Dreamers and Spell Casters

Schools of Magic

In Eternia, there are six schools of magic. They're founded on the six vices, and have spells that reflect these vices. For example, the Greed School (excess desire for worldly goods, materialistic, lordliness) has spells that detect map stuff/treasure, opening traps/chests, identification of objects, summoning "servants", etc., while the Revelry School (excessive pursuit of bodily pleasures) has spells that distract others, power over curses, healing, etc. If you are hit with a targeting spell from a certain school, you may have to make a saving throw against that vice.

So, in addition to encounters that may check his vice rating, a lustful warrior character is also extra vulnerable to spells cast from the Lust School. Anyone could be affected be the such spells, but the warrior would have a lower chance of resisting because his saving throw would be worse.

Casting Spells

Putting runes down costs the requisite amount of "rune fuel," eternium. This liquid must be imbibed to work, and it spoils quickly in any kind of container. A full dose of Eternium is worth 50 runes.

As noted elsewhere, spells are cast by putting together sequences of 2-6 runes. The rune pool for casters in an area has a standard scarcity, shown by the stars on the rune pictures.

The Dreamer Exception

There is a special group of spell casters (always NPC's, never PC's) called Dreamers, or derisively, Fish. Dreamers are outside these rules. They have their own school. They aren't in the rune pool (i.e. runes are always available to them, and when Fish use runes, none are taken from the pool). Their spells do not fizzle, nor are targets permitted saving throws. Dreamers cannot learn other schools of magic.

The biggest disadvantage for Dreamers is they're hated and hunted by practically everyone. They are normal until they undergo a "second puberty," sometime after normal puberty and before age 30. The transformation takes 6-10 months, after they receive their first true dream. Their skin pigmentation, no matter what their race, becomes chalky white --- hence the Fish epithet. I'm not getting into the whole Dreamer/Fish persecution ethos here, but it essentially boils down to Fish saying "we act like evil bastards because people persecute us because they fear superior beings" and everyone else saying "we hate these evil demons we don't understand and they're killing us anyway." There are a few people on both sides who don't participate in this race war, and the adventuring party obviously represents this rare group well. The other minority group of Fish/Normals who tolerate each other do it for purely politics/power expediency, a royalty-only caste diversion.

Dreamers/Fish are sterile albino mutants. Most are killed at birth. Men outnumber women by about 3 to 1. Their tempermental imbalance is stereotyped by the Normals, but there is no denying that fish tend to be paranoid, quick to anger, and illogical by the standards of Normals. Many, if not most, Dreamers could be characterized as evil.