In Magonomia® there is a special kind of spell called a Grand Enchantment. This is how wizards in the game bond familiar spirits and create permanent enchanted items, among other things. Sometimes you don’t need a lot of mechanics to evoke a lot of atmosphere. Here is the rules section on Grand Enchantments to illustrate that point. Enjoy!

Grand Enchantments

There is a special kind of spell called a Grand Enchantment that requires even more elaborate and exceptional preparation than a typical spell. Unlike other spells, Grand Enchantments can last forever.

From the wizard’s perspective, Grand Enchantments are in a class by themselves when it comes to preparation and complexity. A typical spell might require the wizard to wear a special robe and carefully prepare a conjuring circle. A Grand Enchantment might require the wizard to cast the spell at Stonehenge on the summer solstice using a staff made from a rowan tree that was struck by lightning. Every Grand Enchantment is a magical quest that culminates in a permanent increase in the wizard’s power. The benefits of the Grand Enchantment are usually gaining an Extra in the form of an enchanted item, a companion such as a familiar spirit or a guardian angel, or some permanent, new power for your wizard, such as Second Sight.

Several Grand Enchantments are available to PCs in Chapter 11: Spells.

A Grand Enchantment lasts indefinitely and cannot be cast concurrently, so a wizard will usually only cast it once in their career.

Grand Enchantments for PCs

If you choose a Grand Enchantment as one of your wizard’s spells, you can assume they have gone through the lengthy process of preparing and casting it offstage. You don’t have to take special steps to “unlock” a Grand Enchantment you’ve purchased or earned according to the rules. You can simply record the benefits of the Grand Enchantment, whether that’s an Extra for your character, an additional Aspect, or whatever.

Of course, you are encouraged to make up a backstory about the awesome things your wizard did to complete their Grand Enchantment. Continue reading into the next section for some inspiration.

Roleplaying Grand Enchantments

If you wish, you can ask the GM to prepare a story or a subplot about your character’s quest to cast the Grand Enchantment. This can be a great way to deepen your character’s persona and to make their magical career feel like the personal and even spiritual growth that Renaissance magicians perceived it to be. Here are some tips for designing that story.

• The Grand Enchantment Aspect can be used as a campaign Aspect for the duration of the story. Players can Compel it to add new challenges and complications to the quest to complete the Grand Enchantment, or Invoke it to have their sense of destiny help carry them through those challenges. Any character who is helping with the quest can Invoke Grand Enchantment, not just the wizard who has the spell.

• Your wizard doesn’t have to know the Grand Enchantment yet at the start of the story. You can instead work with the GM to have your character start the quest for the Grand Enchantment and then actually learn the spell at the end of the quest, as the milestone award for completing the story.

• The events and challenges in the story can be directly related to casting the Grand Enchantment, or they can be side quests the wizard discovers along the journey. For example, the GM might decide that the Grand Enchantment requires the wizard to obtain the scale of a huge dragon. The nearest big dragons are in Norway. The story could be about traveling to Norway and following rumors and climbing mountains to reach the dragon’s lair, or it could be about a sinister Norwegian sorcerer terrorizing a town the wizards pass through along the way.

The actual tasks a wizard needs to complete for a Grand Enchantment can be anything you can imagine that makes a good story. Here are some general suggestions to help inspire you:

Time and Place: It’s common for Grand Enchantments to be timed to rare astrological events like planetary conjunctions or comets. They may need to be cast in a special place: ancient pagan holy sites, tombs and catacombs, or the sites of momentous past events. In extreme cases, a Grand Enchantment may require the wizard find their way to a mythical place like the island of Avalon or the summit of Mount Olympus.

Spirit Encounters: The Grand Enchantment may require the magician to conjure a specific spirit and convince it to participate. Your wizard doesn’t need to know any particular spell to do this: when destiny calls, General Divination is enough to tell them how to make contact with the spirit they need. Perhaps contacting the spirit is a quest in itself, such as finding the tomb of an ancient wizard to call up their ghost. Perhaps the spirit requires the wizard to prove they are worthy of its help, or perhaps it demands a favor in return.

Legendary Items: The Grand Enchantment may require the wizard to obtain some legendary item, such as Merlin’s staff or the eye of a basilisk. Quests for legendary items can easily lead a wizard to distant lands: Greece, Persia, even as far as India or China.

Special Person: The Grand Enchantment might require finding a special person to participate in a ritual: a direct descendant of some ancient royal line, or an adult who is pure of heart. For player characters, the special person should be a willing participant in the enchantment, not a sacrificial victim. Human sacrifice is for villains. The person doesn’t have to be a wizard – but it might be interesting if they are!

Riddles and Puzzles: The quest for the Grand Enchantment may be framed as a riddle. The quest may start by encountering the riddle in some ancient tome or in a vision the wizard receives. Solving the riddle leads to a clue to the next stage of the quest. There are many movies and novels about occult conspiracies that use this formula to great effect. A classic example of a riddle, perfectly usable in your stories with a little imagination, is the alchemists’ motto V.I.T.R.I.O.L.: Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem. It translates to “Visit the interior of the earth and, rectifying, you will find the hidden stone.”

Prophecy: Completing the Grand Enchantment very well might require fulfilling a prophecy. For purposes of creating a Magonomia story, a prophecy is just a way of presenting one or more of the other elements of a Grand Enchantment story. The prophecy itself may be oblique enough to count as a riddle. It may designate a time and place to perform a magical ceremony, or identify (perhaps clearly, perhaps cryptically) a special person or a legendary item, and so on. The prophecy might be one the wizard encounters in their research, it might be pronounced by some spirit they encounter, or it may come to them directly by mystical revelation.

Personal Growth: One of the most fun and rewarding experiences in roleplaying is portraying a character’s personal growth. Growth in this sense is not just gaining new powers and abilities: it’s growing into a better person. For example, maybe a wizard’s powers have gone to their head and they use magic when it’s not really necessary, for personal benefit or even just to feel powerful. Character growth for that wizard could be to come to a new understanding that their powers are a gift to be used for the benefit of mankind. Renaissance occult writings are very much concerned with elevating the magician’s moral and spiritual status. Pulling this off in a roleplaying game will require some negotiation between the player and the GM. Don’t be afraid to suggest what direction you think the character should go. After your character experiences a major change like this, you’ll probably rename one of their Aspects to reflect the change. This can occur as part of the milestone at the end of the story, in addition to gaining the Grand Enchantment spell.

Grand Enchantments for NPCs

The GM can also use Grand Enchantments as a plot device. A rival wizard, or cabal of wizards, could be preparing a Grand Enchantment that requires a multi-stage quest over several weeks or even several years. The player characters need to find out what the NPC wizards are really up to, and most likely, foil their evil plan – though it can also be interesting if the NPC wizards are attempting something important and beneficial and the PCs have to step in to make sure they succeed.

In the hands of NPCs, Grand Enchantments aren’t limited to the spells in the rule book. They can attempt any Grand Enchantment that would make a good plot device.  Here are some ideas:

• Cast a massive Curse that affects a whole country or a whole royal family

• Turn a human into a werewolf

• Conjure a very powerful spirit into material form

• Bring someone back from the dead (either for real or as a twisted undead monstrosity)

• Become King or Queen of a mortal kingdom, usurping the rightful ruler

• Create some kind of unstoppable weapon, such as a fire-breathing mechanical dragon

• Lift an ancient curse