This is my attempt to make a kind of unified folk magic primer for new people coming to the game that want to play wise witch and cunning folk. This is definitely a work in progress and doesn’t cover everything thats possible out there, but its a good place to start perhaps. If you guys have any input, please send it my way!

-D

Nailing it Down / Protection Magic

Description: People want to keep what’s theirs: their house, their land, their people. Nailing it down is how they claim that space and set a boundary the spirit world is expected to respect. This is usually done with something that clearly marks the property line. Sometimes it’s four railroad spikes driven into the four corners of the lot. Sometimes it’s four things buried at the corners instead—witch bottles, personal concerns, or other charged items.

This “establishes the property.” From there, the practitioner keeps it alive: washing the spikes or bottles, or sprinkling herbs, powders, or water at the corners every week or every month. The area must be theirs—land they own, land that’s been in the family, or land they have a rightful claim to. You can’t ward an open field that doesn’t belong to you. The bigger the space, the harder it is to maintain the ward.

Basic Rules: To establish a ward:

• The practitioner makes a Use Magic test at a difficulty of 2 + desired ward level (up to Level 5 for a first establishment).

• This takes at least one lunar month of regular preparation and tending.

  • Success: The ward is established at the chosen level.

  • Failure: The ward doesn’t “take,” and they must spend another month doing weekly preparations before trying again.

After each month passes, the practitioner can attempt to improve the ward:

• They may increase the ward’s level up to 6 with monthly upkeep.

• Once the ward reaches Level 6, each further increase requires six months of preparation and ritual.

• Improving the ward requires a Use Magic test at a difficulty of 2 + current ward level.

  • Success: The ward increases by 1 level.

  • Failure: No improvement; the existing ward stays at its current level.

Neglect and decay: Wards lose power if they’re abandoned.

• If no one tends the ward for over a month, it loses 1 level.

• This continues each month of neglect until the ward drops to 0 and vanishes altogether.

• In some cases, this can be slowed or resisted by drastic claims on the land, such as family members buried on the property or other permanent acts tying blood to soil. (GM discretion.)

Activating and resisting the ward:

• The owner (or rightful heir) must actively “bar” a specific person from entry, or close the ward to everyone except those who share blood with the ward’s owner.

• When something or someone tries to cross the boundary, their level is checked against the ward’s level.

  • If the ward’s level is higher, they are stopped at the threshold.

  • If they insist on crossing anyway, they immediately take Ward Level × 2 damage as magical backlash lashes out against them.

Bypassing or breaking a ward:

• A PC trying to cross a warded area without permission must make an Understand Magic test at a difficulty equal to the ward’s level.

  • Success means they can identify weaknesses, loopholes, or indirect paths around the ward.

• A prepared practitioner (GM discretion on whether they have the right tools, time, and knowledge) can attempt to take down or punch through the ward with Use Magic at a difficulty equal to the ward’s level.

  • Success: The ward is broken or bypassed (GM decides if it’s temporary or permanent).

  • Failure: They are barred, and they suffer damage equal to the ward’s level from the backlash.

How to use it to drive plot: Wards are a very common plot device. Violating them has drastic consequences, both magical and social. They’re often keyed to blood, so characters can sometimes call out to a ward to let them pass if they invoke their lineage. Family disputes, hidden heirs, and secret children all matter a lot when the ward “knows” who’s kin.

Warding land is one of the most common things practitioners do to keep themselves and their loved ones safe. It gives you:

• Houses and farms that are safe until someone neglects the work.

• Sacred family plots that are impenetrable to outsiders but vulnerable from within.

• Enemy strongholds protected by old, mean wards that the PCs have to study, trick, or slowly weaken.

And of course: the bad guys can ward places too. A villain’s hideout might be ringed in old iron, buried glass, and blood-soaked soil, forcing the PCs to treat the land itself as an antagonist.

How to use it to drive plot: Crossroads work is basically a built-in excuse for big, messy life changes. NPCs who suddenly get famous, get rich, or get way too competent at something almost overnight almost always “went to the road.” That gives you:

• Debt clocks. Someone’s bill is coming due. Maybe the PCs have to help them wiggle out of it, or decide if they’re willing to take that debt onto themselves.

• Broken deals. The crossroads entity is angry because someone didn’t hold up their end (stole the offering, moved the dirt, skipped nights, tried to cheat). Now weird “bad luck accidents” are happening around town.

• Deals inside the party. Let one PC quietly take a crossroads deal and start playing with the consequences. That player gets what they wanted… but now they’re haunted, stalked, or “bumped forward” into the timeline in unnatural ways.

