OSR: Spell Research and Magical Industry, Part 1

In order to provide a basis for player invention and extrapolation, you'll need a system that:
  • Explains most magical phenomena in your setting. 
  • Explains some real-world phenomena.
Once the paradigm - the core set of rules and assumptions used by the system - is understood, players can improvise within those rules without constantly needing GM adjudication. Players asking "Can we do do that but in reverse?" or "Oh, is that why plants have green leaves?" won't send the GM scrambling for a thick reference tome. If it makes sense within the paradigm, it's good enough for RPG purposes.

Here's the state of the art magical paradigm in Endon, expanded from the original Principia Arcana.
Spells are living creatures. Spells, enchantments, ghosts, and souls are all more or less the same. Souls inhabit a living shell most of the time. Weak souls require the living shell to be maintained with food, water, air, etc. Strong souls, like those of sufficiently magical creatures, can ignore biology and physics.
A wizard's spells range in intelligence from pond scum to ferrets. A spellbook is a menagerie-prison. A well-trained brain is a mind-gun loaded with spell-bullets. Minor spells, called cantrips, infest the wizard's soul and bind to it. You can imagine them as extra, mutated limbs, except stuck to the soul and not the body.
Spells can be bred and trained. Copying a spell is difficult and tedious. Enchanting an object means convincing a spell to activate more-or-less permanently and is exceptionally tricky. Runes and engravings can help form a combination prison, racetrack, and factory.

Magical energy is spell food and fuel. It’s gunpowder for the mind-bullets. Raw magic generates
octarine light, the eighth colour, when it interacts with normal matter; a faint purplish-green sparkle or flare.

Wands are portable brains for storing spells and magical energy. Powerful wands can act like a magical battery, storing extra charges for a wizard. Concentrated magic has a tendency to explode.

Raw magical energy flows from the sun to the earth. This is why spells return at dawn and many magical effects only last for a single day.

It's possible this theory isn't true. It might even be wildly inaccurate. But it does explain most of the observable facts and that's good enough for the wizards. After all, Newton knew how gravity worked without having the faintest idea of why gravity worked. The theory of caloric fluids explains a cooling cup of tea and predicts the speed of sound in air. Radioactivity had a long and exciting life without an explanation; oil prospectors corrected for continental drift long before the geologists started paying attention to coastlines and fossils.

So maybe magic will turn out to be electromagnetic corpuscules or planes of negative and positive energy. Maybe it will be something else entirely. But right now, for the purposes of this article, the spells-as-living-creatures theory given here is true.
Figure from Occult Chemistry, which is a real book and also excellent.


There are eight metals. All metals are made from condensed magic. This is why gold and silver have an almost supernatural appeal.
  • Occultum: purified condensed magic. Massless. Like dark glass. Core fuel for many magical items and devices.
  • Gold: a powerful conductor and accumulator of magic strongly associated with the sun.
  • Silver: capable of altering the nature of magic, just as the moon alters sunlight into moonlight. Ghosts and highly magical creatures are wounded by silver.
  • Mercury: a "live" form of silver. Acts as a magical capacitor, storing charge and then suddenly releasing it. Also has strong associations with transformation and scrying magic.
  • Iron: a strong association with blood and violence. Accepts enchantments easily.
  • Tin: a "dead" form of silver. Tin has no known useful magical properties.
  • Lead: absorbs magic and stores it. Used as the core of magic batteries or for heavy magical shielding. Ghosts cannot pass through lead.
  • Copper: capable of negating spells or diffusing magical energy back into the environment. Magic shields and barriers are often made of copper.
Generating Occultum is very difficult and requires enormous specialized condensers. Very few wizards attempt it, and instead buy from local suppliers. A single occultum "coin" the size of a fingernail is worth 100gp.

It's fairly easy, using a small bit of magic and some basic tools, to transform a metal higher on the list to one lower on the list. The reverse requires a lot of magical energy and usually results in an explosion.


There are eight true gems. All other gems are corruptions, variants, or "mere stones."
  • Diamond: believed to be fragments of the crystal spheres surrounding the earth. Diamonds can act as a lens backwards through time, allowing glimpses of the past. They also act as powerful magic resonators, increasing the power of spells and enchantments.
  • Ruby: this red stone acts as a magical focus, gathering diffuse energy or spells into one point.
  • Citrine: orange and sharp, citrine is known as a thinking stone, and is used for many intelligent or near-intelligent spells.
  • Topaz: true yellow topaz can diffuse a spell or enchantment, blunting its power without destroying it.
  • Emerald: emeralds are fragments of leaves from a primordial tree. They enhance spells that deal with life directly; either sustaining, measuring, or ending it.
  • Sapphire: deep blue sapphires enhance patterns and ensure time flows at a constant rate.
  • Tourmaline: indigo tourmaline can split light into all eight colours. Light, detection, and invisibility spells rely on tourmaline.
  • Amethyst: least worthy is the violet amythest, a gem that merely protects other spells from minor interference. Used as a charm against drunkenness.
Gems are sold by jewelers. A cut gem (with a specially selected number of facets) worth using in magic is worth at least 10gp, with larger stones worth up to 1,000gp.

