At St. Trinians there are two major schools of magic, Necromancy and Demonology. However, magic can be used for other things, including basic zapping of people with magical bolts of lightning, enhancing dice pools, healing and enhancing senses.

Invoking the Goddess

Before doing any magic at all, you need to have Magical Energy, or ME. To get this, you need to perform a ritual called Invoking the Goddess. The ritual itself is straightforward. Using WP, you open a gateway to the realms of magical power and draw down energy. The bigger the gateway, the more power you can draw down, but the harder it is to control.

The ritual can be quite long winded and requires that you draw various symbols on the ground, and intone specific phrases. Every witch will have her own way of doing things, but the essentials remain the same: symbols, chanting, and various paraphenalia need to be used to make the gateway open and flood the subject with power.

The system is simple enough. To draw ME down, several witches need to act together. A character is considered to be a witch if she has at least 1 point in the Religious Studies skill. The character who is to be the recipient of all the ME stands in the centre of an occult circle, and the other witches stand around the circle. They then go through the process of chanting and performing the ritual. After a certain time has elapsed, every witch involved makes a Religious Studies skill roll. Each success obtained gives the recipient 1 ME. The ritual can be repeated as many times as the players wish, but it takes time, and ME does start to dissipate after a while, so deciding to do more rituals has to be considered aganst how long the current reserves will last.

The table below shows the varous factors involved in Invoking the Goddess.

Portal                   Max          Witches       Time
Size      Difficulty   Points      Required

Keyhole     4          5              3                 1 Hour
Portal        5          7              5                 2 Hours
Opening    6          9              7                 4 Hours
Gateway   7          12            9                 6 Hours
Rift            8          20            13               Sundown to Sunrise

Obviously, the larger rituals will require more participants than the PCs can provide, so they have to bribe or cajole other NPC girls from St. Trinians into helping, which can be a challenge in itself.

It is possible to preform the ritual alone, but it is diffcult, and very dangerous. When doing the ritual alone, the difficulty increases by an amount that is equal to half (rounding down) the number of rituals required for that size ritual. So to open a Keyhole solo raises the difficulty by +1, but a portal adds +2.

Trying to open any larger than a Portal solo is doomed to failure. Attempting to do so s not just stupid, it borders on suicidal. Uncontrolled magical energy may result in a disaster leaving only a pair of smoking boots where the witch used to stand...
This message was last edited by the GM at 16:23, Sun 24 July 2011.

Uses of Magical Energy

Magical Eneregy is the raw fuel for Necromancy and Demonology, but a witch can use it for other things too. However, Magcal Energy doesn't last. Human bodies are not adept at storing this sort of power, and the human mind is defintely not meant to be exposed to it too long, as it can result in serious problems. After magical empowerment, the ME will leak away at a rate of 1 Point every 3 Hours of In Character time. Obviously, time on RPOL can be hard to judge, so the Headmistress will keep a tab on ME leakage, and let you know when you lose a point through leakage. This means it pays to charge yourself only just before you know you are going to need magic powers, such as right before a necromantic ritual, or breaking into a bank vault.

There are rumours about magc items in the world that can store Magical Energy without leaking, but players will need to hunt for these ...

These are some of the uses of Magical Energy, other than Necromancy or Demonology:

Raw Energy
A girl laced with ME stands out. There's something electric about her. The more energy she holds, the more her aura stands out. When filled wth energy, a player could have eyes that are blacked out, hair that stands on end, or the ability to light cigarettes with a thought rather than a lighter. Obviously, a girl who is cackling with energy is going to be noticeable by normal people, so discretion might be advisable.

Extra Willpower
Magical Energy can be used in place of Willpower to perform mundane tasks. However, unlike WP, you can only spend 1 ME to add to a dice pool at a time, not three points, like with WP. However, you can spend both, granting a +4 bonus to a dice pool in total.

