AKA Peacocks, Attention Whores, Snow Flakes, Fashionistas

They’re all sheep. They laugh at you because you’re different, but you laugh at them because they’re all the same! You’ll show them. You’ll show them how much of an individual you are. If they understand, they’ll follow. If they don’t, it’s their loss. Make a statement. Freak the mundanes.

Irony: by making themselves objects of fear and annoyance, Provocamancers assert what they try to subvert. Instead of deconstructing culture, they affirm it by counterbalancing it. Provocamancers rebel by conforming and conform by rebelling.

Stats:

Generate Minor Charge: Draw the attention of at least twenty strangers, and keep it for at least one minute. Scale a building in a superhero costume. Attempt to start a chorus of “Yellow Submarine” on a crowded subway. Pretend to choke in a restaurant. The exhibition must be a surprise to those viewing it, so no scheduled performances.

Generate Significant Charge: Provoke people in a way that, if you’re a slow runner, will get you beaten up, arrested, or worse. Obvious examples are streaking and walking down the street smashing windshields with a Louisville Slugger. However, creative exhibitions depend on a location. Walk through Harlem in a minstrel costume. Make out with someone of the same sex in a redneck town. Loudly berate the home team at a soccer game. If a bid for a minor charge makes people sufficiently angry, you win a significant charge. If an attempt at a significant charge doesn’t, a minor charge is your consolation prize. The restrictions on minor charges still apply; the exhibition must be unscheduled and attract at least twenty onlookers for no less than one minute (before someone tackles you).

Generate Major Charge: Provoke at least one million people with a single outrageous act, which they keep talking about for a month or more. Flash on national television. Put your face on cryptic billboards across the country. Commit a bizarre and nationally publicized crime leading to a controversial trial. The conditions on minor and significant exhibitions do not apply to major ones; if enough people see the Snowflake’s actions and remember for at least a month, the duration of the act doesn’t matter. Such a display can be part of a performance, but it must be an unexpected part.

Alternately, a Provocamancer may publicly commit suicide, and spend the charge as she dies.

Taboo: Blend in. If you don’t strike most people who see you as at least slightly odd, you’re becoming lazy. Identifying as a particular subculture without subverting it also breaks your taboo; a twelve-inch, red mohawk and a butt flap won’t fly and neither will sagging, acid wash jeans and bling jewelry, but both at the same time would. On the other hand, a Provocamancer doesn’t have to look ugly or garish; she just can’t fit a mold. All flamboyance must be immediately apparent; no wearing normal jeans and saying they’re weird because the pockets are upside-down and the belt loops are sideways. Weirdness that people won’t notice at a glance isn’t weirdness.

Random Magick Domain: Opinions, impressions and interpretations. Provocamancy isn’t the best school for sensory illusions, and it can never directly effect emotion or memory. However, Peacocks excel at putting their own spins on things, changing what stands out and what doesn’t.

Formula Spells

Minor Formula Spells
Look! A Distraction!
(1 minor charge)
The Provocamancer points in any direction and shouts “Look! An !” Everyone who can both hear the Peacock shout and see him point looks in that direction and won’t pay attention to anything else. They keep looking for the pterodactyl for a number of seconds equal to the one’s place of the spell roll. Each additional minor charge doubles the duration. If a distracted person perceives a physical threat to herself, the spell no longer affects her. Otherwise, nothing will make a victim stop staring.

Test the Waters
(2 minor charge)
With this spell, an adept can determine a person’s superficial likes and dislikes. No deep, psychological insights or current thoughts are available. However, tastes, political perspectives, sexuality, pet peeves, and miscellaneous opinions are there for the peaking.

Devil’s in the Details
(2 minor charges)
A single detail or attribute of a person or thing stands out above all else. A Provocamancer can’t make someone ugly, but he can make sure everyone notices the pimple on her otherwise perfect cheek. He can’t hypnotize someone in to buying car, but he can make them see how beautiful the paint job is while ignoring the faulty transmission.