Combining the theory of metals and gems, we can see why crowns (gold, a magic accumulator, surrounding a variety of beneficial gems) are such powerful symbols.

Other Sets of Eight

  • Eight colours of light (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet, and octarine)
    Eight points on a compass rose.
    Eight intervals in the octave.
  • Eight possible directions (up, down, left, right, forward, backwards, backward-through-time and the impossible forward-through-time). 
  • Eight true celestial bodies (the Sun, Mercury, Venus, the Earth, the Moon, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn), all others being classified as "entrapped offspring".
  • Eight elements (stone, water, ice, fire, lightning, acid, air, and the newly identified "void" or "vacuum")
  • Eight perfect geometric forms (sphere, tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron, icosahedron, cuboctahedron, and unahedron, the regular polygon with fewer than zero faces).
Some specious wizards maintain that the "eight deadly sins" and "eight blessed virtues" fall within this system. "If that were so," High Wizard Brumley once quipped, "then surely the eight table  settings of a formal dinner service and the eight pawns on each side of a chessboard would have supernatural significance."

Magical Industrial Equipment

Please compare prices to the price list here.

Magic Accumulators

A lead cylinder wrapped in thin bands of gold and glass. The cylinder slowly builds magical charge. Rotating the cylinder speeds up the process. mall Magic Accumulators are the size of a coffee machine. Large Magic Accumulators are the size of a carriage.Gargantuan Magical Accumulators take up half a warehouse.  

Magic Accumulators
Size Tempo Charges Per Day Cost
Small [   ] 1 1,000gp
[   ][   ] 2
[   ][   ][   ] 3
Large [   ] 4 3,000gp
[   ][   ] 8
[   ][   ][   ] 12
Gargantuan [   ] 8 6,000gp
[   ][   ] 16
[   ][   ][   ] 24
Charges can be used to refill a wand or magic weapon's charges. They are also used to bind enchantments, transmute metals, and power strange and dangerous magical devices.

Magic Accumulators only explode if they are at full charge and rotate for an entire day without discharging. Most have safeguards to vent raw magic to the atmosphere instead of detonating, but safeguards can always fail.

Magical Batteries

Large copper and iron tubs containing mercury and filaments of occultum, magic batteries store magic charges for later use. 

Magic Batteries
Size Tempo Charges Stored Cost
Small [   ] 2 2,000gp
[   ][   ] 5
[   ][   ][   ] 10
Large [   ] 6 6,000gp
[   ][   ] 15
[   ][   ][   ] 30
Gargantuan [   ] 20 12,00gp
[   ][   ] 50
[   ][   ][   ] 100
Each time a charge is added beyond a battery's listed capacity, there's a 10% chance they explode. Most sensible wizards refuse to fill batteries beyond 50% capacity... unless they're working on a really exciting project.

Spell Breeding Reactors

Two copies of a spell must be placed into the heart of a spell breeding reactor. Raw magic, carefully placed gems, spinning gears, and filaments of occultum gradually induce copies of the spells to form. Spells can be collected into scrolls or spellbooks, or directly bound to objects using an enchantment engraver.

Spell levels may need to be adjusted based on your campaign and magic system. Level 0 or 1 spells are trivial workings. Level 9+ spells are proper works of archmastery; very difficult to cast, let alone breed. A reactor to breed those spells must be custom built and requires at least 100,000gp in components.

Spell Breeding Reactor
Level of Spell Tempo Time to New Spell Charges per Spell Cost
Low (0-2) [   ] 1 day 1 3,000gp
[   ][   ] 12 hours
[   ][   ][   ] 6 hours
Medium (3-5) [   ] 5 days 3 10,000gp
[   ][   ] 2 days
[   ][   ][   ] 1 day
High (6-8) [   ] 20 days 5 20,000gp
[   ][   ] 10 days
[   ][   ][   ] 5 days
Very High (9+) [   ] 80 days 10 n/a
[   ][   ] 40 days
[   ][   ][   ] 10 days

Running a spell breeding reactor with two different spells is a good way to create new and lucrative hybrid spells. It's also a good way to destroy your equipment.

Enchantment Engraver

Every wizard has their own system for binding spells to object. Most involve a negligible amount of gold and occultum, though more powerful enchantments may require gems and specially prepared materials.
Enchantment Engraver
Level of Spell Charges/Hours per Spell Cost
Low (1-2) 1 300gp
Medium (3-5) 3 600gp
High (6-8) 5 1,000gp
Very High (9+) 10 n/a
To enchant an existing object, consult the price list.

Enchantment effects are based on the spell used. The GM will need to adjudicate the exact effects, but players probably have an idea in mind when they start down the path to magical industry.

Test Cases

A wizard discovers a new level 1 spell named extinguish flames. They want to mass produce and sell it. Endon's current Tempo is [  ].

The wizard spends all the money they have in the world and takes out some seriously painful loans to buy a small magic accumulator for 1,000gp, a low-level Spell Breeding Reactor for 3,000gp, and an Enchantment Engraver for 300gp, for a total of 4,300gp.

