Key Magic
The world is bigger than it seems, but most of it is forbidden. Every block you walk has buildings and spaces kept special and reserved. Houses. Cars. Apartments. Mailboxes. So much space is locked up, available only to special people.
You aim to be as special as possible. You seek to open the world back up, but only for you.
The secret to that power is keys. Bits of metal and plastic that make us who we are. In the modern world, humans are a collection of possessions, and the world is divided up into fiefdoms of who can own what.
The more keys you get, the closer you are to becoming the ruler of all dominion.
Generate a Minor Charge: Get a key or passcard to some new restricted area or object. This could be a set of car keys, an apartment or office key, or even a lockbox key if something worthwhile is in the lockbox. It doesn’t matter if you got the key legitimately or not, and you don’t even have to use it. The key must be a physical object that lets you bypass physical barriers – passcodes and backstage passes won’t work. Getting new copies of keys you already has won’t earn new charges, either.
Generate a Significant Charge: Acquire a key to a coveted location. This has to be a place or thing that’s well-protected, valuable, and specifically desired by more than a dozen people.
Generate a Major Charge: Cleidomancers cannot gain major charges.
Taboo: Give away any key. Physical possession is what counts here. You can’t lend out a key, leave a key out of your arm’s reach of your keys, or let someone else touch a key. You can’t even return a key you borrowed from someone else.
Also, you must treat all keys with reverence. Keeping them on a chain is fine, but using a key to open a package, insulting a key, or allowing any a key to be damaged breaks taboo.
Random Magic: Access and identity.
Symbolic Tension: Keys are external possessions, but they convey a social status of identity and membership.
Blast: The Cleidomancy blast opens up a hole in the target. This blast also works equally well on objects.
Charging Tips: You can probably get a charge or two every week, by renting storage space, requesting access to work areas, and so on. Janitors, postal carriers and facility managers can get a lot more – a charge a day is pretty likely. Jail and bank guards could probably get a significant charge every month or two.
Starting Charges: 4 minor
Minor formulas
Let’s Get Past This
1 minor charge
The most obvious Cleidomancy formula. You can open any kind of door or lock.
Swordfish
2 minor charges
Successfully guess any password. If there’s a single word (or combination of characters) that’ll get you what you want, you’ll say it. If you’re at a keyboard, you’ll type it too. This is usually a password, but it can be used for other situations. For instance, if someone asks “Who sent you?” looking for a good reference, you might blurt out a trusted contact’s name, like “Eponymous!” though you won’t know anything more than what you’ve just said. If the required response is more than one word (or involves any spaces, for a written password) you won’t say a thing and your charges are wasted.
Lockdown
2 minor charges
A single door (or hinge, or compartment) becomes impossible to open for the next hour. Destroying the door will still do the job, but even magic won’t make it open.
Window to the Soul
3 minor charges
This is the Cleidomancy minor blast.
Security System
5 minor charges
Hold an object in left hand (the “Key”), and touch an object with your right hand (the “Treasure”). The Treasure can’t be used by anyone unless they’re holding the Key. It will just remain inert, or so clumsy it’s impossible to use. You can even stop artifacts from functioning. Only intentional triggered uses are stopped – you could prevent a car from starting or a sword from swinging, but you couldn’t stop a brick of uranium from causing cancer. The effects last a day.
Significant Formula
New Grounds
1 significant charge
Open a locked door you’ve never opened or passed through. Instead of the usual destination, the door will open into Otherspace. Specifically, it’ll be a windowless furnished apartment, with a simple kitchen and normal appliances. Anyone who enters with you will come along, but once the door closes, those on the outside can’t get in. Anyone who opens the door from the Otherspace will open the portal again, and anyone can enter or leave as usual. When the last person leaves, the apartment is gone for good. Each time this formula is used, it goes to a new apartment. The apartment gets water and electricity from an unknown source, but there’s no phone, radio or television access.
Total Lockdown
1 significant charges
A curse for a single victim withing line of sight. For the next day, anything with a lock within the target’s reach will lock immediately, and can’t be unlocked while the target is nearby.
Open Your Heart To Me
2 significant charges
This is the Cleidomancy significant blast. The victim’s ribcage opens, causing hideous physical damage. Objects are ripped open.
Skeleton Key
2 significant charges
Touch a key to a dead body. All your possessions will change to identify you as that person. Your keys will unlock the body’s car and house, your driver’s license has your picture but the body’s name, and your credit card will access the body’s account. You won’t be remembered any differently by people, though. You can’t unlock anything you own, though, or access your own accounts with any objects. This formula ends when the Skeleton Key is destroyed or used on its original lock.
