(AKA Networkers, Hackers)

She is the past, present and future all in one, unforgiving and harsh… She is the Internet, the living goddess.

The people outside, they laughed at you: at your social akwardness, at your stutter, at your thick glasses. They didn’t understand, none of them did: who needs them anyway? So you locked yourself up in your parents’ basement, preferring the company of the world to your so-called “friends”. The cold, metallic body of your computer became a steel shrine, the hard clattering of your hands flying across the keyboard a hymn to Her majesty. But all those didn’t really matter: they were simply a looking glass through which you journeyed to another world. The real world.

There, you were king. Nobody laughed at you, at your stutter or glasses. No, you had a different voice there: a voice which was command, manifest. You could be everywhere and nowhere at the same time, the ruler of all that you surveyed. There, you were popular: charming, well-liked, warmly recieved… loved.

You don’t know when it exactly happened, except that one day, you looked into the echoes of the dying flare from your monitor, and then… everything just snapped into place. Everything just made sense. Where the barriers between the real world and the living world collapsed, you had power: power over anyone and anything, just like you knew you were always meant to have. You no longer need that box to step through into the other world: you are the looking glass now, your body and mind, a living temple to the goddess that is the Internet.

Nobody would laugh at you again, ever.

The central paradox of Communicomancy is that technology both brings together and seperates. What the hacker cannot have in real life, he seeks in cyberspace, but in doing so only enlarges the rift between him and the rest of the world. The Communicomancer can never cross that rift, but can only continue to try to do so by making it bigger and bigger.

Communicomancy Blast Style:
Hackers blast by manipulating the threads of inter-reliance and dependency between man and machine: as long as the target is holding on to a piece of communication-capable technology, the hacker can affect that machine and cause it to either subtly malfunction or, in more extreme cases, just blow up. This means that hackers cannot blast anyone not possessing a communication device, but honestly, how many people these days don’t own at least a handphone?

Communicomancy Networks:
The Communicomancer gains his power from the network of virtual people that he knows, and his power is similarly limited by that same network. For every minor charge that he stores, the hacker must know 1 virtual person; significant charges require 10 virtual people, and major charges, 500. Multiple identities that a single person owns only count as one virtual person, regardless if the Communicomancer knows this or not. This established virtual network can also be tapped for the obvious social advantages, but in order to keep his power of inter-dependencies in tandem, every favour the hacker owes someone in the network must be repaid within, one way or another, within a year. The communicomancer can willingly drop a contact without breaking taboo if there are no favors owned to that person by ritualistically breaking all contact (i.e. sending a goodbye email, deleting him from your ICQ etc.). The Communicomancer can never add the person to his network again except unless the person ritually approaches the Communicomancer again; even then, the hacker does not gain a charge from adding a new person to his network. Remember that the loss of a contact in any way also means that the maximum charge storage for the Communicomancer is lowered.

Stats:
Generating a Minor Charge: Spend 4 hours on the Internet without a break, communicating with your established network of “friends” through IRC, instant messengers or the like. This includes meals and even answering the call of nature: nothing is more important than the people who you love and serve.
Generating a Significant Charge: Add a new person to your established network of contacts after spending 4 hours or more on the Internet without a break. This person must be a complete stranger that you have in some way met through cyberspace, and he must willingly extend a formal request to break the “stranger” barrier through a ritualistic action, such as requesting your authorization on ICQ or private messaging you on IRC. You cannot solicitate such requests: the stranger must be approaching you of his own free will, although once he breaks the “stranger” barrier you can, of course, entice him one way or another. Multiple identites of the same person only count as 1 person, regardless if the hacker knows it or not. If the stranger was met via IRC, the stranger must be a regular IRC user, or give you an instant messenger contact or email address before you can gain the charge.
Generating a Major Charge: Change the style of networking globally with a single action.
Taboos: Losing a contact from your established network. This seriously messes up your carefully established balance within your network, and you need to spend time relinking the probable links and threads from one person to another within this web. The Communicomancer also cannot know, in the physical world, more people than half the number of people within his cyber network; that would undermine the pure and simple fact that technology is the only way you can get to know people without all the attached social hassle. When does a person stop being a stranger and becomes someone the hacker knows? Probably when the Communicomancer knows the person well enough to have their names and contact information. Beware pushy salesmen!
Random Magick Domain: Inter-dependencies through the use of technology, including the innate inter-reliance between man and machine. No matter what form this takes, however, machines must feature a major part of this magickal exploitation; after all, Communicomancy is about networking through isolation.
Starting Charges: Newly-created Communicomancers have 3 minor charges.
Charging Tips: A Communicomancer only needs time, patience and a little innate charisma to rack up the charges. If he really puts his mind to it (and ignores the rest of the physical world, possibly starving and dehydrating to near-death in the process), a determined Hacker can gain up to 6 charges a day, possibly 1 or 2 of those being significant charges.

