Direct Heirs of Ancient Egypt

Copts speak a descendant of the ancient Egyptian language, and Coptic priests speak a purer form, which is used for litur-

If you have earlier Ars Magica supplements, traces of many of the hedge magician types described in them can be found in Egyptian relics. Egypt has such deep history that a roughly parallel version, weaker in some aspects and more potent in others, to virtually every other magical tradition listed in preceding Ars Magica supplements, can be found somewhere in the ruins that line the Nile. Even groups like the trollblooded magi of the frozen North seem to have parallels. In that case, there were similar mages among the servants of the ancient desert spirits.

gies. Most literate Copts can read Egyptian texts written in the time of the Ptolemies, which used Greek characters. Scholarly Copts can read hieroglyphs, even those from ancient tombs. Superficially, they do surprisingly little with this knowledge. This is because most scholarly Copts are monks.

Coptic monks keep libraries of secret, ancient knowledge. The most famous near Cairo is Al-Quisir (on the Maqatam Mountain near Tura). The monks can read and understand ancient Egyptian spells, but they do not, generally, practice them. Christian prayer is simpler to learn, more powerful in an ultimate sense, and does not endanger the immortal soul through prayer to false gods. Monks have little desire to command Egyptian deities or dig up treasure. There are a few Copts who practice Egyptian magic with the saints or the Holy Family swapped in for Egyptian gods. These are Holy Magicians (see Realms of Power: The Divine).

The term "hieroglyphs," meaning "sacred carvings," is from Plutarch, is Greek and is, to Egyptians, sacrilegious. Locals call this script a variety of names, such as The Pen of Copts, The Pen of the Temples, The Pen of Talismans, The Pen of South Arabia, The Pen of Priests, and The Pen of Hermes.

Collections of Magic Items

Although they do not practice spellcasting, Coptic monks have access to many powerful magical items. Some of these are found when churches are established on older sites. Others are donated to the Church by believers. The churchmen are faithful and pacifistic, but they have seen pogroms before and always have a few tricks ready for self-defense.

Coptic Alchemists

It's debatable whether the most studious of Coptic monks or the personal alchemists of the sultan are the most skilled in the world. Each side claims the other is superior, citing the thousands of books of magic to which their theoretical rivals have access. Hermetic magi interested in Alchemy may compare the Copts to the Learned Magicians of Europe, who have access to a single, excellent book of Egyptian alchemical formulae.

Learning Coptic

Non-Coptic characters wishing to learn spoken Coptic can do so easily: there are many Copts who are happy to teach their language to outsiders. Characters do not even need to travel to Egypt to do this: Copts can be found in many of the trading ports around the Mediterranean, and on pilgrimage in the Holy Land. Some of the monks have also produced grammars to help Arabic speakers to understand their language. Characters wishing to learn how to read hieroglyphs must seek out a skilled, likely ancient, Coptic monk and convince him to take sufficient time to act as a tutor.

In Ancient Egyptian religious magic, the powerful practitioners were the lector (that is, "reader") priests who performed the Faerie Rites recorded in the sacred books during religious services. Most priests had a limited repertoire of Faerie Rites. Egyptian gods, in conventional services, could only be asked to do certain things, at certain times, by people who had followed strict preparatory rituals. Egyptian gods did not perform miracles on demand for anyone who had the temerity to bother them.

The chief lector priests were the librarians. They kept the books between religious services and had access to books of Rites used more rarely, and in emergencies. An Ancient Egyptian ghost asked about "magicians" will assume the character means chief lector priests, as their title is the generic word for workers of potent magic. These leaders of individual temples were appointed by the pharaoh, who was high priest of Egypt. They were served by a caste of artisans, who used Magical powers to create amulets, medicines, other magical items. The creations of this servant caste are the most common magical treasures recovered from tombs.

These priests were usually Faerie Rite Wizards, who are described in more detail in chapter 6 of Realms of Power: Faerie. Different temples specialized in various effects, but Evocation (page 122), Grant (page 127), Weal (page 128), Ware (page 128), and Woe (page 130) were all popular, and all priests had the Ceremony Special Ability (page 115).Egyptian society was polytheistic, so books of rites usually contain only closely-related effects. The lector priests for the god of war could not, and were not expected to, grant bountiful crops, or make people fall in love. An Egyptian seeking such rites would ask at the temple of an entirely different god. Some gods provided only one single effect, and their book of rites contains only that effect.

The artefacts described in this section differ from those described in the Tombs Chapter. The Tombs chapter assumes Magic-aligned practitioners, and this chapter describes Faerie-aligned priests served by a caste of Magicaligned artisans. Artefacts designed under either system should be used in a troupe's saga, as suits their stories.

Most Egyptian religion was based on the worship of faeries. The Osirian Hero Cult, although it had faeries flitting about its edges and claiming individual congregations as worshippers, was tied to the Magic realm. The Ancient Egyptians noticed this difference. They thought the Osirian Cult, which created monumental tombs, was unusual, and exclusive. The oldest akh all claim blood kinship to the pre-ascendant Osiris. That is, their cult is for a single family. Later it was broadened to admit some of the wealthiest nobles and merchants.