Willpower losses cannot be absorbed with Magical Energy, but there are situations where the Headmistress may decide that a girl can spend 1 ME instead of 1 WP when being bitchy or working on Weird Science projects.

Healing
Magical Energy has immense power to put people back together again. Anyone who contains ME can heal their own wounds, but they still take the WP damage from beng hurt. It costs the following to heal your own wounds:

1 Slapped Level - 1 ME
1 Battered Level - 2 ME
1 Trashed Level - 3 ME

The witch can also use ME to heal the wounds of others. To do so, the witch must make a Religous Studies roll at difficulty 5. If this succeeds, te witch can heal the subject, but the healing costs 1 ME more for each level than to heal herself.

If the RS roll fails, the witch still has to expend the ME points at a rate of half the cost rounded up. Trying to heal a Trashed friend to Battered, and failing, costs 2 ME.

Don't botch a healing roll... It might get messy!

Enhanced Senses

When you are charged up with Magical Energy, you get an awareness of the supernatural world. This means that your senses can now pick up on things that other girls cannot see. Sometimes you will get feelings that supernatural forces are around. However, this does mean that your Observe rolls will let you see Supernatural things - if there are any around to see!

Dark Lightning
A very useful application of Magical Energy is to fire it at people! Zap! Such fun! By spending 1 ME, a witch can blast her enemies with raw magical power. The witch must make a Religious Studies roll at difficulty 5, against the defenders Games (Track & Field) stat attempt to dodge. The blast has a limited range of abur 15 feet. If it hits, it allows for a roll on the damage table. If the witch spends more ME points, she can hit multiple targets in the same area with the same attack roll, at the cost of 1 ME per extra target. It's a great way to clear the fourth formers out of the school corridor!
This message was last edited by the GM at 17:16, Sun 24 July 2011.

Megalomania

There is a downside to being a witch - Magical Energy makes you feel powerful, confident ... and that everyone else is insignficant. The euphoria that comes from a body charged wth this energy is similar to a junkie getting a hit of their favourite drug, and some witches force other girls into doing another Invoking the Goddess ritual as soon as their ME levels are depleted. The megalomania that comes with this power makes everything in the mundane world seem insignificant and expendable.

In short, Magical Energy will turn you into a real bitch.

The more energy you have, the more it twists you. If you only have a few points in your system, you may seem arrogant and nsist everythng is done your way. This gets worse as the energy levels increase. For example, up at 12 points, you may insist that everyone kneel and worship you as a Goddess. Chances are they'll slap you down, hard, but that won't stop you demanding it!

You can spend Willpower to avoid this behavour for a brief time, but if it is becoming an issue, the best approach is to just spend the magic. Before you try to do something really stupid, like walk on water...

Potions

Potion making takes time and effort, but unlike other magical pursuits, it does not require Magical Energy to brew a potion. However, you will need to have not only the Religious Studies skill, but also a knowledge of Cookery.

Potions are very versatile, and you can create potions for almost anything you can imagine. Want to turn someone into a frog? Potion. Want to make someone fall in love? Potion. Want to make someone fall in love with a frog? Potion! The downside is that they only work for a limited time period, and utitlise very special ingredients which can only be used once, unless you get very lucky.

The first thing to decide when making a potion is, what do you want it to do? This provides the effective limit on potion making. The effect is limited to enhancing or changing one person in a specific way. So, you can't make a potion that grants three wishes, but you could brew a potion that would give someone wings.

The second thing to know about potions is that they require very specific ingredients, as well as a mixture of strange herbs and ichors. Many of these will be available from the sort of contacts an experienced potion maker or Fixer might have. However, some of the will be very obscure, and the more extreme the potion, the rarer the ingredients needed. The Headmistress will tell you what you need to find in each case.

It is also possible that the potion may need something from the target as an ingredient.

When all the ingredients are combined, the potion maker needs to make a Cookery roll. The difficulty roll will depend on what the potion is designed to do. If it has a mundane effect, the difficulty will be 5. A more powerful mundane effect will be difficulty 6. Mundane effects include healing potions.

