Hear! Kitty kitty…
In the past animals were things to be hunted or feared. Later they were kept for food or for fleece, or to keep out the unwanted, or for a thousand other reasons.
And now they’re pets.
We don’t really need them, they don’t really need us, but never the less there they are, still keeping us company, keeping us safe. Totem spirits for a modern age.
The central paradox of Domestic Shamanism is that it is based on the worship of a creature you already own. They rely on you as much as you rely on them and so it all goes around
Domestic Shaman Blast Style
Claws and teeth. Victims look like they’ve been attacked by the Shaman’s entire menagerie
Stats
Domestic Shamen gain charges by building and tending to their collection of pets.
Generate a Minor Charge: Spend an hour doing something for one of your pets over and above the nessecary feeding, walking and so on.
Generate a Significant Charge: Get a new pet. You can just buy one from a pet shop, or catch one yourself. They have to be properly domesticated, however.
Generate a Major Charge: Aquire a new and completely unique pet (nobody’s entirely sure if people count…). Some have hypothesised that sacraficing your life to your animals will also work
Taboo: Angering the animal spirits. In particular you may never mistreat an animal, and may never neglect an animal you own
Random Magick Domain: This varies according to the animals you own. If you have cats, your magic will relate to catty things (stealth, mysticism, killing babies). If it’s dogs it will relate to doggy things (loyalty, tracking, licking your own genetalia). If you have both you can do both.
Starting Charges: Newly created domestic Shamen start with one significant charge and one pet.
Charging Tips: You can get a minor charge per hour by tending to your animals, but you still have to make time for other things. Once you buy more animals for Significant Charges you need to devote more time to your pets just to avoid rbeaking taboo, so getting minor charges becomes harder.
Domestic Shaman Minor Formula Spells
The Little Fella’s Not Gonna Make It
Cost: 1 minor charge
Effect: You can put an animal down quietly and painlessly. For this spell to work the animal really needs to be better off dead. No killing guard dogs
Knowing Their Own
Cost: 1 minor charge
Effect: Cast this spell on a single domestic animal, and it will not attack you. This spell wears off when the animal leaves your presence, or when you breach taboo. If you break taboo whilst in the presence of an animal under the influence of this spell it will go for you immediately
The Little Fella’s Gonna Pull Through
Cost: 2 minor charges
Effect: Heals an animal for a number of wound points equal tothe sum of your casting roll
Room 101
Cost: 2 minor charges
Effect: The minor blast.
Channeling
Cost: 3 minor charges
Effect: This spell grants you one skill at a level equal to your Magic: Domestic Shamanism skill. This can be any skill you like but it must be associated with an animal you own. You can Sing like a bird, Hunt like a cat, Fight like a guard dog or whatever. This skill must be mundane in nature, no channeling your parrots Fly skill. This skill lasts until sunrise or sunset, whichever is closest
Calling
Cost: 4 minor charges
Effect: This spell calls up what could be a totem spirit, or could be a particularly smart animal. Cast the spell, and within the hour an animal, of a type similar to one you own, will show up. It will be an excellent specemin, will understand instructions, and will be unusually smart. It will stay until it decides to leave.
Domestic Shaman Significant Formula Spells
Let Slip the Dogs
Cost: 1 significant charge
Effect: It’s a significant blast ladies and gentlemen
Wrath of Bird and Beast
Cost: 1 significant charge
Effect: This nasty little spell hits the target with your taboo until such a time as they or you break it, at whcih point the spell expires. If the target mistreats an animal, they taboo just as you would (this only matters if they are an Adept or Avatar, obviously). In addition, animals are angry at them for the next day, this may lead to them getting attacked, or may not, it depends on the animals they encounter
Aspect
Cost: 2 significant charges
Effect: Until sunrise or sunset you gain one skill associated with an animal you own. Unlike Channeling this can be a skill normally unavailable to humans (Fly, Track By Smell and so on)
Guidance
Cost: 2 significant charges
Effect: Like the Calling, above, except that the animal is really, really smart. They won’t solve problems for you in a direct way, but they can do the whole spirit animal thing. They can lead you places and show you stuff, and it’s bound to be interesting. This spell can function like Synchronicity
Change
Cost: 4 significant charges
Effect: You can turn into an animal you own. This is extremely difficult and of dubious practical value, but most people don’t go into magic for the practicality of it.
Domestic Shaman Major Effects
These are going to vary massively with your pets. it could allow you to gain a skill associated with an animal in myth permenantly, it could grant your enemies the eternal emnity of all cats. it could reenact the birds in your hometown.
I think this is a good outline for a school, and could be fleshed out into something interesting.
I’d like to see the charging structure more solidified, such that having lots of sources gives lots of charges, but makes it hard to do anything else, like videomancy works in UA2.
Perhaps you can only get one minor charge off a pet each day. So to get lots of charges, you need lots of pets, which means lots of time spent caring for them, or you break taboo.
