Fourth Circle of SpellCraft

Alright — Fourth Circle is where the gloves come off, the leash comes loose, and the Veil actively notices you.
This isn’t “scar-making” anymore — this is surgery without anesthesia, cutting straight into the world’s operating system.

Fourth Circle (Veil-Rippers)

System Mapping (5e-style)

  • Equivalent: 4th–5th level D&D spells.

  • Damage output: 6d8–8d12 baseline, often with secondary or lingering effects.

  • Veil Risk: Every cast automatically thins the Veil within a 100 ft radius for hours to days. There’s a 30% chance something crosses over if you’re in a populated or high-belief zone.

  • Legal Status: Illegal outside of sanctioned ATO or Pendrake use. Even possessing a Fourth Circle grimoire without sanction is grounds for erasure by the Umbra Bureau.

  • User Base: 99% of awakened mages will never cast these. The rest usually die before their third attempt.

What Makes a Fourth Circle Spell Different

  • Reality Override: They don’t just influence — they replace rules in their area. Gravity can reverse, causality can stall, physics can be rewritten temporarily.

  • Permanent Scarring: The world remembers a Fourth Circle. Even after the effect ends, echoes remain — plants that won’t grow right, lights that never turn off, shadows that fall in the wrong direction.

  • Veil Feedback: Extended casting time? You risk a feedback loop, where the Veil pushes back — warping the spell or even warping you.

  • Belief Magnet: The Veil is thinned so far that strong mortal belief nearby can bleed into the cast, altering it unpredictably.

Signature Fourth Circle Spells

Starfall Convergence — bring the sky down

  • School: evocation

  • Cast: 1 minute

  • Range: 1 mile

  • Dur: Instant + lingering

  • Effect: Calls down 3 flaming meteors (20-ft radius explosions, 8d10 fire + 8d10 bludgeoning, DEX save half). Impact craters become semi-permanent Veil-thin zones.

  • Side Effect: Anyone who survives the center remembers hearing their name whispered as the meteors fell.

  • Lore hook: Favored by rogue ATO defectors during the Mythic World War to erase entire squads.

Eclipse Rend — plunge the world into alien night

  • School: transmutation

  • Cast: 1 action

  • Range: 500 ft radius

  • Dur: Concentration, up to 10 minutes

  • Effect: Sunlight in the radius is erased, replaced by a cold, otherworldly darkness (magical darkvision required to see). All enemies inside take 4d8 cold per round they move more than half their speed.

  • Veil Effect: Thins immediately — entities with affinity to darkness have a 50% chance to manifest.

  • Lore hook: Last seen used in Poland, 1940, during a clash between Heihachi Vance and Kazuya.

Chrono Sever — cut time’s thread

  • School: transmutation

  • Cast: 1 action

  • Range: 30 ft radius

  • Dur: Concentration, up to 1 minute

  • Effect: All creatures in radius WIS save or become frozen in time, immune to everything but can take no actions. You can move freely among them.

  • Side Effect: When effect ends, every frozen creature loses 1 minute of subjective time — sometimes replaced with random visions.

  • Lore hook: Pendrake inquisitors use this when assassinating oathbreakers in full view of crowds without witnesses ever knowing.

Phantom Legion — war ghosts become real

  • School: conjuration

  • Cast: 1 minute

  • Range: 60 ft

  • Dur: Concentration, 1 hour

  • Effect: Summons a company of spectral warriors (2d10+5) from Veil memory, each AC 18, HP 50, +7 to hit, 2d8+4 damage.

  • Veil Risk: 20% chance they don’t go away when you drop concentration.

  • Lore hook: Thought to manifest fallen Tournament-Born — and they remember dying.

Hollow Sun — burn through souls, not skin

  • School: necromancy/evocation hybrid

  • Cast: 1 action

  • Range: 120 ft

  • Dur: Instant + 3 rounds

  • Effect: Creates a sphere of searing golden fire (15 ft radius). CON save or take 6d10 radiant and lose 1d4 maximum HP permanently. Survivors are marked with a golden brand visible only to magic.

  • Side Effect: Marked targets are easier for Watchers to track through the Veil.

  • Lore hook: Used only once in recorded history by Lady Alarisse Pendrake during the Siege of Myrdrassil.

Reality Suture — stitch the world closed

  • School: abjuration

  • Cast: 10 minutes

  • Range: 30 ft radius

  • Dur: Permanent

  • Effect: Seals a Veil tear up to 1 mile across. Also erases 1d4 hours of memory from all mortals within the area as the tear closes.

  • Side Effect: Every cast burns away a fragment of the caster’s soul — cumulative Charisma penalty.

  • Lore hook: ATO Elders keep this locked away; only 7 living mages are known to cast it without dying.

Soul Fracture — weaponize identity

  • School: enchantment

  • Cast: 1 action

  • Range: 60 ft

  • Dur: Concentration, 1 min

  • Effect: Target WIS save or take 5d10 psychic and have their personality split — GM chooses two conflicting personas they must act between randomly each turn.

  • Veil Effect: Causes brief mirage-layering where multiple versions of the same person flicker in and out.

  • Lore hook: Used by Vance assassins to make divine champions kill their own allies.

Casting a Fourth Circle in the Modern World

  • Immediate Response: Umbra Bureau rapid units arrive within minutes if in urban zones.

  • Belief Distortion: Pop culture bleed-through almost guaranteed in crowded areas.

  • Watcher Attention: Use twice in one month? Expect a Watcher to appear in person.

  • Political Fallout: Even ATO-sanctioned use requires post-cast tribunal hearings.