(AUTHOR’S NOTE: In this series, we’ll be some simple magic you can do at home! Assuming you live in Arkham Asylum! And escape frequently.)
Contrary to what you may have heard, finding magic is easy. For example, let’s say you’d like a powerful magickal aphrodisiac. (And who wouldn’t desire a brimming flagon full of, you know, desire?)
The philter is surprisingly easy. All you need is a little cheap wine, a few pinches of thyme, a few very ripe strawberries, the horn of a rhinoceros (obviously, you’ll need the REST of the rhino; they’re endangered, and you’re certainly not going to shoot one just for its horn, unless, obviously, you plan to eat the rest, and frankly, I know you: you always overcook your massive land mammals. Leave it to the professionals. Where was I?)
—and a few other bits of this and that; honestly, if you can pick it up at a garage sale and eat it without dying, you might as well just throw it in.
Now recite the appropriate spell. Magic doesn’t speak any human tongues, which means that all verbal aspects of your thaumaturgy are utterly pointless except for psychological purposes; but c’mon, it’ll help you believe in yourself, and trust me, if you don’t believe in yourself, you’re never going to make a Potion of Vilely Imposed Love.
Got all that? Great. Now you just need a mandrake.
All you need to do is wait until the seventh hour of the seventh full moon of the seventh year of the time of the Omen. If there aren’t any omens, we recommend making some; perhaps you could purchase a little time on public access television and assure people that the sky is falling? It’s always worked for us.
Then all you need to do is dig up the mandrake.
Now it’s true that mandrakes are essentially human-shaped, and they become more animated during a full moon. Legend claims that they start shrieking when you try to pull them from the dirt, but that’s not true.
No, YOU start shrieking, because those little buggers are STRONG, and that thing’ll grab your shovel, pull you under, cover you in dirt, steal your car keys, and pretend to be you, all in less than thirty seconds.
The potion will be screwed, but on the plus side, you won’t need it in the afterlife, because everyone wants a piece of a zombie.
My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities, put on events, and make stories come into being. I also tweet a lot over @darklordjournal.