Speaking of which, you need a sever penalty for giving away or deliberately eliminating your pets, to keep the taboo threatening.
One other bit: charges could have a “flavor”, a la Iconomancy, so that if you charge from a cat, you can do catlike things, etc. You start towards that idea on a few spells, but a person with 1 dog and 9 cats, giving her 10 sig charges, could cast 10 dog type spells as it’s written right now.
Some more spells should be obvious: talking to animals (keep in mind that animals have very simple thoughts processes), or seeing through their eyes, or extra lives for the cat shaman.
And a creepy GMC who keeps, say, rats as pets for this school (or spiders, or whatever gets the PCs to activate a fear response) would be fairly cool.
I had rather a lot to say about the school, didn’t I?
Yes, you did.
Now boogie over to “The Ignotamancer” and do the same thing :). I’m working on finalizing it this weekend . . .
I like the idea but I don’t like the charge system. This is just an idea but let me just throw it out. to get a sig. charge you must kill a beloved pet so that his soul can be with you and hold the charge. This won’t break taboo if done in a ritual context.
Kill a pet? Ick! What would be the point?!
I think that the spells could use a little work, but I don’t have any problem with the charge system, really. It makes it difficult to get a sig after you’ve got a menagerie of 20 animals, admittedly — I wonder if there should be some other way of getting a sig?
I don’t like the sacrafice a pet option, simply because I like the idea of building up huge menageries, and if you’re periodically culling for sigs it gets to be a problem.
I considered charge flavours, but decided against it. It increases bookkeeping, and I’m not that bothered about casting all dog spells if you one dog and 20 cats, after all the cat-spirits are lazy anddon;’t like being bothered, the Dog-spirits are eager to serve.
Leaving out some of the more obvious spells was also deliberate, I quite like the idea of a pet-shaman notactually being able to talk to animals directly, the spirits tend to speak through omens and portents, not just by chatting to you, and I wanted to keep some of that idea in the school.
But yeah the spells could do with a bit of clarification (I tend to keep these thigns in note formand assume that since I know what I mean everybody else will), and the Taboo probably needs some sharpening.
Guess this one explains those old ladies with about 300 cats, then. 😉
Seriously, I like this one. I’d add a spell that allows you to see through the eyes of one of your pets. Would be especially fun because if you’re using it for spying, you’re likely putting that pet in danger and risking taboo.
Guess this one explains those old ladies with about 300 cats, then. 😉
Seriously, I like this one. I’d add a spell that allows you to see through the eyes of one of your pets. Would be especially fun because if you’re using it for spying, you’re likely putting that pet in danger and risking taboo.
I hate to be a “me too”, but I like it! The charging aspect seems ok, but I might add granting the Adept some of the negative qualities of his menagery… for instance, the Adept with 23 cats spends a weekend generating minor charges from petting and grooming them. He wakes for work on Monday, only to find it’s half past noon. Arriving late, he slips into napping when bored (such as at meetings). Comming home, he cares for his cats and goes to bed… and awakens at 3am with the overwhelming urge to go jogging (the midnight crazies for those of you who have cats).
Damn. I was all fired up about writing up Zoomancy, and then I found this. 🙁
Anyway, I think it’s perfect except for a few suggestions I’d like to make:
—Come on. Let the poor deranged bastards talk to their pets. It’s a fairly standard convention in things like Willard.
—The paradox should be finding companionship by eschewing humanity.
—I think a good flare to add to this would be to make it so that the more often an animal is effected by Zoomancy spells, the more intelligent becomes and the more human its thought processes become.
Also, when a Zoomancer’s pets are near their master fairly constantly, their intelligence develops very gradually and they remain obedient, but when their master leaves, their intelligence tends to snowball, as does their independence. After spending as little as a week or so away, many Zoomancers have returned to their beloved pets to find rebellious swarms of highly intelligent beasts who at best shun and threaten their masters, if they don’t immediately tear them to pieces. Animals left alone indefinitely often develop lasting civilizations, complete with sophisticated hierarchies, language, culture, religion and even technology. These societies also have the same instinct to expand and conquer that humans do — at least one tribe is rumored to include at least half the rats in Europe, with growing colonies in New England and China…
I was just browsing the site and found this… Am I the only one finding this school freakily similar to the Herpemancy presented in Break Today? I wonder what the odds of such a similar brainwave hitting at about the same time are… o|0
Well, my idea for Zoomancy was meant partially as a less crackheaded overhaul of Herpemancy, so may not have been coincidence at all.
I quite like this school actually, and I want to make some NPC Dom Shamans now. 🙂
Gotta love them crazy cat ladies.
(I’ll probably replace the first Minor Formula with a “talk to animals” one)
Veterinarians and animal shelter workers should be able to treat their charges as their own pets for the purposes of this school, or at least get additional charges through their work. It may make them considerably more powerful, but I think it fits.