and you, ARRUNTULLA ! -a setting for GURPS

[Kindling]

I see what you mean about the setting name, it's been rattling around in my head for the last few days since I read it, just popping up as a phrase between each batch of more coherent thoughts. Which is... interesting.

PS. No comment on the idea of posting a write-up of play in the setting?

[SA]

That would be a groovy idea, Kindling. I'll do that.

[SA]

SPELLS, PRAYERS AND FORGOTTEN FORMULAE

FOR BECKONING SHADOWS[/b]
You can kick a human and spit in her face and call her an animal and sometimes she will believe it. This is how we forge the best of slaves. Even so she will always be a human no matter how far she lowers herself [this is debatable]. An animal can be made less than an animal. It can forget the warmth of its own blood and the weight of its own bones. It can forget that it is itself and eat its own body like a stranger. These are the things that live in the hollows beneath our cities or in the middens and shadowed cages where vulgar humans nurture their creeping hate.

Cut yourself and bleed in some forgotten depth of the city and doubtless a wretched thing will feed on it when you are gone. Most shadows are lured by blood. Rats black and bony like four-branched twigs, hairless cats with two feuding faces, dogs with feet tangled in their own cottony guts. Go often to the same dark place and bleed and soon they will have a taste for you. Be ready for them lest they take you in the night.

There are fiercer shadows with more disturbing appetites. Their madness accomplishes some wild artistry. They yearn to share their hungers and join death and blood with humid ecstasy. These are the things that might have been human had they not forsaken that right at the commencment of their lives. Some of them have grown despite this, into strange visions of maturity. Others are ageless infants suspended in wine-red amnion. The greater shadows dream of lust, of gory union and sexual desecration. They are lured by sex and its emissions. They reek of fornication.

FOR SUMMONING INSANITIES[/b]
As a kindness to you I will not speak of the summoning of insanities. You are an idiot and will call them to you and they will fill you will such a strangeness that you will deny the world, and the war, and the plight of all races.

FOR REPELLING INSANITIES[/b]
Insanities can be repelled easily. Make the circle and trigram of the eighth forgotten engine and surround it with four murdered humans. Paint the shape of the arrogant man on your breast and raise up your sword stained with the blood of your victims. When the insanity comes you must cut off its head, then sever its five flailing arms. There are countless other ways but they will all damn you.

FOR COMPELLING THE SPEECH OF CORPSES[/b]
Only the very recently dead can be compelled thus. Grasp the dead one's tongue with a hand smothered with your own spittle. Trace a sign of knowing on the corpse's brow. The wretch will speak if its apparatus is intact. It will be wakeful for no more than a minute and can only speak of its mortal life. There is no other. You can also compel the dead one to speak with your own organs by grasping its trachea in your hand. The criterion of freshness remains.

FOR KILLING A CHILD IN THE WOMB[/b]
The anppara plant will induce miscarriage in any mammal. The women of the other continent know many secret remedies as well. You do not need me to tell you how to kill a foetus with herbs and potions.

To kill a child without such devices you must first procure an already miscarried foetus. It need not be fresh but it must have a great deal of its flesh upon it. Dissolve and divide the corpse's constituents as it is explained in the book of tender alchemies. From the oily element distil the fuel and burn it in a sealed room so that the fumes do not escape. Inhale as much as you can. Now that the death is in you it can be transmitted to another. Beware: it will infect the very first woman so touched whether or not she is currently with child. Woman cannot work this magic except as its inevitable subject.

FOR RETURNING THE DEAD TO LIFE[/b]
This dream has cursed more souls than any other. I will not perpetuate it.

FOR INSPIRING LOVE[/b]
Smear your sexual emissions upon an effigy of your paramour. Burn the effigy and collect the ashes in a ceramic container. Bury the container and pour your blood on the spot every night. A curiosity will rise in them which may be nurtured into love. This is a corruption of love and will end poorly for you.

FOR IGNITING HATE[/b]
The book of fears lists a hundred magics for creating hatred in a human. None of these spells can be undone without great cost to their creator. Find the book and learn this for yourself.

FOR KNOWING HUMAN FUTURES[/b]
There are many ways to do this: Mix the subject's blood with the reagent of eager colours and drink it to inspire a discordant dream of their lifetime. Devise a machine of lenses and gilded mirrors through which their future image can be seen (and perhaps stolen). Capture a ravenous shadow and torture such knowledge from their flesh. And there are other ways. By participating in the futures of others you will lose your present self. I do not know what that means.

FOR TRANSFORMING BODIES[/b]
Every shape-shifting alchemist has formula of their own. All are gruesome to behold. No transformation is clean or swift. It is a refitting and realignment of bones and tissues and a careful balancing of hormones and humours. It is agonising and very risky. For some it is an art.

[Steerpike]

Deliciously evil rituals!  Love the secretion imagery that seems to pervade.

[SA]

Thanks. Wizards are a sputtering, leaking, oozing sort of people.