What you say about the future can change the future.

Nickname: Heralds

To speak the future is to own it. A Prodromancer gains power by making predictions and announcements of the future. By announcing what is coming, the Prodromancer harvests the portents and excitement carried in the news, and, by talking about things that have not yet happened, the Prodromancer breaks into the future.

The future is a hazy and unclear thing. It can be predicted by applying magical power, applied experience or logical extrapolation, but never perfectly. A perfect pronouncement of the future is a lie, and it is this deception that gives power to the Prodromancer.

Prodromancy is not a particularly new school. Fortune-tellers have stumbled across it many times, and sometimes madmen find themselves doing it. However, it’s not a school that lends itself to organization, and there’s no formal society and few cases of teachers and students. Explaining what you’re doing spoils Prodromancy, and Prodromancers have little to gain from apprentices, so practitioners are typically self-taught. It’s also a fairly uncommon school. It’s an art best practiced by those who have another, more mundane, way of predicting the future. The weatherman, the stock analyst, the corporate spokesman, the reporter and the armchair commentator can become great heralds. These people, however, are unlikely to have the right combination of skeptical deception and reverence for false certainty that’s required in a Prodromancer; usually, the people with the right kind of mindset are actually huckster soothsayers, whose predictions are rarely accurate enough to gather and real power.

The power of this school is not in fortune-telling, but in speaking about the future. A Prodromancer can gain just as much power from announcing construction plans as he could from second-guessing the stock market. Some of the best heralds are those who only say things they’ve been told will happen. It’s not necessary to base your predictions of the future on prophesy or speculation; inside information works just fine. What’s required is taking the uncertainty of the future and claiming that it’s clear and definite.

A Prodromancer shares a lot in common with an Avatar of the Messenger. Both get their power by giving messages. Both have the ability to change the world by what they announce. Some Prodromancers, in fact, are also Messengers. But they are different: Prodromancy cares only for statements about the future, and Prodromancers are not bound to the truth. A Prodromancer can lie, make false predictions, and twist the truth without impunity, so long as they speak with confidence. In this way, a Prodromancer shares a good bit with the Demagogue who only speaks about the future. Prodromancer Demagogues are also not uncommon.

Entropomancers and Prodromancers often do not get along, because they affect fate in opposite ways. An Entropomancer opens themselves to chance, while a Prodromancer attempts to tie the future down with predictions and certainty. The presence of an Entropomancer can make Prodromancy go awry. Any attempt to use Prodromancy on or near an Entropomancer has a -10% penalty, but a Prodromancer can always sense an Entropomancer with a successful magic roll, without spending any charges. Entropomancers aren’t particularly effected by Prodromancers, though, nor can they sense them. Others who are devoted to chaotic destinies can have similar effects to a bodybag.

Gaining a Minor charge: Say something about the future that comes true. You must tell someone about a future event and they need to be paying attention. Once the event occurs, you gain the charge. Telling someone who already knows about the event doesn’t count, nor does something trivially obvious (“This pencil will fall when I drop it”.) You can only gain one minor charge per event, no matter how many people you tell.

Gaining a Significant charge: Announce a future event of importance, while acting in an official capacity. The event must seriously affect the life of your audience. Acting in an official capacity means you’ve been employed or appointed as the primary person responsible for making such an announcement. Again, you can’t gain charges from saying something your audience already knows, they need to pay attention, and you only gain one charge per event. You gain the charge once it comes true.

Gaining a Major Charge: Announce an Ascension into the Invisible Clergy, or an event of similar caliber. All the caveats for a minor charge apply.

Taboo: Two separate taboos limit the behavior of a Prodromancer. Firstly, a Prodromancer can never tell the whole story. Some key fact must be left out, or, at very least, the Prodromancer must not explain how the information was obtained. Every statement about the future must contain some mystery or deception. Second, a Prodromancer can never express uncertainty about the future. Hedge words like “if,” “maybe,” and “probably” are out of a herald’s vocabulary. The future must always be expressed as a clear thing, or not discussed at all.

Symbolic Tension: The Prodromancer relies on the future being both uncertain and absolute.

Random Magic Domain: Communication and prediction.

