Vita fugit.
A.K.A. Batteries, Timepieces
It’s pretty hard to find a Chronomancer. They’re rare, because the personal cost of Chronomancy is so high. They’re also secretive, because of the great power they wield. If you know a person who you know is a Chronomancer, you’re lucky. Cherish them while they’re still around.
Unless, of course, you know a Chronomancer who seems to age normally. In that case, get as far away from the person as you possibly can.
Like the name suggests, a Chronomancer can manipulate time, but only at the cost of his own life energy. Every time he uses his powers, he takes one step closer to the grave. Whether that’s a small step or a large one depends on what the person does. One small advantage, though, is that unlike other adepts, Chronomancers’ “charges” aren’t used up if a spell fails – the life energy is only drained if a spell is successful.
Because they can influence nearly everything related to time, Chronomancers are rather powerful. They can retry something they’ve failed at; speed up time or slow it down; roll back something that happened to them, their city, their country or even the world; get glimpses of the past or future; be in the right place at the right time; travel through time; and accomplish spectacular feats of healing… and also harm. The motivation not to do these things all the time is, of course, that doing so would also fry the Chronomancer rather quickly.
Chronomancers who engage in time travel have found that the time stream has a certain amount of resilience – nothing they do (without casting a spell) in the past seems to have any effect on the present, and no one ever seems to believe their stories about what the future is like, either. Using Chronomancy to get brief glimpses of events in the near future or past is different, of course – members of the occult underground usually tend to understand that those are important.
In addition to casting spells with it, Chronomancers may always roll their Chronomancy skill (or associated Obsession skill) to get an intuitive sense of what time it is, or to perform any other mundane time-related task (i.e., figuring out how long it will take to get somewhere, or how long to cook something).
Many Chronomancers (though it’s hard to quantify this, because they don’t really have meetings to discuss such things) gain their abilities from their experiences as the Living Receiver in a Tangent Universe. Some Chronomancers believe that Merlin was one of them, given the tales about his backward aging; possibly even the first. For obvious reasons, Chronomancers and Cliomancers do not usually get along.
Using whatever system seems reasonable, possibly based on Body and related skills, the GM should calculate the Chronomancer’s maximum life span in months. This total will be used when subtracting months or years from the character’s life.
Charging tips: Eat healthy, don’t smoke, take plenty of vitamins and herbal supplements and get enough sleep. Some Chronomancers try every “age-defying” product they can get their hands on. Beyond that, genetics are everything.
There is, of course, another more unscrupulous way to beat the system with regard to Chronomancy. All you have to do is get yourself a proxy; the proxy must either be an adept, or a person with an Avatar rating of 70 or higher. The person must also have Soul and Body at least as high as yours. Once you’ve made them your proxy, you can start draining their life instead of your own – up to a maximum number of years equal to the level of the proxy. But heaven help you if anyone else in the occult underground finds out…
(At the GM’s discretion, this may mean that a major charge can never be used from a proxy, at least not unless the proxy is rated 99; on the other hand, this may depend on the person’s age.)
For reference, a minor charge is equal to one month of life; a significant charge is one year; and a major charge uses up all you’ve got left. At the GM’s discretion, using a major charge may not be possible if the character is too old. Watching a Chronomancer age more than 10 years in a single scene is a rank-5 Unnatural check; watching a Chronomancer use a major charge (which causes them to rapidly age, collapse and decay on the spot) is rank 9. Each minor charge used also temporarily remove 1 Body point, and each significant charge removes 10; when Chronomancer runs out, he or she collapses from fatique. The lost Body points return at the rate of 2 per hour, or 5 per hour if resting in bed.
Taboo: While they can heal others as much as they like, Chronomancers who try to reverse their own aging process through magick lose their Chronomancy skill permanently. Magical “fountain of youth”-type items have the same effect.
Paradox: Mastery of time as a whole causes your own time to run out.
Blast Style: Chronomancers have three Blasts available to them. The minor blast (two minor charges) inflicts temporary fatigue (-15 shift to Body and Speed) that fades after twenty minutes. The significant blast (two significant charges) inflicts one permanent age-related malady on the target – dementia, osteoporosis, and diabetes are good examples. The major blast can remove any one person from the time stream completely, such that the person never existed at all… but the cost of a major charge is noted above.
Sample effects
(Note: When events are changed or time is altered, no one but the Chronomancer and possibly other Chronomancers – GM’s discretion – remembers the event as it originally was. Cliomancers may also be exempt, at the GM’s discretion. Any time a Chronomancer mucks around with time, others can roll Soul to notice that “something weird” has happened, but they won’t be able to put their finger on it unless – example – they notice the Chronomancer is moving much faster than anyone else around.)
Minor effects: The Chronomancer may view a person’s “time vector” (a visual representation of where the person is going in the next minute or so) (1 charge); retry a failed significant check (1 charge); increase or decrease the speed of time for one person, including self, for a scene by up to 90 percent (1 charge per 10 percent ); ensure he or she will be “in the right place at the right time” for one day (two charges); or view a past or future event, within five years and no more than five minutes long (three charges).
