Talk:Maestro Felix Bertalan/@comment-8049634-20130421095651

Like it. Like it very much.

I think theoretically "sacrifice" does not need involve suffering per se - as a greater setting point - but it is a relatively easy thing to sacrifice and may well have been a prefered path in whole lot of times and places - Old Ungren in particular :)

As an example of what I mean by - not necessarily "suffering" a prospective magic user could for example be i love with someone - they could then sacrifice this love - perhaps any love whatsoever - in exchange for some (usually temporary) power. There is no suffering involved - just sort of emptiness and vague memory coupled with a nagging question of "how could this have ever been important to me ?" and yet it is a sacrifice nevertheless.

Reason I mention this is that a form of southern "magic" that I want to use in Miliuric campaign (which need by no means be *dominant* form of magic in the south) that is incidentally quite resilient to Demonization of its practitioners would be "monastic magic" or "mysticism magic" whereby practicioner pays with desires, motivations and otherwise bits and pieces of personality.

As with demons - end result is a gradual removal of humanity but the final product is not a monster - but rather, more like a plant, meditating under a bodhi-tree, potent in magic but with no use for it whatsoever. One of the climactic points of the campaign will be for one (or more) of the characters to come to realization about the monstrosity of this path which (obviously) will at the outset seem much more noble and humane then the northern one :)

Sorry for the aside. Did really like your essay - just got reminded...