A potion with an obvious magical effect will have a difficulty of 8. Breaking the laws of nature is never easy, but can be amazing if it works!

If you want to make more than one batch of the same potion, you can attempt to do so, but it adds one to the difficulty. If the roll succeeds, the Headmistress will roll 1d6 and half the result, rounding up. This gives the number of potions produced.

Once the potion has been brewed, it merely requires that a witch spend 1 ME point to infuse the potion with magic, or 2 points if the brew has made several potions. A potion that has been infused with ME will last for a year and a day. However, the potion does not have to be infused. An uninfused potion will last until the night of the next full moon.

It takes one day to brew up a batch of potion, regardless of how many doses the batch produces.

How long a potion lasts is down to utterly random chance. When the potion is drunk, the Headmistress rolls on the following table. If the result is Forever then there may be a need to brew another potion to remove the effects!

If the potion brewer spends 1 WP, they ay raise or lower the result of this roll by 1.

If the brewer is aware that she is drinking a magic potion, she can spend 2 WP to reduce or increase the result by 1. If she is being fed the potion secretly, she needs to succeed in a Hard (6) Cookery or Religious Studies roll to realise she has drunk something magical.

Potion Duration Roll/Time Results
1 or less - An Hour
2 - A day
3 - A week
4 - A month
5 - A year and a day
6 or higher - Forever.
This message was last edited by the GM at 01:31, Mon 25 July 2011.

Necromancy

Zombies! Who doesn't love a shambling decomposing cadaver? The girls of St. Trinians can't get enough of them, they're so handy.

It's surprisingly easy to raise the dead. The ritual requires a cadaver. It can be in any state of decomposition, but it needs to be intact. The witch can then spend 1 WP and make a Religious Studies roll. The spell nfuses Magical Energy points into the corpse from your own stock, so you need to be charged up on ME for this to be effective. Each success on the RS roll allows you to provide the zombie with 1 of your ME points.

While the zombie contains your ME points, it will obey you to the letter, and while slow, it will carry out your orders with a stupid but functional level of intelligence. ME will get used up, however, and the zombie loses 1 ME for every 5 IC hours that it is active. When it loses the final point, t wll crumble nto dust and cannot be ressurected again.

As long as you have the ME and WP to make them, you can have as any zombie minions as you desire. However, it can be tricky to fnd somewhere to store them. You can order your zombie to rest by making a RS roll at diffculty 5. If successful, the zombie will fall into sleep, where it only loses ME at a rate of 1 point per IC day. To wake it up again, you must spend 1 WP and make another RS roll at difficulty 5.

You can also use the same ritual as making a zombie to gain control of a zombie from another person. The roll is the same, and the zombie is controlled by whoever has the most ME in the creature at any given time. When multiple points are inside the zombie from different people, the ME added first is burned up first.
This message was last edited by the GM at 18:10, Sun 24 July 2011.

Demnology

Demonology is very complicated, and involves several steps. However, if it works, the rewards are amazing.

If it fails, you are so deeply in trouble that you measure the problem in fathoms...

First of all, demons do not want to be summoned, and especially nt by the girls of St. Trinians. Lucifer himself has forbidden his minions from ever having anything to do with "that pack of bloody harridans" after an unfortunate experence in the 1940s where he was summoned by the Sixth Form. He takes this seriously, and this may cause problems. (see below.)

If you are determined to throw caution to the wind and raise a servant of Satan, however, the first thing you need to do is work out which demon you want to call. You have to call it by name, and to do so will need to know that name, and offer it something it wants. Every demon has something very specific in mind that it especially enjoys or requires, so researching which demon you want, and what it wants in return, is essential. Otherwise you could summon totally the wrong creature, which is both sloppy and very risky busness. To find the relevant detals, you must first find a library with books of demonology, and then make a RS roll at difficulty 6. If successful, you have your information, but it takes a day to find. If you fail, you can spend another day, and roll again. This can be repeated, but after 7 days, the library is clearly not of any use, and you need to find another location and start again.

