A blade-obsessed school for barbers and surgeons everywhere.

Nickname: Slashers

You know what it means to cut.

It is a ritual of tremendous power. People cut their hair, their food, their wood, without knowing the perfect bliss you know.

The usefulness of the blade comes to with a price: the blade is a weapon as much as a tool, and the only difference between work and mayhem is the steady hand of the wielder.

You separate the world when you cut. This thing is desirable, this thing is waste. This person is a friend, this person is an enemy. This creature will live, and this creature will die.

And so you divide the world.

Generate a Minor Charge: Cause at least 3 damage to a person using a blade. Cutting yourself counts.

Generate a Significant Charge: Kill a person with a blade.

Generate a Major Charge: Kill yourself with a blade. You can use the charge in your dying moments.

Taboo: The destruction you cause must be tempered with life. If you do any damage at all to anyone, you must use a blade that you have used on the same day to help a person, non-violently. You could attack someone with a scalpel used for surgery, a table saw used to help build a house, or a razor used for shaving, for instance. If you successfully attack someone unarmed, or with anything but a bladed weapon used on the same day as a tool, you immediately lose all charges.

Symbolic Tension: Blades are dangerous tools of destruction, but essential to modern living.

Blast: Aichomancy’s blast is powerful, but not spectacular. The Aichomancy blast is a normal attack using a bladed weapon, either thrown or up close. Use Aichomancy skill instead of any other skill, and flip-flop results. Even blades which are normally very hard to use in combat will cause damage – you could swing a table-saw or throw scissors for tremendous results. This attack can’t be dodged, but will not cause an Unnatural Stress check.

Random Magic: Precision. Aichomancy keeps your hand steady and produces exact results.

Charging Tips: Going on a charge-gathering spree is likely to land you in jail, but there are a few ways to gather minor charges legally, including the medical profession, self-cutting or consentual blade play. A trauma surgeon could earn three or four minor charges a day, while some cutting for kicks can probably only earn two or three a week. Most aichomancers work in some sort of related profession (lumber, construction, hairdressing, or frame-making, for instance) and can probably get an extra minor charge every month or two from industrial accidents. Most aichomancy charges are generated during play.

Starting Charges: 6 minor

Minor Formulas

Master of the Blade
1 minor charge
Add 20% to a noncombat skill that uses blades. This lasts for a single roll. For an extra charge, you can give someone else the bonus.

Steady Hand
1 minor charge
You can take any single-round action with as much precision as you could normally muster with ten minutes of measuring and preparation. You could splash exactly 1.2 liters of water, grab a hundred and five pebbles from a pile, or pull a tooth safely in seconds. This won’t give you a bonus to any roll – it just reduces the amount of time needed to do something.

Unerring Strike
2 minor charges
This is the aichomancy minor blast. It does damage equal to the sum of the dice, plus any bonuses for the weapon used.

Cut to the Chase
2 minor charges
A target of your choice must make precise, unambiguous statements for the next hour. They can’t give a hint, muddy answer, half-truth or equivocation. Bald-faced lies or confessions of ignorance are just fine, though.

Sharpshooter
3 minor charges
This is the combat version of Steady Hand. You can make a single attack roll without penalties for size, distance, position, cover or movement. This can be applied to throwing something or shooting a gun, but if you hit a person, you will violate your taboo.

Significant Formulas

Staring Daggers
1 significant charge
Your expression burns with intensity. For the next ten minutes, anyone who looks into your eyes must make a Rank 5 Violence check.

Stab-o-mancy
1 significant charge
Aichomancers all have different names for this formula, but the Occult Underground has taken up this frustratingly unglamorous name for the Aichomancy significant blast. Stab-o-mancy does damage equal to the dice result.

Proper Artist With a Knife
1 significant charge
Use Achiomancy in place of any noncombat skill related to blade use, such as hairstyling, old-style film-editing, surgery, or tree-trimming. This knowledge applies even to the parts of the skill that don’t relate to blade use, as long as a blade is involved in the process somehow. Lasts for a single roll.

Hunter’s Charm
1 significant charge
Hold a blade and name someone who caused you at least one point of damage, directly or indirectly. For the next three hours, the blade will, when held loosely, tend to point directly at the target.

Spotless!
1 significant charge
Only usable when you’re completely alone. Clean up an area for a minute or two, and you’ll make the place perfectly spotless and sterile. A useful way to prepare a makeshift operating room, or to remove evidence of a crime.

Major Effects
Become a demon, housed within your blade. Kill a single person at any range. Know the answer to any question, and shout it out with your dying gasp. Grant an ally a skill of your choice. Sever a magical connection.

What You’ve Heard
The Ukiah Woodcutter was a mass murderer in the forests of Northern California. He managed to kill four victims, avoiding the police with incredible skill, before the Sleepers began to worry that he might be an adept of some kind. He was caught in a minor car accident with the Sleepers, violating taboo, then confessed everything at gunpoint and was summarily dispatched. This most famous of Aichomancers has given the school a very negative reputation — nearly as bad as Thanatomancy.