Spell seed: KEEP MAGIC CIG AM PEEK.

KEEP MAGIC CIG AM PEEK – Google Docs

KEEP MAGIC CIG AM PEEK

 

It’s a minor little bit of palindrome magic: if you have the raw power to do it, light a cigarette and mutter this while you stare at the burning end.  The esoteric result is that while you do it you get at least a little resistance to anti-magical effects or attacks. It won’t save you from a powerful draining spell for very long, but if you’re running across a magically-drained area, you can get to the other side with no more than maybe the thaumaturgical equivalent of chapped lips.  If you have magical ability, of course. And can run while staring at a burning cigarette, which not everybody can do. Still, it’s a useful enough bit of hedge magic, normally.

That’s normally.  On days where the calendar date itself can be a palindrome — for example: 8/14/18 — then KEEP MAGIC CIG AM PEEK generates an amplification effect that not only protects against magical drains; it generates a ‘bubble’ of magic that can be used by other mages.  To use the magically-drained area example above: a mage using this magical field ritual can generate a mobile area which would allow other mages to cast spells themselves normally. The ritual only lasts until the cigarette stops burning, of course; but, as many a mage over-reliant on magical dead zones for area defense has discovered, it’s often enough to bypass such defenses entirely.

This is even more important in worlds where vampires and other sapient monsters require constant amounts of magic to function.  The weaker version of KEEP MAGIC CIG AM PEEK would be extremely difficult for any monster with an innate fear of fire to maintain; but that’s not a problem with the more powerful one, obviously.  Just get a magic-user without that fear do it, and then piggyback your way in.