Swarming out of the underbrush, three brigands bar the way of a lone traveller riding an ill-kept road, their swords already drawn as they make their demands. With a word and a gesture from the rider, their leader's hand becomes a magpie's wing, his sword clattering to the ground as his fingers twist into feathers...
Propped against a craggy boulder on a wooded hill, an old man's body leans stiff as an oak plank, guarded by the watchful eyes of owls. Silent and invisible, his spirit roams free of his flesh, slipping down the long slope to spy on the marching column of warriors beyond the treeline...
At the rubble-choked entrance of a collapsed mine, a young woman calls out to the earth for strength. Her body spasms as a spirit of rock and soil enters her, then surges with strength as she begins to lift boulders the size of a wagon wheel with her bare hands, tossing mountains of stone aside to clear the way down into the dark...
On a cliff overlooking the sea, a hooded figure watches a fleet of ships approaching, sails taut against the wind that drives them toward the mouth of the fjord. The wind twists in the man's grip as he invokes the spirits of the sky, shifting the gale to drive the invading ships past the fjord's mouth and to crash on the jagged rocks at the cliff's base...
The Seiðkona
Bodil's Gap is a setting with several different kinds of magic, each with its own traditions and practitioners. Among these styles, seiðr is the most subtle and varied, and of its practitioners, the Seiðkona is the undisputed master.
Seiðr is the magic of spirits, and its practitioners find power by bargaining with otherworldly beings or channeling their own vitality to work their magical art. It is a magic of curses and enchantments, of spells to transform and alter the world, changing the properties of people, places, and objects to suit the Seiðkona's whims. Unlike a Wizard, it does not pick spells, but uses a variety of moves to produce magical effects.
Plague your Foes with a Thousand Curses
Not for the Seiðkona, the vulgar hurling of fireballs or lightning bolts; in battle, the art of seiðr is best used to harass enemies and support allies with a variety of debilitating curses. With a word and a gesture, a Seiðkona can curdle the luck of an enemy for a moment, dulling their next strike, fating them to greater harm, or confounding their ability to resist the tricks and maneuvers of those battling them more directly.
With greater skill, a Seiðkona can begin to transform an enemy's very body, twisting parts of their anatomy into animal shapes to hamper their ability to fight—forcing them to drop their shield from a hand turned into a dog's paw, stumble about on a goat's leg, or swallow orders issued from a bird's beak, for example. Other moves allow a Seiðkona to send a fragments of waking nightmares to distort what their victims see into confusing and deceptive dreamscapes; or conjure angry ghosts into the bodies of their enemies, forcing them to struggle for control over their own limbs.
Most flexibly, a Seiðkona can shape their Seiðr Invocation into any curse or enchantment they can describe, so long as they can work around the requirements of their spell—for the magic can be quick, or enduring, or without cost, but never all three.
Command the Spirits
Apart from the magic they can work under their own power, the Seiðkona is also able to bargain with or command spirits. Whether binding the ghosts of the dead to their will or treating with the spirits of the wild for favours, a Seiðkona is at home in the twilight realm between human civilization and the otherworld of invisible powers.
With their influence over the spirit world, a Seiðkona can bind a spirit to watch over a place and magically report back, or to defend such a place against any intruders the Seiðkona deems unwelcome. They can wrest answers from even unwilling spirits, or invite a spirit to possess their body in exchange for power and the use of the being's own native abilities. A particularly charming Seiðkona may even persuade a spirit to accompany them as a companion, offering its skills and aid to the Seiðkona for as long as the bargain between them remains unbroken.
Using the Seiðkona
This playbook is intended for cunning spell-casters who manipulate their foes with curses and transformations, and for those who wish to forge a relationship with otherworldy forces. If it can be summed up in a single image, that image is Baba Yaga, working magic in her hut guarded by three horsemen who are the Day, the Night, and the Sun. Use it instead of or alongside playbooks like the Wizard or Druid to present a spell-caster whose magic is folkloric and primal.
Bodil's Gap is currently in playtesting, and the playtesting version of the Seiðkona playbook can be found here. If you have any insight or feedback, leave a comment or send an email to brazenhead@zoho.com.
Up Next
I realize that last week I said I would do the Goði next, and obviously I haven't done it this week. Originally I was intending to present the setting's custom playbooks in alphabetical order, but I've since decided to do them in the order they were designed, since the older playbooks have had more revision time. To that end, next week I'll be talking about the Rúngaeti playbook, a different kind of spellcaster who gains their power by mastery of the runes.
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