The will f the people, in personal form.
You believe in the democratic process and the will of the people. You believe it can be applied at every level.
You believe in the mechanics of the democratic process. The bureaucracies, the mudslinging, and the endless meetings. The power of drudgework and of personal charisma. The arcana of technicalities and bylaws. The strength of off-the-record compromises. The way an appealing idea can triumph over an effective idea.
The will of the people is the power of dreams. The right of self-determination carries the risk of mob rule, and you dive into that gamble and turn it into your own invisible crown of power.
You are the first among equals.
Generate a minor charge: Propose and win a vote.
Generate a significant charge: Propose the effects of the formula used in a vote and win. The voting body does not need to know that the effects are carried out magically, but the overall purpose and effect of the formula must be clear. (No significant formula ever requires more than one charge.)
Generate a major charge: As with a significant charge, but at least five million individual voters must support you.
Note: For the sake of Demomancy, a vote only counts if it is democratic, formal, representative, established and contested, as defined below.
Democratic: Decisions must be made by some kind of vote of majority or plurality rule, with at least ten people voting.
Formal: The decision-making process must be set down beforehand and applied evenly.
Established: The voting group must have voted (in a way that meets all other requirements) at least three times before on different days.
Representative: The people voting must be drawn from those affected by the votes, or chosen by them democratically. A coffee shop’s employees could be voting on coffee shop activities, but not on Canadian politics.
Contested: At least two voters must sincerely vote on the opposing side.
You don’t necessarily need to cast a vote, just to propose the issue. (For instance, you could get charges by going to city council with a proposal, even in another city.) If someone else proposes it, you don’t get a charge unless you planned this with the proposer beforehand. The issue can be modified slightly after you propose it, but drastic changes ruin the charge-gathering.
Taboo: You must complete any democratic process you enter – go to every debate and stay the whole time, and participate in the entire process from beginning to end. If you are absent or leave early from any democratic process you’re involved in, you lose all charges.
Symbolic Tension: Democracy is a measure of an individual’s will, manifested in the will of the many. In theory, Democracy is a choice by an overall mass of people. In practice, what really matters is the charisma, marketing insights and (perhaps most often) persistence of the organizers.
Random Effects: Minor effects give you the kind of traits needed to manipulate democratic groups – persuasiveness, awareness of group dynamics, and endurance. Significant and major effects make manifest the choices of a voting body.
Charging Tips: Pick between one and three voting groups to which you belong. Most demomancers find a little voting body and turn it into their charging grounds. If you can get yourself in with a local democratic group or two, you’ll have no problem gather 1-2 minor charges a week. Some newer demomancers try to influence a much bigger body and this usually means they can only gain a minor charge every month or two.
Starting Charges: 4 minor.
Minor formulas
Will of the People
1 minor charge
Pick a group of more than 50 people. You instantly know how the majority of that group would prefer a specific issue gets decided. You can’t earn charges on a vote you predict with this formula.
Stump Speech
1 minor charge
You get a +20% to a single Charm or Lie roll when orating to a group.
You Are An Island
2 minor charges
Use on a target within sight range. The target is filled with a sense of alienation and shame, and must make an immediate rank-6 Isolation check.
Endurance Campaign
2 minor charges
Work tirelessly in social activity — door-to-door lobbying, debates, mail campaigns, interviews, phone calls, or any other communications. As long as you don’t do any heavy manual labor, you don’t need to rest or sleep at all – just take short breaks for meals. Lasts a number of hours equal to your Demomancy score.
Cliquesense
3 minor charges
You become aware of the social ties and history of a single group of up to fifty people. You instantly know the answer to up to three questions about the way that group operates, in terms of internal or external social interactions. For instance, you could find out “Who’s the best person to rally everyone against the current leader?” or “Who in this department would give information to outsiders?” or even “What are the different factions in this office rivalry?”
Significant formulas
Avatar of the Law
1 significant charge
Create a human from clay for a single task. They have all stats equal to your skill roll, plus one appearance skill and one other appropriate skill for the task, both at the same level. You must work a human-sized amount of clay (which probably costs about two hundred dollars) for two hours, then the Avatar takes form, works until the task is accomplished, walks away and disappears.
Exile
1 significant charge
Remove a target from your group. Anyone who meets the target will know the target doesn’t belong in the group. Exile can even change someone’s apparent class or demographics – the target’s physical appearance won’t change, but will be interpreted differently. Lasts until an appropriate group votes any particular target back in.
