The magick of smoke…

Smokers, Sooters

Where there’s smoke there’s fire. Smoke is not just the sooty by product of fire it is the tangible link connecting heaven and earth, a diffuse umbilical that connects all of us physically and spiritually.

Throughout our various cultures the smoke released through fire has been a magical commodity. It can preserve and flavour meat, it can carry scents and perfumes, it can take away the ashes of the burning dead to heaven, and it is the road map of the winds of the sky.

Smokers treat smoke reverently as a cleansing mechanism. They immerse themselves in it, bathe in it, and absorb its ephemeral essences until they become the smoke.

Minor school: Fumomancy is a minor school. It produces minor-equivalent charges and has no significant or major effects.

Generate a charge: Bathe yourself and observe smoke for an uninterrupted three-hour period for a single charge. If you come across a burning trash fire belching toxic fumes or you chain smoke cigarettes for three hours, you gain a charge.

Taboo: It is the nature of smoke to be temporary and ephemeral; it is not the substance of foundations. Fumomancers cannot keep a single charge longer than 24 hours, one is lost every day.

Blast: Smoke magic chokes victims with choking poison and stinging suffocation.

Symbolic Tension: Smoke is just carcinogenic dirt in the air, its elaborate forms and shapes are nothing more than soot and randomness carried up by heat convection.

Random Magic: Control the smoke and become the smoke in all its shapes and sizes.

Charging tips: A plastic bag, a squirt bottle of paraffin, a box of safety matches, and somewhere out of the way can net an easy smoke magick charge.

Starting Charges: A fumomancer starts with five charges.

Fumomancer Formula Spells

Attack of the Vapours (one charge) For a number of hours, equal to the sum of the Magick: Fumomancy roll, an area of filled with a visually impenetrable smoky fog or smog. The smoke will not budge and cannot be blown from the area. Afterwards it leaves a fine deposit of soot. Everyone in the smog is considered blind. It will not cause anything more than irritation.

Burning Choke (one charge) Choke is fumomancy blast. A spiral of black smoke ejects from the caster and wraps around the target’s head, forcing into his eyes, nose, mouth, and ears. The smoke is searing hot and invokes a fit of violent gagging. The damage is half the sum of the roll. The remaining damage converts to a negative skill shift, rounded down the nearest five. This skill shift lasts for one hour.

The Breathe of God (two charges) The caster is immune from all potential damage and penalties from inhalation, both the toxicity and heat. This lasts until the fumomancer loses another charge. The caster can be blood choked but not suffocated.

The Sfumatomantic Stigmatica (four charges) The caster coughs up white smoke, it pours from his open wounds, and curls from his nostrils, and heals the sum of the Magick: Fumomancy roll.

Djinn Life (six charges) The fumomancer’s form assumes the shape and consistency of smoke. He can still be identified as a shape amidst the billowing clouds. The fumomancer is effectively immaterial and can enter through openings the size of a keyhole. He can vary his density to go from opaque greyness to a translucent haze.

The fumomancer can speak and hear. He can feel his environment through his ghostly skin.

The fumomancer can stay in smoke form until he loses his next charge or charges.