Pennsylvania Dutch Magic: design questions

[FenrisUlf]

HI all,

Just got some questions for 'spells' based on Pennsylvania Dutch magic as listed in books like The Long-Lost Friend and The Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses.

As a general note -- about all of these spells involve Incantations, usually prayers (sometimes to 'the Fallen Angels'), Gestures (most often the sign of the cross three times), and usually last until the person in question 'takes the Holy Blood and Body of our Lord Jesus Christ', i.e., takes communion, which would be about once a week in Dutch country. They were also done as amulets of a sort, with everything from the infamous SATOR square written on a dinner plate to various himmelsbrief ('heaven letters') which were supposed to defend their bearer from death by various means, vindictive prosecution, and death by fire, illness, and wild animal attacks.

For a start: 'Stealing Fire from a Gun'. This is something supposed to make the person using the spell/amulet (most of these spells are written down ahead of time and carried on the person) immune to gunfire. The 'how' depends -- sometimes you just won't get hit by a bullet, sometimes the gun fails to go off, and very rarely the gun will backfire or explode.

Any ideas on how that can be handled in game? A Dispel versus RKAs, Firearms Only (-1)? Extra DCV, only versus Firearms? Or should I use something else? This should be somewhat subtle magic, as 'real' Dutch magic is supposed to be low-key.

Thanks for any help.

[Shadowsoul]

Specialised DCV sounds about right to me although one could interpret the spell as aggressive in that it tampers with firearms aimed at the caster; in which case the caster would gain the (unconscious?) ability to force anyone who fired at them to make a misfire/malfunction roll with consequences rainging from missing to breaking or even blowing up in their face. Assuming of course that the caster made their magic skill roll which might gain bonuses from the level of success of the roll for the original ritual or spell. That may be overcomplicated, albeit amusing, however and so for simplicity's sake it might best to stick with a specific DCV enhancement.

[Captain Obvious]

If you're using the misfire rules from 4th ed, you could combine that with the Luck constructs from Valdorian Age.

The spell would be a certain amount of Luck, limited only to alter the attack roll of an attacker. Each point of Luck that came up when you rolled would move the attack roll up one point, basically draining OCV (or adding DCV however you look at it). At some point, it will push the roll up into misfire country (16+), and then the gun will misfire, jam, or backfire.

Not incredibly foolproof, especially if the attacker has a good OCV, but it keeps the subtlety. Actually I kind of like this construct...I'll have to use it myself.

Thanks for the opportunity to brainstorm, Fenris!

[Chris Goodwin]

I just want to say, I couldn't not look at this thread; my mom's family are Pennsylvania Dutch.

[FenrisUlf]

I just want to say, I couldn't not look at this thread; my mom's family are Pennsylvania Dutch.

As are my father's, which is where I first learned about Pennsylvania Dutch magic.

They ever tell you about Snyder County's undead witches or the valley that leads to Hell, complete with der Ewige Jager*?

* -- 'The Eternal Hunter', a PA Dutch version of the Wild Hunt.

[OddHat]

The book GURPS Voodoo is a great resource for this style of magic.

Something like "Stealing Fire" is probably best written up as extra DCV, plus a triggered Dispel vs Firearms with IPE and an 8- activation roll. The Extra DCV defends most of the time, and the Dispel occasionally goes off and fries the gun.

[Chris Goodwin]

As are my father's, which is where I first learned about Pennsylvania Dutch magic.

They ever tell you about Snyder County's undead witches or the valley that leads to Hell, complete with der Ewige Jager*?

* -- 'The Eternal Hunter', a PA Dutch version of the Wild Hunt.

No, and I wish they had! My mom and her sister and cousin are the only ones left of that branch of the family now, unfortunately (and I'm not even sure the cousin ever lived there).

[AmadanNaBriona]

Somewhere in my storage unit I've got a book with a pretty good breakdown of how to construct Pennsylvania Dutch Hex Signs (My mothers father was from penn-dutch stock).

The first talisman I ever made was a redded leather magic square I made at Scout camp.

M I L O N
I R A G O
L A M A L
O G A R I
N O L I M

To call dreams and see the unseen

[FenrisUlf]

No, and I wish they had! My mom and her sister and cousin are the only ones left of that branch of the family now, unfortunately (and I'm not even sure the cousin ever lived there).

See if you can find ONCE UPON A HEX by Boyer, that contains a ton of old Dutch folklore. Other good books are Arthur Miller's HEX (covering the 'Pennsylvania Witchcraft Murder'), and almost any of the ghost books by Adams & Seibold, though I prefer GHOSTS OF BERKS COUNTY I - III. The coverage of Hawk Mountain (everything from swamp devils to murderous ghosts to the dragon of the Pinnacle) is exceptionally good.

Heck, my paternal grammy could have told you stories; she was a midwife and knew some braucheri (healing). Or my dad, who liked to tell the story about the time he and several other people saw the devil take a man to Hell.

[Nolgroth]

Or my dad, who liked to tell the story about the time he and several other people saw the devil take a man to Hell.

Now THAT would have been a story to hear! I love to hear the stories that the "old timers" tell when the mood strikes them.

[FenrisUlf]

Now THAT would have been a story to hear! I love to hear the stories that the "old timers" tell when the mood strikes them.

From what I remember of it (this was about 20 years ago at least, and Dad's been gone for over a decade...)

