Phone magic.

Nicknames: Phone Phreaks, Operators

You probably thought you were shy. People never seemed right to you while you were with them. Truth told, you’re not shy at all – quite the opposite. You love people. Need people.

You just can’t stand their presence.

Maybe you heard voices in your head, and wanted other people to join the chorus. Maybe it’s social anxiety keeping you from personal conversation, but leaving you desperate for people. Maybe you were isolated somehow, desperate for human contact, or maybe you’re ashamed of your face and your body.

Whatever it is, you take your social life straight up and pure. People and their words, nothing diluted with appearances or physical space.

After all, we’re all just voices floating in the void, calling out to one another, aren’t we?

Generate a Minor Charge: Have a voice conversation for four hours. This can be by phone, radio, or internet, but voices must be shared. You can have multiple conversations as long as there’s no break longer than five minutes the whole time.

Generate a Significant Charge: Change someone’s life over the phone. The change can be positive or negative, as long as it’s a big change, and you can only gain one such charge per person, ever.

Generate a Major Charge: Make a phone call that changes world history.

Taboo: Face-to-face contact of any kind. Being in the presence of another human being ruins everything, causing you to lose all charges. Even voice conferencing is too close.

Also, if you carry too much power, it can get out of your control. If you ever have more than three significant charges, the next time you speak with someone, you lose a significant charge and they gain one. Targets who are not adepts will then experience an unnatural phemomenon, similar to a Mak Attax special order.

Symbolic Tension: Other people become closer, yet further away. You can always talk to someone over the phone, but they’re not really real. You surround yourself with distant people.

Random Magic: Disembodiment, and transcending physical distance.

Blast: Usable only while you’re communicating with someone by electronic means. The machine on the other end gives off an enormous electrical charge, destroying the machine and causing harm to your victim.

Charging tips: Minor charges are a breeze. Just stay on the phone. An adept can easily get three or four a day. For significant charges, it’s a little more intense. An adept who works at it can probably gain one a day. You could get a job at a suicide hotline, but you’re likely to burn out fast if you do it too long, and you’ll probably max out on significant charges soon enough anyway.

Starting charges: 3 minor.

Minor Formulas

Peoplefinder
1 minor charge
This is identical to the Entropomancy significant ritual Long Distance Call, but it’s a lot easier for Telemancers – just one minor charge.

Technical Difficulties
1 minor charge
This is the Telemancy minor blast.

Private Eyes Are Watching You
1 minor charge
Lasts five minutes. You experience what the person on the other end of the line is experiencing, in terms of sight and sound only. You can still speak – and you’ll hear your own voice over the phone – but you are blind and deaf to the physical world on your end of the line. For an extra two minor charges, this lasts the duration of the phone call. You can only see through one set of eyes at a time – if you’re on a conference, you can use this multiple times, switching perspectives.

Thank You For Your Donation
4 minor charges
You transport an object from your own hand to the same hand of someone on the other side of the line, or vice versa. You can’t teleport an object too large to hold in one hand, and you can’t move anything into a hand that isn’t free. If the target is unwilling, you must roll under your Telemancy skill but over their Soul to use this formula successfully.

Phone Tap
3 minor charges
You listen in on any electronic phone conversation, using your own phone. This isn’t tracable, and ends when the phone call ends. You must be concentrating on one of the people on the call, by name or clear identity.

Significant Formulas

What Would Whoever Do?
2 significant charges
Hold tight for this one, because it’s a little strange. You enter a phone conversation with anyone and anything – dead people, fictional characters, animals, abstract concepts, furniture. The voice and personality will reflect your target, in a weird anthropomorphizing way, but WWWD doesn’t affect whatever you’re calling, it just makes a conversation. You could try calling a safe vault to ask it what’s inside, but nothing you could do could convince it to open. This can be a great source of information, but can’t change the world. It’s basically just a form of divination that you can bring other people in on. When calling dead people, you don’t get real ghosts, just a magically-created voice. You may not be able to get a real answer from the other guy – a vault, for instant, would take a lot of convincing. If you call a real, living person, you’ll get them, as per the Peoplefinder ritual, and, as a bonus, you’ll be able to understand their language.

Hotline
2 significant charges
Your voice carries healing in it – a voice of distant reason. You can cause someone to lose a hardened or failed notch from any Madness Meter by talking with them, calmly and supportively, over the phone. This requires about a minute’s worth of conversation.

You’re Breaking Up
1 significant charge
This is the Telemancy Significant Blast.

Conference You In
3 significant charges
Usable only when you’re talking on the phone with two people at once. You quickly and silently teleport one of them to a location directly behind another. Nobody can be looking at the source or destination at the moment this is used, or this formula fails (but no charges are spent)

Ghost In The Machine
3 significant charges
Preserve a willing person who’s about to die, in your phone. Only usable when someone’s on the verge of death, and on the phone with you. They must also be willing. The target dies, but his spirit becomes a voice in your phone. Any time you use the phone you were using while talking with the target, you’ll reach them. They’ll report a pleasant floating sensation. The phone cannot be used for normal purposes again, and the target won’t exist when you’re not on the phone. The target will not become a demon. However, calling the target costs $10 a minute (it’s billed as an international call to a small town in the Congo) and if your phone line is ever disabled or disconnected, the target truly dies.

Telemancy Major Effects
Cause an enemy to become disembodied into your phone. Call a real mystical being, or someone’s subconscious. Transport buildings over the phone lines.