Stupidity is the most common element in the universe.

Bad ideas are often very appealing. They’re easier to grasp, they play to our expectations, and they are often very difficult to disprove.

The haze of mistakes falls on everyone sometimes. It’s like a dream: you can’t tell you’re asleep until you actually wake up. Stupidity spreads, and there’s no way to tell if you’ve caught it.

So, instead, you have learned to master it. You seek it out. You absorb it. You serve it and follow it. You catalog it, consider it, create it and collect it.

By listening to foolishness, you absorb it into yourself. You scatter your thoughts with clumsy thinking and, in that chaos, you find release.

So you seek to hear the worst ideas, and do the dumbest things possible. That way, you’ll understand the virus, and become immune to it.

Does that make you stupid? You don’t think so, but how would you know?

Definition of Moron: For the sake of this school of magic, a “moron” is one of two things: either someone with a Mind score of 35 or less, or someone who just failed a skill roll and is acting on bad knowledge from the skill roll. Madness, ulterior motives, or weird magical requirements don’t make someone a moron, even if they’d lead to the same results.

Generate a minor charge: Engage in conversation with a moron. The moron must believe it’s a normal, sincere conversation. You gain a minor charge for every three hours of conversation, whether that’s from one moron or many.

Generate a significant charge: Get bad advice from a moron, and follow that advice in a way that causes a disaster to you..

Generate a major charge: Get bad advice from a moron, and follow that advice in a way that causes a disaster to ten million people.

Taboo: You lose all charges if you follow sound advice. If someone suggests that you do something, and it’s not a terrible idea, then you can’t do it – even if you were going to do that anyway.

Random Magick: The breakdown of rational thought, and the way mistakes spread from person to person.

Symbolic Tension: Stupidity is objectively clear, but impossible to find. The thicker the fog, the clearer everything seems.

Blast: The victim feels a sudden cloud confusion and idiocy. The subject loses Mind and Speed equal to the damage. This reduces the maximum score for other skills. If the subject’s Mind or Speed reaches 0, the subject falls into a coma for weeks. Otherwise, Mind and Speed return to normal in an hour.

Minor Formulas

Skullnumb
1 minor charge
This is the moronomancy minor blast. The victim’s Mind and Speed are reduced by the sum of the dice.

Look!
1 minor charge
A single victim is distracted and loses his or her next action.

Neural Knot
2 minor charges
A single victim will forget a single fact. The subject won’t remember until something external (a relevent conversation, a written reminder, seeing something similar) reminds them.

Hand of Glory
3 minor charges
Only usable right after entering a building. Anyone who’s already asleep won’t wake up until you leave. Ends immediately during daytime.

You Say the Darndest Things
5 minor charges
Can only affect a child under the age of 7, or someone affected by an impairment penalty of 15% or more, like someone who’s very drunk, on drugs, sleep-deprived, etc.. The subject (which can include you) temporarily gets a Mind skill of your choice, at a level equal to the skill roll. The skill lasts five minutes, and seems like an intuitive guess to the subject. Following the subject’s advice during that time doesn’t cause you to break taboo.

Significant Formulas

Dumbstrike
1 significant charge
This is the moronomancy significant blast. The victim’s Mind and Speed are reduced by the result of the dice roll.

Blind Following the Blind
1 significant charge
Usable on anyone with a Mind score below 50 who isn’t already an Avatar. The subject temporarily becomes an Avatar of the Fool, with a skill equal to your roll. The subject will intuitively use all channels available. Ends after an hour, or when you leave the person’s presence. Following the subject’s advice during that time doesn’t cause you to break taboo.

Brain Drain
1 significant charge
A single victim loses 1 point of Mind, and you gain 1 point. If used while the subject is telling you something you didn’t know, you steal 3 Mind instead. The subject doesn’t notice anything happening. This is permanent.

I Have a Worse Idea
2 significant charge
Usable after someone succeeds any skill roll, while they are acting on it. The victim suddenly believes they’re making a mistake, and will start doing the wrong thing instead, as if they failed a check. If the subject is acting on a failed skill roll, they’ll continue whatever they were doing. Can effect any skill, even magic.

King Mob
2 significant charges
Affects any crowd of twenty or more that’s assembled in one place trying to complete the same task. The crowd coordinates together poorly – getting in each others’ way, mistaking friend and foe, ignoring a barely-hidden detail, and so on. Individual abilities aren’t impeded. If used on the awakened Sleeping Tiger, this formula can cancel one effect.

Major Effects
Transfer your consciousness to an animal, item or braindead person. Destroy someone’s mind. Make someone an idiot savant. Rig an election to the worst possible choice. Make a good idea sound ridiculous to anyone who hears it.

What You’ve Heard
A prison psychologist made quite a splash in the Occult Underground in the Midwest when he disrupted a meeting between two powerful Avatars (A Fool and a Scholar). He had freed one of the prisoners and followed him into the meeting. The two Avatars (and their cabals) hadn’t even heard of the school of moronomancy until the man showed up and made a tense situation worse.