• Crossroads as liminal gates. When the party needs to move to a new arc, new region, or new tier of horror, the crossroads ritual is an in-world way to justify a tone / setting shift: someone opened the way, and now you have to live with what walked through.

Any time you need to introduce a powerful rival NPC, a tragic backstory, or a ticking supernatural deadline, you can hang it off “they went to the crossroads and cut a deal.”

Crossroad Work

Description: Sometimes you need something you just don’t have—talent, beauty, charm, luck, the right voice, the right hands. That’s when people go to the crossroads. They bury a symbolic item that represents what they want, then return to that spot for seven nights at midnight.

Somewhere in that run of nights, they’re supposed to meet a man waiting there. If they cut a deal, whatever they buried is returned to them along with the skill, gift, or desire. In return, they pay with something they can’t get back: their soul, years of their life, the ability to be happy, the memory of a loved one—whatever the entity wants.

If you want a real-world echo, look up the musician’s legend of Tommy Johnson (not Robert Johnson—that’s a whole thing).

There are also crossroads rites where you don’t seek an entity at all. You ask the crossroads itself. In these, you bury or place a symbolic item (a key is most common) and leave offerings there for seven days—usually alcohol, food, or tobacco. This isn’t about selling your soul; it’s about “opening the ways” when you’re stuck and need new paths or opportunities.

Basic Rules:

Deals with an entity: This is the classic soul-selling story: finding a demon, stranger, or perhaps the Devil himself and trading something precious for fame, money, power, or talent.

• These bargains should be handled entirely by the GM as story events.

• No rolls are required; the cost and consequences are narrative and contractual, not something you can rules-lawyer your way around.

Asking the crossroads itself (Opening the Way):

• The petitioner buries or places a symbolic icon (often a key) at a crossroads and leaves offerings there for seven consecutive days.

• Once they’ve completed seven days of offerings, they make a Use Magic roll at a difficulty of 4.

On a success:

• They can “open the way” for themselves or someone else, granting an asset for one month on any tests directly related to escaping what’s holding them down or moving forward in life—

  • Getting a new job.

  • Securing a promotion.

  • Landing a big break or opportunity.

• Reality should bend a little in their favor: unexpected openings, lucky coincidences, people showing up at the right time. The GM is encouraged to introduce concrete chances that didn’t exist before.

On a failure:

• The road still may open, but crooked. The opportunities that show up are risky, morally tainted, or come with strings attached. The GM can still offer chances—but make the costs visible.

Live Things In You

Description: Sometimes nasty people do even nastier things and that work gets inside you. These are parasitic workings: live things that move around under the skin, hungers that aren’t yours, whispers that live behind your teeth. Folks talk about “swallowing a frog,” “snakes in your belly,” or “something riding your back” when they mean this kind of work. This is often done by getting the target to sleep on or eat something cursed. Once they have, it’s all but done.

These things are fed—on attention, on blood, on fear, on the target’s bad habits—and if you stop feeding them, they don’t just die. They get angry.

Basic Rules: Treat a Live Thing as a Level 1–6 infestation.

• When the curse is laid (or inherited), the practitioner makes a Use Magic roll at a difficulty of 2 + the desired infestation level.

  • Success: The Live Thing settles in at that level.

  • Failure: It doesn’t “take” properly; it manifests as weaker, painful symptoms (GM choice) at Level 1 and the caster draws unwanted attention.

• Ongoing effects:

  • Each time the host does something that feeds the thing (indulging a vice, losing their temper, breaking a taboo, etc.), they gain an asset on one roll in that moment, but the infestation level ticks up by 1 (to a max of 6).

  • Each time they resist feeding it, they must make a **Might **type roll at a difficulty equal to the infestation level or suffer damage equal to that level and lose an asset for their next action.

• Removing a Live Thing: A prepared practitioner can try a cleansing rite. This takes at least three nights of focused work. At the end, they roll Use Magic at a difficulty equal to 2 + infestation level.

  • Success: The Live Thing is forced out. The target takes damage equal to half of the old infestation level as the target vomits the “Things” up.

  • Failure: The infestation becomes hidden, dropping its apparent level by 1 but gaining the ability to hide from basic magical inspection (GM’s choice). It can also make the Live Things lash out, harming the infested person equal to their level.

How to use it to drive plot:

• Slow-burn body horror. Let a PC or beloved NPC slowly develop symptoms—strange cravings, weird movements under the skin, dreams of being something else. The party has to figure out what’s living in them and who put it there.

