Who knows what’s true and what isn’t? Who cares? You know the only thing that really matters: if you can get another person to believe you and then act on that belief, you’ll have the power to change the world.

Cryptomancy was once a dying art, its power and clarity diminished by conflicting, confusing notions of truth and falsehood, as well as by the fierce rivalry of the adepts that held them. But in the light of events leading up to the Second Gulf War in early 2003, a Cryptomantic initiate by the name of Gerald Osborne had a revelation that led him along a very different path from the one planned for him by his mentor. No one with access to a TV, newspaper or internet site could fail to notice that the evidence for the US/UK attack on Iraq was somewhat less than totally conclusive, and yet it seemed that a majority of legislators, media pundits and ordinary people were happy to go along with it. Maybe Blair and Bush were right, of course. Maybe they weren’t. But what really mattered was that a lot of people were prepared to believe they were right. Congressmen and Parliamentarians voted for war, while generals mobilised the troops. Saddam Hussein and Hans Blix could have been telling the truth all along, but it wouldn’t have made much difference. Months spent pondering all this from behind the foreign affairs desk of a respectable broadsheet newspaper led Osborne to his breakthrough: true power didn’t come from truth or falsehood, but from what people believed and what they were prepared to do about it. And if an adept who understood this could persuade others that his take on things was the right one and thus influence their actions, it would give him unprecendented control over the future course of events. That realisation was the birth of Postmodern Cryptomancy.
There aren’t many Postmodern Crypts yet, of course. But they maintain that they’re symbolically linked to the Archetypes by their role in determining what is true and what isn’t (i.e. what other people choose to believe). Just getting someone to see things your way doesn’t mean a whole lot in itself, though. What matters most is what that person does next, and if he does what the adept wants him to because of something he’s been convinced of, the adept gains power to shape the future in a much more blatant fashion.
That’s right: Postmodern Cryptomancy revives all those old ideas about prophecies, omens, blessings and curses, dusts them down and puts them in a modern context. This way, the adept ties himself even more closely to the archetypes – after all, aren’t they all in the business of deciding what happens next?
The central paradox of Postmodern Cryptomancy is that while you accept the ambiguous nature of the cosmos and the power of persuasion, you cannot allow yourself to be affected by such things. You must never allow yourself to change your mind and go along with what someone else thinks – you can change the universe but the universe can never change you, even if you want it to.

Blast Style
Crypts have no obvious, direct Blast. But they can harm people in much the same way that Urbanomancers do, by hitting them with nasty hexes that make them much easier to hurt the next time someone’s shooting bullets or pointing knives in their general direction.

Stats
Generate a Minor Charge:You get a Minor Charge whenever someone acts upon a piece of advice that you’ve given them. You must clearly state how following this advice will benefit them in the future, and it must involve some effort, loss or risk on the part of the other person. For instance, getting someone to lend you $100 on the understanding that they’ll get it back within a week would do the trick. Note that the recommended course of action doesn’t actually have to turn out for the best, as long as the other person has a go at following it.
Generate a Significant Charge:Talk a person into doing something dangerous, difficult or stupid, again adding a reason why it will ultimately have a positive outcome. Persuading someone to quit their job on the grounds that they’ll get a better deal working for you, for instance, will get you a Significant Charge. Alternatively, get 10 or more people to follow your advice regarding some group decision. Getting a board of executives to revise their corporate strategy based upon your projected sales figures would be a good way to pick up the charge.
Generate a Major Charge:The Desdemona Effect. You get a Major Charge whenever you successfully persuade someone to make an attempt on the life of another person. However, it isn’t as easy as just giving $10,000 to a hitman and asking him to rub out Alex Abel: certain people just don’t take much persuading to do certain things. Persuading Eponymous to take a shot at his boss would be an entirely different matter. It’s also possible that you could get a Major Charge by talking a major adept or a godwalker into violating their taboos, or by convincing a person of international importance to make a decision that affected at least a million people, such as starting a war for the sake of peace in the Middle East.
Taboo:You lose all your charges whenever you find yourself agreeing with someone in a way that contradicts something you previously said or set out to do. You also lose your charges if you say you’ll do something and then fail to do it within a day or any other deadline that you might impose upon yourself. So, a dumb comment like “I’ll kill that asshole next time I see him!” is definitely off-limits, unless you really, really mean it. Arguably, this is good; such restrictions force you to consider your words, actions and plans with painstaking care. On the downside, if you’re ever wrong and you know it, you have to bull through regardless of whatever anyone else says, and how much you might secretly agree with them.
Random Magic Domain:Postmodern Cryptomancy doesn’t do a lot in the here and now. It affects the future, and is powerful magick for making predictions and causing things to happen days, weeks, months or years from now.
Starting Charges:Starting Postmodern Cryptomancers get 4 Minor Charges.
Charging Tips:Any kind of job that requires persuasion or giving advice, such as working in an electrical compliance store, could easily net a Cryptomancer around 2-3 Minor Charges a day. If a Cryptomancer is regularly in a position where he’s advising people on very big decisions, he could be pulling in around 1-2 Significant Charges a week. Law is a very fine career for a Cryptomancer to go in for.
Note:As far as practitioners of the Western and Eastern Schools of Cryptomancy are concerned, this postmodern offshoot is nothing to do with true Cryptomancy at all and has no claim to the name. As it seems to focus less on lies and secrets, they might have a point. As far as the Seers are concerned, Cryptomancy is all about mysteries and the future has to be just about the biggest of the lot.

