The Geas places a compulsion onto the victim which is enforced by one or more spells that are triggered when the compulsion is broken. In order to place a Geas upon a person, they must be able to hear the compulsion that is being used. Compulsions are any command that is understood by the recipient of the geas. In practice, the compulsion is the recipient’s understanding of what the spell caster believes the compulsion means. For example, if the geas were “Not to act against my interests”, then any act that they caster would believe is against their interests if the act was known violates the geas. If the recipient honestly does not know the caster’s understanding, then the recipient’s own understanding and opinion matters. If, in the previous example, the character were stopping a slave trade, the geas would only come into effect if the caster was interested in the slave caravan (whether or not this is known by the recipient) or the recipient believed that they’re actions went against the best interests of the caster. Say, if the character knew that the funds would go to the caster, but the caster wasn’t aware of this yet, the geas would come into effect.

In game terms, placing a Geas on someone works much like enchanting. First each spell that will act as the penalty are cast onto the person (or object). Drain is taken normally. Like Enchanting, the number of successes required is the same as the number of spells used plus the power of the spells divided by 10 (rounded up). Any extra successes in the roll represents the power of the Geas. This is the number of success that the recipient must roll on a Will roll to avoid following the compulsion. Please note, that no penalty spell has to be defined. This will give the person a compulsion with no penalty if avoided.

Roald convinced Jeremy to undergo a geas in return for Roald’s support of Jeremy in the upcoming war. Roald uses the compulsion that Jeremy “cannot seek to do Roald harm, whether financially, emotionally, physically, or magically.” He decides to use a penalty spell that inflicts pain, but won’t kill–a low-level Create Fire spell. The Create Fire spell has a power of 20. With this power, he will gain 8 HP of damage until he corrects his behavior.

Using this spell as the penalty, the ritual will cost Roal 3 Will (unless countered by the Ritual Magic roll) [1 for the 1 spell and 2 for the power of the spell. Roal performs this ritual inside a hermetic lodge and gains 9 successes on his Ritual Magic roll. He takes no Will drain and Jeremy is now geased.

Later Jeremy decides to act against Roal. As he starts to pull his weapon, he remembers the geas and can feel it pulling on his soul. He fights again it, but will need 6 successes [9 on the ritual magic roll minus the three required successes] on a Will roll to avoid the geas. He decides not to try and sheathes his sword intent on having the geas removed at the earliest opportunity.