Sorcery: Weather Control

Weather witches have always been among the most revered and feared members of the sorcerer community. In ancient time, a witch could doom a community to a slow death by withholding the rain the crops needed... or could wreck it quickly by bringing on storms that flood the fields, destroy homes and kill the unwary. On the seas, those who could call the winds were lifesavers in truth, for a becalmed vessel was one that would die.

Most cultures consider weather working to be a woman's art, drawing on the ties between her fertility and the bounty of the land and the elements, but this is far from universal; in some African tribes, weather magic was men's magic, for example. Technosorcerers make no such distinctions, of course, but then, their mastery of this Path is thought by most to be limited at best. (Whether this is true is a question of some debate, however, as there are a few who always seem to have the wind at their back, cloudy skies and convenient fog banks when they need them.) Weather magic can be terribly powerful but is also usually very slow to take effect. Changes in the weather are usually measured in hours or days; you can speed these processes up, but you cannot summon tidal waves out of nothing or storms from clear skies. When given time to work, however, weather craft can command forces that are truly awesome and terrifying to behold, but not without cost. Even simple changes can leave a sorcerer drained; major workings can demand terrible sacrifices or even the death of the caster.

System

Roll: Manipulation + Willpower

Cost: Weather working is expensive. An effect costs one Willpower per 2 dots in Intensity, plus one for every 3 dots of Duration, Speed and Scale (or fraction thereof).

Modifiers: None

Duration: See below

Note: Because of the nature of weather craft, the sorcerer does not gain the benefit of Path dots as freebie successes; almost all weather craft casting will be performed as extended task checks.


Aspects

Intensity

* You can make small changes in the environment: a sudden cold breeze, a slight drop in room temperature, a softening of the light in a room, the sudden flaring of candles.

** Minor changes to the environment are possible; you can summon up a dense fog, ensure that skies are cloudy or create favorable winds.

*** The rains and winds are at your command. Rain showers come when you call them, and strong winds blow where you will. You can change the local temperature by as much as 30 degrees in either direction and can calm strong seas or currents.

**** Storms move and surge where you will; powerful rains, gale force winds, heat waves and cold snaps (changes of up to 40 degrees in temperature), and powerful tides and undercurrents are all at your command. You can also take control of existing weather patterns; an additional Manipulation + Occult roll (difficulty 7) allows you to direct some phenomenon of the storm (hailstones, powerful waves, lightning bolts, smashing winds, etc.) at a specific target. These attacks do (4 health levels + the caster's successes); a new roll must be made for each attack. Lightning bolts do lethal damage (aggravated if the subject "botches" the soak roll), other attacks do either lethal or bashing damage depending on their exact effects.

***** Your control over the thunderstorm is absolute. Great waves surge and crash when you command, and no man can stand when you send the winds against him. The blizzard and the drought are your weapons. Elemental attacks sent against others do 6 health levels + your successes on a Manipulation + Occult roll.

****** You can summon the most destructive of weather patterns: tornadoes, hurricanes and monsoons, killing frosts, dust storms, lethal heat waves and raging thunderstorms. Their elemental attacks can kill even the most powerful of men; attacks do a base of 8 health levels + successes rolled. Storms of this magnitude will disrupt local weather patterns for weeks or even months after the storm itself fades away; the faster the storm is summoned the more extreme the aftermath and disruptions.


Speed

* The changes you request will happen... eventually. Depending on the severity of the change, it might take anywhere from minutes to a week or more for the weather you summon to arrive.

** Minor manipulations of the local weather occur within a few seconds or minutes of your enacting the change. Major changes still take long periods of time to take effect, depending on the severity of the shift.

*** Small changes take effect within a minute of your calling them, and larger changes require only a few hours to a day to take effect. The most extreme of shifts in weather, however, still take several days to set up.

**** Minor changes are almost instantaneous, larger changes occur within a few hours, and extreme changes happen in a day or two.

***** Minor changes occur when and how you ask them to, larger changes happen in an hour or so, and even extreme changes usually take place within a day of you asking for them.

****** Even the largest of storms come within an hour or two of your calling them. Summoning a storm with this kind of speed is guaranteed to mess up local weather patterns and will certainly attract large amounts of attention from those who watch the skies... not to mention weirding out every meteorologist on the same continent as you are.


Duration

* A few seconds, no more, and only for minor changes.

** A minute or so. Major changes cannot last this short a period of time.

*** A few minutes, maybe half an hour at most.

**** An hour at most

***** Several hours, maybe a day.

****** Up to a week.


Scale

* 50 square feet or so. Minor changes only.

** Affects about a half-mile area.

*** A mile or two in size. Extreme changes cannot take place in this small an area.

**** An area roughly five miles in diameter. All but the most extreme changes are possible.

***** An area 20 miles in diameter. Any kind of changes are possible.

****** An area nearly 100 miles in diameter.


Price of Failure

Even a simple failure at Weather Control will result in weird shifts and changes in the local weather patterns; a botch can disrupt the local weather almost beyond recognition (snow on the Sahara, droughts in the rain forests, etc.) or muck up the weather patterns for an entire region to a lesser degree. A sorcerer could find himself summoning up the mother of all hurricanes when he was trying for a ismple thunderstorm or fried in her own thunderbolts.