Playing chicken with the Sleepers
Entropomancy works like this. Take a risk, get some mojo. Walking up to a street gang and mouthing off works perfectly fine. It doesn’t matter if they try and jack you or not, what matters is that you took the risk, that you did it on purpose, and that you didn’t use your magick to get out if things went bad.
Now, they could use magick to create the situation but most body bags don’t cause it’s a waste of energy. You would be trading magic for magic, but there’s this guy named Iron who has figured out a way of trading up. He’s been using small doses of magic to get a bigger payoff and he’s doing it through the Sleepers.
He performs magick, in public, for no other reason than to attract attention. It’s by risking the Sleepers wrath that he gets his energy. First time he tried it he used a minor spell to rip up a local TV reporter’s face during a live broadcast. It wasn’t major magic but it was enough that the Sleepers could have reacted. In return the universe gave him more energy than he spent.
So now he is wandering around, doing minor magic in public, getting some serious energy out of it, and pissing off the Sleepers. They’re trying to keep why he’s doing it quiet because if word gets out some other body bags might try it as well.
I hear he’s going to take all this energy and trade up again by doing something big in front of a whole lot of people. Like during the final five minutes at the Superbowl. Assuming he survives the riot, the Sleepers and everybody else who gets pissed off that would be some major energy. What he’s going to do with that energy, how he’s going to trade it up, Gawd only knows.
Why does he call himself The Iron? He stole the idea from an author named Spider Robinson. You see, if an arson commits arsony, and a felon commits felony then an iron commits irony. The only reason he is doing stuff in public is because the Sleepers don’t want him to. If the Sleepers didn’t mind, then he wouldn’t get power from it. The entire occult underground could end up being revealed simply because the Sleepers are trying to keep it from being revealed.
That’s why he’s The Iron.
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Note To Readers: I did not include any stats for Iron, tailor him to your campaign. If you do run this guy, he can be just as much fun as a newbie to the underground scene than as an established Duke.
Hmmm… Interesting. Except for one little thing.
That thing being the fact (often repeated in the rule book) that you can never, read NEVER, gain a charge by using magic. No free lunches, they call it.
The way I read this article, one may discuss that the magis itself does not help generate the charge, but I think it violates the spirit of the rule if not its letter.
I could be wrong, of course, so anyone feel free to contradict me. But I still think that simply would not work.
hmmm… While I can see the argument for saying it broke the rule my understanding of the rule is that the IDEA of the rule is, no free lunches as in, making charging easier (ie a Personamancer can’t get a charge off using magick to impersonate someone).
The Iron is in essence making his charges more expensive since he is spending them to get them when he could just play chicken, or Russian Roulette
I think he’s possibly breaking the letter, but certainly following the spirit, so in one of my campaigns it’d fly
However I’d make absoulutely sure it was at least a 10% chance he’d be seriously injured or dead before giving him a sig, and he has to risk his life plus that of either at least 10 innocents or 1 loved one before he gets a major. In other words charging rules still apply esp the major one.
Thus in essence He probably loses out since most of his risks are only worth a minor charge
The way I see it, it goes against the rule, and the problem is, if you let him do it, there’s always a chance players will start looking for something similar they can do.
Cool idea, anyway!
this is all assuming that the sleepers DO exist, right? (shifty eyes)
maybe i’ve been reading to many conspiracy websites but what makes you think he’s the only one. I figure someone out there put this guy up to this and is gaining charges off his back the guys getting powerful but so’s the parasite. See i figure the parasite is playing this guy like a 2 bit harmonica untill there’s a riot when he can draw a major charge off the riot. Or maybe it aint the sleepers givin him the mojo its the parasite hoping to stir shit up to an apocalyptic level and then gain ascension as ‘the devil’
there is no end to the paranoia.
Heck – maybe he isn’t getting the charges from the risk, he just thinks he is. Every time he does his “I’m pissing off the Sleepers” schtick, he gets a bit of mojo… but it’s not from the risk, it’s from someone who’s training this schmuck like a rat in a 7th grade science lab. Hit the lever, get a pellet – do something splashy, get a charge. We know those burger slingers over at Max Attax can pass off charges, maybe they want someone making noise to help wake people up? Or maybe someone is setting a trap for the Sleepers with some fancy bait?
Or something else – this guy’s acting like a Rebel. Maybe he’s being made into the part… so someone else can come down on the Rebel’s metaphysical ass HARD in some weird proxy battle.
But then the next question is… who would want to slam down the Rebel? I’ll leave that as an exercise for the reader…
Okay Shawn, I like the idea of a Max Attax plot behind this.
How about if the guy doesn’t exist at all, that this is a rumour being spread by someone trying to bait Entropomancers. Other Entropancers hear it, and try it out. If it doesn’t work (“No Free Lunch”) some might do it more than once just in case they were doing it wrong.
Could be a plot against the Sleepers (who would have to try to cover up a bunch of Entropomancer copy cats) or it could be an opening attack on the Body Bags themselves. Get them to risk public exposure and gather Underground opinion to stomp them out.
In Weep’s “Swap Meet”, there’s an Entropomancer who’s charging up off of the risk of using her magick to help out her mafia boyfriend.