Silurian School

“Essence is the language of Creation, and we can learn to speak it.”

Silurian Sorcery

The Silurian School of Sorcery was born from the works of the Golden Age sorcerer Silur, though she herself was not a proponent of the school which bore her name. Silur took an empirical approach to sorcery, not seeking out the underlying truths but rather attempting to describe sorcery as if it were a language: the elements of each spell and effect its symbols, drawn from the vocabulary of archetypical states and qualities found in the nature of Creation, their combination into spells its grammar and syntax. Sorcerers were writers, poets, their spells sentences composed of symbols set out in creative arrangements and combinations.

Silur herself believed that sorcerers were not empowered by understanding deeper truths of Creation, but were rather imposing their own wills UPON Creation with the power of sorcery. Yet her language of spells did not bear with it deeper philosophical underpinnings, and was widely adopted: from the experiments of the Devonian School to the blueprints of the Kinetropic School to the grand plans of the Salinan School, sorcerers of all different philosophies and loyalties embraced Silur’s language of spells and used it for their own purposes, and today her symbols are nigh-ubiquitous in the study of sorcery.

It was Silur’s students who believed that the language was not just a tool, a convenient shared framework for discussing spells, that its universality spoke to an underlying mystical truth upon which it must be based. These students looked at the language of spells, and saw how its Mystical Symbols could be repositioned without breaking the spell so long as they kept the same pattern. They spent long hours studying the movements of the Wyld and the Fair Folk, seeing how they too seemed to take the qualities seen in Creation and re-arrange them to form new expressions. Decades were spent interrogating the greater demons of the Yozi and demanding answers from the closest confidantes of the Primordial Gaia to uncover the origins of Creation itself. From these studies, those sorcerers were able to unearth what they believed to be the truth of Creation and sorcery.

To the Silurian sorcerer, Creation is an arbitrary state of being forced into existence by the immense wills of the Primordials, who imposed order upon the Wyld. A sorcerer wields the same power as those vast and ancient beings, though on a smaller scale, imposing order upon chaos through the language of sorcery. The grammar of spells, the symbols of entity and effect, the motions of ritual, all carry with them the power of order that can force the unbounded energies upon which Creation rests to serve the sorcerer’s will.

Silurian sorcerers are readily able to learn a vast array of spells, converting them to their sorcerous language so they might be understood even if the learner’s worldview is incompatible with that of the teacher. They have been responsible for inventing many minor variations of spells (a summoned chariot becoming a cushioned carriage, a message-bearing cherub becoming a miniature warrior with dragonfly wings to carry the same message), but few entirely new spells have been created by practitioners of the School… those few that have tend to reflect the linguistic leanings of Silurian sorcery (such spells are particularly favoured by its adherents).

Silurian Absorption

Source: Adapted from the White Treatise pp.22

School Minimums: Linguistics (Ability) 3.

A Silurian sorcerer believes Creation is an arbitrary system of interacting symbols that she can manipulate through its syntax. The sorcerer tends to see everything in terms of symbols and communication, grammar and narrative.

Counterspell of Story: A Silurian sorcerer can block the powers of the Fair Folk, who likewise treat Creation as a fiction they change at will. A Silurian sorcerer can use Emerald Countermagic against any Fair Folk Charm or glamour backed by Essence no higher than her own (round up).

Symbolic Substitution: Silurian sorcerers excel at recombining the symbolic components of spells. The character can invent new versions of spells she already knows, changing one aspect of its manifestation such as the shape of its area, its manifested substance or its elemental source — but the Essence cost stays the same and the new version cannot offer any net advantage. (For instance, the sorcerer might create the spell Death of Silver Butterflies that could offer financial loss or gain from the Obsidian of the original, but doesn’t make the spell more effective as a spell… the sorcerer would not be able to create a spell Death of Iron Butterflies). The variation costs the character half the time and XP of learning a truly new spell. Characters who don’t already know the original spell or lack the Silurian Absorption pay full cost for the variant spell.

Shield of True Self: A Silurian sorcerer understands the self to have symbolic representation, that representation being key to placing them within the syntax of spellcraft. The only valid Arcane Link to a Silurian sorcerer is their True Name, all other links will fail to produce the desired results.