Communicomancy Minor Formula Spells
Hack Tha Gibson (1 minor charge)
Using this spell allows you to bypass any form of technological security temporarily long enough for you to pass. This includes radio-frequency gates, keypad locks and retina eye scanners, but a conventional lock to a server room would still foul your attempts. Each instance of security requires a new casting.

Good Ol’ 404 (3 minor charges)
This is the Communicomancy minor blast spell that causes communication devices to “betray” their blasted owners. Radios crackle and blow up, cellphones fizzle and spark, computer screens lock up and shatter… Of course the spell only deals minor blast damage, but the good thing about this blast, however, is that the distance between the hacker and the target does not matter. If the hacker knows your IP, or any other concrete, numerical form of identification, including your social security number, ICQ UIN or similar, he can put this blast over you. If the target is actively using the device, and said device is potentially dangerous, the communicomancer gets to roll another die for damage. Using another minor charge for this spell allows the hacker to target a device instead of a person.

Bad Command Or File Name (1 minor charge)
This resembles a non-lethal version of the Communicomancer’s blast spell in the sense that a single machine just simply ceases to function for an hour. Every additional minor charge extends the malfunctioning duration by another hour: the charges must be spent while casting the spell. Phones return a dead dial tone, radios get static, Internet-capable PDAs simply appear to run out of batteries and the like.

Misinformation (3 minor charges)
Misinformation causes all forms of information recieved by the target to be either taken out of its desired context, or simply makes static interfere with vital portions of the message proper. People can hear and understand the target just fine, it’s just the target who has difficulty understanding them; of course, multiple castings of this spell would soon rectify this and make the entire place a communication nightmare. For an additional minor charge, the hacker can change any single incoming message to say what he wants it to say.

Disseminate (2 minor charges)
This spell seeks out and sends a short message of no more than 10 syllables to a targetted person. Telephones around the target start ringing, fax machines print out the messages, emails from unknown address suddenly pop up and so on, however it is most convinent for the message to reach the target. For an additional minor charge, the spell can be broadcast to a group of people instead (GM decides what constitutes a “group”). Although Disseminate will attempt to get the target’s attention, if the target refuses to pick up the phone or simply deletes the email without looking through it, after 3 such attempts the spell would fizzle and return to the hacker who cast it, with the message “The number you have just called is not in use; please, try again later.”

Shut It! (1 minor charge)
All communication devices around the communicomancer suddenly cease functioning for a millisecond: Internet connections are severed, phone calls get cut off and die, faxes get lost somewhere in the line… This, of course, does not prevent reconnection, and neither does this spell affect permenant or physical connections (i.e. T1 lines).

I Googled It (1 minor charge)
This spell instantly brings to mind the first 10 possible locations where a given piece of information can be found, starting with the most likely to the least likely. This functions as a very weak divination augury, but is exceptional useful for getting one started on the route to discovery. A search like “Where are my car keys?” won’t reveal to you where your car keys are hidden, but would instead point you to a possible source of information where you can find out where your car keys are (i.e “ask your wife”).

Trust Me (2 minor charges)
This spell makes the target, who must be communicating with you some way through the Internet, feel like you’re someone to be trusted. This doesn’t lend any extra credibility to your words if you’re saying something completely nonsensical to the target (“The Internet is made from strings and strings of human sinews!” to a technical engineer), but it does seem to have a ring of certainity when you say it. You cannot use this spell to gain a significant charge, of course. When casting this spell on someone in your established network, the charge is only 1 minor charge.

