A premodern school of magic that barely works.
Nickname: The school is one that has fallen out of favor and power. THose few who know about the school are most likely to appeal to crude Freudianism if asked for nicknames.
These days, the school of rhabdomancy is dead, but once it was a grand form of magic. With the staff as a symbol (of a symbol of male potence), the Rhabdomancer could perform a wide variety of magical abilities, extending the natural utility of tools and heightening his status with an impressive scepter. Today, a magician who wanders about bragging about his rod of power is likely to earn giggles more than respect, and the whole school is embarassing and ridiculous. Ancient texts describing the secrets of the school are sometimes treated as joking gifts or worthless items to dupe the gullible. Anyone obsessed enough to continue the teachings of the school will find that, while there is some small hint of magic left in rhabdomancy, it’s hardly a trickle. The most unfortunate are those who knows of magic only because of rhabdomancy – they know reality can be broken, but it’s incredibly difficult, demanding and unreliable for them, hardly worth the effort.
Note on Charges: All rhabdomancy charges are stored in a particular rod, which must be grasped firmly in one hand while the charges are spent. A rhabdomancer cannot use more than one rod at the same time. Destroying the rod destroys all charges within.
Note on Obsolescence: The concept of a wizard’s staff and a king’s sceptre as tools of power is no longer a powerful concept, and Rhabdomancy as a school is obsolete. It barely works anymore. All Rhabdomancy rolls are made with a -45% penalty, and Rhabdomancy charges are much, much harder to gain now than they ever were. When Rhabdomancy was strong, there was no penalty, and charge generation was much easier – 3 hours for a minor charge, and a personally important item of some kind for a significant charge, and a historically important item for a major charge.
Generate a Minor Charge: Spend three days modifying, decorating, carving or shaping a rod. This must be some kind of long slender object which can be held in one hand. You must work at least eight hours each day, and undertake no other serious projects while doing so. The rod can be a tool of some other kind as well: a spear, a telescope, a long knife, or a pen, for instance.
Generate a Significant Charge: Spend three days modifying, decorating, carving or shaping a famous and historically important rod.
Generate a Major Charge: This just doesn’t happen any more.
Taboo: Tool use. A Rhabdomancer loses all charges if they use any tool which they have not created themselves by hand. He can use raw materials, or objects he’s made, but anything that’s been worked by a human besides the Rhabdomancer is forbidden to use.
Symbolic Tension: That’s part of the problem. The symbolic tension of the rhabdomancer just isn’t important any more. It was something about how the staff is more important as a symbol of power and magic than it is a real physical tool, but these days, the real symbols of power aren’t scepters and magic wands.
Blast: The rhabdomancer’s rod leaps from his hand and strikes the victim. if any charges remain within the rod, it then flies back into the rhabdomancer’s hand.
Random Magic: Tool use and status. However, Rhabdomancers can no longer use random effects, and can only use the nine remaining functional formulas.
Charging Tips: You’ve picked the wrong school, or, at least, the wrong century.
Starting Charges: 4 minor charges, distributed among any number of rods.
Minor Formulas
Dowsing
1 or more minor charges
The definitive rhabdomancy ritual. Specify something you want to find. Very common things, like water or wood, cost one charge. Extremely rare items can cost up to five minor charges, and unique items cost six charges. The rod will, if held loosely, point directly toward the nearest significant example of what you’re trying to find for the next hour.
Staff of Mastery
1 minor charge
The next attempt to use the rod you hold as a tool or weapon gains a bonus of +10% to the relevent skill roll.
Column of Helios
1 minor charge
Creates a light trail where the rod moves, or a trail of light behind the rod. This lasts a minute, and is bright enough to read by. Useful for impressing people, or, in a pinch, as a replacement for a flashlight.
Arrow of Cruelty
2 minor charges
This is the Rhabdomancy minor blast. Unlike most blasts, it can be dodged.
Scepter of Imperial Might
4 minor charges
Hold your rod aloft. Everyone nearby will immediately notice you and pay attention to you.
Significant Formulas
Shadow of Cadeucus
1 signficant charge
Heal someone by touching with staff. This is identical to the Epideromancy formula Regeneration.
Spear of Destruction
2 significant charges
This is the Rhabdomancy minor blast. Unlike most blasts, it can be dodged.
Standard of Glory
3 significant charges
When the rod is held aloft, any allies who can see it gain a bonus of +10% to actions related to the use of rodlike tools. This effect lasts ten minutes, or until the rod is lowered, and is generally used with large staves or flagpoles.