Charter
1 significant charge
Establishes a new purpose for the voting group. Everyone in the group can change a skill related to the group’s previous purpose to a new skill related to the group’s purpose, but this skill cannot exceed 40% or the appropriate attribute.
Restraining Order
1 significant charge
Pick a target represented by the electing body. Target cannot perform the specified action, and must make a Rank-8 Isolation check if forced to. Lasts until the target leaves the group, or gets permission from some appropriate voting body to perform the action.
Community Action
1 significant charge
Bless a project that you supervise, that requires work from at least ten people for at least a month. Any purchases made for the project will (by fortunate coincidence) cost half as much. Everyone working on the project, including you, gets one appropriate skill at a level equal to your Demomancy skill (or their appropriate attribute, if lower). However, you can’t use your Demomancy skill or generate new charges, and you’re still at risk of breaking taboo. You can’t end this formula voluntarily – it lasts until the project is completed, or is cancelled by vote.
Major Effects
Gain new permanent power, authority or skill. Make a radical change to the economy or politics. Send a group of people to jail forever. Resolve a moral question nationwide.
What You’ve Heard
A sleepy Orange County suburb near Los Angeles has become the personal domain of a demomancer: Emily Smith, a concerned and socially active mother. Mrsm Smith has turned her local PTA into a mystical power generator. She regularly fends off Occult Underground types who stray into town from Los Angeles proper, and she’s considering turning her local Homeowner’s Assocation Co-Op into a private army. Emily has a tense alliance with a pair of demomancers operating out of a cheese store worker’s co-op in Oakland, eight hundred miles to the north, but she’s hoping to get them working for her on a long-term basis.
This was created in parallel with Aristomancy for contrast. I thought it’d be nice to have a few adept schools related to politics: one for democracies and one for aristocracies.
They’ve both been sitting waiting to be finished for months. Sigh.
The idea here is a tension between the ideal of democracy (where rulership is an expression of the will of those who are ruled) with the practical applications (where dealmaking, bureaucracy, charisma and simple physical endurance are what usually really matters.)
I like where you’re coming from with this, the “first among equals” is a good source of mystical paradox/symbolic tension, but I sort of dislike how sig. charges work. I realize the “contested” makes it difficult to just do as you please, but it still seems sort of prone to an endless supply of (very specific) wishes. Particularly if you can set up a group with certain known dissenters.
Thanks, Neville! Any ideas for other sig charge structures?
I’d say something along the lines of turning a vote to your advantage, that is, making the group vote according to your will not theirs? Or achieve, without vote fraud, a vote in your favor where the voters don’t really have a voice (such as through political manipulation, gerrymandering, etc.). It’s tricky, but something along those lines so it better reflects the symbolic tension (will of the people but really just will of the individual who drives the people who still must bow to the power of the people etc.)?
Other ideas were : Get them to vote in something bad for them, under some pretense. Get them to vote for something really only good for you OR for something that has unintended positive effects for you (like a public works contract). Stuff like that.
So no blast styles?
Michael: Yep, you’re correct. No blast styles.
There are ways to mess someone up (Avatar of the Law, Exile, Restraining Order) but no blast. I couldn’t see any that would fit with the theme.
Neville: I am kinda attached to the system of voting for specific effects for significant charges. The sig formulas are designed to be magical enactments of votes.
You’re right, though: there needs to be more to it than just a wish factory. Make the existing one harder. Matbe the existing body can’t know it’s magic? And it has to replace a vote that would actually be better if magic weren’t considered? I’m not sure. It should be harder, but I like the idea of getting people to unwittingly vote in favor of your making a golemlike servant.
However you play it is fine, so long as it’s not the Endless Magic Industrial Complex and works for the theme.
I’d stick with the idea that it’s about you working the crowd, not the crowd working itself. Like if you get them to get all worked up for something that they normally wouldn’t even be aware of, much less care about. Or if it requires someone to be defeated (a counter-proposal ~some other way of rectifying the problem).
Ooor you could set up a normal charging scheme, but have the cost to cast a formula be reduced by some amount if you can get people to vote for it. The more people that for you enacting the formula, the more the reduction (possibly to some floor charge, like never less than one charge of its type… or at least a diminishing returns type of charge reduction where it would take thousands of people to get a sig formula spell down to a minor charge requirement, etc.) Maybe vote for it unwittingly? Whatever, using the rules you set up.