Honey magic – a minor school for kitchen witches.
Honey is powerful.
The bees work magic in their honeycombs, and you take the waxy sweetness and refine the magic further. You made food from it, and medicine, and beauty.
Honey carries power. It is ancient and modern and vital. Beet and cane sugars have replaced honey in the West, but much of the world still knows honey as the primary source of sweetness. Honey lengthens life, brings joy and preserves food.
Generate a minor charge: Spend three hours preparing food, drink or medicine which includes honey.
Mellimancy does not generate significant or major charges.
Taboo: You must never speak ill of anyone, nor say anything unkind. Your actions can be as harmful as you like, but your words must always be sweet.
Symbolic Tension: Honey is delightful and sweet, but it can cover up spoilage. Even genuine sweetness can cause rot.
Random Magic: Surface improvement. Mellimancy can’t solve problems, only make them sweeter.
Charging Tips: Mellimancy charges are pretty easy. You can earn a charge a day, easily. Three or four if you can spend all day in the kitchen. Most mellimancers use Elixir daily, and some prepare it for a loved one or two as well, which slows down charge generation.
Starting Charges: A Mellimancer starts with 3 minor charges.
Minor Formulas
Elixir
1 minor charge
This formula imbues a drink containing honey (mead, lemonade, tea, whatever) with mystical properties, making an Elixir of health. It affects anyone who drinks it, but the benefits don’t take effect immediately – you have to drink the Elixir every day for a week before you get any results. The Elixir doubles natural healing rates, alleviates chronic health conditions, and gives a +5% to Body and all Body-related skills. If not taken daily, all benefits go away and chronic health conditions return.
Name Your Poison
1 minor charge
Another culinary formula. Changes a dish containing honey so the flavor will be extremely pleasant, with no strange tastes. Any poisons or toxins will be undetectable, but have full effect. Of course, you could also just use it to make a nice meal.
Sweeten the Deal
1 minor charge per subject
Affects a group of people, all of whom must eat a dish containing honey together. For the next 4 hours, none of the subjects can intentionally physically harm any other subject. You can be one of the subjects, if you wish, and you don’t have to affect everyone at the table.
Blue Honey
3 minor charges
Changes a teaspoonful of honey into a potent bluish hallucinogen. Anyone who eats it will start hallucinating within about half an hour. The world seems like a rich, beautiful, colorful wonderland. The subject won’t be able to perceive anything that’s upsetting or frightening – you could cut off his leg and he wouldn’t know anything was wrong. The subject starts coming down after about four hours.
The Sweetest Thing
5 minor charges
To use this ritual, you must be wearing a honey scent of some kind. Affects a single victim who is favorably disposed toward you (even slightly) and who can smell you. The victim will be filled with insane jealousy toward anyone else who seems to hold your favor. Ignoring this jealousy requires a rank-7 Isolation Stress Check.
What You’ve Heard
Ma Sherie’s Southern Kitchen is a charming Southern-style kitchen in Seattle, Washington. Ma Sherie herself does all the cooking, and her honey apple pies are famous. She always has a kind word and an affectionate smile for everyone, no matter who they are. This makes the Southern Kitchen restaurant very popular with criminals, troublemakers and the dangerously insane. Like many small business owners who are “in on it,” she’s hoping her restaurant will become the local gathering spot for the Occult Underground, but so far she’s mostly just gotten weird lowlifes.
Can I just say how much I love writing minor schools?
This one’s mostly kind of a kitchen-magic. The taboo isn’t specifically connected to honey – it’s connected symbolically to the contradiction of the school. I know that’s a little odd, but other taboos wouldn’t have worked.
(Never insult or harm honey? Never stop making honey items? Never use honey outside a ritual context? Never eat food without honey? They just don’t make sense and aren’t much restriction, either.)
Anyway, the idea of the school is that the formulas are all really pleasant and sweet at first glance, but really open to causing misery indirectly. Sweetness and rot.
I was going to say “sweet”, but the pun was too terrible to endure. So “kickass” will be used in it’s place.
Kickass!
Taboo: you could always have spoiling charges. All charges are lost every two weeks, the time it takes to finish a jar of honey.
C.
One neat thing about honey is that it does have a preservative effect on flesh. However, its penetration is incredibly poor and it only preserves the outer surface. I recall once reading about some ancient figure who was embalmed in honey; the interior of the body became completely rotten while his outside remained apparently intact.
Ben-San, that’s exactly the kind of feeling I wanted for this school. Thanks for the creepy trivia.
Insect King, spoiling charges would be interesting, too, yeah. I think I like the “sweet demeanor” better, because it affects behavior more.
Sweeten the Deal might be overpowered. Give it to your archenemies in a simple room with no furniture other than the table and chairs and a single door. Lock the door and gun them down, all for a couple days’ work in the kitchen. That and Blue Honey would rank as Significant in other schools.
Thanks for the thoughts, Anon!
My thought was that the need to get the victim to eat food you make is enough to balance out the power level. If your arch-nemesis is unsuspecting enough to eat food you serve, especially in a secured room,
you can take them down with some roofies (or bathtub GHB) anyway without any magic needed.
I’m trying to avoid any significants, since the school’s intended to be a “minor” school.
Think organized crime. The two Mafia bosses and their men sit eating pasta. They have guns at their side, but aren’t using them. Neither of them would normally be dumb enough to start a firefight. But when one side can’t fire any shots, the result becomes predictable. I think that situation is realistic enough, even with wary adepts instead of the Mafia.
And my point is that you may be avoiding Significant charges, but you’re still using Significant power.
I like the school and its formulas, and I agree that it shouldn’t be a full-fledged school, and the formulas even tie in well to the theme. But game balance matters.
Anon,
Aha!
Just to clarify the Sweeten the Deal formula as it’s written:
“For the next 4 hours, none of the subjects can intentionally physically harm any other subject.”
The people affected can’t attack each other. They can still attack anyone else without difficulty.
In your wonderful Mafia meeting example, if you give it to everyone on one side of the table, they can still shoot the other guys – they just won’t shoot each other in the back.
If the formula was “I can hit you but you can’t hit me” it would totally be a Significant formula.
Mmm. Enchanted pasta.
Thanks, that clears things up. However, I still think Blue Honey is overpowered.
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