QM: A note on how I try generally to approach magic. There are no dnd style spellcasting formulas, fireball explodes with aoe x feet using y ingredients etc.
>>5157937The Ancient Rites are all meant to be living things, metaphors, allegorical demons that mould and shape themselves to the desires and situations surrounding those that use them. I think you worked this out a bit with the use of the Wallet / Strange Identification back at the hair salon earlier. So for example in a medieval world the Wandering Wheel Of Fire might invoke an actual gigantic flaming chariot wheel, with burning spiked spokes and an axle etc that rolls around crushing people and setting them aflame etc a bit like the Executioner Wheel in Bloodborne. In the Golgotha urban setting maybe the Wandering Wheel Of Fire is a revolver suddenly triggering like a gatling gun that unloads an unstoppable torrent of chain-firing bullets without ever reloading etc. The Living Path Of Flint may carve a passage through impenetrable rock to the surface... or it could just be a maintenance door to an emergency stairway left unlocked. On another world, the same spell might be a whirlwind demon of elemental stone shards that devours enemies... etc.
So the rites are all meant to be adaptable and mouldable metaphors to various situations. Most magic just works by thinking it (this is where the Empty Path would have led, in the other qst playthrough).
You glimpsed the Incunabula of The Magus, but resisted its temptation (some of those innocent sounding rites are truly horrible) - beware that magical opponents may use some of this against you...