Once when my father was still a teenager (which would make this anywhere from 1943-46, I think; though it might have been slightly earlier) he wound up keeping a watch on a dying man with the local preacher. The guy was very wealthy, very nasty, and very miserly; he'd done the dirty to just about everyone in town at some point or another out of his love for money. And now that he was dying, aside from a few relatives sitting downstairs waiting for him to die so they could get his money, no one wanted to sit up with him. Everyone in town hated him and were glad for his death. Dad's family kept moving around a lot for work, but all of Dad's brothers were either at work or still just kids when the preacher dropped by the house, so his mother told Dad to go with the preacher to help him.

It must have been terrifying; Dad remembered the old man as screaming and sobbing for his money, alternately cursing God for letting him die and begging the Savior to protect him from the devil. Dad said you could hear him carrying on from outside the house. The preacher tried to give him Last Rites, but the dying rich man just cursed him too. You could barely hear the people downstairs, openly gloating over the man's death and even yelling, "Isn't he dead yet?" once in a while.

Then Dad remembered that everything got very quiet. The sounds from downstairs and outside just seemed to 'fade away'. Then the door of the room, which stood open just a crack and had very rusty hinges (it squeaked audibly when Dad and the preacher opened and partly closed it earlier) opened wide without so much as a whisper. And standing in the doorway is a dog. "A great big black dog, black as pitch, and his eyes were lit up like an animal's at night." The dog seemed big enough to come up to the bedside and look into the dying man's eyes, its head level with the top of the bed or maybe a bit more. Everything was silent; the preacher stopped praying, Dad kept quiet, even the dying man fell silent -- though he stared at the dog in truly horrified fashion, like he was about to have a heart attack.

The dog just stared at the man for a few moments. Then it turned around and walked back out the door, paying no attention to either my father or the preacher. The door swung close behind it and Dad could hear the people downstairs talking again. The dying man said nothing; when the preacher checked him, he was dead.

Dad and the preacher then went downstairs to find the assembled relations ready to start partying at the news that the old man was gone. The preacher asked them, "Who let that dog in here?"

"What dog? What are you talking about, you damn fool preacher? There wasn't any dog in here."

At those words the preacher turned pale and took Dad by the arm, telling him, "Come on boy, we're leaving here." Dad didn't even have a chance to get any words out; the preacher took him outside and didn't stop until he got him to the church. He then told Dad, "Now kneel and pray for that man; God knows he needs prayers, and no one else will give him any." Dad, still not really getting the point of all this, knelt and prayed at the rail beside the preacher. After a few minutes the preacher told Dad, "Now go home, and don't speak about that dog." My father, feeling very creeped out by the whole thing, walked home.

A few months later he told an uncle of his who knew some braucherei about the dog, and the old man told him, "That was no dog. That was the Devil, who came for the old miser."

That was the story as he told it to me. I don't know if he believed the dog was the devil or not by the time he told me, but I think that as a boy he may well have half-believed it.

[Nolgroth]

I love those kinds of stories. If I could, I would rep ya for it. Black dog stories are among my favorites. Too cool for school.

[FenrisUlf]

Another "how would you design this?" question --

One of the rare 'direct attack' magic thingies in PA Dutch lore is something called a 'blood bullet'. Basically it's a bullet made at midnight in either an abandoned churchyard or at a crossroads, that can kill any one person in the world if you say their name when you fire it into the air. There are no defenses against it -- if you're inside a house, a bank vault, wearing adamantium armor, whatever, the bullet will kill you. And it doesn't miss. (Though in game terms there has to be some defense against it.) Nor does the person have to be anywhere nearby: as long as they're on the planet (or maybe just in eastern PA) the bullet will find and kill them.

Also, while the bullet can be easily found and extracted after it kills someone, there's apparently no way to identify it or the gun it came from (then again, most of these were made for flintlock rifles, so IDing them might be impossible anyway). Magic can find these details out, however.

The drawback? To make one, you have to sell your soul to the Devil.

Just how would that be modeled in game terms? I'm thinking a NND RKA, probably 3-4d6, One Hex AoE MegaScaled to cover the entire planet? And juist how do you handle attacks like that anyway? If they're MS, wouldn't they affect everyone in the area, i.e., everyone on Earth? I've got a hard time figuring out those attacks.

And the no identifiying, that could be, what some form of Invisibility against Forensic detection?

Thanks again!

[OddHat]

I'd do it with a compound power: 15d6 Mind Scan +20 or so ECV, and a 3d6 RKA BOECV Does Body. If the GM doesn't like treating an RKA BOECV as a true mental power, do it as an EGO Attack Does Body and pump it up to 12d6 or so. One charge that never recovers for both (Special Effect: You sold your soul to the devil, and now it's gone), gestures (firing the gun in the air) and an IIF (the gun and bullet, Inobvious Inaccessible because you can be on the other side of the world from the target). Not being able to identify the gun the bullet was fired from and the bullet actually being found in the target both seem like +0 advantages that are part of the special effects. You might add extra time and trigger if you really want to give a point break for the construction of the one use item.

1 Hex Megascale Accurate with Fully Indirect is legal according to the Ultimate Mystic, but I don't like it as much.

[Vondy]

Pennsylvania Dutch Magic.

Sometimes the irony makes my sides hurt.