• Weaponized loyalty. A community leader, preacher, or boss is powerful and charismatic because something lives in them. Taking away their Live Thing might save their soul but cost the town its only real protector.

• Escaped things. A botched removal spits the Live Thing into the world. Now the spirit of the curse wanders the earth, looking for victims.

Cut and Clear

Description: Cut and Clear is work for severing emotional, spiritual, or magical ties. Lovers that can’t stop circling each other, folks still bound to abusers, people haunted by the “ghost” of a job, addiction, or old life—this is the knife you use to cut those cords. It doesn’t heal the wound, but it stops the bleeding.

Done right, it clears away old attachments, old glamour, and old claims. Done wrong, it hollows a person out so thoroughly they don’t remember who they were trying to become.

Basic Rules: Cut and Clear can be used to sever one major tie: a person, place, addiction, or magical connection.

• The practitioner spends at least one week preparing baths, candles, and cleansings, with the target actively cooperating.

• At the rite’s conclusion (Where the person is ritually bathed, crossed between 2 candles which are closed behind the and finally collects the bath water to be throw into running water), they make a Use Magic roll at a difficulty of 4 for personal/emotional bonds, or 2 + Level of the opposing magic/ward if they’re cutting a magical tie.

On a success:

• The targeted bond is severed.

• The target gains an asset on any rolls to resist being drawn back into that situation for the next year.

• Any magic that was riding that connection (scrying, sympathetic curses, remote influence) must succeed on its own Use Magic roll vs difficulty 4 to feel the connection die off.

On a failure:

• The bond twists rather than breaks. The target might become obsessed, inverted (love to hate), or numb and unreachable.

• Mechanically, they gain a hindrance (or difficulty increased by 1) on social rolls related to that bond until another successful working or major story event.

How to use it to drive plot:

• Freshly single and hunted. Someone finally cuts off a toxic partner… who also happens to be tied into serious occult work. Their spells bounce back, lash out, or force the ex to escalate into real-world violence.

• Breaking a cult. PCs may use Cut and Clear to free cult members from a charismatic leader’s hold. Every success chips away at the cult’s power—and every failure creates unstable ex-followers.

• Magical divorce. Two old practitioners split and both want the same spirits, property, wards, or ghosts. The PCs get dragged into who gets what when the supernatural pre-nup is being ripped apart.

• Cut from the wrong thing. A character cuts themselves free from a protective ancestor, a guardian spirit, or a bargain that was actually keeping something worse at bay.

Road Opener

Description: Road Opener work is for when you aren’t looking for a deal so much as a clearing. It doesn’t trade your soul; it clears away blockages, closes dead ends, and makes sure the paths you could walk actually open in front of you. In older traditions this might be done with special oils, herbs, brooms, or candles, all focused on opening “roads” for travel, money, love, or spiritual growth.

Where Crossroads work is making a contract, Road Opener is house-cleaning for your fate.

Basic Rules: Road Opener is usually a short-term, focused working.

• The practitioner sets a clear statement of intent (“open the road to stable work,” “open the road to leave this town,” etc.) and spends three days in preparation (cleansings, lighting appropriate candles, offerings at thresholds, etc.).

• At the end of the third day, they make a Use Magic roll at a difficulty of 3 (mundane opportunities) or 4 (dangerous/supernatural opportunities).

On a success:

• For the next month, the target gains an asset on any roll directly related to pursuing that intention (job interviews, moving, travel, new relationships, finding allies, etc.).

• In addition, the GM should introduce at least one or two concrete opportunities that didn’t exist before (a sudden opening, a stranger with an offer, a border guard turning a blind eye, etc.).

On a failure:

• The “wrong road” opens. The target still gains chances—but they’re tainted, risky, or tied to people/forces with bad reputations.

• Mechanically, they get opportunities, but each comes with an attached cost or complication the GM frames up front.

How to use it to drive plot:

• Arc transitions. When the party decides, “We want out of this holler / this town / this contract,” Road Opener is your in-world way to justify why the next lead falls in their laps.

• Twisted wish of open doors. NPCs use Road Opener and get exactly what they asked for in the worst possible way. The PCs are called in to clean up the fallout.

• Competition. Another practitioner opens the road for a rival group; now both the PCs and their rivals are racing down the same newly-opened path.

• Forbidden roads. Some roads are closed for a reason. When someone opens them anyway, things from the other side start using the same paths.

Banishing Work

Description: Banishing is the work you do when something won’t leave. Spirits that linger, haints that ride you, malignant forces clinging to a house, even living people who’ve tied themselves to your threshold—banishing is the act of telling them, you do not belong here, and making that true.

