It’s all in your head.

Some people just don’t know how to take it easy. They get so wrapped up in their own angst and ennui they wrap themselves in it, they come to love their own pain and fucked-upness. Some go on hurting themselves, doing foolish, crazy and self-destructive things simply to prove to the world, “I’m not well.”

For some it’s a cry for help. But not for you. You’re not writhing in pain – you’re wallowing in it, you’re exploring it. The darkness of the human psyche holds many secrets, for those brave enough to plumb the depths. It is both a forbidden tome and an ancient tomb, containing the kind of power that drives one mad.

Madness IS the method.

George Orwell said it best. “If you think I float, and I think I float, then I float.” You understand this, that true power comes not from strange diagrams, rituals, or even from books or money. Power is in the human mind: in the dark corners, in passion, fear, motivation. By changing these you change the world.

So what if your world no longer matches up with that which the rest of the world sees. You know that yours is just as real as theirs, and it’s only a matter of time before they come around.

You’re not insane; you may be the only sane one left.

Psychomancy is almost certainly related to Personamancy closely, but it is uncertain which sprung from which. Modern fascination with ‘self discovery’ and pop culture psychology springs from a general modern preoccupation with identity, which in turn can be traced back to Freud, who is considered by most to be the founder of this school. Others trace back all the way to the Ancient Greeks, when Aristotle wrote both Peri Psyches and Poetics (“About the Mind” and a treatise on theatre, respectively). No one is certain which came first.

Psychomancers usually have a ‘pet theory’ of the mind, whether adopted or adapted from actual psychological theory, or created on their own. Some are hardcore stodgy Freudians, others are Jungians who can’t keep their feet on the ground, some have simply read too many self-help books, some are so morbid their only particular belief is that people are essentially evil and there’s no hope for any of us. Some are more modern, some are outdated, some are just plain crazy. Whatever the case, they like convincing others of this idea as well, whether by helping them through it, or using it as a means to expose someone’s flaws. Some seduce or brainwash people into being their followers.

A Psychomancer has three options: gain charges by madness checks and take the therapy Taboo, gain charges by spreading your worldview, and take the backing down Taboo, or take both, with both taboos.

Central Paradox: As they gain power and understanding of the mind from delving into their own experience and confronting their personal demons, their deep fascination with their own instability causes them to lose their own minds even as they grow to understand themselves. Your desire to understand the world through your exploration of the mind is so strong you’ll sacrifice any semblance of reason to cling to a false theory.

Taboo: Allowing another to analyze you or try to help you. To a Psychomancer this is like willingly entering Room 101. Don’t trust your mind to others, you know it best. And you know how it can be manipulated.
You also may never back down on your perspective on the mind. Feircely defend it beyond all reasonable proof to the contrary, or violate taboo.

Generate a Minor Charge: Gain a Hardened Notch on a madness meter, reflect on the experience briefly (around 15 minutes), assess what it means for you, or rationalize the stimulus that triggered the check.
Alternately, convince a person to believe your particular worldview enough to make some lifestyle changes or to keep up a continued interest in your pet ideas.

Generate a Significant Charge: Gain a Failed Notch on a madness meter, analyze it in depth (one to four hours.) This should include dream analysis and so on, in an attempt to justify or understand your actions.
Alternately, convince a person of your worldview enough that they will trust it beyond the bounds of conventional reason, and the advice of their own most valued associates.

Generate a Major Charge: Become a Sociopath or gain a Psychosis, then wallow in your delusions (Spend at least one week in deluded introspection and illogical action, according to your newly twisted worldview.) At the end of your wallowing, your personality should have been significantly warped by your complete re-organization of your beliefs.

Blast Style: Unleash the target’s inner demons to cause the victim pain, convulsions, make him harm himself in anguish, and so on.

Random Magick: Psychomancy is all about motivation. Their magick can manipulate the human mind (mostly in darker, unconscious ways, rather than on the level of thoughts and ideas), manifest delusions and illusions, affect emotion and insanity.

Charging Tips: You’ll end up doing crazy things for charges. Do things deliberately contrary to your nature, commit atrocities, lock yourself away from the world, all for the sake of quiet introspection; to understand the human experience. It also helps for a Psychomancer to gather a group of people under his sway, and subject to his influence upon their minds.

Starting Charges: Every Psychomancer is at the beginning essentially either an ‘Analyst’ or a ‘Patient’. An analyst must start with at least 3 Hardened in one stress, and gets 3 minor charges. A Patient gets a single Significant charge, but starts play with a minor but troublesome Psychosis attached to that failed notch. This Psychosis does not mean one Stress Gauge is filled, and neither does it grant a Major Charge.

Minor Formula Spells

Freudian Slip
1 Minor Charge
You pick up on the subtlest hints in conversation. Minutiae like this, which are seldom given notice by anyone, can be the keys to someone’s innermost thoughts. By listening to a person speak you can garner clues about what is going on in the back of their mind. Casting this spell gives you a collection of inner thoughts, emotions, and mental states which would not otherwise be discernable. It is a lesser (and somewhat random-access) form of mind reading.

Psychic Resilience
1 Minor Charge
You may not have seen it all before, but you’re at least used to seeing things you’re not used to. Whether by rationalization or reflex, you can shut your mind down to stress. You’re unfazed by things that would leave others paralyzed with horror. By casting this spell (as a reaction) you can ignore the Panic/Paralysis/Frenzy effect of a Failed roll. If you cast this normally (ie not as a reaction) and spend an additional charge, you can ignore any stresses facing you for the next 15 minutes, +15 per additional charge.

