[Astromancer]

What we did on our Summer Vacation

Well, I reckon that it started when Bill and I took that Egyptian statue that his great Uncle Cyrus sent home from Egypt, when he passed through on his way to be a missionary in East Africa, to the old Indian mound. Bill's grampa says Cyrus wasn't eaten by cannibals, no one could ever stomach Cyrus. I brought the funny little idol that mom's cousin sent her from Asia. No one could ever say where it came from. We set them up in the old witch's shack she built on the mound. She's been dead twenty years but her stack is in good condition. Then we got the old hoodoo book from Chicago that Suzy found in her attic.

The gang was going to cast a spell, just to see if we could. It was summer we didn't have all that much to do. We agreed to try to summon a fairy. The girls thought it would be sweet, and the guys didn't think tiny little women with butterfly wings would be a problem.

We learned better.

Basically, it's 1946. The Mana level planet wide is now Normal. But other than some kids in an American small town, no one knows yet.

All the kids who tried to cast the spell now have Magery -5. If you have access to older GURPS materials and the advantage that allowed people to spontaneously know useful spells in survival situations, these kids could have that. Otherwise, they're just cobbling what they can out of grimoires printed in Chicago. (Note: Chicago was a major occult publishing center from the 1880s to the 1990s).

This is the Little Rascals meets Cthulhu. And Cthulhu runs for it.