Local Magic
In "Magia en la Ciudad" ("Magic in the City"), his post for the 2025 RPG Blog Carnival, Gonz Campoverde of Codex Anathema asks about the magic that animates your game's setting. I must admit that I had not given the everyday texture of magic much thought as my main D&D campaign goes.1 I tried to give each city a distinctive character through geography, architecture, politics, and local custom, but even when I consciously included fantasy elements (the winged cats common in Motthart, for instance, or the giant owls that the city guard of Chantowl ride), I did not think about magic, exactly. Indeed, I certainly did not consider quotidian magic, because I tend to think of magic as something that only specialists can access; "quotidian magic" almost seems like a contradiction in terms.
Detail of View of the Valkhof, Nijmegen, Aelbert Cuyp, circa 1655
But lately I've been feeling that, if I were to do my main campaign again from the top, I would want the setting to be more fantastic. Everyday magic in the cities would help with this, but I would only want this magic if it met certain criteria. I'd want it to be very local; each bit of magic should be specific to a region, helping contribute to its city's distinctiveness and history. I'd want most of it (not necessarily all of it) to feel mysterious more than mechanistic; too much fantasy treats magic as a technology for my tastes. Similarly, and lastly, I'd want most of this magic to be out of the average person's control and to be difficult to bureaucratize. These local magic elements would be minor miracles, prophesied dooms, ancient half-forgotten pacts, or profane rituals that certain practitioners know how to perform but do not truly understand. Some of it, however, can be baked into the citizenry's regular practices, so long as they are ignorant of how it works.
To that end, here are some ideas for local magic, big and small, as my submission for April's RPG blog carnival. The first of these I have used in my current campaign. Others are ideas I had for unfinished, or unstarted, projects. The rest I have come up with for this post. In them I tried to capture the feeling of folk Catholicism, Lois McMaster Bujold's fantasy novels, Ursula Le Guin's Changing Planes, or Jorge Luis Borges's fabulist stories; you can decide how well I succeeded. I also allude to Bill Watterson and Lord Dunsany. You may steal any of them for your own settings and campaigns, if you like, but please cite me properly if you decide to publish.
The Creeping Porridges. In the deep elves' subterranean cities, many families have little slimes called creeping porridges in their homes, that help tidy by eating crumbs and other small debris. The deep elves make these by mixing powdered ooze, available in certain dry goods stores, into any kind of starchy meal and cooking it. Each creeping porridge is about the size of a bowl of oatmeal and has a lifespan of a year at most; they can safely be stored in a jar when the elf household needs to keep them out of the way. Cooking only hastens the creation process, however, and powdered ooze will form into a living ooze when mixed with any thick wet substance and left to sit for a sufficient length of time. For this reason, troublesome pest slimes can form when enough powdered ooze is swept into the deep elves' rubbish heaps or gutters.
The Yearly Storm of Javëmëk. Fifty-four years ago, a demagogue stirred up the people of Javëmëk and reigned over the city for seven increasingly bloody and draconian days. After a week, the duke's men reclaimed the city, and the rabble-rouser took his own life rather than face capture. The moment he did, a terrible storm appeared, worse than any the city had ever seen; it was as though when he died his sin and anguish spilled out and were so great that they could take no other form. Every year since, on the anniversary of his death, a storm of equal strength has ravaged the city, no matter how clear the weather in the neighbouring countryside.
