Wanderers along a predictable course, outcastes riding the rails of civilization.

Linneamancy

Nicknames: Hobos, Gatejumpers

The lands humans occupy are marked as territory. What were once open fields and forested hills are now claimed with road signs, highways, utility lines, and train tracks. The train tracks that made it all possible, say the Linneamancers.

Train lines conquered the wilderness, and the trains became a new civilzed world where people and goods can travel without leaving shelter. Tons of merchandize can cross the land, thanks to the lines laid down by the enterprising railroad copmanies.

But this civilized structure can be its own wilderness. Linneamancers makes these civilzed places wild again. They sneak onto boxcars to cross the nation, jump tthe gates of subway trains, pummel each other in the roller coaster rides, steal food from commuters, and generally live a life that’s both barbaric and sophisticated. All the while, they ride along the rail lines, collecting geomantic power from the new dragon lines humans have written onto the earth.

A Linneamancer often begins as a runaway, seeking a free life and a way to travel far away from their unhappy homes. This freedom becomes power, and the power becomes addictive. As a gatejumper learns that they can make things happen, and discover that it’s the train lines they ride that give them power, they begin to learn about these lines and routes obsessively, absorbing details and facts about the iron horses that have become their new rolling home.

Other Linneamancers begin with their obsession with a particular form of transit. Roller coaster enthusiasts, trainbound tourists, or public transportation activists may grow so obsessed with their rides and lines that their feelings become almost worshipful. When they find that their prayers are answered whenever take a free ride, they start to need the same freedom as the rest of the hobos.

Linneamancers hate and fear each other. As they ride around, they gather up energy from the earth, becoming a battery for those energies, and each Linneamancer can see that potential. As a result, they become intensely territorial. Any fellow Linneamancer is both predator and prey, and if you leave them alone that might just mean you’re letting them get the first punch. Sometimes Linneamancers can get along with each other, and maybe even ride the train together, but it requires a lot of trust.

Generate a Minor Charge: Ride on a train (or subway or monorail) for four hours without exiting. Time spent with the vehicle not moving doesn’t count. This must be a land-based vehicle with a fixed external route. A roller coastter or trolley would count, but a bus would only count if attached to a powerline or track. Despite the little bit of water, a swan boat of a tunnel of love would count, too. Riding on a free line is fine, but the train must be accessible to the public.

If the train line is historically significant enough to hold a Cliomancy charge, the Linneamancer also gains that charge the instant motion begins. However, this uses the charge as if a Cliomancer had harvested it, and never earns more than a single minor charge.

Generate a Significant Charge: Ride on the first public ride of a new track or stop.

Alternately, beat another Linneamancer physically until they surrender, lose consciousness or die. All Linneamancers recognize one another on sight, and a Linneamancer who is defeated in such a way loses all charges as if they had violated taboo. No charge is gained if the loser didn’t have any charges, and at least 1 point of damage be inflicted non-consentually.

If the winner used magic in the fight, of course, the winner doesn’t get a charge, but the loser still violates taboo.

Generate a Major Charge: Spend a full year on a train without leaving. Only time spent while the train is moving counts. The last month of this trip may become an allegorical or mythical journey – if this happens, the gatejumper must also resolve this journey. Experienced Linneamancers refer to this annoying complicaton as “Walking the Song Lines.” This way well be an effect of the Statosphere, trying to keep Linneamancers from getting too strong too fast. As with a minor charge, monorails, roller coasters, and subways work too.

Taboo: The Linneamancer must never, ever pay money for anything. Giving money away is fine, as long as there’s no expectations of goods or services in return. Barter is also acceptable. Vending machines, bribes and loans are right out.

There’s another complication. Linneamancers recognize each other on sight, and any Linneamancer can gain a Significant charge by beating another one, physically, to surrender, unconsciousness, or death. The loser loses all charges.

Symbolic Tension: Linneamancers rely upon an organized institution, but are essentially barbarians, outside society. They wander without purpose on a path someone else set. A Linneamancer cannot operate within an industrial society or without one.

Blast: The Linneamancer blast is direct, bold and simple. The Linneamancer runs at the target in a fast-paced slam, slamming into the target but remaining unharmed. This can move the hobo anywhere within line of sight on a single turn, as long as there is connecting ground. It will knock over the target in addition to causing damage. The significant blast clearly causes more damage than a normal body check could do – it’s more like being hit by a train, really. Inanimate objects can be affected as well.

Random Magic: Travel and destiny.

Charging Tips: The easiest way to get charges is to pick a train line and stay on it as much as you can. Keeping track of new lines, tracks and stations is really needed, to find the big charges, but keep an eye out for other Linneamancers. Perhaps the best way to gain and keep your charges is to get very, very good at sneaking around. A good dedicated Linneamancer in a major metropolitan area should have no trouble getting 2-5 minor charges a day, and maybe 1 significant charge a month.

