fears. It rises to Mystes, Epoptes, and finally Hierophant — see Chapter 8.

Track three numbers on your sheet, and keep them honest:

• Allegiance — starts at 0, the exact middle. Every initiation, oath, and binding moves it. It decides which school works at full power and which courts answer you.
• Miasma — starts at 0, clean. It only ever rises through defilement; it falls through purification. At 5, your sanctified works go dormant. At 10, the spirits come looking for you at night.
• Dynamis — starts at 6, your day's spark. At grade 1 that is the whole pool: 4 + grade × 2. It refills each cycle, and unused spark never banks. You spend it to fuel workings and burn it to push a roll.

Choose your road

Temple initiate (theurgy). You took the first purification and swore the first oath at a shrine. You begin with a patron's eye on you (or a rival's), a small archive of common formulas, and the habit of cleanliness. You will spend your early career learning which offerings please which gods — an olive branch to Athena, a first-cut of craft to Ergane — and which taboos will undo you if you slip. You are slow, sanctioned, and witnessed. Your power is grace, and grace is dependable.

Crossroads goetist (goetia). You stood at a crossroads with the dead, offered nothing, took nothing, and walked away at dawn. You begin with a chained grimoire, one minor daimon bound to a small task, and a price you have not fully paid. No temple approves of you; nobody stops you either. You are fast, marked, and in debt. Your power is taken, and the taking shows.

Middle walker (both). You can use both schools — at half strength, trusted by no one. Your spark refills half at dawn and half at moonrise, so you are never fully charged at any hour. It is the hardest road and the most interesting: everything, at half-strength, with both courts watching. Some of the most dangerous practitioners in the world are Middle walkers, because they are the only ones who can see both ledgers at once.

What you carry

Before your first scene, make sure you own:

• A grimoire — your formulas live here. Lose it and stop practicing, and you lose what you knew.
• Two or three phylakteria — one-shot charms, the bread and butter of the craft. Each is a moment of safety you made ahead of time.
• Common materials — salt, herbs, olive oil, wax, ash. Enough for small rituals and grade-1 workings.
• A formula or two you have written and practiced — the working you can do without thinking, and the seed of composition.

A first project

Give yourself a project before play starts, because it teaches the whole system: I am an initiate of Athena's precinct, and I am crafting my first phylakterion — a ward against the hungry things, blessed at the shrine, sealed at the hour of dawn. That one sentence involves purification, petition, a working, a seal, and a god's attention. By the time it is done — or has gone wrong in an interesting way — you will understand the game.

Whatever you choose, choose a name you would answer to on a bad night. You will be tested.