Mourning brings inner strength and benign ghosts, except for the benign ghosts. Those are fake.

Nickname: Mourners

It is likely that Favilomancy is the oldest surviving school of magic. The objective falsehood of the school’s basic principle – that the ghosts of loved ones watch over those who keep their faith – is no impediment. If anything, it helps keep this magic alive in the modern day.

The first Favilomancers were ancestor-worshipping shamans. They loved their fathers and mothers who passed on, and they saw them and took wisdom from them. They spoke with the dead and learned from them and grew strong. They surrounded themselves with things associated with death, but kept themselves vital in it.

Today, most Favilomancers don’t know they’re adepts, and are not involved with the Occult Underground in any way. They see themselves as haunted, or, more likely, watched over, by the ghosts of those they love. They learn the school on their own, or follow it by instinct. Most aren’t even consciously aware of it when they use their magic. Many only see one ghost in their entire life – the one ghost that guides them. Their conventional theories, unverifiable evidence, and uncynical attitudes draw them to the occult mainstream.

The name “Favilomancy” was coined by Maria Delatorre, a professor of anthropology at the University of Mexico City, Occult Underground theorist, and Favilomancer duke. Maria Delatorre has researched and met a few other Favilomancers.

Maria is well aware of demons, what they are and what they do. She maintains that Favilomancy deals with a different class of entities, which she refers to as eidolons. The eidolon represents only the noblest parts of the soul, which after death are cleansed of selfish desire and exist for love, protection and weal. When confronted with the fact that only Favilomancers seem to encounter such beings, she happily announces that this is a sign of the greater enlightenment of Favilomancers. These conversations are rarely productive, and most people who associate with Maria have learned to let the subject be. Those who propose that the so-called eidolon is a manifestation of the Favilomancer’s own best intentions are confronted by Maria with the most fervor.

The eidolon is the center of Favilomancy, and many Favilomancy formulas center around the eidolon. The eidolon is a somewhat idealized form of a dead loved one, which seems to be always in a state of loving peace. Some Favilomancers see many different eidolons, but some see only one – usually the first loved one the Favilomancer ever mourned.

In truth, eidolons are completely illusory. They are incarnations of the Favilomancer’s magic. They’re delusions, but a Favilomancer who stops lying to himself about them will lose all power.

Intrinsic to the school’s power is its sincerity. The Favilomancer must love those who are lost, must regret this loss, and must believe that real ghosts visit her. Insincere worship, death without regret, and grieving without pain are powerless to a Favilomancer.

Favilomancers are simultaneously more and less vulnerable to real demons. They’re more vulnerable because they believe in ghosts and trust them implicitly, and cannot dishonor or malign them. They’re also a lot less vulnerable, however, because they have many ways to detect and protect themselves from possession and other malign magic.

Generate a minor charge: Pray or give homage at the gravesite to a dead loved one, or a shrine devoted to the dead loved one. This can be a formal prayer or a quiet conversation, but needs to last at least two hours.

Generate a significant charge: Attend the first burial ceremony, memorial, cremation or wake for a loved one. A loved one must be someone you knew personally and truly loved. It could be a family member, a lover, a close friend, or a mentor, as long as you had an extended and reciprocated personal relationship.

Generate a major charge: Die. If you die while attempting a major effect, you can spend the major charge with your final thought.

Random magic: Inspiration and Nobility. The school of Favilomancy is all about making the mourner a better person through memories of those they lost. Under no circumstances can Favilomancy genuinely interact with demons or the dead.

Taboo: A Favilomancer cannot speak ill of any dead person, defile anything dedicated to the dead, or otherwise dishonor anyone who has died, no matter who it may be.

Blast: Favilomancy does not have a blast.

Symbolic Tension: Maria Delatorre would say that the tension of the school is that through grieving and loss, the Favilomancer’s soul is lifted up and filled. As she says, “The blossom of life grows strongest in the soil of death.” In fact, it’s slightly less rosy: Favilomancers are devoted to other people, but in fact it’s all about themselves. Their self-obsession is transferred onto loved ones, and the most martyred Favilomancer is the most self-centered.

