Mystics

There is a moment every Mystic remembers – the first time a working answered them and they understood, all at once, that they would never again be without recourse. No altar had to be built for it. No reagent pouch had to be kept full. The knowledge simply was, carried in the mind the way a scar is carried in the skin, and what the mind holds, hunger alone can spend.

This is the whole of what it means to walk the Mystic’s road. Fire, force, and the very fabric of space bend to a trained will, and the training is the only price ever asked twice. A wand, should you carry one, is a thing you shaped yourself and bound to a working you already knew – see Bind and Unbind, below – not a relic some dead master left lying about for the finding. Know a spell, and hold enough strength in the day still ahead of you, and it is yours to loose.

Every Circle of that training now carries as much ruin as it does wonder. Bolts of raw force, chained lightning, webs that hold an enemy fast, wards that turn aside a killing blow – these stand alongside the fireballs and blinks a Mystic has always known, and a Mystic who trains toward them can hold a line, not merely slip away from one.

Know this before you take up the path: a Mystic’s reach comes at the cost of a Mystic’s flesh. What you gain in the ability to touch the world from a distance, you surrender in the ability to simply stand and take what comes back at you.

The Casting of a Working

• Speak the working’s name with /cast <name> (or its shorter form, /c) – /cast fireball, and so on.

• Reach for something you have not yet learned, and the world will simply tell you so. No hunger is spent on a working that was never yours to begin with, no word wasted to the open air.

• To take stock of what you currently know, and how much of the day’s strength remains to you, consult /myspells.

The Staff

Every Mystic sets out on the road with a staff already in hand – a length of wood shaped to channel what the mind alone cannot fully hold steady. Grip it, right-click to choose which working waits ready upon it, and left-click to let that working loose.

More is written of the staff and its many forms on the page of the Mystic Staffs.

Binding and Unbinding

Two workings answer to no Circle at all. Every Mystic knows Bind and Unbind from the very first day of the craft, and neither ever draws upon the day’s strength. Speak /cast bind <spellname> while holding any object at all, and that object becomes a tool for whatever spell you have already mastered – a right-click thereafter calls the working forth without a word needing to be spoken. /cast unbind frees whatever was bound to the object in your hand, that it might be bound anew to something else. Binding teaches nothing new; the working must already be yours before an object can be made to carry it.

The Day’s Strength, and How It Is Restored

A Mystic may call upon each known working once a day – a single shared well, not a separate allowance for every spell in your keeping (Bind and Unbind draw from no well at all – see above). A few workings of especial power draw more deeply than the rest, and are capped tighter still: Explode, Anvil, and Chain Lightning permit three castings a day; Confuse Monsters, Invisibility, and Stoneskin permit four; Forcebomb, Reach, Counterspell, and Mirror Image permit five. All else draws only upon the shared well.

There is one way, and only one, to see that well refilled: sleep through the whole of a night, truly and completely, not merely lying down and rising early. Lie down the instant the sun sets and you will still wait out the night like anyone else – only a night given over entirely to sleep clears the slate for the day to come.

The Circles of Mastery

A Mystic climbs through 9 Circles of understanding, advancing of their own accord as experience accumulates – through crafting, through enchantment, through the casting of workings, through deeds accomplished. No class climbs slower toward its ceiling than a Mystic does. None reaches higher, once the climb is done. Deep knowledge was never meant to come quickly.

Cross into a new Circle and you will find a random handful of that Circle’s workings made suddenly yours – permanently, though never the whole of what that Circle offers. Two Mystics standing at the same Circle need not know a single working in common; this is the way of it, not an oversight. There is no choosing which workings answer your call, and once one is yours, nothing takes it from you again – save death, which is discussed below.

Each Circle strengthens the body as well as the mind, though only ever a little – five hearts at the First Circle, rising to thirteen by the Ninth, the thinnest constitution of any calling in Irrupt. This is the price already spoken of. A Mystic caught flat-footed in a straight fight is glass waiting to be tested. Craft, position, and the good sense to blink away before the blow lands are what keep the glass whole.

The Workings, Circle by Circle

Each Circle offers a pool of workings, and crossing into it grants only a portion of that pool, drawn at random – never the whole of it at once (as spoken of above). For a fuller accounting of each working’s exact craft, see Mystics Spells.