Common people, who did not have monumental tombs, had no expectation of becoming akh. They expected, if they were good, to toil on forever in the Field of Reeds as farmers. Being anything other than a farmer in the afterlife required enormous amounts of money for burial rituals which common people had no hope of earning. Most Egyptian magic was religious, but most Egyptian religion wasn't about death, and so wasn't tied to the Osirian Magical Hero Cult. The artefacts of the Osirian cult, because they were put into storage in graves, have survived into the 13th century more often than those of all of the other cults.

Reading the Books of Ritual

A Hermetic magus who reads this type of Egyptian ritual is likely unable to perform it. A character already trained in the correct Faerie Methods can use the text to create a Hermetic equivalent. Rules for this are found in Realms of Power: Faerie (page 121). Characters with books of Ancient Egyptian rites may need to seek the favor of powerful Merinita magi, as those best able to convert the works.

Most of these spells are designed to be used with the Ceremony Supernatural Ability. If this is the case, the Ceremony must be performed exactly as described. This may require a Communication + Leadership roll against a target of 3 + 1 per required follower. It may also involve lengthy preparations to create ritual purity. Common forms

Wisdom From Ignorance (Minor Virtue)

One school of Sufis found in Egypt is particularly interested in calligraphy, and the aesthetics of the enigma. By this, they mean that pondering texts which have been structured as meaningful, but which the viewer cannot read, can be used as a form of meditation which brings enlightenment. They are able to use books as sources of training provided they are unable to read the language they are written in.

The sufis use this ability to gain understanding of spiritual matters, so players should create Ability books normally, and when sufis use this Virtue, switch the Ability learned from the book to Theology, Organisation Lore: Sufis or similarly uplifting subjects. A sufi using this Virtue may occasionally gain experience in materially practical Abilities, but this only occurs in the context of overcoming specific challenges on spiritual journeys. Directly applicable learning like this is considered a miracle by the sufi, and troupes should police this like any other miracle.

This group is also interested in Alchemy, but only in materials which alter mood and physical condition, and thus make meditation and channelling the Divine easier. The schools of mysticism in Egypt (called kanqahs) are often set in graveyards, which gives them a Divine aura.

Egyptian magicians often speculate about the ultimate goals of the monks. They do not, apparently, use magical texts, so why collect them? If they simply seek to keep the world safe from their contents, why not just burn them? The monks keep stockpiles of magical equipment, including terrible weapons. Many monasteries also have Nilometers, which they claim to use for the administering of taxes, but their role in ancient religion makes them suspicious, in the eyes of many.

In this saga arc, the Copts are allies of the Black, and use their magical powers and items to fight the servants of the Red. Characters aiding the Black may be given quests by monks, rest within the protection of the Dominion, seek healing, or be given training. The saga concludes with the characters taking the relics of Saint Simon the Shoemaker to the mountain in the heart of the Sahara which is the stronghold of the Red. Saint Simon is famous for his miraculous moving of a mountain. The player characters move the home of the Red to the depths of the sea, decisively swinging the war toward the Black.

In Egypt, the number and variety of temples is so large that, for a magus in 1220, it is virtually inexhaustible. If a troupe desires it, Guaranteed Insight can be found about almost anything. Conversely, if a troupe prefers it, Egyptian magic was so thoroughly incorporated into Mercurian magic that there is little strikingly new to be found it the ruins, but treasure doesn't need to be novel to be valuable.

of purification include the shaving of all body and head hair, smoke bathing, washing out the mouth with natron salts, drawing figures of the gods on the skin, dressing in new clothes made of the highest quality linen, and abstaining from intercourse for at least a day, and perhaps far longer.

The space may also need to be purified with incense, figures of the gods drawn on the ground, or Nile water. Many spells require items which must be previously unused, like clothes, furniture, parchments, quills, and fresh herbal ingredients, which makes recasting failed spells inconvenient. Others require expensive, but reusable items, such as wands of ivory that are scraped across the ground to create protective circles, and elaborate masks, which identify the caster, or target, with a god whose actions in a sacred story are similar to the desired spell effect. Many spells need to be said four times in succession to work.

The entire thrust of Hermetic Alchemy makes no sense to either the practitioners of the sultan's court, or the Coptic monks who guard the secrets of the ancients. The Mystery of Hermetic Alchemy is, at its core, about making the practitioner immortal. It takes decades of work, but at the end of it, the character can live on as a magical being. The counterpoint to this, which is obvious to either of the practitioner groups, is that sincere followers of the Divine get to live forever anyway. Characters who go to Paradise or Heaven don't need to worry that Judgement is still inevitable, and although the details vary between sects, everyone agrees that followers of the Divine live on in the greatest possible bliss. The Great Elixir is basically worthless to religiously devout people.