Spin
(3 minor charges)
Choose a place or thing. Choose something that people tend to feel strongly about. For twenty-four hours, everyone who sees the thing you put the spin on associates it with the provocative thing. No matter how little sense the association makes, most people still won’t buy a cookie that makes them think of dismembered babies. This spell has many uses; some dukes will learn an enemy’s phobias and attach them to everything in his house. Others can turn any civil conversation into a screaming fight by instilling an area with a controversial issue so no one there can stop thinking about it. However, Spin is subtle; generally speaking, it won’t make people come to blows, run screaming, or masturbate with unconventional objects. Still, it can be a powerful tool in manipulating people as well as groups large and small.

Significant Formula Spells
Look! A Diversion!
(1 significant charge)
The same as Look! A Diversion, only this version lasts a number of seconds equal the percentile roll. The caster may spend additional significant charges to double the duration.

Plumb the Depths
(2 significant charges)
With Plumb the Depths, an Exhibitionist can see a person’s innermost hopes, fears, and dementias. In game terms, this reveals a single character’s Obsession, Stimuli, Paradigm Skills (if any), and marks in Madness Meters. However, it can’t offer specifics about desires, goals or beliefs.

Walk On By
(2 significant charges)
Usually, a Provocamancer tries to break the apathy of modern society. However, it can be useful to increase the ennui. When a Snowflake uses this spell, no event that she can perceive seems out of the ordinary to anyone, except her. A guy carrying a LAW rocket? Well, that’s the inner city for you. A man bleeding to death in the street? Eh, he’ll be okay. An explosion? It’s not near your house. Nothing draws attention. Everyone keeps doing what they were doing. The spell lasts for a number of minutes equal to ten’s place of the roll.

Autopilot
(3 significant charges)
This spell must be cast on someone in the process of a single, physical activity that can be continued for at least an hour. Once that person is on autopilot, she’ll keep doing it until forced to stop. Such an action can be as simple as walking down the street or as complex as dancing, drinking, working on a car, or milling at a party. The target will stop to go to the bathroom or if she is physically forced to stop (grabbing the victim and holding her still for a minute or so will break the spell). Immediate danger or pain will also end Autopilot’s effects, so the spell can’t make a person walk off a cliff or keep laboring while bleeding to death. A person’s memory of being on Autopilot is generally vague to nonexistent.

Big Spin
(3 significant charges)
This works like spin, but it affects people in a large area (about the size of a city) for about a month, making a major impact on public opinion. Keep in mind that Big Spin has no effect on public knowledge, only how people interpret that knowledge. It can’t spawn specific rumors, but it can inspire its victims to do so.

Kallisti
(5 significant charges)
This is an extreme version of Spin. This time, people will fall in love for a day, think feces tastes like candy and attract legions of worshipers who think they’re the Second Coming. Needless to say, Kallisti is incredibly dangerous. Few Snowflakes cast it if they aren’t either smart enough to make good use of it or stupid enough to think they can.

Major Formula Spells
Start a national sensation. Curse someone so that everyone he meets for the rest of his life loathes him. Get your own TV show for no apparent reason.

What You Hear: the Provocamancer
Every weekday, since the summer session started, a man rides into the quad of your community college on a silver trick bike with a seat back. He comes and goes between 11:00 and noon. He’s an asian guy in his mid twenties or early thirties, not in the best shape, but not fat. He wears sunglasses, a bright green t-shirt, and gold, metallic hot pants. Some days, he just rides a lap or two around the quad and leaves. Some days, he does the same while rapping loudly. Some days, he gets off his bike and starts doing aerobics and dancing (sexy-dancing, with lots of hip-swinging and ass-shaking) to the music on his iPod, which he keeps in his hot pants.

How do I know he’s at your community college? Because he’s at every community college in the United States. Every weekday. At the same time. Ever since June sixth.