Life’s a bitch and then you die.

Nickname: Whiners

Crime is on the rise, eleven-year old girls are dressing like whore, the polar ice caps are melting, there’s not enough oil to last the next fifty years and it’s all your fault. Mankind is a blight; the only animal that will consciously destroy its own environment, slaughter itself in mind-boggling numbers, and ensure its own eventual destruction. The apocalypse is coming, but who gives a shit? Life will be better when we’re all dead.

Whiners are everywhere. You probably know more than a few of them. That guy who won’t shut up about his divorce, the old woman clucking her tongue at kids these days, the granola-eating hippie with those insipid “Save the Whales” stickers plastering his car. But YOU, you’re different. You understand. The mundanes may bitch and moan but they still cling to the false hope that it can get better. The divorcee will remarry eventually, the old woman tries to reform all the little thugs and skanks se can see, the hippie recycles and picks up after himself.

What they fail to realize is that there’s no point. The world is painful and horrible, and there’s no way we can fix any of our myriad mistakes – it’s too late. Frankly, it’d be smarter to just speed things up, spread a little entropy, and get it all over with.

Focus:
Pessimancers focus on a particular ill plaguing humanity. This could be pollution, violence, the supernatural, corporate greed or what have you. The only rule is that the problem should be pervasive enough and entrenched enough that even normal, well-adjusted people will agree that it’s damn near impossible to solve. It’s possible to adopt more than one focus, but it’s rare – spending every waking hour worrying about ONE incurable ill is difficult enough.

Gain a minor charge:
Talk to (probably at) someone for at least 30 minutes about your focus; they must leave significantly more depressed than they came. Contribute in a minor way to the pervasiveness of your focus (knock over a dumpster if you’re upset about the environment, punch someone if you hate violence).

Gain a significant charge:
Make someone so miserable that it significantly changes their life. As a rule of thumb, your interaction with them should be powerful enough to trigger a Self or Helplessness stress check of a rank greater than 3. Examples include making someone quit a job they previously enjoyed, breaking apart a long-lasting friendship, or depressing someone badly enough to make them into pill-poppers. Make a significant contribution to your focus (build a factory if you’re an environmentalist, kill someone if violence bothers you).

Gain a major charge:
Make someone so miserable that they do something significantly against their character, such as commit suicide or murder. Make a major contribution to your focus (cause the next Exxon-Valdez spill, bulldoze an orphanage while the kids are trapped inside).

Taboo
A Pessimancer may not make a conscious effort to make the world a better place. If at any time he does something that weakens his focus (anything from picking up litter to feeding the poor to saving a life), he loses all stored charges. If this happens inadvertently, taboo is not violated. If, for example, a Pessimancer depresses someone to the point where they can no longer stand idly by and see harm done to the homeless, all is well. But if inspiration was the Pessimancer’s intent, it’s taboo.

In addition, Pessimancers may never take steps to remove a hardened or failed notch from their Self or Helplessness gauges.

Blast
A Pessimancer’s blast is linked directly to his focus. If he despairs that drugs are ravaging America, his target will decide to give heroin a shot and overdose. If he’s worried about crime, his target might be robbed and stabbed or shot. The blast will take effect as soon as it can logically do so – the next time the target goes to a party, for example, or visits the “bad part of town”.

Random Magic
Pessimancers’ random magic deals with despair and helplessness.

Symbolic Tension
The Pessimancer hates himself and the world around him, but no matter how much he complains, he cannot take the initiative to improve his lot in life.

Sample Minor Formulas

Nobody likes a Whiner
1 minor charge
This spell lasts for the space of a single social interaction (a board meeting, a date, a single phone call). The target of the spell believes he is acting normally, but listeners get a sense that his heart isn’t in it. All social skills are penalized by -10% while the spell is in effect.

Sigh
2 minor charges
Make the target sink into a funk during which he thinks about the most depressing thing about his life at the moment. The target will not do anything other than sit and mope unless he is confronted in some way (“Johnson! Your report was due half an hour ago. What are you doing?”). Otherwise, the spell lasts an hour.