Plant the World-Tree
3 significant charges
This formula used to create a tree of choice which would instantly grow to full size, in a shape of the rhabdomancer’s choice. Now? Now this formula does nothing. It’s totally powerless, a waste of charges.
The Wand Now Broken
5 significant charges
Snap the wand you’re using in two. All other rodlike tools within line of sight are similarly shattered. This formula used to allow the caster to control which items break, but now it just breaks everything.
What You’ve Heard
Jim Pulhooley, who insists on being called by his “mystery name” of Gnaius Archaeorhabdos, is a descendent of a family line of rhabdomancers who held great power in Ireland during the Renaissance. He rediscovered the secrets of the school in his youth, and has managed to amaze himself by occasionally getting the power to work. Upon demonstrating his powers publically and announcing a grand age of magic, he was discovered by Sleepers, who publically humiliated him and privately instructed him to keep his powers a secret. Soon after, Pulhooley was scouted by TNI, who determined he wasn’t worth recruiting. In the meantime, he’s made occasional contact with other people in the Occult Underground, all of whom laugh at him behind his back. He’s now taking classes to learn to make his own rifle from scratch, in an effort to revitalize this school into a school of weapon fetishization, but results so far have been pessimistic.
The UA rulebook makes references to schools of magic which used to work and have faded from power since. PoMoMa included rules about Cryptomancy fading from power, but I wanted to play with the idea of a school which is much further along the path to irrelevence. So I created this as an example of a school that has lost power.
That and I couldn’t get the word “rhabdomancy” out of my head whenever I tried thinking of new schools.
Where do you come up with the school names? what language is the -omancy suffix from (greek or latin)?
Basic questions out of the way…
The only trouble with the school is that the staff that the school focuses on is only not a useful tool if the person wielding the staff isn’t a Rhabdomancer, but as soon as Rhabdomancer uses and charges the staff it becomes a useful tool, and the tension falls off and so the staff becomes a useless tool again and the Rhabdomancer can charge up, at which point the tension falls off again…
Which IS pardoxical I suppose but still…
Somehow I get an image of some of these adapts attempting to get a major charge (And get their school some relevance) with the biggest symbolic staff of all…the ICBM
I really dunno about the charging structure of this, I have some trouble seing the ancient mages of yore sitting fondling their staff all day long. also: carving a historically important rod? I mean: what?-) Maybe a couple of staff-based rituals instead of this entire school, one for storing charges (good for when you just have to break taboo for a while), one for atuneing a staff to yourself (with a small bonus for casting spells through it and a hefty penalty for casting without it) and maybe one or two others. I really like what you have done with the “dying school” concept, and maybe I shouldn’t complain about a dying school acting strangely… I like Jim Pulhooley!
Carving a historically important rod would be, say, getting hold of the Royal Sceptre of the Holy Roman Empire (or the first lightning rod invented, or the umbrella from the movie Mary Poppins, or the Spear of Longinus) and carving runes in it, tying feathers onto it, and so forth.
As far as the symbolic tension goes, it’s intentionally not very good. I was trying to work out a symbolic tension that isn’t really powerful anymore. The idea of a temporal tool used for ritual purposes seems like it would have once been wasteful and strange, but it’s kind of unsurprising now.
A lot of what I wanted to do was kind of chart what a school might look like just before it stops working, and propose a school that’s in that point of transition, since the point of transition must exist.
I’m interested in the idea of how a dead school would instead become a set of rituals. Maybe I’ll try to make something that’s in transition between a school and a set of rituals.
Rhabdomancy is actually a real word. Typically, it refers to using sticks for dowsing:
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=rhabdomancy
Typically, I look for a suitably impressive Latin or Greek word that means something like what I want the school to do, turn it into something like a prefix, and stick “-mancy” at the end. Greek is better than Latin, though. There’s canonical examples of both – most are Greek, but there are exceptions. Amoromancy, annihilomancy, irascinmancy, videomancy, urbanomancy and mechanomancy all have Latin roots. (Mechanomancy could also be a Greek root – the Latin word “mechanicus” comes from the Greek “mekhanikos” – but it’s more similar to the Latin word.)
A Germanic root would probably sound totally wrong.
Of course, I always wonder how terminology becomes homogenized in the Occult Underground, besides the convenient out-of-game abstraction.
There could be a really fun campaign just trying to get Rhabdomancy back into the human mindset.
Well-written and engaging; thanks again! 🙂