Communicomancy Significant Formula Spells
Short Circuit (2 significant charges)
This is the Communicomancy significant blast spell, where things really get nasty. Now, even devices that do not belong to the target can cause significant blast damage (and possibly a lot of collateral damage). The hacker now also merely needs to register your presence (i.e. target says something on IRC, comes online on ICQ) to put a long-distance blast over you. If the target is actively using the object, roll 1 additional die of damage; if the object is potentially dangerous, roll yet another die of damage. Paying an additional minor charge allows the hacker to target a device instead of a person.

Demodulation (1 significant charge)
This functions as a more potent version of Shut It!, where now even permenant connections can be physically severed. However, if the connection’s output is exceptionally large, the spell can only affect it instead of every single connection around the hacker.

A/S/L? (1 significant charge)
This spell summons a demon into a computer, where the hacker can then communicate and bargain with it without any risk of personal possession via IRC or any other form of virtual communication. If no compromise is reached between both parties, the worst the demon could do is possess the computer and be as annoying as it is demonically possible for them to be whenever the computer attempts to connect to the Internet.

If You Forward This… (2 significant charges)
By attaching this spell onto a virtual message of any sort, the hacker can then spy upon the recipent of this message and all other channels it passes through as long as it stays on any computer, even if it were editted and then forwarded as long as the context of the message remains similar. The hacker can only spy upon one location at any one time, with the ability to cycle through other instances of the message at any time he wishes, and sees the place as if staring out of the computer screen; while doing so the Communicomancer cannot do anything else. If all instances of the message is deleted in any symbolic manner (putting it in the Recycle Bin constitutes deletion), then the spell returns a visual flash of static before fading. This spell lasts for 2 days, but the hacker can choose to lengthen the spell’s duration by 1 day per significant charge added; this charge can be added at any time as a standard action.

Net Junkie (2 significant charges)
If the Communicomancer touches someone physically and casts this spell, the next time the target uses a machine for the purpose of surfing the Internet, he or she would be glued to the screen for a number of hours equal to the tens digit place of the hacker’s roll. Affected people cannot even move from their seat or otherwise attempt to stop using the Internet until the spell ends, or the connection gets severed by outside means, even if this means having to piss and crap right in front of the computer. The target is, naturally, aware of what’s going on, and would surely rack up quite a fair number of Self and Helplessness checks in the process.

I Know (1 significant charge)
Casting I Know allows the hacker to retrieve a single piece of information no larger than something that could be stored in a 16kb file, no matter how deeply secured that information may be as long as there is some way for the information to travel to the Communicomancer. The Communicomancer must know the existence of the file in the first place, and then cast it on to a computer with an Internet connection, which will then retrieve the information tracelessly in 10 minutes to 2 days, depending on the distance, file size, security and the bandwidth available. Every additional significant charge spent on this spell increases the file size by 16kb.

You Got No Mail (2 significant charges)
Kind of like an amped up version of Bad Command Or File Name, this spell instead causes a range of communication-capable devices touched by the targetted person to cease functioning for one entire day. When casting this spell the Communicomancer must specify a range of devices to be targetted, so selecting “phones” would affect all cellphones and traditional phones, but not fax machines or modem lines. Multiple castings of this spell can ward almost the entire array of communication-capable devices from the target, possibly causing quite a few Helplessness checks.

Shifting Faces (1 significant charge)
Casting this spell makes you resemble anything you want to be over the Internet: if you wanted to appear like James Bond, you could, right down to petty mannerisms and the smooth, slick talking. Or if you wanted to write like William Gibson, just cast this spell and begin typing. This spell only lasts for a number of minutes equal to the ones digit on the roll, but can be increased by another die worth of minutes per significant charge expended at any time. This spell’s focus can be a fictional character, a real person or even just a general mood you want to convey (“omnipotent and mysterious”). Note that this spell, however, does not let you know what you don’t actually already know.

Communicomancy Major Effects
Become someone internationally known and revered over the Internet, make someone famous on the Internet fall from grace and power, topple another Communicomancer’s network…