A Season in Endon has 180 days. Because the Magical Accumulator only produces 1 charge per day, half of those days are spent producing spells and half are spent enchanting objects. Assuming all goes well, that's 90 enchanted objects in a Season. Assuming they can be sold for 5gp each, that's 450gp per season... so it'll merely take 10 years (without interest) to turn a profit.

Oh dear.

What if the wizard went into business with a larger firm, and could afford a gargantuan Magical Accumulator, four low-level Spell Breeding Reactors, and a lone enchantment engraver for a total of 18,300gp.

The accumulator produces 8 charges per day. 4 are spent on making 4 new spells per day and 4 are spent enchanting objects with those spells. 4 spells x 180 days in a Season x 5gp per object is 3,600gp per season. That's merely 5 years to turn a profit.

Oh dear.

So how does a wizard make money in Endon?

First, by selling items for more than 5gp. Marketing helps. Legislation is better. Publicity is best. What if, instead of a shabby metal token, the wizard sold beautiful enameled orbs (a few penny's worth of paint and varnish)? What if, instead of hawking extinguish flames on street corners, Parliament were to pass a law requiring every theater, coachyard, and dockyard to own an extinguish flame device? What if they were motivated to pass such a bill by a few well-timed fires conveniently extinguished by our friend the wizard and their new invention?

Second, by accepting that most low-level magic items are churned out by vast factory firms, who keep prices low to drive out competition and use surplus equipment from early ventures to crank out low-level magic items as a side business.

Third, by sabotaging those bastards and replacing them.

Fourth, by buying lightly discounted magical equipment that's almost as good as the verified stuff. You can get up to 50% off the prices above if you're willing to buy damaged, experimental, or jury-rigged devices.

Fifth, by selling things that non-magical physics can't do. Extinguish flames? Water can do that. Continual light? Coal gas is cheap. But a tiny dancing statue that fits in the palm of your hand? Paint that lets you see through walls? A flying carriage?

Sixth, by waiting for the Tempo to increase and magical equipment to become more efficient. At Tempo [   ][   ][   ],
a gargantuan Magical Accumulator (24 charges/day), three low-level Spell Breeding Reactors (12 spells/day), and a lone enchantment engraver costs just 15,000gp and produces 12 spells per day.

Seventh, by taking out loans under a false name, getting as rich as you can, and running away from the city in the dead of the night with a coach full of discount magic items, gold, and disguises.

And finally, eighth, by experimenting and pushing the boundaries of the possible.

In Part 2, I'll cover making new equipment and the joyful wonder of magical explosions.


  1. I love all of this! So good!

  2. Very cool, and quite believable. I especially like the associations of the number 8.

    The Chinese had a similar fixation on the number 5: 5 elements, 5 senses, 5 major bodily organs and 5 minor ones, 5 fruits, 5 grains, 5 meats, 5 vegetables, 5 flavors, 5 poisons, 5 planets...it goes on and on.

    You could perhaps take this a step further and interlink your sets of 8. For example, the Chinese associated the heart with fire and the bitter flavor. Putting this into game practical terms, a wand of fireballs might require not just some random part of a fire-associated monster, but that monster's heart in particular.

    Or, rather than a one-to-one correspondence, maybe there could be overlap. In medieval humor theory, there were four bodily humors (blood, phlegm, choler, and melancholia) corresponding to four properties of hot, cold, wet, and dry. Blood is hot and wet, choler is hot and dry, phlegm is cold and wet, and melancholia is cold and dry.

    This kind of thing can get way more complicated than players will ever appreciate, but I find it to be fascinating world-building. At any rate, I'm looking forward to seeing where you take it.

  3. YES YES This is the EXACT same reasoning I used in some of my bound elemental craft posts. And all the stuff further on? You are helping lay a more detailed foundation of moon-rat and gnome science and engineering.

  4. Presumably the wealthy and paranoid line their hats with copper plating to block the effects of mental magic.
    And hatters go mad because they are frequently struck by random bursts of magic.

    1. Yup! And it's why Coppers are called Coppers.

  5. Will there be advice for running games without spell levels in the finished book? For systems like the GLOG, or Knave.

    1. Yup. Basically, levelless spells cost more Charges depending on the intended power of the device/wand, and use the Medium setting for Spell Breeding Reactors and Enchantment Engravers.

  6. This is amazing. Fantastic. Hope it does brilliantly. I hate it.

  7. Coins and Scrolls - PLEASE do a sequel adventure to Tomb of the Serpent Kings!

    IMO it's one of the best adventures of all time, and i'm not using hyperbole.

    Would be really helpful if you did could do a modern version of Caverns of Thracia, ie something with multiple paths and multiple levels, but maybe presented in a more modern way.

    If you're feeling REALLY generous you could always do a total of 3 dungeons, Serpent kings, a 'Medium' dungeon, and a 'Caverns of Thracia' Dungeon.


    1. Hi! I've got a few notes for a mid to high level adventure. The Magical Industrial Revolution book will also include a handful of one-page dungeons and at least two longer dungeons.