Blast: The Prodromancy blast takes the form of a curse. It doesn’t do any immediate damage – instead it puts suffering into the victim’s future. The next time the victim is attacked or otherwise subject to damage, they’ll take extra damage equal to the damage result (the sum of the digits for a minor blast, the dice result for a significant blast.) If the attack would otherwise fail, it hits anyway, causing the damage listed. This can lead to dramatic results – a friendly slug on the arm or a narrowly avoided bicycle accident could shatter the victim’s spine, for instance. The victim will be instinctively aware of this doomed future, though they might not believe it. A Prodromancy blast does not fade away, and the Prodromancer has no special ability to cancel it.

Charging Tips: A Prodromancer working in the right kind of profession can probably gain a minor charge or two every day, and maybe a significant charge every month or so. Without the right profession or lacking appropriate professional skills, a Prodromancer can still probably gain a minor charge a day, but significant charges aren’t possible.

Starting Charges: 4 minor charges.

Minor formulas

The Face of the Apocalypse
1 minor charge
Coincidental effects make your pronouncements more impressive and ominous. The wind might catch your clothes and hair dramatically. Lighting and thunder might punctuate your words. A crowd might go quiet as you speak, or perhaps the light might catch your face at just the right angle. In any case, any attempts to impress or frighten someone with your words gains a +20% shift for a single roll, no matter what you’re saying.

Bard’s Privilige
1 minor charge
It’s the traditional role of a soothsayer to be well-received. You can find a safe place to stay, a bed and a meal, with no cost and no questions asked. You’ll be able to reach the place within an hour, and you’ll know where it is.

Forewarned
2 minor charges
A quick form of combat precognition. This formula takes no time to use. You know what everyone else is doing this round before you decide what to do. You won’t know the results of their rolls, but you will know what they’re trying. This formula can also be used to Dodge an attack you didn’t see coming – you can use it without knowing you need it, even when you’re asleep or not expecting a fight.

Cast the Bones
3 minor charges
You need a specific willing client, and a traditional method of fortune telling with which you’re familiar. You gain glimpses, symbolic hints or uncertain predictions about the client’s future with relation to a particular question. This can provide potent information, but the uncertainty of the information means you need to put a spin on it or you’ll violate taboo.

You’ll Regret This
3 minor charges
This is the Prodromancy minor blast.

Significant formulas

Cheater’s Dice
1 significant charge
You need a specific willing client, and a traditional method of fortune telling with which you’re familiar. Perform the reading as usual, but you’re not predicting the future – you’re changing it for the worse. You can pronounce a future for the person and future events will try to make it come true. As with a divination, the future you create is hazy, uncertain and often symbolic in nature, even when you pronounce it in clear terms.

Pick a Winner
1 significant charge
Requires a large body of data. Ask a question, and destroy all of the data. If a single entry in the data you’re destroying is the correct answer to the question you’re asking, then it, and only it, will remain. You can get a phone number, for instance, by burning a phone book and looking at the scrap that’s remaining. If the right answer isn’t in there, though, all the data will go away. You only need to destroy a single copy of the data. Unlike a lot of Prodromancy formulas, this doesn’t have to be about the future – you can ask any question.

Emergency Broadcast System
2 significant charges
You send a simple telepathic message to someone you know, at any distance. The subject will hear the message in his head, and be aware that it’s coming from you. This is a simple, short, one-way communication. You can send the message to anyone who you know by name or nickname. The message must be a statement about the future. You can send a single message to multiple recipients at a cost of 1 significant charge per additional recipient.

Reply Hazy, Try Again
3 significant charges
Hide the future from discovery. Those who know about it will still know, but anyone who’s trying to find out about a future event that you’re concealing will fail unless they make a roll above your results on this formula. This can foil investigations, nullify divinations, and even turn important text invisible. Once the event occurs, the formula’s effects end.

Wail of the Ban-Sidhe
3 significant charges
This is the Prodromancy significant blast.

Prodromancy Major Effects
Change the target of a curse. Cause all divinations to give the same false answer. Give someone a curse or blessing of your choice. Rig an election. Change someone’s destiny.