Significant effects: The Chronomancer may stop time for one person (1 charge) or for everyone in a scene (2 charges); retry a failed major check (1 charge); reverse or remove any acquired disease or disorder for someone else (2 charges); alter or remove a past event that doesn’t affect history as a whole (2 charges); view any past or future event in its entirety, regardless of when it occurred (1 charge); travel through time (1 charge per 100 years traveled; this cost must be paid again each day the traveler stays in the alternate time); slow time up to 90 percent for everyone in a scene, including or excluding him/herself (1 charge per 30 percent); or alter some of the details of a major local (2 charges), national (4 charges) or worldwide (6 charges) historical event (GM’s discretion on the scope of this one).
Major effects: Literally anything the Chronomancer can think of, with regard to time. People or whole cultures never existed or were completely different, major wars never occurred, the bible was never written, or completely alter the nature of time itself – you name it. But don’t expect to be able to live to see your handiwork, unless you’ve got a proxy to sacrifice.
One other thing I meant to add – while pills and herbs and antioxidants are okay, gene therapy or resequencing to reverse the aging process would also violate the taboo. You can slow or even try to halt the aging process, but if you actually reverse it, no more Chronomancy for you.
I like the premise of this school very much, but I don’t like how the drawback of the school vanishes completely with a proxy.
vagina, I did consider what you said, but two things: first, like it says above, if you use a proxy to drain life from, eventually someone will find out and kill you for it. Particularly if the proxy is the one who finds out. Second, I’m not sure how a proxy works, but isn’t the chance an effect gets redirected to the proxy only equal to the level of the proxy? I think that’s the case, so if the proxy is rated 50, half the time the charges will still come from the Chronomancer. And finally, I know I don’t usually like playing characters who are complete bastards… but if someone decides to do so, any GM worth his/her salt will see that what goes around comes around for that character.
Based on vagina’s comment, the system for proxies should be as follows:
In order to drain from a proxy instead of his own character, the player must make a significant check of the Proxy rating. (So if the Proxy is rated 36, they have to roll under that.) A success means it works, a failure means the Chronomancer is drained instead; a critical success makes the proxy unable to notice it this time, and a critical failure destroys the proxy connection altogether.
Even with the costs for the charges, it’s a bit overpowered. I don’t necessarily have anything against it in concept, but even with major being insta-death, the Bible never being written? A bit much.
Neville, I definitely considered increasing the charge costs because of that, but that would have made it pretty unworkable. I think you’re right – the school as written is mostly suited to a Cosmic-level game. It could probably be tweaked and de-powered a bit, though, just by removing or limiting most of the significant effects. As for the Major, maybe the Bible was a bit much, but as a practicing Jew I do realize how much of an impact that would have. (I just wanted you to know I’m not a random blasphemous atheist pissing on other people’s belief systems.)
Based on what others have said, I think the following should also be added to the taboo; it’s from the other Chronomancer write-up, but it fits just as well here, and de-powers the school a bit by restricting the character.
If a Chronomancer commits one of the following acts, they lose all charges they have accumulated to date: own a timepiece of any description (including a clock, wristwatch, calendar or diary); makes an arrangement for a future date using any precise measurement of time (if other PCs attempt to do this the standard Chronomancer’s line is “I’ll be there when I’m supposed to be.”); ask anybody the time or date.
One more addition to the taboo: If the Chronomancer owns a PDA, a cell phone, or a computer, he/she must at least try to disable its clock or set it to an incorrect time or taboo is broken.
I think the cost for the major charge is fine, but the effect is a bit much. Keeping it on the level of maybe an entropomancer’s major effect would be reasonable. The whole “You can stop your dad from beating you when you were a kid or your mom from getting cancer, but you can’t erase Hitler. At least, YOU can’t”. So that if somehow a whole bunch of chronomancers got together, decided on a goal (unlikely), were all really young (so that their Major Charges would be even MORE Major) and then found essentially a stick to act as a lever (like Hitler’s journal or the founding papers of the Catholic Church, depending on what we’re changing) and then used up their majors, that’d be ok. In fact, maybe that happened and the massive unnatural fallout is to blame for a variety of the strange entities and powers in the UA-verse that don’t fit properly into the Adept/Avatar schema.
As for the taboo, since they don’t really STORE charges, they steal them from the future, what would breaking taboo actually do?
In line with the complete and permanent loss of the skill for the major violations, perhaps the minor violations (carrying a timepiece, etc.) could knock a few points off the Chronomancy Skill?
Also, would it break taboo if a Chronomancer somehow stole someone else’s young body? It’s not exactly reversing the aging process, but it is getting to a lower age. And what about happening upon the Fountain of Youth, then becoming a Living Receiver a few years later?
An interesting thing to it, too, is what if a Thanatomancer or Epideromancer became a Living Receiver and then accidentally a Chronomancer? Yes, they’d go crazy, but if they used a Thanato or Epidero charge to become younger, would they be sane or at least less insane?
Also, knocking off points from the skill seems reasonable.
Yes, knocking off points from the skill is a great option, since losing charges obviously isn’t a possibility. Either that, or they just can’t use their Chronomancy at all until they get rid of the offending item, or for 24 hours if they make a set plan.
