Megagame Makers

In the Urr game settings, we have 3 kinds of magic, but in this game only 2 will be used ¹⁾.

First, there is Personal Magic, to remind the rest of you that the wizards are well wizards during the roleplaying parts of a turn. It consists of a list of 1 (part time magic user) to 4 (Elf) personal powers that a wizard can use at will. These always work. Below are some powers that are so famous/notorious that any peasant in the land knows about them and their wielders.

• The Dark Prince can rip someone's eyeballs out from up to 20 paces away. He has a habit of doing that to persons that disrespect him. He is infamous for having a rather arbitrary and self centered definition of disrespect. There is a magic ointment out there that can be used to regrow eyeballs, but it is a rare ointment.

• Elves can glide across lakes and rivers at tremendous speed and can call down multihued bubbles of magic force that shield them from attacks. But what makes them truly infamous is something called The Charm of Forlorn Encystment. People it is used on are never seen again. If an elf utters the following words: I tire of your Antics and will Invoke the Charm of Forlorn Encystment, either flee, or beg for mercy!

• Wizards in general have a reputation of showing up out of nowhere, in places they could not have traveled to unseen as well as grasping massive scorpions and vipers out of thin air and wielding them as weapons.

This is still nothing compared to what comes next: these are just parlor tricks.

Second is the most powerful type of magic: Ritual Magic. It is so resource intensive that each magic capable nation in the game can only cast one ritual spell during the magic phase of each turn. A wizard must be freed up to lead this ritual. You cannot be involved in delicate diplomacy and coordinate a magic ritual that may have over a 100 participants at the same time. There is a special 'magic umpire' in the game who handles all magic rituals and how well they work.

A list of the magic capable nations in the game and what is generally known about their 'arsenal'.

• The Kingdom of the Longbeards is rumored to have an ancient ritual that makes their army unbeatable as long as they defend their homeland in a just war.

• The Elves have rituals that grant simple peasants the power to take on their oppressors.

• The Gnomish Confederacy has supposedly a ritual that grants army units the power to fly. Whether this is that everybody grows a pair of wings or that all board a flying ship is unclear. Reports are contradictory.

• The Dark Empire is a Ritual Magic powerhouse. Rumors talk about the Making the Dead rise and eating the living, predicting the future from the entrails of a human sacrifice, summoning hordes of locusts to devour their enemies crops and binding dragons to their will.

• Some years ago the Temple Hermits of the Free City of Urr used Ritual Magic to move a watchtower a 150 paces sparing the city the expense of tearing it down and rebuilding it, because the river had slightly changed its course over the years, undermining the foundation of the old spot of said tower. It was a minor feat as Ritual Magic goes, but it did prove Urr belongs on the list of Ritual Magic powered nations.

  1) We are planning to introduce the 3rd in a follow up game.
   It is either going to be titled: 'The Witches of Urr' if Urr wins this game, or 'The Uprising of Urr' if the Dark Prince wins.