Mystical artistic vandalism.

A.k.a. Taggers, Spraycans.

Graffitiomancy is tricky school of magick to pin down in terms of history. By its very nature, it’s spread and influence has been subtle, slick and just out of sight. Some folks say it got its start back in the Middle Ages, where the first public toilets had their walls scribbled on. Others say the cavemen had a crude precursor to the modern school. The paranoid ones say it, like all schools of magick based on an artform, arose out of ancient cultural feuds that are still being waged to this day by a shadowy elite based in France and England. Most likely, the modern school of Graffitiomancy got its start durting the infamous graffiti gang wars that paralleled the beginnings of Hip-Hop.
No matter what its origin, however, the Graffitiomancers of today exist uneasily amongst the dirty streets, sometimes warring with Urbanomancers and each other, hoping to find a comprimise between the world they want and the world they see.

Symbolic Tension: Your artistic vision is both wide and narrow, destroying and creating. Sure, you try to act like a mirror for the world, presenting its virtues and vices with truthful clarity. But, somehow, your personal judgements, hang-ups, feelings, goals and mistakes always profane the big picture you paint for the people. You’re defiling what you wish to keep pure. It’s like sending rancid chocolates to your most beloved valentine.

Generate a Minor Charge: Leave a small graffiti tag of yours on a wall or floor or some other surface (no, canvas don’t count). The tag must be your own original work. If at least 10 people pay attention to the tag and take in its ‘message’ within 24 hours of it being painted, you gain an additional minor charge, hence why so many taggers like to tag cars, busy streetwalls and the insides of buildings instead of inside their own homes and backalleyways. You can only gain one extra charge per tag.

Generate a Significant Charge: Create an elaborate mural dedicated to your message across a significant portion of a surface (usually stretching across multiple walls at your height or spanning the entire height and length of one wall). You get an extra significant charge if at least 100 people pay attention to the mural and take it all in within a single given day. Note that you can get this charge on any and every day since the mural was completed, until the mural is somehow taken or gone, of course.

Generate a Major Charge: Have one of your graffiti pieces become as famous and recognisable as the Mona Lisa or The Scream or…well, you get the idea.

Taboo: Graffitiomancy has a two part taboo. First, if you willingly deny the chance to express yourself, you lose all charges. This includes lying in certain contexts, cleaning off your own graffiti (although it’s okay for someone else to do it without your permission or knowledge), abandoning a creative project (not just graffiti, but also wiriting a novel, ordinary painting on a canvas, singing a song, etc.) and not giving your honest opinion when asked (but if you really have no opinion, it’s okay to say so — just don’t clam up or lie about it). Note that this doesn’t mean tagging every wall you see whenever you have the art supplies or having to begin an artistic endeavour every time you have a chance to — after all, you can’t express your artistic vision if you can’t do so at your discretition. Second, if you vandalise, damage or destroy property or art in any way except graffiti, you break taboo. This covers breaking and entering, bombing buildings, smashing chairs and wrecking cars, among other things.

Blast Style: Graffitiomancy has no true blast, although the spell Black Spot (see below) can make a target sick or hurt enough to leave him confined to a hospital bed. The spells Tag Over and Wall Wash can also function as weak blast spells under the right circumstances (see below).

Random Magick Domain: Expression, art and perception of truth and life. Taggers like to speak their minds and see things as they really are.

Starting Charges: 2 minor charges.

Charging Tips: If you got the supplies, you can earn a minor charge for every 10 or so minutes at work…if you take the conservative route and tag up out-of-the-way places. More daring escapades risk harassment and arrest (which probably means breaking taboo), especially if you try to rack up more than 2 or so charges within the hour. On the plus side though, you have a chance of doubling up on charges at the end of the day. Significant charges usually come in at a rate of a full day’s work (usually only if you have a real private place to work, like your home) or a week’s worth of work if you got other things to do. Public murals can easily get you arrested (and tabooed), unless you get commissioned by the local government. Be aware that public graffiti usually gets cleaned up within a few hours to a week of its creation, especially murals and really intrusive tags.

Minor Formula Spells:

Refill
Cost: 1 Minor Charge.
Effects: Instantly restocks an empty spraycan or paint pot you have in your possession with paint of your choice of colour. For an extra 5 charges, this spell can be cast on other empty devices that require any ‘ammo’ or ‘fuel’ of some type, allowing a gun to be reloaded with bullets, a car to be refueled and a flashlight to get new batteries.