Charging Tips: Any Favilomancer can easily gain two charges per day. No true Favilomancer would want to gain a significant charge.

Starting charges: 4 minor

Minor formulas

Guiding Light
2 minor charges
One of your eidolons visits you with advice. You will physically see and hear the eidolon, but no one else will. He or she will tell you something useful or important about yourself. It may be a useful talent or resource you’ve forgotten, a curse on you that you didn’t know about, an unresolved problem you’ve forgotten, and so on, but it will only be about you. This visitation lasts a few seconds at most. Sometimes, the answers may be enigmatic, and sometimes the eidolon will have nothing to offer but a sympathetic smile. The GM is encouraged to use this as a way to move the plot forward, but not to sidestep problem solving. Using this formula repeatedly for the same situation may be a sign of doubting the advice of the eidolon, which could violate taboo.

Talisman
1 minor charge
Your eidolon protects you. The next undesirable mystical effect against you suffers a -15% shift. This lasts a day, and you can have only one of these up at a time. You won’t necessarily know when it takes effect, though

Inspiration
2 minor charges
Your optimistic enthusiasm and good hope give you a +10% shift to any skill you possess above the default level the next time you roll.

Know Thyself
2 minor charges
You fall asleep comfortably, and have pleasant dreams spending time with an eidolon. This negates any magic that would interfere with your pleasant sleep, and advice from the eidolon gives you a hunch when you wake.

Deliver Me
3 minor charges
You can only use this formula when you’re in danger of some kind. You catch fleeting glimpses of your eidolon beckoning you and moving away from you. If you follow, you’ll reach a safe place. This might be a tree which the bear chasing you can’t climb, the house of a lonely old man who will feed and shelter you when there’s an APB out for you, or just a door to duck through where your ex-wife can’t find you. The place will be safe until you leave it, but this formula doesn’t solve problems – it just gives you a safe spot to go for a while.

Rightful Heir
3 minor charges
You can draw upon the contacts or status of a departed loved one. To do so, you need to verbally explain your relationship to the departed, and explain why the status falls upon you. This allows you to use this contact once. For instance, you could declare, “My uncle was a detective in this office – can you help me carry on his work by letting me look at your files?” Or, perhaps, “You owe Big Mike a favor. We were lovers once, Big Mike and I, back when he was still around, so that favor goes to me.” Or even “My father was a Senator here, and it’s my honor to cast this final vote in his name.” You can only claim as much status as the departed had – so if, in the example above, the person who owed Big Mike a favor was going to weasel out on Big Mike, they’ll do the same to you.

Significant formulas

This Too Will Pass
1 significant charge
An eidolon visits you at length, talking with you about your life, offering suggestions, and comforting you. Afterward, you can remove a single Hardened or Failed notch from any Madness Meter.

Wind Beneath My Wings
1 significant charge
You can use your Favilomancy score (including flip-flopping results) to replace any roll for situations requiring endurance, effort, ferocity, or raw strength. You could use this to stay up all night, run quickly, wrestle someone down, scream intimidatingly, or withstand torture, but not for anything requiring accuracy, knowledge or finesse.

Come to Me in My Time of Darkness
1 significant charge
You can remove a negative magic effect or curse that’s affecting you, if you know what it is. Your Favilomancy roll must be higher than the effect roll, or, if there was no roll, the skill level of the effect.

Personal Saint
4 significant charges
Archetypes draw strength from peoples’ belief in them. Everyone believes in the specialness and power of the role of a mother, or a merchant, or a messanger. You can draw upon the inspiration of someone who filled such a role in your own life before they passed on, whether or not they were an actualy Avatar. In game terms, you can use the first-level channel of any Avatar which accurately describes a departed loved one, for a single use, at a level equal to your Favilomancy score. You must be able to understand what you’re trying to do, even if you can’t articulate the concept of the Invisible Clergy.

Major Effects
Make yourself, or a dead loved one posthumously famous. Perform a single act of superhuman strength. Learn a single major secret about the world and your place in it. Remove all your own Hardened and Failed notches and attain true peace.