Sorcery: Conveyance

Seven league boots, flying carpets, witches brooms, demonic chariots pulled by skeletal fire-breathing steeds, teleportaion gateways; myth and legend are full of stories of those who could bypass the hazards and annoyances of long journeys, spanning the lengths of countries in hours or seconds. At least some of these stories can be laid at the feet of sorcerers practicing the Path of Conveyance, avoiding the hassles of the road by flying over it, riding it at speeds no other could manage or bypassing it altogether.

"Conventional" Conveyance requires some sort of steed; this may be a broom, four-poster bed, bicycle, Oriental rug, giant cauldron or a fiery coach-and-four. More technologically oriented sorcerers use jet packs or impossibly fast Lamborghinis and Prowlers (the deluxe version has stealth capabilities, to avoid police radar, but this is superfluous in general; few troopers will believe that they saw a Ferrari doing over 500 kph down a busy thruway... especially when it looks like the car isn't actually touching the ground).

With enough understanding of this Path, the sorcerer need not bother with a vehicle at all, merely willing herself to be where she wants to be without actually crossing the intervening distance. Technosorcerers may refer to this as teleportation, using some kind of booth, apparatus or even phone lines, while a more classical sorcerer may summon up a friendly spirit to do the work for him.

Conveyance can be used on other people, although only teleportation effects can be used offensively and only with very great difficulty.


System

Roll: Stamina + Occult Modifiers: +2 for working against a resisting object/target, -1 for a location that is well known to the caster (Storyteller's discretion). +1 -2 if traveling somewhere while being observed. Cost: One Willpower. Duration: The length of time it takes to pass from point A to point B.


Aspects

Traveling to a place you have never been to adds one success to the total. Teleporting requires two additional successes. (Teleportation is not necessarily instantaneous; you must still assign a rating to Speed.) Crossing through barriers in your way requires one success per barrier (and it must be something that you could actually find a way around; a hermetically sealed chamber is safe from your powers).


Range

* 10 feet or less (across a room)

** 100 feet (across a warehouse)

*** About a mile

**** Up to five miles

***** Approximately 10 miles (across the city)

****** 100 miles

These ranges are guidelines and assume a relatively inhabited environment; passing through deserted prairies or arctic wildernesses is much easier, and ranges might be doubled or even tripled in such terrains.


Speed

* About three times what you could manage on foot.

** You get there about as fast as you would if you had driven, red lights and all.

*** As above, but you ignore speed limits and red lights and traffic; about 45 seconds per mile of distance traveled.

**** You can cover miles in seconds.

***** Instantaneously.

****** You can, when you have to, get there before you left... or that's the way it seems.


Number

* Yourself, and if you're lucky, your clothes come with you...

** Yourself, some clothes and up to 20 pounds of stuff.

*** yourself and one other person or a couple hundred pounds.

**** Two passengers

***** Three passengers

****** Up to five people can come with you.


Rituals

Teleport Ward ** Even a novice student of the Path of Conveyance can create wards against unwanted intrusion by others using this Path. To ward a room or building against teleporting intruders, the sorcerer must first mark the limits of the ward he is going to place. (technosorcerers, for example, will set up electromagnetic interference waveguides, subspace harmonic oscillators and other equipment, while a sorcerer trained in the Hermetic Arts would scribe sigils of protection on the walls, doors, windows, floor and ceiling of each room he wanted to protect). Once this is done, the sorcerer rolls Stamina + Occult against a difficulty of 7. Each success rolled is an additional success needed by someone trying to teleport into the warded area without knowing how to bypass the ward. This protection degrades by one success per month; it can be maintained, however with the expenditure of a point of Willpower and a single success on a Stamina + Occult roll (difficulty 6).

Get Me The Heck Outta Here! ***

Often cast as a hanging ritual by those more interested in avoiding fights than finishing them, this ritual carries the user back to a home location (this can be any location the caster knows well but must be specified when the ritual is performed) instantaneously, as long as the locale is withing range (no more than 50 miles). This ritual costs one Willpower, and the user must achieve at least 4 successes on a Stamina + Occult (difficulty roll; additional successes scored can aid in the necessary range (20 miles per additional success). If the home location is out of reach, a Wits + Occult roll (difficulty 6) will allow the caster to retarget the ritual to another, closer point.

Teleportal *****

Master sorcerers can build permanent gateways between locations. These gateways through space allow anyone who knows the opening phrase or command to travel swiftly from one end of the passage to the other. This ritual takes days of preparation, some of which must be spent at both sites (making this unsuitable for stealthy infiltration of a location... most of the time). Once these preparations are done, the sorcerer makes an extended Stamina + Occult roll against a difficulty of 8; each success adds either 10 miles to the range (the total distance between the two gateways of the portal must be gathered before the ritual can be completed), five uses to the portal or some kind of specification to the gateway (at either or both ends; for example, a gateway could be designated as one-way, could be restricted to women only, only the sorcerer who created the gate or only those who have a special code word or amulet). Assistants can (and should) be used for this ritual. A Teleportal costs one permanent point of Willpower to create.


Price of Failure

The Path of Conveyance is fraught with peril. Beyond any risks of being noticed and the problems inherent to a particular mode of travel (flying brooms are uncomfortable, especially at high speeds, flying carpets are fragile, flying ointments are a hassle to apply and usually smell funny, Teleportals often bring with them nausea and dizziness), those who travel in this fashion can draw the attention of... beings in the realms they travel through. Any journey of more than a mile or so will bring with it the risk of an accident or misstep. Storytellers should feel to ask for a check midway through the journey to make sure that it is without incident (typically, a single additional success will be sufficient to avert any kind of disaster).

Normal failures simply mean that the spell does not go off at all; a botch, however, can range from calamitous to disastrous, depending on the method of travel and the distances involved; flying brooms may end up plummeting out of the sky, while teleportation botches give the Storyteller a perfect opportunity to recreate their favorite Star Trek transporter mishap or perhaps some choice scenes from The Fly. About the best the sorcerer can hope for is to be stranded in the middle of nowhere with no idea what has happened.