Welcome back to our exploration of The Dark Path, we’ll finish off with example dark magicians and the style’s potential origins.
Practitioners of The Dark Path
“I’ve been chasing this guy for 2 years. Two long, cold, painful years. I like to think there’s a point to what he does, that he’s doing all this for a reason. Because if there’s a reason for all this, that means that I, by extension, am not wasting my time doing all this chasing. But I know for sure that there isn’t. It’s just him, and the chase.”
— Unnamed bounty hunter, quoted in the article “The Hunt For The Tunneller”, Washington Chronicler, 12th of May, 2023
Detailed below are two example NPCs who have learned The Dark Path style. GMs can use them for adventures.
Victor McCall
Recovering Black Magician, age 30
At first glance, Victor McCall is a canny but shaken and isolated intellectual who has regrettably fallen on hard times, and into under-employment. He’s an unremarkable-looking man in his early thirties with light brown skin, watery blue eyes and chocolate brown hair.
You’d have to check into his past and public record before you’d guess he did time as a criminal considered highly dangerous. Listening to angry gossip and grumbling underground media, you’d learn McCall is or was hip deep in the most illegal activity that the law could manage to nail him on. This is not quite true, but the stink of his actual sins have exaggerated his wrong-doings for the time being, perhaps the rumours of his supposed depravity will dog him for the rest of his life. Before he went to prison, he was indeed a thief, but his real crime was stepping onto The Dark Path.
Victor McCall was a somewhat unorthodox Dark Path stylist, in that he focused on the meta-magic, knowledge and stealth spells, and avoided the curses and other ugly nasty elements. He was not driven by spite or power-lust but by curiosity. He fell into stealing as he became better at magic, both to advance his mastery of The Dark Path and to earn the money he needed.
Then he got caught by a sweep. Although he was never officially “charged” with black magic use (there are no “real” laws against that, after all), the authorities who were trying to covertly crack down on evil occultists pinned a trumped-up crime on him. He got 5 years for the conviction thanks to a judge and prosecutor who were in on the conspiracy. Even now, he is kept under close watch by anti-occult forces.
Currently, McCall is trying to leave The Path, pretending as hard as he can that he knows nothing of the style and can’t cast any spells. It has been hard to resist temptation. McCall learned a lot about The Dark Path and its…wisdom…through astral-projecting into the obscure spiritual realm of Drugaskan and meditating upon the experience. Drugaskan is an utterly dark, cold, bare brick labyrinth that’s eerily silent aside from faint distant sounds of chains rattling and metal grinding on stone. Sitting still within its desolate corridors, one could turn inward and soak in the magical insights that infuse the twisted local mana. Turning on a light source to see clearly within the realm is not recommended. Feeling your way around is much safer, and enlightening. Reassuringly, the entire realm of Drugaskan smells like nothing in particular.
Some days, all he wants to do is go back there.
The Tunneller
Deadly Saboteur, age unknown
Living down to stereotypes, this Dark Path stylist is a criminal drifter who has gone up and down the country for years, terrorising people all the while. No-one alive knows of his real appearance or identity even as news of the serial killer “The Tunneller” makes headlines. A portion of his early victims (about 8 of them) were always found in tunnels, subways, sewers, or just underground passages. The media thought he was trying to just hide the bodies but actually he killed those people because they stumbled upon his hideouts, or he just dragged their corpses into there after an ambush. They were not even his main targets. But the nickname stuck. He’s a pale, physically imposing man with corn blond hair, hateful brown eyes, and usually with a frown on his face.
The Tunneller spitefully targets communities by pinpointing what he calls “the nails” (anyone who serves as the community’s most vital support staff and/or their trend-setting leaders) and then sabotaging them after a break-and-enter and a period of stalking. He poisons the food in their fridge, rigs up explosives or bear traps, deploys curses and suborns electrical systems. The idea is, by ruining the people who keep the community functioning, the “herd” will break apart under the strain. If that doesn’t work, it’s onto random acts of terrorism, opportunistically hurting anyone he can get at whenever it’s convenient. (He’s not above simply sneaking up behind someone in the dark and shooting or garroting them. He’s good with a knife, too.) With any luck, the unpredictable nature of the attacks will cause destructive panic. The Tunneller leaves behind mutilated animal carcasses at the scene of his crimes. He tries to avoid other mages whenever possible, even breaking off attacks if he realises they’re reacting to his actions.
Origins of The Dark Path
“Sauron was become now a sorcerer of dreadful power, master of shadows and of phantoms, foul in wisdom, cruel in strength, misshaping what he touched, twisting what he ruled, lord of werewolves; his dominion was torment.”
— The Silmarillion
The Magical Styles: Horror Magic book leaves the truth behind The Dark Path’s origin and purpose open for the GM to decide in secret (and maybe for unlucky players to discover in play). I have some suggestions that the GM might use as a “canon” answer in their campaign (or at least, rumours and deluded occultists might ASSUME any of these are the truth regardless).
The magical style may be created by;
- A rather black-hearted archmaster of thaumatology. The warlock desires to ascend into further heights of dominion over reality, so he created The Dark Path in order to feed off the souls of those who join the style (the secret spell Invest is a faint whisper of this feeding) to fuel these hateful ambitions. The creator of The Dark Path may also have created the secret spell Trap Magical Essence, as another part of his spiritually parasitic machinations. The style’s magic is deliberate flawed and radically unstable because his arcane matrix harvests entropy (the collapse of order and energy, which is most plentiful when a human being dies) off the “beacons” (the stylists causing death and destruction with critical failures). The matrix then channels this negative burst into the archmaster’s sinister project to become a god. In game mechanics terms, this resembles an up-scaled operation of gaining bonus Character Points (stolen from the wreckage of reality and life) and spending them on a huge permanent enchantment (although less of a single magic item and more of a reality quake).
- The demon Foras, the same one from the Ars Goetia. A powerful president of Hell, Foras desires nothing more than tear down creation and make humans suffer. The Dark Path is partly an extension of his nature, being capable of teaching man wit, the power of invisibility, and the ability to discover treasures and lost things. The radical instability of the style’s magic is a consequence of Foras being severely conflicted over his plan; on one hand, he wants people to learn from him and become powerful, but on the other he hates humanity.
- The forces of Daath, known most dreadfully as the qlippoth. They are things of The Abyss, That Which is Not True, That Which No Longer Is, That Which Should Not Be, The Anti-Reality, Non-Existence, from the Time before Time, “god’s garbage pit”. Perhaps originating from a reality quake at the dawn of creation, the qlippoth desire to feed off our reality, and The Dark Path is their tool for this. The unstable nature of the magic taught is both a result of the style’s origin in “a non-existence” and what happens when the forces of Daath manage to get a bite of reality. To draw upon Daath is to risk a cancer of life, the universe and everything. The book teaching the style simply spawn from nowhere as if they were always there, a blasphemous act of retro-creation.
- Choronzon, The Breaker of Thought and Form. Choronzon is a mighty arch-spirit who guards the way into enlightenment, The Gate of Truth. Some have speculated He is an aspect or mask of the demon Mara from Buddhist mythology. Whatever the truth, Choronzon is constantly testing mages seeking occult lore and magic power, to see if they are worthy of the higher mysteries. The Breaker of Thought and Form created The Dark Path as one of his trials; it is a trap for the unwise and those skilled in the style become worthy challenges for the wise. The unstable nature of the style’s magic is meant to help weed out those broken in their sins and give harsh lessons on foolish power-mongering to the surviving witnesses.
Three Hundred and Thirty-Three 