Shark magic!
You are accustomed to constant hunger. Like the sharks you worship, you’re never satisfied, and like them, you’re cold and violent. You haven’t quite achieved the innocent bloodshed of the shark, but you are working on it.
It is instinct that makes you strong, and it is hunger that gives you instinct. You swim in stranger seas than the shark, but you adhere to her sacred lesson: stay in motion, find prey, and forget the rest.
Generate a minor charge: Get bitten by a shark for at least 3 damage. This must be in a planned symbolic ceremony that takes at least five minutes per charge. Each bite is worth a charge, though.
As a minor school, squalomancy does not generate significant or major charges.
Taboo You must remain constantly hungry, both physically and metaphorically. Any time you’re full of food, you lose all charges. Any time you heal damage, for any reason, you lose all charges. More importantly, any time you’re satisfied with your life and things are going well, you lose all charges
Blast: A shark leaps from your fingertips and bites the subject for the damage rolled. The better the roll, the bigger the shark. After it appears, the shark is completely normal (and if you’re not underwater the shark will thrash around and die very quickly.)
Symbolic Tension: A shark is a dangerous alpha predator at the top of its food chain, but it is still endangered. A shark is constantly hungry but keeps the ecosystem in balance.
Random Domain: Urgent hunger. Squalomancy gives power (especially sharklike traits) to the restless and unsatisfied.
Charging Tips: You can get as many charges as you have flesh to spare, really.
Starting Charges: Your choice. Up to 6. For every charge, you’re down 3 Wound points.
Minor Formulas
Blood in the Water
1 minor charge
You can smell the exact location of anyone who is bleeding within 200 feet. Your sense of smell is otherwise unimproved. Lasts until you eat.
Deep Sea Diving
2 minor charges
Allows you to function underwater as comfortably as you normally would on land. You can breathe underwater, survive deep water pressure, and swim as fast as you can run. You don’t get tired from swimming. Lasts until you stop moving.
You Are The Prey
3 minor charges
This is the squalimancy blast. Does damage equal to the sum of the dice, plus 3 for sharp teeth. If the target is underwater, the shark will keep attacking the target until the target is dead, the shark is dead, or the target is out of the water. If it matters, the shark has a Speed and Initiative of 50, a Body and General Athletics of 30, and uses your Magick skill for attack rolls. It does not dodge or do anything but bite the target. If the target is not around to bite, the shark begins acting like a normal shark. Unlike most blasts, You Are The Prey can be dodged.
A Fine Frenzy
6 charges
This one affects the past. Anyone who personally knows and wants to kill someone present (including you) retroactively knows your location, with just enough time that if they hurry they can show up just as you use this formula. If they wouldn’t immediately rush and come to the location, or if their retroactive arrival couldn’t be retrofitted, a given killer won’t gain the knowledge (but others still will.)
Relentless
7 minor charges
You gain a Violence Hardened notch. (If you’re already Hardened-10 you can’t use this formula.) It’s frightening to see you become an insane predator; any human or animal who sees you use this formula must make a Violence-10 Stress check.
Kind of a combat-intensity, brutal minor school.
Taboos I considered and rejected:
Cannot harm a shark (doesn’t come up much)
Cannot show regret (discourages RP)
Cannot speak out against violence, death or killing (discourages RP)
Must have regular contact with a shark (yawn)
I like the taboo, but I think I’d change the blast to “appears to have been bitten by shark” as summoning a living physical creature seems a bit… dramatic for a minor school.
Otherwise, seems reasonable. The charging makes sense symbolically: Feeding the Hunger to Gain the Hunger or something like that, seems to me.
I’m gonna agree with Neville there. Shooting sharks at your enemies doesn’t…seem to fit. Making shark-like wounds blossom on your ‘prey’s’ skin…that’s much better.
Agree with what NYC and CS said, plus the blast becomes way to powerful under water, since suddenly the target is in combat with someone who doesn’t get any negative modifyers for fighting in water, while it’s obvious that the target should have them. So blossoming wounds it is, I’m afraid. Either that or the shark vaporises after one attempted bite.
What exactly does Relentless do? And what does it look like?
And a line or two on how charging rituals can go horribly wrong;-)
Otherwise I like it!
Thanks for comments all!
Funny thing is, I got the idea this afternoon after thinking “wouldn’t it be awesome to shoot sharks out of my fingertips?”
But, honestly, I like the change of “sharkbites appear.” You’d need to reduce the formula cost by 1 of the formula, though, I think, but you could then remove all mention of special underwater rules.
(Truth is, I see the underwater rules as unlikely to come up, since, you know, how many times has a UA game gone underwater? As any Super Friends fan can tell you, it’s really hard to get plots where you need Aquaman.)
Relentless causes the adept to take on the aspect of a cold-blooded remorseless killer. Anyone who sees them can tell the sudden psychotic shift, and the change is as permanent as any other Hardened notch. What others see is that the person very suddenly seems dead inside, more violent and detached and crazy.
How charging rituals can go wrong? Ha! Good point. Hungry sharks make for troublesome rituals.
Nice.
Perhaps the sorcerer could injure himself with shark related material sanding oneself with sharksin, bear-trapping a shark’s jaw on a limb. Like epideromancy, one 3-point damage equals a charge.
Now grant the sorcerer the spell to swim “through the air”.
The taboo: cannot stop moving or lose the charges.
Although by removing the sunmarine divisor out of the equation, you have another superb runner-up for Ordo Corpulenti.
C.
I agree that the blast is enormously powerful underwater, but, honestly, anyone who plans to fight a shark-magician under water deserves to have their head examined, or at least removed. Eating (and being eaten) in aquatic contexts is the one thing a squalomancer can do, so I won’t begrudge the ability to do it well.
I’d also like to point out that, once the target is dead/out of the water, “acting like a normal shark” involves attacking whatever is surrounded by the smell of blood and displaying electrical activity, a category which might well include the caster or other friendly targets.
I propose a compromise.
On the surface, damage manifests as sudden sharkbite stigmata that may not be dodged This is 2 charges. Underwater, you may spend another to “shoot SHARKS from your fingertips”, with the same hazards Strange Person notes. This version may be dodged.
Note that this school is hilariously easy to shut down once your enemies know about it. If a skinner uses Regeneration on you, you’re metaphysically out of the game. So I don’t mind it being a bit potent for a minor school.
Why bother with healing magic? One quick jab with a needle o’ morphine takes away pain and hunger alike, at least for a while, and neutralizes most non-magickal threats as well.