Qlippothic Magick
by Anders Sandberg (nv91-asa@nada.kth.se)
Qlippothic Spheres
Qlippothic magick deals with the dark sides of the spheres, or rather the
forces normal mages do their best to avoid. They are notoriously vulgar
and dangerous, but at the same time quite powerful. A Qlippothic mage can
use all normal spheric magick (although with a definite qlippothic slant)
but also other effects, normally not possible in more balanced paradigms.
The Nephandi are the most well known Qlippothic mages, but there are other
mages who have been drawn to the unbalanced by madness, lust for power or
curiosity. However, once you start to use qlippothic magick, it becomes
hard to stop.
Correspondence
Unlike in the traditional paradigm, Nephandi does not see everything as a
part of an indivisible unity. Everything can be taken apart, even the
Correspondence Point. This makes qlippothic Correspondence dangerous, both
for its users and its victims.
- Detect Warping. The Mage can notice errors and illusions of space or
perspective. These weak points of space exist everywhere, and connect all
places through secret links beneath reality.
- Watch through the cracks of reality. The mage can look through the
weak points of space into other places.
- Move through the cracks. The mage has the power to slip through the
weak points and emerge elsewhere. However, he has to be very careful to
hold himself together, so that the different parts of him would not break
apart. He can also send out his mind through the cracks, to find something
anywhere in the world... or beneath.
- At higher levels the mage can move other objects through space, as a
whole or take them apart. He can also create new cracks, and patch them
together (this creates creases and strange overlaps in space).
- The Mage is now able to take apart and rearrange space itself, even
changing the number of dimensions. Such rearrangements tend to be rather
unstable and very destructive for anything caught in them.
Entropy
This is dealt with in the Book of Madness.
Forces
Qlippothic magic does not deal with the balanced flows of energy the
Traditions and Technocracy uses. Instead it creates and controls
unbalanced, destructive forces or the lack of energy. The forces a
qlippothic mage wield are usually violent or somehow corrupting
(electricity is filled with spikes, gravity tugs in different ways at
once).
- Detect potentials. The mage can detect potentials where energies
attract or repel each other. At such points the slightest change could
break the equilibrium and cause disruption.
- Disrupt lesser forces. Normally ordered forces such as light or
electricity can be disrupted, loosing their usability and becoming
irritating or destructive. Electronic devices break down or are destroyed,
light becomes gritty and strangely unable to help perceptions.
- Destroy lesser forces. The mage can not only create forces, he can
also destroy them. Light can be turned into darkness, electricity drained
and sound dampened.
- Disrupt greater forces. Now the mage can make any force begin to
counteract itself. Tidal forces can rip apart objects, heat concentrate
itself and moving vehicles start to tumble chaotically.
- Destroy greater forces. The mage can now remove gravity or drain heat.
In principle he can remove all forces from something, making it dissolve
into dead matter.
Life - (see also Qlippothic Life in 'The Nephandi Text')
Unlike normal life, qlippothic life cannot sustain itself. It needs
something to feed on, be it the quintessence flow the mage invokes or
other kinds of life. Any life affected by qlippothic magick becomes
slightly parasitic; the cells feed of their neighbors, plants suck out
all the nourishment in the soil and animals are filled with a raging
hunger to sate the unlife within them. Without a constant supply of
external energy it will die (although qlippothic life has a nasty tendency
to take a long time to die completely).
- Detect disease. The mage is able to find all weak points, potential
diseases and wounds within another living being.
- The mage can warp simple life, like blighting plants or forcing
insects to grow. Warped life is always slightly sickly and deformed.
- Warp complex life. The mage can change himself (this will of course
bind him stronger to the qlippoth, since he will need the energies of the
sphere even more in the future). He can also create simple pseudo-living
beings, not able to survive on their own but usually quite tenacious.
- The mage can warp all forms of life, including other people.
- Transmute flesh. The mage can turn living beings into true unlife,
like humans into vampires. This unlife is quite potent (as long as it can
feed on the quintessence of other life) and strongly tied to the qlippoth
of life.
Matter
Qlippothic matter is the sphere of ruining objects and removing the
properties of matter.
- Detect flaws and impurities.
- Create qlippothic matter. Qlippothic matter is notoriously inert and
useless; it is not affected by most forces, cannot sustain life or be used
for anything. It is also very hard to destroy or get rid of, and just
accumulates as dirt or garbage.