Can you be part of two schools at once? I didn’t think so… since your Obsession skill would have to change to join a new school, and you can only have one Obsession skill at once. I think if you switched from Epideromancy or Thanatomancy to Chronomancy, you might be able to still use your original school in the Tangent Universe, but once you got back to the Primary Universe, that school would no longer be open to you.
Also, I should have said this explicitly in the Tangent Universe write-up (and I’ll add it as a comment in a minute): The Living Receiver is normally a mundane, not an avatar or adept. I don’t really even think an Authentic Thaumaturge would get tapped, particularly if other people were living in the same house.
Actually, I think for the planning part of the taboo, they can’t do it until they either cancel the plan or until 24 hours after the meeting occurs.
About the anonymous comment: Choosing to stick with Chronomancy would automatically dispel any previous aging-stopping/reversing effects. As for switching bodies, I think the best solution should be this: The GM should calculate the maximum life span based on Soul, not Body, since Soul stays the same no matter what body you’re in. A chronomancer can switch bodies, but his soul still only has a set amount of energy within it.
Now that I think of it, this may also mean that Soul gets drained instead of Body when using charges.
An addition: For five significant charges, the Chronomancer may create a portal to initiate a Tangent Universe. However, he/she may not choose who will be the Living Receiver, Manipulated Dead, or Manipulated Living – and also cannot be any of these him / herself. The portal appears at some random location in the world, and the Living Receiver is selected in the usual way. Doing this is triggers rank-10 Violence check, and a rank-8 Unnatural and Self check. Potentially unmaking the entire universe is a pretty horrific thing to do.
You can’t NORMALLY be following two adept schools. It’s possible, but it drives you stark-raving.
I like the switch to calculating by Soul.
Opening a Tangent Universe would be a fair Major Charge use, what with the chance to unmake the world.
I don’t see why it wouldn’t be an adept, as they’re specifically apart. It’s part of the definition, part of how they work their magic. I CAN see it passing over avatars because they’re so woven into the normal framework of the universe.
Mainly because, having seen and dissected the movie many times, the point of it is that Donnie isn’t just weird, he’s special and important. The Living Receiver doesn’t know he’s special or important at first; adepts already do.
Neville – Do you think I should take all these changes I made and make a revised version incorporating them all into the main text?
But Donnie doesn’t know he’s special and important (and debatably isn’t either) until he becomes the Living Receiver. While adepts do normally know they’re special, I think that it would be reasonable to assume that adepts become the Living Receiver incredibly rarely just because A) they’re rare and B) the anomalies are rare and have a specific proximity. So A X B and you get “Incredibly Horribly Unlikely”. But possible. It also might make sense for it to be easier to make an adept a LR in a TU because, by working their mojo, they’ve torn themselves just a touch loose from the normal world and are therefore a touch easier to relocate and repurpose, but not as easy to rewire (as in the case of the Manipulate Dead and Living), also difficult thanks to their magickally backed-up/empowered obsessions.
Couldn’t hoit?
You know, Neville, you make a very good case, so I think I’ll defer to you on this one.
However, I do feel like if an adept gets tapped as the Living Receiver and thus can’t be influenced very easily by the Manipulated Dead and Manipulated Living, this would remove the certainty that he’d succeed in returning the artifact to the Primary Universe. Which means if he fails, the Primary Universe could actually be destroyed (unlike when a mundane is involved). I think this would make a pretty good story, don’t you?
For the record, I am not an anonymous poster. You have to register to post, and I registered under a childhood nickname. The fact that the nickname coincides with part of the word “anonymous” is, again, merely a coincidence.
Oh, my bad. I assumed the fact your name wasn’t a link was because you didn’t have a profile, when in fact it was just because your email isn’t in your profile. Sorry about that.
One last addition: The new taboo is a little unclear, since my version of the school doesn’t use regular charges that you can lose.
If the Chronomancer owns a timepiece, he/she can’t use Chronomancy till 24 hours after geting rid of it. If the Chronomancer makes set plans, he/she can’t use Chronomancy till 24 hours after either keeping or breaking the plans. Asking someone the time is pretty minor, so that only knocks out the ability for one hour.
Can you slip a time-piece onto them and have that yield the effect? Or surround them with clocks?
Neville – I don’t think that would work, unless they didn’t rid themselves of said timepiece(s) immediately upon finding them. So you could certainly set them up to smash a lot of clocks…
What you hear: One Chronomancer has found a way to get minor and significant charges from destroying famous or historical clocks. Every other Chronomancer who’s heard of the guy wants to find him and figure out how he pulls it off, but it seems he’s hiding between the ticks.
The reason I ask is that it seems really difficult for another person to trick them into violating their taboo, something I tend to like when it comes to adepts. Particularly powerful ones.
I suppose if someone else arranged it so that they saw a clock face, even involuntarily, that’d work like they’d asked someone the time.
Also, someone could maliciously heal them or give them a fountain-of-youth item without asking or explaining.
I’m interested to hear your thoughts on the Boy / Girl Next Door, and also on Dentomancy and Lilitumancy once I finish them.
I would slip a quiet metronome into their pocket.
Righto.