Once you have the demon's name, you will need to collect whatever it is that you need to lure it into the human realm. Finding ths could be easy, or very difficult.

Once you have the name and the lure, you can go about summoning your demon. The more people you have involved, the better, as you will be required to pit your WP against that of the demon. However, you need to have odd numbers of people - 1,3,5,7 and so forth. For some reasom, even numbers do not work, probably because this sort of spell abhors balance. They need not all be witches, but they do need to know what is going on.

Next, you need everyone to assmble in a room where you are not going to be disturbed. A circle is drawn on the floor, with a star inside it. The star requires as many points as there are participants, and each stands at a point of star, one person per point. The offering to the demon is placed in the centre, to be consumed when it arrives.

Then, whoever is performing the actual ritual makes a RS roll at dfficulty 5. The ritual takes 5 hours to complete, minus 1 per success on this roll. If this reduces the time to 0, the demon appears instantly. If the roll fails, the demon does not appear, and the 5 hours pass with no success. A new attempt can be made, but a new offering will also be required as the old one will have been corrupted by the nature of the ritual, and be useless.

However, Lucifer meant what he said. Every time a demon is summoned, the Headmistress rolls 1d6. If the result is equal to or less than the number of times this demon has been summoned, incuding the current summoning, Lucifer takes steps. The demon is dragged back to Hell, and no further attempts to contact it will succeed. That demon isn't being allowed out for several generations!

If the demon arrives uninterrupted, then the players must bend their wills towards making it do their bidding. Demons are devious and trustworthy, but they are beings of very powerful will, but they can be overpowered by the assembled strength of several humans. However, entering a contest of this sort and losing has dire consequences, of which more anon.

As soon as the demon appears, those present must make a Fear test. The difficulty must be at least 5, and can rise higher depending on circumstances. If anyone fails the roll, they run away screaming. For everyone who runs, the Headmistress rolls 1d6. If it comes up a 6, the demon knows the secret fear of the scared girl and may use it against them in the future.

If anyone runs, the remainng girls must each make a RS roll at difficulty 5. So long as they accumulate enough successes to equal or better the number of girls who ran, all is well. If not, the demon breaks free! At that point...well. All hell literally breaks loose. Good luck surviving!

Assuming all goes well, the remaining girls may now battle with the demon to gain control. Each girl can contribute 1 WP for each success they obtained on their Fear roll. This means they will have at least 1 point to add, but may have more if they spent WP on the test. This pooled WP is passed to the ritual leader, who will be the one to engage the demon in a battle of wills.

The demon's will pool is 2d6 WP.

The Headmistress rolls a number of dice equivalent to the pool held by the demon, and the ritual leader rolls the dice pool of the players. The ritual leader decides on the dfficulty, ether 4, 5, or 6. The side with the most successes is the winner for the round. The winner subtracts the dfference between the two rolls from the loser's dice pool. This continues until one side runs out of dice, and the contest is over.

If the summoners lose the battle, the demon will demand a service of some sort. The girls will have until the next full moon to do as the demon demands, or their souls will be forfeit. Demons are capricious, and can ask for almost anything - hard, easy, obscure or downright baffling.

If the demon loses, the players can treat it like their bitch. The ritual leader can demand one service from the demon, which it must preform by the next full moon. The command given must be specific. "Solve our problem," will not work at all, but "destroy this person" or "fetch this artifact" is perfectly acceptable. The demon will try to corrupt the mortals as much as possible, and break the orders if it possibly can, as they despise beng beaten, but it will do as t has been compelled if it canot wriggle out of the mess it has been pushed into.

The demon will remain in the world for the duration of the mission. It may draw attention to itself, but nobody said demons were subtle...
This message was last edited by the GM at 19:31, Sun 24 July 2011.