- Remove properties of matter. The mage can remove properties such as
cohesion, color, strength or nourishment.
- Transmute matter into qlippothic matter.
- Create pure qlippothic matter. Pure qlippothic matter is very hard to
affect by any form of magick, and almost indestructible. It just ties up
Quintessence so that it cannot be used.
Mind
Qlippothic Mind deals with disorientation, imbalance and insanity.
- Warped Mind. One of the first things a student of the sphere learns is
to gain insight from madness, how to twist his own thoughts around and
gather power from the dark recesses of the mind. They become able to jumps
of insight and vision, at the mere price of their sanity.
- Emotional insecurity. The mage can affect the emotions and drives of
another person, turning them against him or against each other. Love can
turn into obsession, self confidence can break down into doubts and hidden
fears brought to life. Neuroses can be created.
- Disorientation. Consciousness and thought are quite unstable entities,
and can easily be broken. He can derail trains of thought, induce
hallucinations, force a victim into a coma or psychosis.
- Break the Mind. The mind of a victim can be permanently warped into
unrecognizable patterns.
- Shatter the Mind. At this level, the mage not only can break away
minds from their bodies, but also parts of the minds. Memory, cognition or
thought can be removed or sent away to other places. Things from the
Astral plane can be brought into reality.
Prime
Qlippothic Prime magick is among the most unholy arts of magick in
existence. It corrupts and transmutes Prime into non-existence, removing
it from reality or curdling it into an useless entropic state.
Quintessence fed into patterns will have a qlippothic resonance, which
will affect them in subtle ways. They will become more unstable, less
efficient and often spread their corruption further.
- Detect paradox. The mage can detect paradox and other strains in
reality, weak points where it can unravel further.
- Drain Quintessence. The mage can leak out Quintessence from a magickal
pattern, weakening it. Normal patterns are usually too strong to affect,
but they can be slightly destabilized.
- Dark Talismans. Talismans created by qlippothic magick are both
dangerous and nasty. Their effects are strongly qlippothic, and they also
tend to attract paradox. However, their nature also makes them very good
at destroying, corrupting and warping things in unpleasant ways, even if
they were not intended for it.
- Drain. By draining away the quintessence of a pattern it can be
undone, and its existence is converted into qlippothic quintessence. It is
of course possible to just undo some parts of a pattern, leaving the rest
unstable and decaying.
- Destroy quintessence. This apparently removes the Quintessence from
reality altogether, turning being into un-being.
Spirit
Qlippothic spirit is quite similar to normal Spirit magick, although it
deals with the more malevolent aspects of the Umbra.
- Find breach. Qlippothic mages often seek out weak points in the
gauntlet to widen them further, gradually undermining it.
- See the nether realms. Qlippothic mages are able to perceive the
qlippothic realms beneath reality, and summon beings from them.
- Breach the gauntlet. The mage can now pass through flaws in the
gauntlet into the uppermost nether realms, and perceive the Abyss below.
- Destroy the gauntlet. The mage can disrupt the protective shell of the
gauntlet, opening the way for the darkness below. He can also bind and
warp spirits, forcing them to become qlippothic entities themselves.
- Enter the Abyss. The mage is able to enter the spiritual abyss below
reality unharmed, and to contact its denizens.
Time
Just as space can be taken apart or cracked, the chains of causality can
be manipulated by a qlippothic mage. It isn't possible to get anything
useful done during qlippothic time, and it seems to stretch on for a grey
eternity or speed up just when it shouldn't.
- Find the angles of time. Qlippothic mages have an strange tendency to
find the exactly wrong moments to do something; the results are
unpredictable and often dangerous. They can find the wrinkles and angles
of time, and use them to make chains of events to go wrong.
- Peer through the wrinkles. All the angles and flaws in the timestream
are linked together, and qlippothic mages have a fantastic ability to
predict bad news or discern past events better left buried.
- Dead time. The mage can make time more or less useless. Nothing
important can happen, or it just flies away before anything useful gets
done.
- Unlink time. The mage can remove things from the timestream, partially
or as a whole. If an object is only partially removed, one part will age
indefinitely while the other is preserved or vice versa. They can also be
thrown into a timeless limbo.
- Destroy time. The mage is able to break the flow of time and
causality; events do not have effects or time just passes without anything
happening. Time can also be broken apart and put together, forming endless
causal loops.
Back to the Old World of Darkness Hub
Frame URL: http://www.evildrganymede.net/rpg/mage/m-qlippoth.htm