Self-starving magic, a technique begun by ascetics and revitalized by self-destructive youths.
WRITER’S NOTE: Anorexia’s a big, scary problem in the world, and I’m sure not intending to encourage it or trivialize it, but it’s a common, self-destructive and postmodern act so I thought I’d try making it a school. If you or someone you know may be suffering from an eating disorder, it’s something that should be taken seriously. Seek caring, non-judgemental help. Online resources can be found in many places, including this one. There are also a lot of online sites encouraging anorexia, and I won’t include any links for those, because they perpetuate a very real kind of suffering. Kids, just say no to ana.
Nickname: Anas (young school), Ascetics (old school)
Self-starvation magic had almost completely faded, before anorexia entered Western culture and revitalized it. The old concept of starving the body to feed the mind lost power as nutritional awareness and refrigeration grew, and the school of esuriomancy was basically powerless by 1960.
Anorexia changed that. As Western standards of attractiveness favored thinner and thinner models, people began dieting in an extreme way, and some people took this to a dangerous extreme. Teenage girls were especially predisposed to the notion, combining the comfort of intensive self-control with the beauty-obsessed self-loathing they absorbed from popular culture. The need for beauty and control, and the anxiety of the world’s weight combined to become more compelling than the hunger of instinct, the concern of loved ones, and the admonition of doctors. Later, in the nineties, the internet provided a community forum for anorexics to meet, support and encourage one another, and form a culture resistant to outside pressure.
On one such community, anorexia awoke the much older magical tradition of ascetic denial, and became esuriomancy. Thin Beaitful Mother, an online chat group for anorexic pagans, began exploring the magical potential of self-starvation, and they found the results very striking and tangible.
Even more surprised were the few remaining “old schoool” esuriomancers, who found that magic had returned to them. Many, including some students of the few dwindling formal schools of esuriomancy, had never known their magic could ever actually work. Suddenly it did.
The discovery of magic was surprising and terrifying to both schools, and many dropped out. Those who remained were crystallized by the positive results, and became more obsessed than ever.
Thin Beautiful Mother quickly became more serious and intense, abandoning most of their neo-pagan theories and focusing on tangible results. The group has been officially renamed TBM, all bulemics have been kicked out (since bulemia doesn’t seem to generate charges the same way), and new members are now screened, tested and trained. While most of the members haven’t met in person, they communicate online, and visit one another magically.
Neither school has come into contact, but both schools are vaguely aware of the possibility of the other. Young school esuriomancers occasionally mention or even research old self-starving shamans and ascetics, while old school esuriomancers look on young anorexics with approval and sometimes even posit that their growth has returned magic to esuriomancy.
Generate a minor charge: Go a day without eating.
Generate a significant change: Suffer a medical mishap due to excessive starvation.
Generate a major charge: So far, neither school has found a way of generating a major charge. Some old esuriomantic lessons refer to the secret of “speaking with the Horseman of Famine” to request a great favor, but this method is lost, if it ever worked at all.
Taboo: Eat. An esuriomancer who consumes anything besides plain water loses all charges.
Blast: The esuriomancy blast causes the victim’s stomach and digestive tract to clench up painfully. This can cause pain, nausea, vomiting, and internal bleeding. The significant charge crushes the digestive tract entirely, causing unmistakably unnatural damage and requiring very intensive and unusual surgery to repair.
Symbolic Tension: This is different for the two subschools. The young-school esuriomancer destroys her body for the sake of beauty. An old school esuriomancer has a much weaker symbolic tension: she releases her mind by starving her body.
Two Schools: An Esuriomancer who is female, under 30, and trained by TBM is a member of the Young School, and uses the Young School Minor Formulas (as well as Common Formulas). Others are Old School Esuriomancers, and use Old School and Common Formulas. Because of the weaker symbolic tension of the Old School, all Old School Esuriomancy rolls are at -15%.
Random Magic: Hunger and self-control. Old School random magic also deals with fanaticism, while young school random magic relates to concepts of beauty and attractiveness.
Starvation mechanics: Missing food for a single day causes -10% to all rolls (except Esuriomancy), due to dizziness, nausea, and weakness. Each additional day raises this penalty by 5%. Starving also requires a daily Mind roll (including penalties) to overcome hunger – on a failure, the Esuriomancer breaks down and eats. Eating removes these penalties at a rate of 10% per day. Those who spend more than half their time starving risk serious health problems, and must make a Body roll monthly; on a failure, take a sum of the dice roll as damage, due to malnutrition, heart problems, and muscle decay. These changes require serious medical attention (or magical alteration) to repair. Note that if you somehow bypass these rules, you won’t be earning any charges.