It can be as gentle as guiding an ancestor back to rest, or as violent as throwing a demon out a person into a mirror and then shattering it.

Basic Rules: Banishing targets a single entity or influence at a time: a spirit, curse, or person with a supernatural hold on a space.

• The practitioner gathers a link (name, footprint, object from the space, something the entity has touched) and prepares a circle, threshold, or line of power.

• They then confront or call the entity and make a Use Magic roll at a difficulty equal to 2 + the entity’s threat level (GM sets this, typically 2–6).

On a success:

• The entity is forced out of the area and cannot cross that boundary again for one year and one day unless the banishing is broken.

• If it’s an internal influence (possession, haunting), it is expelled and takes damage equal to the banish’s effective level (GM interprets).

On a failure:

• The entity is angered or partially dislodged. It may jump to a weaker host, retreat deeper into the walls, or lash out violently.

• The practitioner takes damage equal to half the entity’s level (round up) from spiritual backlash.

Breaking a banishing (on purpose or by accident) usually takes desecrating the line or circle, undoing the words, or willingly inviting the entity back in.

How to use it to drive plot:

• Haunted houses with rules. A house can be “safe” if the old banishing work holds. Once someone crosses a line, removes a charm, or renovates the wrong wall, it fails and all hell breaks loose.

• Negotiated banishment. Sometimes the entity wants out, but something else is holding it here. The PCs have to solve that problem to make the banishing stick.

• Bad banisher. An NPC practitioner is banishing things indiscriminately, disrupting local balances. They banish a protective spirit and leave the community open to something worse.

• Banished to where? The banishing doesn’t just send things “away”—it sends them somewhere. That somewhere may eventually push back or send something in return.

Different Candles for Different Jobs

Description: In this kind of work, candles aren’t just light; they’re workers. Color, shape, number of wicks, and how they burn all matter. Red for love and blood ties, green for money and growth, black to absorb and break, white for clarity and calling on the Good Lord and the dead, and so on.

People dress candles with oils, herbs, and names, then burn them to focus and “feed” the job they’re doing.

Basic Rules: Candles act as minor assets that sweeten or strengthen other work.

• A properly chosen and prepared candle gives +1 asset to a single Use Magic working that matches its job (love, luck, uncrossing, protection, etc.).

• Preparing and burning a candle takes anywhere from one evening (simple job) to seven days (big job), during which the practitioner has to tend the flame and keep the intent clear.

Mechanically you can treat it as:

• Before rolling use Magic for the main work, the practitioner rolls a **Create Magic Item **check at difficulty 2 or 3 to see how the candle burns (steady, sputtering, going out).

  • Success: They gain the asset as normal.

  • Failure: The candle work backfires; no asset, and the GM may introduce a complication or omen related to that job.

You can also let a candle be used on its own as a Level 1–2 working for small favors: finding lost objects, sweetening a conversation, nudging a bit of luck.

How to use it to drive plot:

• Omen reading. PCs can “read” how candles burned in an abandoned working (wax shapes, soot, broken glass) to learn what someone attempted and how it went.

• Evidence. Police, antagonists, or rival practitioners interpret candle remains at a crime scene to track who did what.

• Sabotage. Someone swaps candles, snuffs them, or contaminates the oils, causing good work to go bad—cue mystery.

• Limited resources. Special condition candles are rare. Who gets the one black candle needed to break a family curse? Who controls the last batch of Road Opener oil?

Fear Not to Tread Over Evil

Description: “Fear not to tread over evil” is less a spell and more a state. It’s the act of wrapping yourself in prayer, charms, and confidence so that you can walk where tricks have been laid—over powders, through bad ground, into cursed houses—without flinching.

The belief is that fear is a hook. If you truly believe you are shielded, and you’ve done the right work, evil has less to grab onto.

Basic Rules: This is a protective preparation that helps you cross dangerous places or works.

• The practitioner spends time (often one to three days) in prayer, cleansing, and dressing their shoes, clothes, or body with protective signs.

• At the end, they roll Use Magic at a difficulty of 3.

On a success:

• For the next scene / journey / day (GM’s call), the character gains an asset on any rolls to resist fear, mental influence, curses triggered by walking over them (laid tricks, wards, graveyards, etc.).

• They may ignore the first instance of harm from a laid trick or cursed ground they cross—treat it as if the effect failed to “catch.”

On a failure:

• The work only half-takes. The character believes they’re protected, but mechanically gains no asset, and the first evil they tread over, they are **hindered **against.

How to use it to drive plot:

• False confidence. Someone thinks they’re covered and marches into a truly bad place. The PCs have to rescue them or deal with the fallout.

