They say ‘you are what you eat’, and for some, it’s true.

(This is pretty much a more vicious spin on Michael Keenan’s Nutriomancy, so you might want to check that out for further ideas)

aka: Maws, Skinwalkers, Ogres

Symbolic Tension: can become almost anything, but must destroy whatever it is in the process. Generally the more useful a thing is, the harder it is to consume.

Generate two Minor Charges*: This is my flesh. Eat a healthy portion of something that holds symbolic value, preferably in front of someone who holds that belief. This could be almost any animal, and most animal products (milk and honey are both good), but it excludes every kind of snack food and candy, most vegetables (brocolli isn’t known for its mystical power, but some ogres get a neat little kick out of spinach), grains in general, and a wide selection of fruit (apples give charge, but not bananas). What it doesn’t exclude are holy text books and trappings. Some Ogres have gone more than a little bit weird by preying on churches for easy charges.

Generate a Significant Charge: A little light gone out of the world. Eat something that is valuable, generally something that will be missed: a prize heffer, a wolf pack’s alpha male, human children, part of an important building, a first edition manuscript, an olympic medal…

Generate a Major Charge: Conspicuous consumption. Eat something (generally something big) or someone of historical importance. The fame must already be in place, so eating the first ever telekinetic fish before it even leaves the lab is not useful. However, eating the same creature after a week or two of heavy promotion, or say, the Eiffel Tower, could be a gateway to vast reserves of power.

Taboo: Unfortunately, Maws can’t NOT eat. Without food, they have no power, become slowly but stomach-curlingly hungry, and get real cranky. This can lead to unfortunate circumstances, not least of which is the social difficulty of being on a perpetual munchie run. More problematic is being stuck out in the wilderness with any injury that makes you slower than squirrels. Throughout history an untold number of Ogres have wound up as a boulder or a tree for lack of anything else to eat. If a Maw goes for more than 4 hours of consciousness without eating something, anything at all, they lose all their charges. If you should need to make an urgent call on the big white telephone, that time gets cut down to minutes. Unpleasant.

Blast Style: Ogres don’t have blasts per se, but they can (and do) eat almost anything. Although some objects are trickier than others (see below), most fleshy targets are easy.

Random Magick Domain: Skinwalking Magick revolves around changing the casters body to provide some useful service, but nothing can come out of the system that hasn’t previously gone in. It also tends toward the crude, rather than the subtle. Not very good at lockpicking, excellent at smashing walls down.

Starting Charges: Ogres start out bereft of charges and seriously hungry.

Minor Formula Spells:

*I Am What I Eat.
Cost: 1 Minor Charge
Effects: this is an oddity amongst adept spells. Once someone becomes a fully fledged Ogre, it’s always on. Anything you eat gently reflects itself in your skin, and often in your behaviour as well. Clever Ogres restrict their diet so as to always gather charge, but this effect also kicks in on all those lovely things that don’t give you minors, slowly but surely draining you of power and turning you into a vegetable. Sometimes literally. In the modern world most Ogres are thick fingered, short on temper, big on muscles, and possess ‘British Beef is Best’ bumper stickers.

Seriously?
Cost: 2 Minor Charges
Effects: This spell allows Ogres to not only eat anything they can fit into their mouths, but also gain nutritional value from their unlikely choices. Furthermore, it provides global protection from almost any form of mundane poison or bacteria and allows them to keep on eating when any other creature would have exploded long ago.

Skinwalking
Cost: 3 Minor Charges
Effects: Like I Am What I Eat, but directed and managed. Skinwalking lets Ogres pull specific traits out from their meals. One application of Skinwalking is good for one trick over 4 hours (like the horns or strength of bulls, the night vision or agility of cats), but any new effect replaces the one already in place. Generally this spell allows for a maximum shift of +15 to any one skill.

Pigging Out
Cost: 3 Minor Charges
Effects: You immediately gain back wound points equal to the ones dice of the casting roll, but you begin to approach taboo as if you’d just vomited.

Rubbish In, Rubbish Out
Cost: 4 Minor Charges
Effects: Maws have bottomless pockets. Or rather, bottomless stomachs. Anything (anything) that the adept has eaten recently can be vomited back up whole and in relatively working order (if gunky and stinky). There are only two restrictions, firstly that the object can’t have been used to power Burning Out or any flesh changing spell, and secondly that this act of regurgitation functions like any other – it approaches taboo.

Significant Formula Spells:

Open Wide
Cost: 1 Significant Charge
Effects: with a little bit of concentration Ogres can eat anything they can fit into their mouths. With this spell, their reach becomes significantly wider, and their teeth become sharp enough to carve things that are still too big into manageable portions. Russian Ogres have occasionally been known to get apocalyptically drunk (it takes a while), wander out to defunct military bases, and challenge each other to tank eating competitions. Obviously this process is both gassy and takes time.

Come To Daddy (Blast)
Cost: 2 significant charges.
Effects: at short range this is a bite from either the Maw’s primary means of consumption, or via a toothed mouth that opens anywhere on the Ogrish body (often the palms). Longer range attacks generally involve a whirlwind of the caster’s own teeth. They must be extracted if not already available. Lost fangs can be regrown with the aid of Burning Out.

Burning Out
Cost: 2 Significant Charges
Effects: You immediately gain back wound points equal to the casting roll, but you begin to approach taboo as if you’d just vomited.

All Hail The New Flesh
Cost: 3 Significant Charges
Effects: You become the last thing you ate. If this was deer, then that’s what you shift into, ditto cow, chicken, trees, or rocks. You retain the larger part of your personality but your clothes and belongings should be shed prior to transformation. In addition, the change is never quite perfect. You must chose a tell-tale mark that persists regardless of form (e.g. a human foot, your voice). You can ‘hold’ this form until the next time you eat, but it costs a minor to shift out. If they break taboo Ogres can quite easily become trapped in their assumed forms for days without charges or the ability to gain new ones. It’s generally preferred by the discerning Skinwalker to inherit bodies with teeth.

Beware the Stones
Cost: 4 Significant Charge
Effects: allows the adept to use his own teeth as a form of augury. Extraction is far from painless, but although fresh fangs do tend to make the spell more potent, a full set (once acquired) is enough to cast without agony. The effectiveness of this form of fortune telling is entirely at GMs discretion, but there’s nothing to stop Ogres pumping additional charges into the spell.

Take Of Your Body
Cost: 5 significant charges
Effects: You can selectively adopt traits from your last three meals. This might include the antlers and speed of a deer, along with the fangs and fur of a wolf, along with the face of Dan Brabowski from number 56. Although it’s possible to be subtle with this spell, it’s best used when no-one’s looking. In addition to any natural weaponry implied, this spell allows for a maximum shift of +30 to any skill or +20 to any stat. Shifting out works as it does for ‘All Hail…’.

Major Formula Spells: Recall any form you’ve held in the past, ‘hold on’ to a form or trait for a year and a day, consume and become things that aren’t necessarily made of matter, lay a change on someone else by having them eat part of your flesh, actually become a whirlwind of fangs.