Charging Tips: See “Starvation mechanics” above. Most esuriomancers earn a minor charge a day most days, and get a chance for a significant charge every month. This can be very risky, though – someone who seeks charges indiscriminately often ends up horribly permanently damaged and unable to continue.
Starting Charges: None.
Common Minor Formulas
Gaze Into The Abyss
1 minor charge
Detect how hungry someone is, and their general dietary patterns and habits. You can also use this to detect another Esuriomancer, or, for that matter, a Gastromancer. Furthermore, you’re able to see intangible beings made from hunger, such as thaumovores, Esuriomancers using “Abandon the Flesh” and demons motivated by physical hunger.
Empty Inside
1 minor charge
A single target gains your hunger penalty for an hour, and will feel incredibly hungry, no matter how much they eat.
Indigestion
2 minor charges
This is the Esuriomancy minor blast.
Young School Minor Formulas
No, You’re the Freak!
3 minor charges.
Affects a single target. That target becomes, in everyone’s eyes, repulsively ugly. This even affects the subject’s own perceptions. Nothing about their appearance changes – it just somehow seems loathesome, and any flaws or distinctive characteristics become overbearingly painfully repulsive. This lasts a day.
Target Weight
5 minor charges
You gain a +30% bonus to any skills related to appearance or social influence, including Charm, Lie, and Distracting Physique, until you next violate taboo.
Old School Minor Formulas
Greater Cause
5 minor charges
Some stroke of luck, or change of heart, affects the world in a way you’d consider better. You must specify the cause you wish to forward. It won’t necessarily be a huge change, but something will change, you’ll know the result, and it will happen within a day of using this formula.
Rebirth of the Self
7 minor charges
You gain a +30% bonus to your Mind and Soul scores until you next violate taboo. This also increases your Esuriomancy skill, but doesn’t affect any other Mind or Soul skills.
Significant Formulas
Massive Purge
1 significant charge
This is the Esuriomancy Significant blast.
Abandon the Flesh
1 significant charge
Your body loses consciousness and your senses are temporarily transported to a place of your choice. You can give a very general description or a specific one, as long as you’d be able to immediately recognize what you want to observe. You can’t affect the place you watch, even with magic, and you can’t perceive what’s happening with your body. While you’re out, your body is very vulnerable to possession; you get no resistance at all. This formula lasts an hour, or until you end it voluntarily.
Unforgettable Me
1 significant charge
You gain +5% permanently to a Body or Soul skill related to beauty or social influence. This can’t take your skill above the appropriate attribute.
My Body, My Problem
1 significant charge
Heal the sum of the dice roll to yourself. You can’t repair starvation damage with this formula.
Vision Quest
1 significant charges
Travel alone for an hour, and you’ll start to see things. These are typically mystical messages about your current situation, and often takes the form of a conversation with a supernatural or totemic being, who gives instructions. This may be a way of receiving messages from the Invisible Clergy.
I’m feeling a little uncomfortable with the subject matter of the school, which is why I put a big disclaimer on it. I seem to be in some kind of submission-frenzy, probably because I’m on a business trip in a foreign land right now.
Nice. I especailly like the varient school idea.
I think the starvation mechanics are a bit off. After a couple of days, the penalties would stop, and even decrease. Also, the school is full of people who are acclimated to a state of hunger.
I’d let the penalty go up to 30, but after the third day it should go down by 5 each day (never below 10). At this point, they’ve hit a realatively stable point; no more mind rolls because their stomach has given up on telling them that they are hungry.
Once they’ve hit their starvation stride, it’s be easy to have them suffer on point or two of injury each day, possibly avoided by eating half an apple with some ex-lax.
At some point, the damage is permanent
Thanks for the comment, Menzoa. How about this?