• Trials of courage. Elders require PCs to take a fearful walk—through a cursed field, down to an old mine, across a graveyard—in order to prove their faith or earn knowledge.

• Layered threats. Some evil only triggers on the unafraid, or only on the overconfident; using (or faking) this work can be the key to bypassing certain traps.

• Play with belief. The more the characters lean into it—songs sung, charms clutched—the more strongly you can justify lowering difficulties or turning aside effects in tense scenes.

Laying Tricks

Description: Laying tricks is how you set traps with magic. You dust a doorstep, dress a handle, hide something in a shoe, or scatter powders where someone will walk. When the target touches or crosses the trick, the work springs: sickness, bad luck, nightmares, or sometimes blessings if the practitioner is kind.

Most folks will have no idea anything’s been done to them—just that things started going wrong after they visited that house or crossed that path.

Basic Rules: A laid trick is a triggered effect keyed to a person, place, or behavior.

• The practitioner defines:

  • Target (a specific person, a bloodline, “whoever crosses this threshold,” etc.)

  • Trigger (stepping over a line, touching a knob, sleeping in a bed)

  • Effect (a curse, sickness, hex, or mild blessing).

• They then make a Use Magic roll at a difficulty of 2 + effect level (1–6).

  • Success: The trick lies dormant until triggered. The first time it triggers, the target must resist with an appropriate roll (Might, Speed, Intellect) vs difficulty equal to the effect level.

  • Failure: The trick misfires—going off early, catching the wrong person, or seeping out as a general miasma over the area (GM fun).

Laid tricks can be spotted or disarmed:

• An Understand Magic roll vs difficulty equal to the effect level lets a character notice subtle signs: powders, strange smells, marks.

• A Use Magic roll at difficulty effect level can neutralize or redirect the trick (possibly onto someone else).

How to use it to drive plot:

• Invisible crime scenes. Someone keeps getting sick, cursed, or unlucky after visiting a particular place. PCs have to find the trick and who laid it.

• Weaponized hospitality. A villain invites PCs in, lays tricks on their chairs, plates, or drinks, and smiles as the work slowly takes hold.*

• Escalation. Trick wars: two practitioners dueling by laying and counter-laying tricks all over town, dragging civilians into their feud.

Bottle Spells

Description: Bottle spells are works corked and stored. Witch bottles, sweetening jars, curse jars, war jars—whatever the local style, they’re all variations on the same idea: you put something in a container (names, hair, sharp things, sweet things, grave dirt, etc.), seal it, and give it a job.

As long as the bottle stays hidden and intact, the work continues. Break it, unstopper it, or dig it up… and whatever’s inside can change.

Basic Rules: A bottle spell is a persistent effect tied to a physical object.

• Decide the bottle’s purpose:

  • Sweetening: make someone kinder, more favorable, more generous.

  • Binding: hold someone back, keep them from leaving, tie them to a place.

  • Hurting / Cursing: cause sickness, nightmares, bad luck.

  • Warding: absorb harm directed at a house or person instead of them.

• The practitioner gathers appropriate ingredients and spends a night or more assembling and charging the bottle.

• They then make a Use Magic roll at difficulty 3 for minor, personal bottles or 4–5 for strong communal or long-term bottles.

On a success:

• The bottle takes effect at Level 2–4, depending on how strong its construction is.

• Each time its job “fires” (turning aside harm, sweetening a key interaction, inflicting bad luck), you can mark a tally; after three to six uses, it weakens and may need to be fed, shaken, or refreshed.

On a failure:

• The bottle works, but crooked. Its job twists: a love bottle becomes obsession, a warding bottle draws attacks to itself and its maker, a curse bottle splashes some harm back on the caster.

Bottle spells can be:

• Found and broken to end their effect (ending a curse, removing a ward, etc.).

• Corrupted by adding new ingredients, changing their job.

• Moved to redirect who/what they’re affecting (moving a house ward’s bottle offsite, for instance).

How to use it to drive plot:

• Hidden bottles as clues. PCs find bottles in walls, under floorboards, in graveyards. Each bottle is a story: who made it, who it’s for, what job it’s doing.

• Community lynchpins. A whole town is protected or bound by a single communal bottle hidden somewhere important. Enemies want to find and smash it.

• Bad spell, good bottle. PCs must decide whether to destroy a nasty curse bottle, risking the curse spilling out everywhere, or leave it in place because at least it’s contained.

• Feed the bottle. An NPC begs the PCs to help them “feed” a crucial protective bottle every month. If they fail, the protection falls, and something old and mean notices.