Sagémile's Doubles. Those born in Sagémile have a latent talent of bilocation. Most of them will, once or twice in their lives, appear by accident in two places at the same time. Their memories of the event are often foggy and confused, and in one location (or both) they will seem languid and distracted. A few of Sagémile's children will try to cultivate the talent; of these, fewer still will succeed. It is thought that the assassins of the House with the Yellow Door have a knack for it, and so too might the ascetics of the Sacred Hill Monastery or the priestesses in the Hall of Apricots. Whether these mystics are skilled at bilocation or simply prone to it is a matter for much speculation and debate. Some locals even say that none of them are any more likely to bilocate than your average Sagémilese cordwainer, and that it's all just jugglery. Still, your average Sagémilese cordwainer will be in two places at once at some point in her life, and it makes sense that a person could learn to do it at will.2
The Conscripts of IchĂłpolese History. All the youth of IchĂłpol train for war, though war has not come to the city's walls since a great siege over six centuries ago. In those ancient days, the city had suffered famine and plague and then, when its towers and gates were starved of defenders, it also suffered attack by an immense army. It would surely have been overrun, but for a miracle: everyone who would ever live in the city, for years and millennia afterwards, appeared on its walls over the course of the siege. Against this clear sign from the gods its attackers persisted for many months, but they could not breach its gates and the city stood free. Since that time, anyone raised in IchĂłpol is transported into the past for one day and one night, starting at dawn on their twentieth birthday. Though a few try, none can escape this miraculous conscription.3
The Dogs of the Pact. It is said that the dogs of Eidrittwold have an ancient pact with certain of the city's old families. Coming from hunting hound stock but bred by the noble houses to be guard dogs, Eidrittwold dogs are patient with children and comfortable with livestock, and they have lived on the family estates and in their townhouses for hundreds, maybe thousands, of generations. Indeed, the charge of the city crest is a hound statant. When acting in defense of their ancestral families, the dogs truly do have remarkable abilities, to scatter imps and ghosts, to stir valour in fearful hearts, and to heal wounds with a lick of the tongue. Those noble houses are keen to keep the dogs' pedigrees pure, but a careful observer might notice that the mutts who accompany some paupers are capable of the same feats.
The Mercenary Matchmakers. In the Fishlanes, so just across the river and technically out of Caer Galrwym's city limits, is the four-storey home of the Matchmaker's Guild. They are called witches by some, busybodies by others, and saints by a few. Those who are unlucky in love can, for a fee, put their hearts in the Matchmakers' hands. If you pay for the Guild's services, they will find someone for you to wed and cherish, who will cherish you in turn. In fact, they guarantee it, for they know the secret of brewing love potions, and when you sign their contract you agree they can make you desire whomsoever they choose. The Matchmakers have high standards for propriety and for domestic felicity, however, and they take great care to join together the most compatible clients before them; if you have to wait a year for them to find someone suitable, you will simply have to wait a year. The fee remains the same. Although few can quarrel with the consensual use of love potions, the Guild has its critics: some Galrwymans think the witches actually run a generations-long breeding program, though to what end they do not know.
The Doom of Zaccarath. Centuries ago, the tyrant-priest Harin renamed his would-be capital city Zaccarath, for his aberrant patron Ud-Zakkartet, Triplets United, Empress Divided, Lady of Bitumen and the Leadwhite Palace, etc. When his own people rose up and killed him in his tower, he laid a great doom upon the city, stating the year and the hour of its fall. That hour is now a few weeks away, and the city is as lively as ever. Livelier, even. Scholars, adventurers, and wealthy youth from the world over have been visiting Zaccarath for the last decade, so that they can say they were in the doomed city before its end. All residents know of the prophecy, of course, but few plan to leave, and many are annoyed by the tourists who enrich them.4
The Tearful Statues of Saint Kolibrie. Saint Kolibrie is much beloved in Oortwuik, the city in which she lived and died. Throughout Oortwuik are thousands of statues in her likeness, made of wood or stone or ceramic, in public shrines and in private gardens and on hovel stoops, and each of them is miraculous: a statue of Saint Kolibrie, no matter how roughly made, will always weep. Neither the skill nor the piety of the sculptor seem to matter. The tears of Saint Kolibrie's statues are sweet, not salty, and they attract hummingbirds in the right seasons. Fortunately, though nearly every house has the holy woman's image somewhere, there are enough of the jewel-like little birds in spring and summer that each house will have a regular visitor.
Most of my other games are supernatural horror games set in Edmonton, Canada, so the question is very different there: magic only animates the city when it slips through gaps in the masquerade.↩
This, of course, is based on the story of Ămilie SagĂ©e.↩
I always felt that was something odd about time in narrative MMORPGs, where veterans of certain battles rub shoulders in guidhalls and auction houses with fresh recruits who have not yet fought in those same battles, but somehow will. I thought limited time travel might go some way to ease this oddness, to make a consequence of the medium part of the narrative itself.↩
The name Zaccarath is of course taken from Lord Dunsany's short story "In Zaccarath," which I encourage you to read.↩