Have Your Say
Cost: 3 Minor Charges.
Effects: Ask the target of this spell about some kind of subject matter (“Hey, officer, how’s the murder investigation going?”) and she’ll tell you her honest opinion on it (“Pretty good, I think we’ve got the guy right in our sights.”). Note that this doesn’t necessarily give you any information about the subject matter itself, although it may give you a hint about what info the target has and how she interpets that info, rightly or wrongly. Targets of this spell may suffer Unnatural-2 and Helplessness-1 madness checks for spilling their guts in this manner, if the situation calls for it. This spell can be resisted with a successful Soul roll, although doing so is a Self-3 madness check.

Tag Over
Cost: 1 Minor Charge.
Effects: Instantly replaces another Spraycan’s tag (for minor charges) with your own. You must have your hand over the tag while casting this spell. If the Spraycan whose tag you just usurped was carrying a minor charge, you can steal it for yourself (but otherwise, no charge from the tag at all). Having your tag usurped by another Graffitiomancer via this spell inflicts an Unnatural-3 madness check and one die worth of damage. You can’t usurp murals with this spell (but see Wall Wash below).

Getting Up
Cost: 2 Minor Charges.
Effects: For one roll, you may use your Graffitiomancy skill (with flip-flops) in place of an artistic skill such as Dancing, Singing, Poetry, Painting and Drawing.

Mark The Spot
Cost: 5 Minor Charges.
Effects: Draw, paint, tattoo or otherwise mark some kind of symbol or picture onto an object or person and cast this spell. As long as that symbol or picture stays on the object or person, you will be able to pinpoint their location exactly by spending a minor charge. The only downside is that any Graffitiomancer who also knows Mark The Spot can spend a minor charge to become immediately aware of any ‘marked’ objects and people nearby (he won’t know who put the marks on them, just that they’ve been marked).

Significant Formula Spells:

Black Spot
Cost: 3 Significant Charges.
Effects: The target of this spell suffers an injury or disease that disables him within 6 hours of it being cast. This spell is never directly fatal, although it’s hard to defend yourself when your legs and arms are broken or you’re delirious with fever. Magickal and professional mundane healing can cure the injury or illness as per normal, otherwise the spell’s effects lasts 24 hours.

Camoflague
Cost: 1 Significant Charge.
Effects: Same as the Bibliomancy spell You Can’t Judge A Book By Its Cover, this spell disguises an inanimate object as another inanimate object for 15 minutes. If the disguised object doesn’t fit in with the surrounding area, observers can make a Notice roll with a -50% shift to notice “something odd” about it.

Wall Wash
Cost: 1 Significant Charge.
Effects: Allows you to usurp another Tagger’s significant charge mural with one of your design. Like Tag Over, this spell can steal a Significant charge (or up to 10 minors, if that’s all he has) from the target adept. Having one of your murals usurped with this spell inflicts an Unnatural-5 madness check and two dice worth of damage.

Personal Touch
Cost: 4 Significant Charges.
Effects: Allows you to turn one finished work of art you have personally created (not a minor charge tag, but maybe a mural) into a single use Significant artifact. The work of art doesn’t have to be graffiti, it can be a drawing, a painting, a sculpture or even a recording of your music.
The artifact’s power can be an Significant Graffitiomancy formula spell for no extra cost, or you can have another adept of any school enchant the artifact with one of his Significant formula spells, although this will cost extra Significant charges equal to what would it would normally cost (both you and the other adept can pay this extra cost with any charges either of you have). Using the artifact’s effect takes an action.
For example, you have 6 Significant charges and a painting. Casting Personal Touch on the painting allows you to make an artifact that casts any Significant formula spells you know and costs 4 Significant charges. If you have an Urbanomancer friend with 2 Significant charges, you can cast Personal Touch on the painting and turn it into an artifact that casts the formula spell Traffic Accident (costs 3 Significant charges, assuming the Urbanomancer knows it), which costs you 4 Significant charges (only you can pay these charges) and another 3 Significant charges from between the two of you (either you pay 2 charges while he pays 1 charge or he pays 2 charges while you pay 1 charge).

The Colour of Truth
Cost: 2 Significant Charges.
Effects: For the next 12 hours, you gain the Soul skill Aura Sight or Symbol Sight at the level of your roll.

Major Graffitiomancy Effects: Make your own magickal portrait to age and taint in your place, ala The Picture of Dorian Grey. Permanently gain a Soul stat of 99. Magickally bring a work of art to life. Find out the names of all the archetypes in the Invisible Clergy.