DEPARTMENT: THAUMATOLOGY
Magic is science we don't understand yet. This department studies and utilizes thaumaturgy, manipulating esoteric energies to cast spells, perform rituals, and interact with magical entities. They provide a defense against threats that conventional physics cannot explain.
Primary Function: Intervention and application of thaumaturgy in an operational environment.
Operational Specifics: A team of 3-4 combat-trained thaumaturges, capable of casting offensive "spells" (e.g., force projectiles), defensive (shields), and utility ones.
Primary Function: Preparation and performance of complex and long-lasting rituals.
Operational Specifics: A unit of acolytes and specialists that prepares the ritual site, draws the circles, manages the components, and maintains the chant during evocations or banishments.
Primary Function: Creation of thaumaturgical barriers and traps on the field.
Operational Specifics: A team specialized in rapidly tracing glyphs and seals of interdiction on surfaces to create anti-entity barriers or magical traps.
Primary Function: Design and execution of the most powerful and dangerous rituals.
Operational Specifics: A very high-level thaumaturge with encyclopedic knowledge of dozens of magical traditions, necessary for interventions of the utmost criticality.
Primary Function: Transmutation of matter and creation of potions and elixirs.
Operational Specifics: A researcher working in the alchemical laboratory to create unique metal alloys, universal solvents, or potions with temporary effects.
Primary Function: Locating people, objects, or places through thaumaturgic means.
Operational Specifics: An expert practitioner in divination techniques (e.g., crystallomancy, cartomancy, radiesthesia) to locate anomalous targets.
Primary Function: Detection and identification of Exorcised Vital Energy (EVE) emissions.
Operational Specifics: A technician who uses specialized sensors to detect and classify the magical "fingerprints" left by entities or rituals.
Primary Function: Navigation and analysis of non-physical planes.
Operational Specifics: A thaumaturge specializing in astral projection and in interacting with entities and places that exist outside of our physical reality.
Primary Function: Creation of temporary animated constructs from inanimate matter.
Operational Specifics: A thaumaturge specialized in animating matter (stone, clay, metal) to create temporary servants for simple tasks or as expendable guardians. The constructs dissolve after a brief period.
Primary Function: The digital library of all magical texts and rituals of the Foundation.
Operational Specifics: An encrypted database containing the scanning and translation of thousands of grimoires, tomes, and scrolls, indexed by effect and risk.
Primary Function: Mapping of the global currents of thaumaturgical energy.
Operational Specifics: A geodetic/astral map showing the location and intensity of Earth's power lines, crucial for planning powerful rituals.
Primary Function: Catalogue of known magical entities, spirits, and elementals.
Operational Specifics: A database that lists creatures of purely magical nature, describing their powers, habitat, vulnerabilities, and methods of summoning/banishing.
Primary Function: Interact with communities residing in alternative realities.
Operational Specifics: A network of established contacts and protocols to negotiate or request information from entities residing in accessible and relatively stable dimensions (e.g., The Wanderer's Library, Three Portlands, Hy-Brasil).
Primary Function: Rapid healing from extreme physical wounds.
Operational Specifics: An alchemical serum that forces an explosive cellular regeneration, capable of regrowing limbs and repairing lethal damage. Every use, however, introduces genetic and psychological instability, with unpredictable long-term consequences for the subject.
Primary Function: Catalyst for transmutations of the highest level.
Operational Specifics: A fragment of an authenticated Philosopher's Stone, used as a catalyst for the most complex and costly alchemical reactions.
Primary Function: Supply of basic materials for improvised thaumaturgy.
Operational Specifics: A bag containing a set of ritual chalks, candles, salts, rare metals, and other standard components for the casting of small spells or circles of protection.
Primary Function: Channeling and amplification of a practitioner's thaumaturgic power.
Operational Specifics: A personal item (wand, amulet, staff) finely calibrated to help a thaumaturge focus his will and reduce the risk of critical failures.
Primary Function: Detection of illusions and hidden magical glyphs.
Operational Specifics: A monocle or a visor that allows one to see through magical illusions and to highlight seals or traps invisible to the naked eye.
Primary Function: Rapid creation of a barrier to contain summoned or spiritual entities.
Operational Specifics: A kit that projects a circle of salt and laser-etched containment glyphs, capable of temporarily restraining medium-power entities.
Primary Function: Creation of a remote magical observation point.
Operational Specifics: A crystal that, once placed, can be activated by a Diviner to see and hear what happens in its vicinity.
Primary Function: Protection of an area from direct magical attacks.
Operational Specifics: A device that projects a stationary energy dome capable of absorbing or deflecting a limited amount of hostile magical energy.
Primary Function: Expulsion of hostile extra-dimensional entities from our reality.
Operational Specifics: A standardized and effective ritualistic procedure against most low and mid-level spiritual or demonic intrusions.
Primary Function: Cleansing of an area from spiritual influences or residual energies.
Operational Specifics: A ritual to purify an area, making it hostile to certain types of entities and neutralizing the effects of previous rituals.
Primary Function: Reinforcement of the Site's magical barriers.
Operational Specifics: An annual or emergency procedure to enhance the Site's permanent interdiction glyphs, protecting it from astral or dimensional intrusions.
Primary Function: Guidelines for interacting with Fae entities without violating their pacts.
Operational Specifics: A set of ironclad rules on how to behave, what to say and what not to say when negotiating with the Fae, to avoid catastrophic consequences.
Primary Function: To bind a spiritual entity to an object or an area.
Operational Specifics: A procedure that does not banish an entity, but imprisons it within a designated object, limiting its range of action and power.
Primary Function: Safe execution of large-scale rituals.
Operational Specifics: A variable geometry room, isolated from physical and astral reality, designed to contain the failure of a major ritual.
Primary Function: Production of materials and potions through alchemy.
Operational Specifics: A laboratory equipped with athanor, alembics, and other specialized tools for the safe transmutation of matter.
Primary Function: The central archive of all thaumaturgical knowledge.
Operational Specifics: A secure and climate-controlled section of the Site library that contains the physical copies (or secure transcriptions) of the most powerful and dangerous grimoires.
Primary Function: Approval for the evocation of an entity for informational purposes.
Operational Specifics: The rare authorization to perform a summoning ritual in order to interrogate an entity (e.g., an elemental, a minor spirit) within a containment circle.