Minor Formula Spells

Eyes of Tireisias
Cost:1 Minor Charge
Effect:You get a vision of the future. Or, something that’s very likely to happen in the future to you or someone you’re personally acquainted with if you don’t do anything to prevent it. It’s pretty random and non-specific, and it has the added disadvantge of making you blind to the real world while you’re receiving the vision. However, if you spend an extra charge you can specify whether you want information about a particular place, time or person, and the better your roll the more useful the vision is likely to be.

The Gods’ Touch
Cost:2 Minor Charges
Effect:The target gets either +10% or -10% on any roll determining the outcome of an action that you’ve either specifically encouraged, for a bonus, or discouraged for a penalty. For instance, if you’re face to face with a gun-toting TNI hitman all you need to do to hit him with a -10% shift on any Firearms roll is cast the spell and say quite clearly, “It wouldn’t be a good idea to fire that thing.”

Wrath of Hercules
Cost:2 Minor Charges.
Effect:This is the Cryptomancy Minor Blast, sort of. The next time someone fails to hit the target with a hand-to-hand attack, use the result of the successful magick roll for this spell instead of whatever the attacker rolled.

Written in the Stars
Cost:3 Minor Charges.
Effect:Choose a horoscope prediction from your favourite periodical and read it aloud to the target. Make a successful magick roll, and the prediction will come true. Who says astrologers are all full of bullshit?

Orphic Benediction
Cost:4 Minor Charges.
Effect: The target gains a +5% bonus to any stat or skill of your choice. This is permanent, as long as he abides by some condition or refrains from a particular course of action specified by you. For instance, you could make your friend a lot stronger, on the condition that he always wears the same pair of socks.

The Gods’ Revenge
Cost:4 Minor Charges.
Effect: This spell is basically the opposite of Orphic Benediction. It makes the target 5% worse at something unless he does something that you specify.

Significant Formula Spells
Eyes of Cassandra
Cost:1 Significant Charge.
Effect: This is roughly similar to Eyes of Tireisias, except that it specifically shows you the very worst thing that might happen to you or someone that you know within the next lunar month.

Diana’s Arrow
Cost:2 Significant Charges.
Effect: This is the Cryptomancy Significant “Blast”. It turns a failed firearms attack or magickal blast into a successful one, with damage determined by the result of the caster’s magick roll.

The Gods’ Judgement
Cost:3 Significant Charges.
Effect: If you say a particular course of action will succeed, it will. If you say that it won’t, then it won’t. In game terms, any one dice roll to determine the outcome of that action is turned by this spell (if it works) into either an automatic success or automatic failure, depending upon your preference.

The Theban Curse
Cost:4 Significant Charges.
Effect: This is a subtle, difficult power to invoke, and it requires some careful thought on the part of the GM. In essence, when the spell is cast you deliver a self-fulfilling prophecy: you say something to the target, such as “May your own son kill you, Theban!” that person will go off and do things that make your prediction come true, even if he’s actually trying to avoid it.

E.g. Pelops, obviously a proto-Cryptomancer, lays the above curse on a certain Laios, who then takes his infant son and leaves him on the hillside to die. But then peasant farmers find the kid and bring him up (they call him Oedipus, by the way), and quite by chance he bumps into his father on the road about twenty years later. A dispute results and Oedipus kills his dad without realising who he actually is. It’s interesting to reflect on what might have (or might not) have happened if Laios had just kept his son at home, but Sophocles certainly wouldn’t have been able to write a classical tragedy about it.

Shield of Achilles
Cost:5 Significant Charges.
Effect: The target of this spell cannot be killed by injury or disease. He can be injured, but potentially fatal blows are either flip-flopped or the damage from them is reduced to the sum of the dice, whichever is lower. If he’s knocked down to 0 Wound Points, he’s merely knocked into a coma from which he will recover at a normal rate. He can sustain permanent damage and will eventually die of old age, but nothing else can kill him. Or so he might like to think.
In fact, you must always specify a fatal weakness when you cast this spell. Perhaps the spell will end if the target is ever struck on his heel, or if he fails to do as you say. When the spell is broken, the target can be hurt and killed just the same as anyone else.

Major Effects:
Events just arrange themselves so that whatever you say about the future comes true. Admittedly, you’re going to need a lot more than 1 Major Charge to alter the future course of history, so starting World War 3 is probably out of the question.

What You Hear:
Probably not very much, unless you’re involved with the Cryptomancers. But you’ve heard from a friend of a friend that there’s this guy in England somewhere who can tell you the results of any sports fixture a week before it happens, as long as you accept one piece of advice from him and follow it to the letter.