Musical Magical (OSR Secret Jackalope 2020)

Spell rituals

An ancient spellbook has been uncovered, containing these secret rites. 

The Forest Witch by Stu Harrington

You Spin Me Round

Cover a spinning top with the ashes from a burned wheel, write the words PRITTU VANAM on your palm, and then spin the top upon it. So long as you keep it spun, all who can clearly see its spin are forced to pirouette.

Take Me to Church

Select a shrine or temple and take the branch from a tree near it (if there are none anywhere nearby, a handful of grass may still work). Then, obtain an eyelash from a true believer. When you need to return there, hold the branch aloft and entreat the god to return you to safety. The branch will burn in holy light, and you will be brought there in only a minute by a similar divine glow.

Kill V Maim

Weave grass from your hometown into a small pad, and mix together dirt from a robbed grave, spittle from a panicking goat, and the crushed body of an insect that has killed a human into ink. With this ink, write out your name and the letters E V N X T I N on the pad, and place it under your clothes. For the next week, if you are wounded by blows while bearing this pad, your foe will be struck down on the spot.

Megitsune

Craft a fine mask of clay or another brittle material (clay is simply the most easily reached choice I know of). The mask should depict your own face in a visage of deepest sorrow, and be inscribed along the rim with IV NATAS MIM RETO KALIN. Shattering this mask against your face summons the pure maiden Megitsune, a fox spirit in the form of a young girl who is kind and knows the deepest regret of everyone whose eyes she meets. She will use this knowledge to achieve her (and your) ends, but is not all knowing.

Crying Spirit by Leon Ropeter

Absolute Territory

This spell can be cast with a skirt or cloak. Create a patch woven with an eyelash that has not been wished upon, and dyed with wine that has been shared. Sew the patch to the inside of the garment while describing the most beautiful sights you have seen. When you flip up the inside to reveal the patch, it will start to shine brightly and everyone within five meters as well as anyone who approaches to that close will be enthralled for up to a minute by what they see.

Wonderland

Mix together rust shavings, a stranger's blood, the wings of a butterfly, and spoiled milk in a pot of oil. Say the magic words YARUNE TOLSS REWEK and anoint it upon yourself or another. Until the sun sets, this oil will permeate the outer clothing and badly sting the skin of any fairie who touches it. There are other recipes to ward against other spirits and supernatural monsters, but all I know of them is that the incantation is the same.

Untouched

Take the bone which has never touched human skin from a large beast (a dog or larger). The spell may only work if thick gloves are worn by the caster when handling this bone. The bone must be painted or dyed black and you must incant NATARES. As soon as this is said, the bone will appear to all as whatever object they most desire at that moment, until it melts away into ink at sunset. Some may react unusually to this sight.

Magic wand of peace by Victor Duarte

I Can't Fix You

Forge a bell from bronze that was once a sword. I believe the sword must have seen battle, but cannot be sure. Carve the words NORU SIVIM somewhere on it. If it is rung over a wounded foe while they sleep, the magic words will burn a hole in the bell and the wounds they bear will become cursed to never heal by any natural or medicinal means.

Wandering

Make a candle using the fat of a lost sheep for the tallow and cotton from a field you have never seen before as the wick. Burn it while chanting the words TUMUN SHAMA VIDEH until you have a handful of molten wax. Throw this wax upon someone and they will seem to disappear, while they are forced to wander through the halls of an empty palace full of stairs and balconies, trapped until they say the words "I'm free!"

Summoning by Olivier Hennart

Mr. Blue Sky

Make a circle with a three-pointed star holding at each point amethyst, quartz, and hematite respectively. Meditating in the center of this circle for an hour under uninterrupted sunlight shall summon Mr. Blue, a small fae man with skin fittingly the color of a clear summer sky, who will stay to aid you until the sun reaches the same spot in the sky the next day. His gaze can quell unbound power; raging fire, torrential flow, or frenzying elementals for example.

Created as part of the OSR Discord server Secret Jackalope 2020! The prompt for an ancient spellbook full of spells named after songs comes courtesy of Stefan "The Moth," who blogs at Verbum Ex Nihilo. This prompt caught me somewhat off guard, but I took it as an opportunity to start writing spell rituals which will be a component of my next RPG project. Ultimately, it all kind of worked out just right.