Lockness Monster
5 significant charges
This puts a terrible trap on a single door you touch. The next time the door is opened, it’ll open into a void-like Otherspace. A tentacle will lash out from the other side and attempt to drag the nearest person back into the Void. The tentacle has a Body, Speed, Initiative and Struggle score equal to whatever you got on your Cleidomancy roll, is mindless, and automatically dodges anything that can be dodged. If the tentacle drags someone inside, the door closes and the victim is gone forever. (If anyone else enters, they’re gone too.) Once the door closes, the formula ends.
You know… I like this. I like this a lot! I haven’t seen such a well worked-out (and symbolic tensionly-correct) school in months.
The only thing I don’t like is about the major charges. How about gaining a REALLY important key? Like, one they arm nukes with. Oh well. I suppose the lack of majors is because of digital passwords taking over the place of keys, so I guess it’s logical.
I agree with Hatchet, this is a pretty good school. There’s a couple minor issues I have with the formula spells. First, Security System seems a bit broad: how can you make a knife ‘stop working?’ Does it simply cease to cut anything? I’d reccomend either restricting it to objects with moving parts or provide a more detailed explanation of exactly how this works. New Grounds seems a little cheap for what it does. Two or three Sigs would be more appropriate. Other than that, awesome. This is something I’d definately use in a game I was running.
I agree with Hatchet, this is a pretty good school. There’s a couple minor issues I have with the formula spells. First, Security System seems a bit broad: how can you make a knife ‘stop working?’ Does it simply cease to cut anything? I’d reccomend either restricting it to objects with moving parts or provide a more detailed explanation of exactly how this works. New Grounds seems a little cheap for what it does. Two or three Sigs would be more appropriate. Other than that, awesome. This is something I’d definately use in a game I was running.
“Becomes so clumsy it’s impossible to use”
I imagine the knife would keep slipping out of their hands or they’d keep grabbing/knicking themselves on the blade.
One thing I don’t really like is the ease of the otherspaces. I DO think it should be able to screw around with otherspaces SOMEHOW, but it seems too easy as is.
Yeah, New Grounds would make more sense as a 2 or 3 sig charge formula. I wanted to have at least two formulas that cost a single sig.
If New Grounds cost more, I’d probably reduce Skeleton Key to a single charge. It’s actually got enough limitations that I think that’d work.
Thanks for feedback!
This brings to mind the little asian dude from the 3rd Matrix flick with all the keys.
I really, really like this one, I may have to use it.
I’ll add myself to the chorus of kudos. I too thought that New Grounds was a little overpowered, but I added the rule that the Otherspace only lasted a number of hours equal to the casting roll. That, coupled with the fact that you can never use the same door twice, and the fact that you can’t use magickal means to open the lock, makes it worth about a significant charge.
Qualia, are you using this school in actual play? If so, how’s it working out?
While it seems appropriate for Majors not to work for the reasons Hatchet mentioned, I’m going to take a whack at it anyway.
Generate a Major Charge: Acquire a key to, and be seen as the legitimate owner of, something that could directly affect at least five million people (The White House or a nuclear missile silo might work) OR acquire the keys to the homes of everybody in a neighborhood of at least five thousand people.
Major Effects: Create a permanent Skeleton Key, capable of opening any lock, anywhere. Create a permanent palatial New Grounds for yourself.
Major Effects (ext.): Open your mind. Open your heart. Or open those around you.
Lock something forever… including certain limited abstracts like “Jenny’s lips” as well as the normal “old chest” and “spoooooky door” (except to you… which would be a great quest as various folk go questing for X but need person Y to open it… unfortunately, person Y is dead and just throwing the corpse at the door doesn’t seem to work, until someone figures out that maybe a key made of their bones might work… and onward and grislier)
Open a door that leads into any Otherspace you’re aware of (including being the only way out of many of the rooms of the House of Renunciation without being Renunciated).
I’d also add, for the taboo, “No B&E. This is as disrespectful as anything else one can do to a key as it completely disregards the key’s very essence” and so on in that trend.
I’m unsure what B&D is. Am I safe in assuming it’s not for kids?
B&E = Breaking and Entering.
B&D (“bondage and discipline”) is different from B&E (“breaking and entering.”)
The thing about B&E as a taboo is that at least one formulas breaks it.
Much less unsavory than what I expected. While the taboo fits perfectly, it may, depending on one’s definition of “breaking and entering,” weaken the school so dramatically as to render it virtually useless.
I would say “forced entry” : forced entry, broken windows, going down the chimney, etc.
As opposed to “illegal entry”
Also, the magic is sort of there for that. It doesn’t break the “B&E” taboo because you’re still using a key, just not the physical part of it.