Starting Charges: Linneamancers begin play with 5 minor charges.

Minor Formulas

Hobo Signs
1 minor charge
Using chalk, pain, pen, or whatever, draw a symbol and decide what it means. Then, decide who will be able to understand it. Those you select will recognize it on sight. You must be able to identify your target audience by sight – you could make it “my buddy Jed” or “any children” or even “the next businessman to see this” but not “someone true of soul” or “the man who shot my brother.” The symbol carries no power if copied – only the original mark works.

Hijack
1 minor charge
Take brief control of a vehicle you’re in. This can be any transport – a plane, a boat, a train, whatever. You determine what the vehicle does for the turn. It must be something the vehicle could do – you couldn’t make a car fly or a train change tracks without a switch. You can definitely cause a vehicle to swerve and crash, or brake suddenly. The maneuver is automatically successful, so this can be used for trick driving using the Linneamancer skill.

Here Comes the Man-Train
2 minor charges
This is the Linneamancy minor blast.

Read the Schedule
2 minor charges
Choose something you plan to do that has a possibility of success of failure. You’ll know whether that thing will succeed or fail. If it’s something that’s a simple roll, you get a hunch for that roll. If it’s more complex, you’ll only know the end result, not how well you’ll win or lose. Once you’ve used this, though, you must take that action. It’s fixed in your fate. Denying that Fate causes periodic rank-7 Self and Helplessness checks until you realize your intention, or it becomes impossible. Hobos can lock themselves into inescapable failure this way. You can only have one fate hanging at a time.

For example, Hobo Pete is planning something, and uses this formula to find out how he’ll do when he punches a policeman in the face. He rolls beforehand, and gets a 09 – a very solid punch! The next time he punches a policeman, he doesn’t need to roll; he’s already rolled. But he’s written that into his future now; if he never goes forward with his plan, the stress of this fate will eventually drive him mad.

Another time, Hobo Pete wonders how he’ll do when he buys a lotery ticket. The GM determines that he won’t win a single dime. Hobo Pete still has to buy that ticket. He might wait a while before doing so, and he’ll know all along that it’s useless, but he’s got to buy that ticket anyway.

I Belong Here
3 minor charges
For the next two hours, anyone nearby is convinced that you belong wherever you want to go, and will not attempt to stop or eject you. This will not affect anyone else, and it only allows you to go from place to place; you could walk into a top-security prison, a Mafia headquarters or Alex Abel’s office, and out again, but taking files or bringing other people would get the usual reaction, and the guards of Fort Knox might want to escort you to make sure you don’t steal anything.

Significant Formulas

Find It
1 significant charge
You instantly know the route to a single object. It must be a unique object you can identify and visualize clearly. You’ll know exactly where that object is, and how to get there.

Free Ride
1 significant charge
Only usable while standing on some kind of line or track. You teleport, instantly, to any location you choose on the same track. The destination must be on the same interconnected network of tracks, but it can be any distance — going across the continent on a major train line takes as much power as reaching the next loop of a roller coaster.

Ear to the Ground
1 significant charge
Like Free Ride, this is only usable while standing on some kind of line or track. You can see and hear everything happening in a place on the track which you choose as if you were present. You can see what’s happening on the track, listen to a conversation on any train on a line, or find someone on the line and see what they’re doing. This lasts as long as you remain on the tracks concentrating. You can still see what’s going on around you, vaguely, but if you stop focusing on the lines, the effect ends.

Penny on the Tracks
2 significant charges
This is the Linneamancy Significant Blast.

Call the Long Black Train
5 significant charges
Only usable at a boarding place of a line where part of the line is out of anyone’s ight. A horrible horn is heard as soon as this ability is used, and the Long Black Train comes out from the unseen portion of the track. The Long Black Train resembles an ordinary train of the appropriate type, but is a dull metallic black, twisted and grotesque, carved with skulls, devils and arcane symbols of evil. An unmistakable aura of dread emanates from the train, and it churns out glowing red smoke. The train stops for passengers, waiting as long as a normal train would, then moves on. When the train goes out of sight, it disappears, never to be seen again, and anyone (no matter who they are) unfortunate enough to be aboard is carried off to an eternal fate too dreadful to ponder.

For those left behind, there’s a big trauma party, with Violence and Unnatural Stress Checks given out as party favors.

Sample Major Effects
Make a traditional hobo mark and cause it to become true. Move a train full of people to another track anywhere in the world. Completely eliminate your own destiny, returning you to free will. Become a sentient subway train. Come back from the dead on the Long Black Train.