Egyptian Alchemy is eminently practical and mechanical. It arose from generations of practice of magical medicine. The greatest cache of alchemical texts, the library of the first hospital, known as the House of Life, has never been found. Alchemical medicines found in Egyptian tombs can be designed as single-use, Hermetic magic items.

This is Faerie, not Hermetic, spell casting, so these steps, which a magus drawing from the disinterested Magic realm could ignore, must be followed precisely. Once any preparation is complete, the character must make a Communication + Coptic roll of 3 + (1 per 5 levels of effect). Some spells are written in a complex, symbolic language, which makes the Ease Factor higher. A character must know, for example, that when a spell calls for the heart of a baboon it means oil of lilies, that Ethiopian soil is crocodile dung and that the semen of Amun is a type of houseleek. A character who botches this reading may suffer the effects of a misfired spell, or may be persecuted by a faerie, claiming to serve the god slighted by the character's boorish invocation.

The most common reason for Ancient Egyptian spells to fail is that the writer assumes that the reader will perform the rite in the presence of the god. Such rites must be performed in a powerful Faerie aura. This is rarely explicitly mentioned in the text, and even when included, it is often an inaccurate warning that the spell will only work in a particular temple, or in the temples of a particular god, at a designated time. Characters who, for example, discover the text of a blessing where water is consecrated in the temple then sprinkled on a crop might deduce that this spell requires a greater Faerie aura than a similar rite which is performed at a temporary altar in the field itself.

There are several other reasons for rite failure. The mystical landscape may have

The most powerful Faerie Wizards are always Gifted. Egyptian accounts of lector priests do not mention a social effect similar to that caused by The Gift. Stories which contain the followers of dark gods do, however, describe them in ways which are similar to the descriptions of Blatantly Gifted magi. There might be several reasons for the apparent Gentle Giftedness of ancient priests.

Some faeries perform tricks on demand, even if the person making the demand is not rewarding them either with magical force or emotionally-charged attention. Faeries so narrowly constrained by their roles that they are little more than machines are known to the Order, but they are thought of as the weakest creatures from their realm. The Egyptians may have found a way to completely strip their faerie gods of personal volition, so that a "priest" was anyone mouthing the right noises in the right robe. If this is true, some of these volitionless faeries are still stuck in their statues, unable to desire to flee.

Engineered Heightened Emotional States in Priests

If a person offers the right type of attention in a heightened emotional state, faeries might reward him with a mystical effect, regardless of his lack of magical power. These sorts of ecstatic cults were known to, but considered uncivilized by, the Egyptians. Some of the darkest magic that they forbade, which called up the things from beyond Duat that were inimical to all life, was conducted this way. Such creatures may be dark faeries, but may be Infernal demons. If this is true, then anyone doing the abhorrent things in these books may be able to call up dark beings, regardless of magical talent.

A Source for the Gentle Gift

All the pharaonic priesthoods seem to have Gently Gifted members. It's possible that the Gentle Gift was granted to pharaonic priests by a Mystery Initiation. Characters who can find the ghosts of priests, or the Initiation site, may be able to self-Initiate. Houses like Jerbiton and Mercere that value Gently Gifted members may support the scheme. If the Gentle Gift becomes readily available in the saga, the troupe may consider offering a new Virtue to any player characters who have already selected that Virtue.

The true wizards may have cast magic from a distance, and used mortal proxies. If this is true, the symbols of office for these proxies are magic items that allow magi to cast spells from a distance, perhaps at less than Arcane Connection range.

Mystery Initiations

Priests may have developed individual powers as Virtues earned via Ordeal. The scripts of these Ordeals may be known to faeries, retrieved from the dead, or found in ancient inscriptions.

The Egyptians were aware that heka took solid form. They thought it was found in rare, expensive and exotic objects. Resin, for example, was though to contain heka that could be used for preservation magic, and gold was thought to be able to contain a great deal of heka when making amulets. Iron was very rare in early Egyptian history, but was good for harming demons (dark faeries from the afterlife) due to its strange heka. Deformed things were also thought to contain heka, which is why many tomb robbers find jars of pickled double-tailed lizards. They throw these away because they do not understand that they are jars of vis.

The ancient Egyptians recognized a mystical force flowing through all things. Hermetic magi call this force vis. The Egyptians called this substance heka, a term they also used for written spells. Egyptian religious magic differed from Hermetic magic in that it is primarily based on the Faerie, not Magical, realm. This means that flourishes which amuse the faeries, like spellcasting at dawn and sacrificing animals, were not optional for Ancient Egyptian magicians. Note that Egyptian artefacts are usually tied to the Magic realm, created by a separate caste subservient to the lectors.

changed between the between the recording of the rite and the present. Spells which accurately and precisely foretold the future were nullified by the Silencing of the Oracles. The Egyptians themselves said that some of their spells no longer worked because their gods, though long-lived, could weaken and die with age, making their rituals void. The rubric (ceremony of performance) in some spells is not written in detail because the priests observed purity at all times, and so did not need to be told what that entailed. Faeries interested in the role and able to complete the bargain it contains may simply not notice the caster, or be nearby.