Starvation mechanics: Missing food for a single day causes -10% to all rolls (except Esuriomancy), due to dizziness, nausea, and weakness. Each additional day raises this penalty by 5%. Starving also requires a daily Mind roll (including penalties) to overcome hunger – on a failure, the Esuriomancer breaks down and eats. Eating removes these penalties at a rate of 10% per day. After the starvation penalty reaches 30%, the stomach basically shuts down – the penalty stays at 30%, and no more Mind rolls need to be made. Instead, take 1 point of damage every day. Those who spend more than half their time starving risk serious health problems, and must make a Body roll monthly; on a failure, take a sum of the dice roll as damage, due to malnutrition, heart problems, and muscle decay. These changes require serious medical attention (or magical alteration) to repair. Note that if you somehow bypass these rules, you won’t be earning any charges.
Actually, the initial -10% is a bit much for just a single day in my experience (if there is a lot of other sources that say otherwise, then please ignore me) but anyone who’s an adept is obsessed adn experienced enough to be at least mildly ‘hardened’ to the first day, I kinda am, just giving them the -5% per day from day 1 until the penalty reaches 30% and then start taking a point of body, speed and health off every day after the 30%, with them having to make the body roll to avoid damage every 10 or 20 stat points lost, and a body roll being required when their stats hit 15% to avoid going into a coma.
I really like this idea (and when it comes down to it, it shouldn’t REALLY make you any more uncomfortable than destroying oneself through dipsomancy or narcoalchemy or what have you)… My one concern is that a permanent 5% bonus to a social skill for 1 significant charge seems much too powerful…
Granted, an esuriomancer can only gain so many significant charges before they kill themselves, but it still seems like it could be open to abuse. I’m new to UA – is there any precedent for magic permanently increasing skills or stats?
Also, from a physiological perspective, missing food for a day is not likely to impact a human being THAT badly… Some nutritionists (and the number seems to be increasing) believe fasting even as often as one full day per week is GOOD for you (it cleans your system, allows for complete digestion, etc.). I myself try to fast one day per month (solids, not liquids), and I’ve never taken a 5-10% penalty to MY skills 🙂
I know it sounds like it shouldn’t affect a person that much, but not eating for a day and knowing you will not be eating for at least a few more days affects your head quite a bit differently than just starving for 24 hours and then eating, it takes quite a bit more effort to do anything physical and your thoughts just derail for no apparent reason for instance. Also, any major body or speed skill check should probably carry the possibility that the esuriomancer will black out from the exertion after a couple of days, or possibly a body roll to see if they end up with a serious injury.
very, nice school overall. I especially love that TBM purged itself of all it’s bulemics (thank you! thank you! The Matinee’s on saturday!)
Some of the formula spells seem rather weak for the charge total, as well as the length of time required to charge up. Target Weight in particular. It gives a 30% bonus to social rolls for 5 minor charges. By the time you have the charges to cast it (assuming you dont break down a sig charge), you are already suffering a -30% penalty to ALL rolls. So… you starve for 5 days, to break even on social rolls, and have a -30% penalty on everything else? Thats a little too self defeating for even a UA school 😉 Should be one charge, or let you flip-flop, etc.
Very cool school, very fitting. Just needs some tweaks to the strengths.
Oh man, Ehren, you are so right. That should be fixed. It should probably only cost 3 minor charges, and it should negate all penalties as well.
MWZ, thanks for the advice on the starvation mechanic. That makes a lot of sense.
Thanks for hunger mechanics suggestions, too, nonsenseconsciousness. As far as formulas that permanently add to skills, they’re actually kind of common. Pornomancy has one. Epideromancy has one (with a very similar mechanic and charge cost). Narco-Alchemy has a bunch, but there’s actually a balance issue with that; any significant narco-Alchemist can raise their Soul to 99% within a year pretty reliably. I think a few other schools have ’em, too. I believe they’re always significant formulas, though.
Also, and I’m sure I will get punched for this one, but what about a “No Fat Chicks” spell, that perhaps allowed a nearby female target of your choice to be rendered invisible/unnoticed, provided they weighed more than the adept?
That’s a good one, Ehren. I’d probably make it random magic for the young school, just because I try to stick to 5 minor/5 significant formulas, but it definitely fits.
Thanks for the info… Turns out I should’ve known that all along 🙂
I think because adepts are so differently handled in UA than in any other system I’ve seen, I don’t yet understand the internal balance of taboo and whatnot.
I that that the Old School version could use some more formulas of its own, probably starting with a two-charge version of “Gaze into the Abyss” that allows the caster to see all unnatural and/or intangible entities. I remember reading somewhere that Ascetics believe that they are able to see the truth through their practices, and it seems appropriate.