First Circle – Basic Elements / Basic Movement

• Freeze– holds a target fast where it stands.

• Fireball– a projectile of thrown flame.

• Blink– a short leap through space, in whatever direction you face.

• Phase– a quicker cousin to Blink, shorter still in its reach.

• Magic Missile– a bolt of force that never once misses its mark. Small, but a Mystic can always count on it landing.

• Shield– a ward that drinks in harm before it reaches you. The first true defense a Mystic ever learns, granted from the very start of the road.

Second Circle – Moderate Elemental / Enhanced Mobility

• Geyser– hurls you, or a chosen target, skyward on a column of sudden force.

• Flamewalk– leaves fire burning in your footsteps as you walk.

• Leap– a straightforward bound through the air.

• Lightwalk– kindles a small light at your feet as you move, holding back the dark.

Third Circle – Elemental Control / Spatial Control

• Firenova– a burst of flame radiating outward, catching all who stand too near.

• Explosive Arrow– lays an enchantment on an arrow that detonates upon striking.

• Build– raises blocks at a distance, sparing you the walk.

• Mark– fixes a waypoint in the world, that you might return to it later.

Fourth Circle – Advanced Elemental Control

• Explode– a true explosion called down upon your target, the heaviest blow the fire line can offer – and capped tighter than most for exactly that reason.

• Recall– carries you back to wherever your Mark was last set.

• Waterwalk– lets you cross open water on foot a while, no vessel required.

• Lightning Bolt– calls a bolt of lightning down upon any target you can see.

Fifth Circle – Manipulation Magic

• Reach– lengthens, for a time, how far your hand and blade may go.

• Levitate– lifts a target clean off the ground.

• Sober– clears the head at once, driving out drink entirely.

• Web– binds an enemy in clinging strands, slowing them near to a standstill.

Sixth Circle – Force Manipulation

• Forcepush– a sudden, instant shove of raw force.

• Forcetoss– hurls a target bodily through the air.

• Mirror Image– conjures illusory doubles of yourself, granting incoming blows a real chance of striking a phantom instead.

Seventh Circle – Advanced Force

• Forcebomb– a burst of force spread across an area, catching all within.

• Chain Lightning– lightning that leaps from foe to foe. The first true working of its kind, punishing any who stand together.

Eighth Circle – Powerful Spatial Effects

• Invisibility– renders you unseen for as long as you can sustain the working; the barest blow ends it at once.

• Counterspell– silences whatever working a target meant to cast next. The first craft built with one purpose alone: to face down another spellcaster.

Ninth Circle – Extreme Manipulation

• Confuse Monsters– turns nearby hostile creatures upon one another, rather than upon you.

• Anvil– drops an anvil squarely upon your target. As blunt an instrument as its name suggests.

• Stoneskin– hardens the very skin to stone, a defense that far outlasts Shield’s brief ward.

Workings Shared With Another Calling

Certain of the above – Reach, Levitate, Sober, Forcepush, Firenova, Geyser, Forcebomb, Freeze, Explode, Forcetoss, Invisibility, and Confuse Monsters – are also within Clerics‘ reach, though by their own separate road entirely. Nothing of the two callings’ progress is ever shared; each rolls and remembers its own workings, apart from the other.

Staff Break – The Last Working

Once, and only once, in the whole of a life, a blow that would otherwise have ended you will instead shatter whatever staff you carry – its bound magic torn loose all at once to buy your escape. You are left standing at half a heart of life, your hunger fully sated, a burst of speed carrying you, and some fifteen seconds in which nothing can touch you at all. Long enough to flee the reckoning. Not long enough to turn back and finish what began it.

The working answers only if a staff is actually in your keeping – carry none, and there is nothing to save you. Nor does it come free: whatever staff answers the call is destroyed in the answering, and a new one must be crafted or bought before you carry one again. Like all else belonging to the life you are presently living, this reprieve is spent the moment it is used, and does not return until the next life begins.

Death Takes All of It

Irrupt does not forgive its dead. Die, and your character is wiped entire – for a Mystic, this means every Circle climbed, every working ever learned, every day’s strength accounted for, all of it reduced to nothing. The next life begins again at the First Circle, spellbook empty, the whole climb still ahead of you.