Another minor school. The “other woman” (or “other man”) as magical parasite.
Nickname: Homewreckers
The most powerful and important ritual in most people’s life is the wedding. Fuelled by love and hope for the future, a marriage is an investment of commitment and hope.
Sweet, sweet, delicious hope and commitment, ripe for the taking.
You knew there was something special about married people. A forbidden sweetness. A hunger for freedom — a hunger to be free of the shackles of prosperous stability.
The first time you seduced a married person, you felt it. The surge of power from broken wedding vows, released into your body. The sacred ecstasy of defilement that opened up the real world to you.
Generate a minor charge: Have consensual sex with a married person of either sex. This must be forbidden in the marriage; open marriages and separated couples give you no power. The particular sex acts you perform are irrelevent, as long as it’s adulterous. You can only gain one charge per partner per day.
Ascendant Cuckoldry does not generate significant or major charges.
Taboo: You lose all charges if you enter into any indefinite-term contract. Marriage, permanent employment, or even a newspaper subscription without expiration date will spoil your magic. Fixed-duration contracts are fine as long as the duration is a year or less. If you break taboo, you can’t generate new charges until all indefinite contracts have been terminated.
Blast: The victim screams with sudden and frightening intensity. The nature of the shout depends on the victim’s current emotions. If they’re angry (even slightly miffed), for instance, it’ll be a roar of rage. The shout might be a frantic battle cry, an ecstatic moan, a tragic wail or hysterical laughter. As a result of the unnaturally loud shout, the victim’s throat hemorrages, and the victim can’t speak above a whisper until the damage is completely healed.
Random Magic: Immediate passion. Ascendant Cuckoldry causes short-term emotional outbursts, and temporarily suppresses long-term needs.
Symbolic Tension: Ascendant Cuckoldry holds stability in awe and contempty simulatenously.
Charging Tips: The easiest way to gather power is to maintain a long-term affair or two, with no expectations or obligations. You can probably gather a 3-10 charges a week this way. One-night stands require more effort (or luck), but you can probably earn a charge or two a week this way.
Starting Charges: A homewrecker starts with 5 minor charges.
Minor Formulas
Incredible Bittersweet
1 minor charge
A single target is incredibly attracted to you, but all his or her friends hate you. Lasts an hour.
Nightclub Walk
1 minor charge
This formula instantly grabs the attention of everyone within line of sight. Lasts only a moment.
Teflon Smile
3 minor charges
A single target forgives you for all wrongdoings. This lasts an hour; afterwards, the victim realizes that he’s been had.
Let it All Out
3 minor charges
This is the Ascendant Cuckoldry minor blast. It does damage equal to the sum of the dice.
You’re Free Now
4 minor charges
Affects one victim and lasts an hour. Victim forgets everyone he knows, and all details about his own life. The victim retains all skills, and remembers facts about the world in general. The victim won’t feel panicked or worried about this loss of memory until the formula ends.
Hmmm… to make this a more powerful school…
Sig Charge: To gain a significant charge, you would need to be the cause of a divorce. You gain the charge when the divorce papers are actually signed.
as for what the significant formulae are, I haven’t a clue… :p
Perhaps powers opposite of Pornomancy, as that school is about attraction, while this school focuses on taking relationships apart…
anyway, that’s my .02
What do you think, sirs?
Moko, that’d be a perfect means of charge generation.
I’d been intentionally doing only minor charges and formulas, because I’ve been digging on this “minor school” idea for a while.
As a full school, that’d be the right way to go. If it were me, I’d probably add more formulas that relate to short-term emotional release. Maybe something that causes someone to have whatever emotions you want for the next hour. Maybe something that makes all parties in a contract agree that it’s no longer valid. A significant blast like the minor. Maybe something that lets you alter the mood of a whole crowd temporarily. And, I dunno, something that causes someone to act like a suicidally brave daredevil for the next hour, with a big bonus to their activities but a recklessness that’d get ’em killed.
Something like that, maybe.
Sweet, sweet Lotharios and Casonovas.
Nice going, Ted.
Cheers,
Chris.
Ted:
That does sound good. I do like your “minor” schools, some will definatly be making cameos in my game. However, this one just struck a chord, and could really make a very insideous school… perhaps one growing out of the 60’s-70’s Free Love subculture, and really finding it’s heyday in the Disco era.
Thanks, Moko!
I’m always curious to hear how schools I write work in actual play. Love to hear player reactions.
Yes, it’s definitely got like a “dark-side-of-free-love” thing going.
Imagine the charge it would generate if the wronged spouse went OJ Simpson on the person who the Homewrecker did the deed with.
I guess that would be the Major charge, getting the Cuckolded person to try and actively kill you, since you have succeeded in “destroying” their sense of what’s right and wrong.
What do you think, sirs?
Hmm. That’s probably not enough, in my opinion. Typically, one person dying is worth a significant charge (see Thanatomancy significant charge). For a major charge, it’s got to be a much bigger effect.
Hmmm…. a Major charge could be gained by breaking up a very high-profile couple. A random celebrity coulpe would be worth maybe an extra sig, but causing the break up of a Head of State for a 1st world country, or a marriage that is seen as the the pinnacle of marriage vows, like Paul and Linda McCartney (that’s the first one off the top of my head)
Cause the murder-suicide of a celebrity couple.
That’s a major charge.
C.
OOOOoooo…. I like that. 🙂
I love any school that makes the PC seriously consider ending another persons life, for a brief bit of power.
But then, I’m a bastard like that.
How about, for a major charge, “Break up a marriage in a way that leads to the death of someone you sincerely and deeply love.”
(Following the lead of Entropomancy.)
You sir, an an evil evil man.
I love it. 🙂
Not to double-post, but the sheer screwed -up-ness of that situation is amazing.
Once the Adept found out what the Major Charge was, he/she’d have to deliberatly find someone to fall madly in love with, knowing all along that they planned on causing their death. I can just imagine one of these guys leaving a trail of dead bodies, getting more and more frustrated that he wasn’t “really” in love with them.