Life’s a bitch…
2 minor charges
This is the school’s minor blast.

Catharsis
3 minor charges
If anybody in the Pessimancer’s vicinity is subject to something that would likely cause a Self or Helplessness stress check of any rank, he may cast this spell. The target collapses in a crying fit that is functionally identical to the paralysis response of a failed check, but receives no hardened or failed notches. The Pessimancer may use this spell on himself, but it’s a violation of taboo.

Your Life, Your Problem
5 minor charges
For a full day, the target of this spell will ignore all problems and pleas for help from other people, from “Mister, do you have any change?” to “HELP ME! THEY’RE GONNA KILL ME!” While the spell is active, the target does not have to make any stress checks. However, they will be retroactively subject to any checks that should have been made when the spell ends.

Sample Significant Formulas

Going Through the Motions
1 significant charge
The target is depressed for a full day. During this time, all skills receive a -15% shift. While the target remains capable of going through the day and doing whatever it is he is supposed to do, any attempt to draw him into conversation fails. The target will answer only in grunts, dismissive waves of the hand, and the occasional “Lemmelone”. Friends and family of the target can get through to him (friends meaning friends, not coworkers or acquaintances), but the only thing the target will talk about is his depression.

…and then you die
1 significant charge
This is the school’s significant blast.

Nobody Knows the Troubles I Have Seen
2 significant charges
The Pessimancer can force someone to live through his own darkest memory. The target of this spell must make a stress check at a rank equal to the number of hardened notches in a Pessimancer’s Self or Helplessness gauge (whichever is higher). If the target succeeds at the stress check, he gains a hardened notch as usual. If he fails, he sinks into a catatonic depression that lasts a week. During this time, he will eat only if food is put to his lips, and will not move for any reason.

Ashes in Your Mouth
3 significant charges
This nasty curse is a ticking time bomb of angst. The Pessimancer casts it on someone, with the stipulation that it will go off when the target performs an action that does significant good. The action must be specific, which usually means that the Pessimancer needs to have some knowledge of the target (one can assume that a police officer is likely to make a significant arrest at some point during their lives, but not everybody opens an orphanage). Within a week of the target carrying out the trigger action, an unintended dire consequence will manifest, and the target of the spell will hear about it and will know it was caused by his decision. For an extra 2 significant charges, the curse will harm something or someone personally and intimately linked to the target. The Pessimancer has no direct control of the dire consequence of this spell.

Example:
Bob the Judge convicts Joe the Pessimancer of Public Indecency. Angered, Joe the Pessimancer casts Ashes in Your Mouth, stipulating that Bob the Judge is in trouble the next time he acquits someone. Two weeks later, Steve the Criminal is on trial for murder, but it’s obvious that he’s being framed. Bob the Judge pronounces him “Not Guilty.” The next morning, Bob the Judge picks up the paper. Lo and behold, Steve the Criminal is on the front page – it turns out he went on a murder-suicide rampage in Sally the Judge’s Daughter’s office building, killing six people. If Joe the Pessimancer had spent an extra two charges, Sally the Judge’s Daughter would probably have been one of the victims.

What’s the Use?
5 significant charges
This spell can only be cast on people with a significant moral interest in the Pessimancer’s focus, and functions somewhat like a Room of Renunciation. The target is subjected to a Rank-10 Self check. Failure results in the target realizing that he simply cannot win, and that it’s pointless to try. Screw it. Might as well join them. It can change the most fervent eco-terrorist into a callous oil baron, and an avowed pacifist into a mass murderer. However, unlike Renunciation, What’s the Use is not permanent. This spell lasts for a year. When that year ends, the target realizes that he has betrayed his principles, and is subject to a high-level Self check (the exact rank depends on what exactly he did while under the influence of the spell). This spell cannot be used to charge up.

Sample Major Effects
Turn the most selfless of acts into a world-altering crisis. Speed up global warming. Make a speech powerful enough to turn any listener into a passionless sociopath.