Editing Nightcats:Sorcery (section)

== The Paths of the Secret Fire ==

Sorcery in Jhelum is fragmented, secretive, regional, and often contradictory. Most practitioners know only one Path well enough to survive it. Each Path favors two Domains of Effect. Those Domains are the kinds of workings the sorcerer truly understands.

=== The Blood Path ===

The Blood Path works through sacrifice, opened flesh, spilled life, kinship, vow, and the old truth that blood answers blood. Its practitioners know that life may be bought with life, that a threshold may be sealed with a wound, and that a promise fed by blood is harder to break than one spoken in comfort.

The Blood Path is strong in '''Harm''' and '''Ward'''. Blood sorcerers wound by feeding the Fire with living force, but they also protect through sacrifice, seal thresholds with bloodline, bind vows, and lay taboos that flesh hesitates to cross. Their workings are intimate, visible, and never clean.

=== The Dream Path ===

The Dream Path works through incense, altered breath, trance, sleep, memory, song, and the uncertain boundary between waking sight and inward vision. Its practitioners step sideways in the mind before they attempt to alter the world.

The Dream Path is strong in '''Conceal''' and '''Reveal'''. Dream sorcerers hide, misdirect, unveil, interpret, and perceive. They cloud attention, send visions, draw out truth, and turn the eye away from what stands plainly before it. Their power is subtle, but rarely harmless.

=== The Idol Path ===

The Idol Path works by giving force a form. It binds power into vessels, masks, blades, rings, jars, sacred figures, painted signs, and crafted bodies. Its practitioners do not trust raw sorcery when it can instead be housed, sealed, and made to endure.

The Idol Path is strong in '''Bind''' and '''Transform'''. Idol sorcerers imprison, anchor, contain, preserve, and reshape. They house spirits in matter, lay force into a crafted object, alter flesh through an inhabited vessel, and give the invisible something it can wear. Their workings are durable, prepared, and difficult to improvise.

=== The Road Path ===

The Road Path works through crossings, thresholds, pilgrim signs, way-shrines, stars, footprints, hidden routes, guide-spirits, and the old truth that not all journeys obey the same distance. Its practitioners know that a path may be found, opened, shortened, lengthened, hidden, or cursed.

The Road Path is strong in '''Travel''' and '''Reveal'''. Road sorcerers find ways, open ways, shorten roads, cross barriers, lead travelers safely, send others astray, and uncover paths hidden from ordinary sight. Where others see jungle, stone, flood, or wall, they see passage.

=== The Curse Path ===

The Curse Path works through names, tokens, contamination, burial, repetition, neglect, taboo, dread, and effects that ripen over time. Its practitioners are less interested in the strike than in the consequence that cannot be escaped afterward.

The Curse Path is strong in '''Harm''' and '''Control'''. Curse sorcerers lay weight upon a life. They bind action through taboo, ruin a household through lingering affliction, compel through dread, and let doom gather until resistance becomes difficult. Their workings are patient, malicious, and enduring.