Place of Power

Basic Information

A place of power is a location in which a magician's personal magical prowess is greatly enhanced.

This may be due to the natural properties of the place - such as a mana spring or other source of power to which he has attuned himself or otherwise personalised - due to extensive preparations such as the drawing of wards or due to alliances that he has made with something in the immediate area such as local spirits (especially if he's a shaman) or even a genius loci. A suitably malevolent caster could even use a bad place for this¹.²

Whether other people can use the place of power or not depends on its nature - in some cases, anyone can use it equally well, in others a specific user has an advantage (perhaps due to attunement) and/or can allow or deny access to others. A more powerful (or diplomatic) worker may or may not also be able to wrest control of the place from an attuned worker.

The downside to using a place of power may be that a user is likely to be dependant on it and, if substantially less effective elsewhere, may effectively become stuck there.

Places of power are often marked by significant geographic features … and if there is no natural feature there (and sometimes despite there being one) … people are likely to build one. Even without physical features such an area is liable to be known for fortean events and to have a sinister - or sacred - reputation. Entertainingly the nexus of the place of power may not be at ground level - this may turn out to be a cause behind the tower building and tunnelling that wizards are famous for.

As far as theurgy is concerned - and other religion related things - places that are literally sacred are liable to act as places of power where the righteous are bolstered and the wicked weakened. Of course the same effect can very easily play in reverse when dealing with a Religion of Evil.

Additionally place captured from an enemy may be a very effective place to work magic against them - even if the place itself has no particular supernatural bent the symbolism alone may well add power to many forms of magic. If the captured location is a place of power in its own right then so much the better. This can work particularly well in regards to some forms of theurgy - a temple seized from a foreign god and re-consecrated to your own should be valuable in all sorts of ways. Most faiths will have specific rituals to deconsecrate a site if they leave voluntarily, but a genuine conquest may not leave time for such things. Also the site may fight back - an ancient place of power belonging to one faith might take a long time to truly change hands, with anything taking place there under the auspices of the new regime being sabotaged to some degree for centuries. The relative power and character of the competing deities may have some relation to this - as may general flavour³.

Notable Places of Power

• The Kaaba
• Mount Fuji
• Solomon's Temple
• Stonehenge
• Uluru/Ayres Rock

See Also:

• Fairy Ring
• Feng Shui
• High Places
• Ley Line

Sources

Bibliography

1. full source reference

Game and Story Use

• This is a good way of turning the BBEG into Orcus on his throne - he has become overly reliant on his place of power (or paranoid about someone taking it over) - and will not leave.
• A major NPC may turn out to be not that big a deal in and of themselves … but as long as they are on their home turf they appear to be a lot more powerful.
• This also means that taking on wizards on their home ground becomes a lot more dangerous⁴.
• Access to, or control of, a place of power may be a major campaign goal.
• A sapient place of power may be a player in its own right - possibly reversing the master-servant relationship on those who try to use it.
• This may be the sort of place that you build a wizarding school.
• And of course, it's where the magocracy builds their castles.
• When hunting mages, detecting these sorts of places can be a useful ability⁵.

Footnotes

1. A great example of this is John Constantine's performance in Hard Time - actually, John does this a lot.

2. Alternatively a place of power may become bad through prolonged use for evil magic.

3. For example, you could very easily see a church desecrated by conversion to a gay nightclub being a potent place for satanic rituals, but the idea that a church would be somehow improved by construction on the site of a former satanic temple flies in the face of all good horror plots. On the other hand, our ancestors may have thought differently, as evidenced by the number of churches built on formerly pagan sites. Again, for those who like plot hooks, such places may serve better as the seal on a canfull of evil than an empowering conquest.

4. As observed in the battle between Frau Totenkinder and Baba Yaga in Fables

5. For example, in Another Fine Myth, Garkin is traced by following a leyline, then Skeeve and Aahz trace it back to Isstvan.