Olfactomancy

All too often the nose is left simply offended by the practice of magic, burned by caustic vapors, rankled by cloying fumes and left to it's own in the aroma of the undead. Not so the largely under-developed school of the olfactomancers, the Sorcerers of Scent, the Smell-Binders, and the Magic Sniffers.

The most basic ability of the olfactomancers is the ability to scent and differentiate the various realms of magic. While the scents associated with each realm of magic very from wizard to wizard, some of the schools have some similar characteristics. Necromancy always has some hint of death and the grave in it, and elemental spells leave scents similar to their elements. A fireball spell might leave a magical scent of sulfer, or of burning cedar, whereas a lightning bolt might smell like rain, or the air after a violent storm. This is a supernatural effect and such scents can linger long after the magic in question has passed.

Most of the time, olfactomancers examine odors, but with the Ghost Smell spell, they can leave specific smells as well. This can range from a light floral scent to ease a night in a dungeon, to prankster applications, to covering their own scent to deter tracking animals.

So often using their nose for their magic, an olfactomancer could be greatly dimished if his sense of smell was compromised. The Endure Smell spell allows a sorcerer of scent to ignore penalties and distractions caused by smell, scuh as the stink of ghouls and ghasts, stinking clouds and the like. This infers no defense against poison or any other agent in a smell or cloud, so most olfactomancers use the spell with a degree of caution.

Casting this spell, the first and most honored of the Olfactomancer's spell history, allows the mage in question to differentiate and sort odors in the same fashion as a well trained bloodhound. The mage can use this power to track someone or something by it's scent alone. it also allows for the sorting of scents, such as smelling a food dish and sorting out the list of spices in it, or much less appealing, sniffing a bit of droppings (you know, poo) to get an idea of what said creature/person ate and where they might have been in the last few days. Cue the Sherlock Holmes players.

The Olfactomancer's most common combat spell, Stinking Cloud creates a cloud of smell specific to the olfactomancer that is nauseating in a fashion very similar to tear gas. While the scents may vary, the specific effects are the same, gagging, choking, profuse mucus from the nose and a chance of vomiting. No other aspects of a scent are copied, thus a flammable based scent is not explosive, nor is a necrotic based scent poisonous.

While almost every olfactomancer can scent magic, the number that can remove the smell from their magic is much smaller. This is a sort of clean-up spell that allows an olfactomancer to magically clean an area of any and all smells, including supernatural and magica odors. Dismell Magic can be used on a single person rather than an area, and for a day per wizard level, that person will create no odor, no matter how poor their hygiene or filthy their surroundings.

This spell creates a soothing cloud that lulls those who smell it to sleep, IE an area based sleep spell. Those who awaken after being hit by this spell remember a primal and emotionally deep scent that they had long since forgotton, such as a grown man remembering the smell of his mother when she held him as an infant, rocking him to sleep.

There are few things that smell worse than zombies and ghouls, and the horror of the thing is that the undead are immune to their own reek. Casting Gag the Dead renders any undead with a nose, which is pretty much all of them but skeletons, vulnerable and fully aware of their own rotting stench. This generally leaves most undead stopped in their tracks and more sentient forms of undead might be repelled by the stink and flee combat.

This is one of the few curses that is available to the school of olfactomancy and it allows the mage to swap scents in a single person. While this might seem a questionable power, it can be quite useful. If a mage suddenly finds his familiar now smells like boiled cabbage rather than a cat his magic is interrupted, and if a noble found the smell of the royal court too much to bear it could cause a scandal. This spell can be reversed by the caster or a Remove Curse spell.