The Golden Door of Dreams
1 Minor Charge
This spell is attributed to Freud’s own student, Carl Jung. By casting this before drifting off to sleep (for at least 3 hours) the adept ensures two things. First, that he will dream, and second, that his dream will tell him something. The dream can be pleasant or nightmarish, vague or lucid, long and detailed or short and to the point as the GM likes. It will however be prophetic. It gives some scrap of accurate and (at least somewhat) pertinent information about the adept’s future. He also recieves a Hunch due to the sense of clarity he wakes with.

Inner Demons
2 Minor Charges
This is the Psychomancy Minor Blast. The victim is suddenly confronted with the terrible revelation of some repressed memory or unwelcome self-revalation, causing great mental anguish. This can manifest any number of ways, mental or physical, and is just as likely to lead to cure (loss of hardened and or failed) as it is to madness (causing stress checks.) For an additional minor charge, the blast does an additional point of damage for each Failed notch the victim has.

Terror
2 Minor Charges
The target is immediately shocked with a vision of their worst fear. They must make an appropriate stress check just as if their Fear Passion had been triggered. Some Psychomancers use this ritual on themselves.

Let it All Out
3 Minor Charges
Psychologists call it ‘Sublimation’. Most people call it venting. Using this spell, the Psychomancer channels their tumultous emotions into whatever they may be doing. It allows them to treat ANY skill(s) as their obsession skill for a particular short term (a few hours maximum) task. If they spend additional charges, upon completing the task successfully (there must be some real challenge and risk involved, the severity depending on the number of charges) they may make a roll against their Soul rating for each one. For every successful roll, they may shed one Failed notch.

Significant Formula Spells

Hypnosis
1 Significant Charge
If you can get a subject to focus, just for a moment, on some repetitive motion (a swinging watch for example) you can implant a psychic suggestion in his mind. This is some basic idea that he is not aware of, as it goes to his subconcious, yet influences his behavior accordingly. It may be simple, or complex, depending on how long the adept has to state the suggestion. If there is anything that is done or said that is either violent towards to the subject, or which triggers a stress check, the hypnotic trance is broken. With a sucessful use of this spell, the subject does not recall being hypnotized.

Talking Cure
1 Significant Charge
This spell allows the adept to make a roll with the target as if he were performing clinical psychotherapy with the target as the patient, using his Magick: Psychomancy skill. Fail and harden notches are removed as per normal, but the effect is instantaneous, rather than taking months.

Unleash the Subconcious
2 Significant Charges
The Psychomancy Significant Blast. The angst-ridden target may physically tear himself apart, throw himself from a building, and/or spontaneously manifest severe tremors or even seizure. A minor charge may be spent for additional damage as per the minor blast. Though the victim is likely to feel shaken for quite some time following, the memory of the mental trauma this blast causes is repressed soon after, so the victim neither gains nor loses any madness notches.

Freud’s Couch
2 Significant Charges
Using this spell when talking to a person one on one, with them lying or reclining and relaxed (possibly through use of Hypnosis) allows the Psychomancer to perform a deep mind probe. The subject will be aware of the thoughts he is disclosing, after the fact, but during the duration of the spell, he is powerless to do anything but answer, truthfully beyond even his concious awareness of the truth, the questions the Adept poses to him, for as long as the Adept takes no action but to ask such questions. There is almost no limit to the information that can be revealed this way, so long as the Adept has the time to keep questioning and listening.

Consensus
3 Significant Charges
This is it. Defining reality by perception. If the adept can get all the witnesses to believe something happens, and believe it himself, their shared delusion can warp reality in exactly the way their shared belief says it would. This requires no Unnatural checks for the witnesses, as they are already convinced that the Phenomena is right and normal. This spell becomes most powerful when the Adept has a dedicated, deluded following.

Room 101
4 Significant Charges
Room 101 is truth. Here, there is no darkness, no hiding, no deception. In Room 101, there is only light, and all is laid bare; as crystal clear as springtime air.
The Adept must abduct the target of this spell and maintain absolute control over him/her for the duration of the ritual, which may take weeks or even months. By whatever means, all of the subject’s stress meters must be filled. The ritual allows this to be done more easily. The victim is treated as if he has no Hardened ranks, and gains 2 failed for each stress check he fails. Once this is done, the adept confronts him with his Fear Passion (which the spell allows him to know), rolls his Psychomancy skill, spends the charges, and the ritual is done. The victim’s Obsession, Rage Passion, and Noble Passion have all been obliterated, and even his Fear Passion numbed. These may then all be gradually rebuilt by the Adept.
Now that he is ‘perfect’, the victim never again needs to make any sort of Stress Check. He will have reactions, but he is already permanently insane in the worst way. He may still lead a seemingly normal life, and indeed feels and believes everything he has been ‘taught’ and his new Obsession even more strongly and genuinely than before. Furthermore, he is entirely loyal to the Adept who used this spell on him, and any particular group or organization the Adept may or may not choose to specify when he finishes the ritual.

Major Charges
A Psychomancer with a major charge can entirely redesign someone’s mind instantly, or create a new mind. He could also add something significant and powerful to the Universal Unconscious, thereby having a profound though unpredictable effect on the world and especially the Statosphere. Note that the Universal Unconcious and the Statosphere are not quite one and the same, though they depend on each other a great deal.
Also note that by redesigning his own mind, a Psychomancer could shed all his hardened, failed, and insanities without violating taboo. However, he runs a significant risk of eliminating his ability to do magick at all, because he changes his own obsession.

What You Hear
There’s a Psychomancer in Oregon who’s built up one hell of a cult following. They’re slowly redefining a significant chunk of reality; making himself a virtual god. He’s become so powerful even the real gods of the Statosphere can’t touch him in his own domain. It makes one think: Even the Statosphere isn’t the absolute lord of Reality.