Weather Lordship

Prerequisites: All four Elemental Invocations
Through this Invocation, the Magician can control and manipulate the weather. Upsetting the balance of the weather is often tricky, however, leading to unexpected consequences. Even minor changes in one place may lead to major upheavals somewhere else. For instance, a Magician’s rain making in Arizona could create a devastating hurricane in Florida. The karma cost of such upheavals eventually comes back upon the Magician. Unless properly Dismissed, failing a Weather Lordship Focus Task causes a great deal of chaos and anguish. Many freak storms, tornadoes and worse have been triggered by careless Magicians. These clumsy practitioners are almost always tracked down and punished accordingly.

A sorcerer can minimize the effects of her use of this Power by a careful balancing act, restoring conditions to their previous state after she no longer needs the weather effect she has created. This is costly and time-consuming, but the price of not doing so is often catastrophically high.

Alter Weather Effect

The Essence cost of this Power depends on the area affected by the weather change and how extreme the change is. Causing a tiny downpour to drench a victim in the middle of a cloudy, overcast afternoon is a lot cheaper than causing a monsoon in the middle of Death Valley. Affecting anything larger than a few hundred meters (yards) in area costs so much Essence that only a large group of sorcerers can hope to do so.

An area with a radius of 1 meter (yard) per level of Willpower of the sorcerer can be affected for a base cost of 4 Essence points (modified by the degree of the weather change). A larger area (10 meters [yards] per level of Willpower) has a base cost of 8 Essence points. A significantly large locale (100 meters [yards] per level of Willpower) has a base cost of 16 Essence Points. A huge area (one mile per level of Willpower) cost a base 32 Essence points. Each additional mile adds 8 Essence points to the base point cost.

Small, imperceptible changes in weather (causing a cloud to temporarily cover the sun) halve the base cost given above, rounded down. A small but definite change (causing a light drizzle to stop, starting a light rain in the middle of an overcast day, or reducing the intensity of rain or a storm by one level) uses the base cost. A significant change (starting a good hard rain during a clear day, changing a storm into a mild rain) costs double the base cost. Agreat change (starting rainfall during the dry season in a normally temperate climate, stopping or starting a thunderstorm from scratch) costs triple the base cost. An extraordinary change (starting a downpour in an arid desert, stopping a hurricane in its tracks) costs quadruple the base cost. The effects are felt only in the area affected; outside that area, weather conditions continue to operate normally.

This Invocation will last 5 minutes per Success Level or until Dismissed, whichever comes first. However the spell ends, the Magician has the choice of trying to restore the natural weather she has disrupted before it does so. This requires an Essence expenditure equal to one third the cost of the initial upheaval, rounded down. Thus, if the Magician spent 60 Essence points altering the weather, 20 points are needed to bring it back to normal. The Magician then makes a Willpower and Weather Lordship Task attempt. If the Magician cannot restore the situation to normal, penalties of -1 to -4 (depending on how extreme the change in the normal weather was and how large an area was effected), are applied to the Dismissal Task.

Messing with the weather of a large area may be noticed. Any Magician within ten miles of the affected area who knows any Elemental Invocation or Weather Lordship can sense the disturbance on a Perception and Invocation Task. The source of the disturbance can be tracked down by a series of these Tasks, and careless or destructive mages will be challenged by their peers (or their superiors).

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