Cat magic. Another minor school.
They’re lazy but hyperactive, feral but mysterious – welcome parasites and apathetic companions. Everyone knows that cats are magical, but most people can’t do anything about it.
Well, you can. You steal their secrets, and trick them with love. You gather up their playful cruelty and their casual affection into yourself, and then you unleash it.
You don’t much like people, but you crave their affection while resenting their laws. Instead, you’re drawn to forbidden things: violence, hidden spaces, the night and mysteries.
Generate a minor charge: Spend three hours petting and playing with a cat.
Ailuromancy does not generate significant or major charges.
Taboo: An ailuromancer blends affection with cruelty, and cannot have one without another. If an ailuromancy fails to be cruel to a friend or lover, or fails to be affectionate with an enemy, she loses all charges. An ailuromancy must always couple affection with cruelty, though not necessarily in equal measures.
Blast: The ailuromancer grows claws for a long enough to slash the target. No Struggle roll is required, but the victim must be close enough to touch.
Symbolic Tension: Cats are beloved companions and callous killers, and don’t realy care about the distinction.
Random Magic: Cats. Ailuromancy can be used to do things cats are said to do. You can’t particularly communicate with cats. You become more like one yourself.
Charging Tips: An ailuromancer will probably break taboo about once or twice a month. Depending on free time and attention span, an ailuromancer can generate 1-3 charges per day.
Starting Charges: An ailuromancer starts with 4 charges.
Minor Formulas
Feetfirst
1 minor charge
Land safely on your feet after falling any distance. You could even dive from a plane safely.
Catseye
1 minor charge
Your eyes turn yelow and slitted like a cat’s. You can see without penalty as long as it’s not completely dark. Lasts one hour.
Cat Scratch Fever
2 minor charges
This is the Ailuromancy minor blast. It does damage equal to the sum of the dice, plus three.
Cat Secrets
4 minor charges
Smell an area for about a minute. You’ll smell everyone who has been there for the past week, including people and animals. You’ll be able to recognize people you know, and the sex, race and age of people you don’t know. Furthermore, you’ll know the location and approximate timing of anything that would produce any strong scent, like cooking, blood, or garbage. This doesn’t generally heighten smell – just for the purpose of investigating a medium room of similar-sized space.
Midnight Predator
7 minor charges
Usable at midnight. Lasts until dawn. You get a +20% bonus to any stealth-related skills. Furthermore, if you can sneak up on a sleeping person and inhale their breath without waking them (which requires a major Stealth check at the least), you heal 1 point of damage and your victim takes 5 damage. You can only affect each victim once a night, but you can affect many victims in the same night (if you manage to avoid getting arrested).
Another little school. This one is kind of ninja-like, and I’m worried that the taboo is too weird. I wanted something that conflated affection and cruelty, to match the symbolic tension. It’s actually a little like the Mystic Hermaphrodite’s taboo, I guess, and similarly difficult to judge.
(I considered doing the “can’t hurt or insult a cat” but that didn’t seem right. Cats hurt cats all the time.)
I’d love to hear comments and suggestions.
Midnight predator is really easy to use on people you share a bed with… But of course the thing to do is sneak in on a ward of sleeping kids. It’s a bit limited, how about you give yourself one point of health, up to your double body? (or bodyX1.5 or something) Would work for the nine lives myth…
I’m not sure if this is to powerful for a minor school, I don’t think so. The taboo is a bit tricky, yes, but still a lot better than the “cant hurt or insult” one… There is probably a better taboo out there, but this one will do until you find it:-)
How about: have to act like a conceited sociopath, even though going against normal psychology and doing so will cause mental stress.
Not acting like a self-serving narcissist at any time will dump charges.
Watch them crack eventually.
C.
The Cat Magician can neither follow orders, nor lead others. He is an irritating solo who does his own thing regardless of what was agreed upon. Catering to another person breaks taboo.
C.
Well, it would be nice with something a bit more concrete than “must act like a prick”. “Taboo You were nice to that old lady! you feel your charges slipping away, leaving you empty and vulnerable!” “But I was just setting her up to screw her up later”.
How about something along the lines of “must be within X meters of a cat or taboo”? If you can bring your cat to work, you’re fine, but if it runs away…
Well, it’s a tough one to do.
Perhaps if he sees a cat, he must move to scare the cat off and piss over the area he saw it in to mark the territory as his own.
There. Cat Bastard Magick not Cat Lover Magick.
C.
Really clashes with the charging… I understand where you’re coming from, making this shool less cuddly, but suggest another charging thing to go with your taboo.
the charge/taboo structure doesn’t have to be as merciless and freaked-out in these smaller school than in one of the big ones, IMO. (though it never hurts)
Well, if the cat magician is charging he has to be nice, but by putting the charging in a definate ritual context (for the next three hours I’m charging now) it forces him to act cat-like in all other respects.
Thus the auliromancer is as fickle as a proverbial feline, nice one minute, cruel the next.
Cheers,
Chris.
Works! Good one!
Chris and Mattias,
I like your taboo much, much better. Maybe without the peeing — PCs shouldn’t have to piss on every street corner because that would get really disruptive for any game. Just with the chasing and harassing. I’d definitely go with that.
Ted
Glad to help. Peeing is optional.
Cheers,
Chris.
What about “Crazy old catlady magic”? Like a biblomancer, but your charges are based on how many cats you have?
Hey Galen!
I actually did a school like that!
http://www.unknown-armies.com/content_comments.php?id=1704_0_3_0_C1