Instead of drawing mana from yourself, you draw power from the surrounding vegetation and “lesser” animals. The advantage of this power is that you never have to use your own Fatigue to cast spells. The disadvantages are that you destroy the environment, you can’t cast spells without leaving telltale signs, and you can’t cast spells if you don’t have living vegetation to suck power from.
Rather than using your own mana to cast spells, you use the HT of surrounding plant life. When you cast a spell, you inflict 1 HP of damage on any plants or small creatures (anything smaller than a rat) in your hex for every point of mana you would have used to power your spell. If you kill everything in your hex and the “damage requirement” of your spell still hasn’t been met, plants in all the adjacent hexes take damage until they are killed, and so forth, until the number of points of damage equals the number of points of mana required to power the spell. If the spell is maintained, the adjacent vegetation loses HP every time the mage must pay maintenance costs for the spell. This means that if a mage remains stationary and maintains a spell for a long time, he could conceivably kill all life in a huge area! However, if the mage lets the spell end, then he must find a new area of vegetation to draw from. If the mage is not standing in a hex that has at least 1 HP of potential mana (see below) he cannot cast spells. If that area is not linked, in some way, to adjacent hexes which also have HP potential, then the mage is limited by the amount of mana inherent in the hexes that he can “reach”. For example, if a defiler mage is in a 2 hex radius circle of desert (1 HP per hex) but all the hexes beyond that have been defiled (0 HP), then the mage is limited to only the mana that he can drain from the hex where he was standing and the adjacent hexes (7 HP total).
Each type of terrain has the potential to yield the following amount of mana:
If the soil or vegetation is particularly rich, the GM can increase the amount of HP available per hex by +1 or even +2 HP.
Once an area of vegetation has been completely destroyed by a defiler, it can never again be used as a mana source unless it has been revived with the Purify Earth spell. Furthermore, no vegetation will ever grow in the affected area and animals will avoid “defiled” areas by preference.
Defiler Mages can never use the Purify Earth or Purify Water spell or any other similar spell. They cn learn those spells as prerequisites though.
Large plants, magical and/or sentient plants are allowed a HT roll every minute to avoid being damaged by your power. If they resist, you just draw proportionately more HT from the surrounding non-sentient vegetation. If your only source of power is a plant which is allowed a HT roll and it makes its resistance roll, your spell fails. Likewise, small creatures get HT rolls if they are sentient or magical.
Plants and animals killed by your magic wilt and then crumble into dust. Trees and bushes remain as dry, dead wood. This effect is quite obvious, anyone who is familiar with your type of magic will be able to determine that a defiler has cast spells in an area of vegetation just by making an IQ roll. If you cast spells on the move in an area of vegetation, anyone tracking you gets +6 to skill. In areas where there is less plant life, the IQ roll will be at a penalty and there will be less of a bonus to the Tracking skill roll.
If the Defiler uses his powers while in or on water, each hex of water affected is Poisoned as if the Poison Water spell had been cast. Any land hexes completely destroyed by the defiler become mildly poisonous, and plants will not grow in them until the area has been purified with a Purify Earth spell. The dust is also mildly toxic to breath. Anyone who spends a lot of time (more than a month) in an area where there is a lot of “Defiler Dust” in the atmosphere is at -1 HT to resist disease and gets -1 to Fatigue.
While this ability might initially seem like an advantage, it is actually a disadvantage. Not only is the mage’s magic immediately obvious to any observers (under most situations), but he must also constantly move in order to power his spells and he will rapidly run out of power sources. Furthermore, in most campaigns, a Defiler mage will have either a Secret (Defiler) or Enemies (Druids, Ecologists, Farmers, etc.) and a Bad Reputation (Destroyer of the Earth).
Voluntary (Special): You can turn your defiler powers on or off at will. This is an advantage worth 30 points.
Delayed Effect: Your powers don’t immediately kill plants and animals, they die over a period of hours or days, even though the mana drain is immediate. This allows you to be much more stealthy with your magic. -10%
Limited Terrain: You can only draw power from certain types of terrain, -10% to -50%, depending on how common the terrain type is. -10% to -50%
Non-Poisonous: You still kill vegetation and animals, but the dust or liquid left behind isn’t poisonous. -10%
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