Sundial magic. A minor school of living outside modern time.

Nickname: Gnomonists. The school isn’t big enough to have a more insulting nickname.

Foucault once said that modern societies have replaced punishment with discipline. Instead of punishing those who stray far out of line, modern societies track everyone, and teach them to discipline themselves perfectly.

In modern society, every moment is tracked precisely, and everyone is under near-constant scrutiny. With this close tracking, every person acts as their own jailer, keeping a schedule and a discipline that forbids significant deviation.

Well, not you.

You are free from that. You discovered a better way to understand time. You see time as elegant, leisurely and approximate. You track time with only a sundial – splendid and natural, scientific and correct but none too precise.

You haven’t precisely abandoned modernity. You just reject the modern notion of disciplined time.

And, refusing to be part of the great clockwork circuitry of the world, you have slipped outside of it. You step outside the modern concept of time and slip into something more elemental and less crisp.

Generate a Minor Charge: Spend a sunny morning or afternoon in the immediate vicinity of a large sundial. You can sleep, loaf, socialize, or even work. You can only gain one charge a day. Also, your charges fade away after a week.

As a minor school, Gnomonics doesn’t generate significant or major charges.

Taboo: You cannot own or use any timepiece besides a sundial. That means no clocks, no computers, no cell phone. Most modern cars are out too. You don’t break taboo if you happen to glance at a clock by accident, as long as you ignore the results.

As a result of thist, gnomonists are almost always very early or very late for everything.

Symbolic Tension: Gnomonics is timeless and timely at once, detached and connected, scientific but antiquated.

Random Effects: The precision of time and technology. Gnomonists usually render things less precise, but they can make things more precise too.

Starting Charges/Charging tips: An unemployed gnomonist, or one who somehow has a job that involves being around a sundial all day (maybe a security guard, gardener, or freelance writer) will typically be sitting on a standing supply of 7 minor charges, gaining new ones as the old ones fade. An employed gnomonist can probably only charge up on weekend, so they’ll probably only have 2 charges.

Minor Formulas

Outside the Gears
1 minor charge
Until the next sundown, machines detect you very imprecisely. Cameras show blurry, metal detectors miss small amounts, and so on.

Slip Through the Seconds
1 minor charge
Only usable in the presence of a sundial. Takes no time to use. You act first! (Effectively, you get the Initiative skill at 99). You also get +30 to your Speed and to all Speed-based skills that you have at least at 15%. Lasts one round.

Breakdown
1 minor charge
A machine within your sight becomes really imprecise. If you’re in the presence of a large working sundial, you can instead affect all precision machines in range (except the sundial!). Guns will miss, cars break down and need to be towed, cameras go blurry, musical instruments go out of tune, and computers have a ton of systemic problems. The machine’s not broken, just badly out of focus. Anyone skilled in maintaining that kind of machine can easily tune it back, with about as much effort as retuning a badly maintained machine might require. A machine that doesn’t require precision tuning, like a ladder or a bomb, is unaffected.

Forgotten Hours
2 minor charges
Affects you and one person who’s alone with you. If you’re in the presence of a large working sundial, then it affects you and everyone in your presence. Requires about five minutes of relatively calm, uninterrupted activity to take effect. Then everyone moves forward in time a few hours, as if they’d just lost track of time and spent the time hanging out doing nothing.

Timeless Knowledge
2 minor charges
Until the next sundown, you gain a skill of your choice, at a level equal to the dice roll. This can be any scientific or technological skill, but only relating to science and technology known at least fifty years ago.

What You’ve Heard
“Tan Eddie” is a homeless Vietnam vet who hangs out at the big Walter Beretta sundial in Central Park. Eddie has taken to dressing in ratty Victorian formals and playing chess with passersby, but at least he hasn’t starting faking a British accent yet. He chases away cliomancers who get close, though it’s probably not necessary, but otherwise he tries his best to keep up with the Occult Underground gossip. He’s best known in the OU for his offer of anonymous medical help: he charges about fifty bucks for illegal and antiquated (but lifesaving) emergency surgery.