These guys really don’t believe in magic.
Vacuumancer
‘Empty mages’ or black holes are an adept’s worst nightmare. They do not believe in magic, so much that they keep it from working for others as well.
Minor Charge: Give an logical explanation to a mundane event that a person believes is mystical or magical. You must present your opinion to the person holding the belief. Examples are explaining that the tarot card reader that the person just patronized is simply skilled at giving vague answers that sound true.
Significant Charge: Witness an actual magical or mystical event (one that costs charges or requires an actual artifact or similar) and refuse to believe it. You must make a Soul check if you can not come up with a rationalization.
Major Charge: Convince a person who truly believe in magic or religion that they are wrong. The person should have a paradigm skill associated with the belief of at least 25%.
Taboo: Acknowledging the supernatural. That includes accepting magical help that can not be explained away. It is fine to ‘humor’ the crazy epideromancer down the street, but you had better not allow him to close the wound in your arm. It is just fine to hunt the Gellure monster, but you can never accept that it was a werewolf. Effects that you do not voluntarily allow do not violate taboo, but you can never ask for or accept magical help voluntarily. If someone helps you without your acceptance that they are doing magic, you do not violate taboo. If you have a rational explanation for why it worked, you do not violate taboo, and may gain a charge. You may freely go to acupuncturists, for example, as long as you do not think that are actually affecting your qi flow.
Random Magic: Stopping magic from existing. You may ward areas, or hurt ghosts, etc.
Effects: Vacuumancers have two effects. The first one stops magical effects from happening. The second drains charges from adepts.
Prove It!
If a Vacuumancer witnesses an adept performing a magical effect, he can spend charges one for one, to cause the adept to waste a charge, which can stop the effect from happening. Example: An adept needs two significant charges to hit the black hole with a significant blast (and declares that he is spending two charges), the vacuumancer makes a vacuumancy roll and spends a significant charge to cancel one of the charges the other adept used. All two charges are lost. Since the attacker has now spent two few charges, the blast does not happen. You may also spend one minor, significant, or major charge to cancel one use of a minor, significant, or major artifact. You may not use this to gain charges. Adept who suspect a vacuumancer is about, may start spending extra charges to have a buffer. You may not affect part of an adepts charge, you must stop the whole charge, so you can not cancel one minor charge out of a significant charge, to cause the adept in the previous example to spend 1 significant and 9 minor charges and thus fail.
Your Sorcerer’s Ways Don’t Frighten Us
You may make a vacuumancy roll and spend charges one for one to cause an adept to lose charges. You may also spend a minor charge to force an adept to break a significant charge into 10 minors, or spend a significant charge to force an adept to break a major charge into 10 significant. You must speak to the adept and belittle his ‘superstition’.
Interesting, but I think it need a little tweaking. For example, doesn’t expending a charge equal a conscious act to direct the flow of mystical mojo into a definitive action? How does this equate with the vaccumancer’s worldview? What are they doing to focus themselves?
I’m all for the verbal belittlement. Laying the mojo smackdown!!
I agree, and the Vacumancer would conciously know they are gaining charges wouldn’t they? And raiseing the skill level of their magick skill would cause some problems wouldn’t it? Unless they can convince themselves that this is what they do, which in turn would be working supernatural effects…
Oh great now I’ve confused myself.
I wrote this when I was really tired. No excuses? OK.
I do not know that adepts actually think in ‘charges’. That is a game term, but a vacuumancer might think of it more as a pool of conviction and a feeling of self righteousness. And the effects are more along the lines of ‘daring’ a supposed ‘magician’ to prove that he can do magic, and when the magician fails, he feels better. I do not see the vacuumancer as actually realizing that he is performing a supernatural effect, he is just a super-powerful skeptic. The PLAYER knows their character is a vacuumancer, but the CHARACTER should never know that he is an adept. I may re-write this.
Actually, I think that it would make a better fit if they DID know it was magick, yet actively denied it and rationalized it, creating the logical failure that Chance mentioned. Who ever said that logic applies to magick? After all, there needs to be a central paradox, and I can’t think of a better one than performing magick while actively denying it’s existence.
Perhaps Vacuumancy is a side-effect of an adept being ushered into the House of Renunciation? That would provide both a capacity for ‘gaining’ and ‘expending’ charges that fall within the world-view AND a reason for the Vacuumancer being so vitriolically anti-magick…
Wow Punky I made sense? Cool!
I’d just use the Skeptic, who appears in PoMoMa and, IIRC, is using a magical gift to stop magic, though he’s unaware of this gift. Other GMCs could have the same skill, if you want. I don’t really see a whole school here, especially as the school doesn’t seem to do more than a small number of things.