Dental magic, creating and destroying pain

You got started as a patient, most likely, discovering that something grew stronger inside you during a dental operation. You found that you could control the pain, channel it into something more powerful.

But the power was stored in that chair, and you craved more. You considered becoming a dentist, but it felt wrong to you: that would put someone else in control of the process.

Instead, you taught yourself, forged your certificates, and got your own chair and equipment. Illegal? Immensely, so you’ve been careful and avoided advertisement or publicity. But some people will risk a lot for a cut-rate unlicensed dentist.

And all that pain stored up in that chair grows stronger and stronger.

Generate a minor charge: Undergo or perform an hour-long dental procedure. It doesn’t need to be heavy surgery – a cleaning, cavity fill or gum scrape is fine.

Generate a significant charge: Undergo or perform a three hour long dental surgery that requires general anesthesia.

Generate a major charge: Perform a dental procedure totally unlike any that has ever been performed before.

Taboo: A dentomancer cannot receive any formal training or certification in dentistry. If they do, they lose all charges and cannot regain them unless all knowledge and certification is somehow removed.

Also! Dentomancy charges are stored in the chair where the dental operations are performed. You can only use formulas on someone (including yourself) while they’re sitting in that chair getting a dental operation. You can store dentomancy charges in multiple chairs, but can’t combine those charges.

Symbolic Tension: The only thing that hurts more than going to the dentist is not going to the dentist.

Random Effects: Pain, especially in teeth. Every dentomancy effect both causes and relieves pain in some way.

Blast: The dentomancer heals damage while one subject is on the chair. The next person the dentomancer touches takes the same amount of damage — the damage victim doesn’t need to be on the chair for the formula to take effect, but it will hurt friend or foe, so be careful.

Charging Tips: If you have a good-paying job with dental insurance, you can get a minor charge a week as a patient. Otherwise, you’re limited to the very illegal charging method of putting together a fake office and performing surgery on others. You can easily generate 5-10 minor charges and maybe even 1-2 significant charges a week this way, but you’ll probably end up in prison within 3 months.

Starting Charges: 4 minor

Minor Formulas

Mental Floss
2 minor charges
Remove a single memory from the subject. You can also remove knowledge that the formula itself happened. The subject knows what will be removed and must be willing — coerced consent works perfectly fine here.

A Cure For Pain
3 minor charges
This is the dentomancy minor blast. Heal the subject an amount of damage equal to the sum of the dice. The next person or toothed animal you touch (even through clothes, requires a Struggle roll at +10% if they are unwilling) takes damage equal to the total amount you healed, in the form of mouth pain. Unlike most blasts, this can be dodged.

Doctor Painless
4 minor charges
Enchants a subject. For the next 24 hours, you can remove all pain from the subject, or cause up to a -25% penalty from new pain. You can decide how much pain the subject feels instanteously at any distance. Any new pain is in the teeth, but this formula can cancel other physical pain.

Psychic Root Canal
5 minor charges
If the subject has any curses or negative spells cast on them, this formula removes them. The subject suffers a horribly intensified version of the curse – this lasts a day if the curse would go on more than a day, or an hour otherwise. Afterwards, assuming they survive, the subject is free of their curse.

Tooth Fairy
Variable cost
Only usable while you remove someone’s tooth. Go hide it under a pillow and leave it unattended for a night. In the morning, the tooth will be replaced by some small handheld item (or stack of items) that would help the subject’s current situation. This might be a few hundred dollars, a gun, a book, a magic item, or even a tiny creature of some kind. The more charges you put in, the more potent the item – you can put in up to twenty minor charges. You don’t need to give the item to the subject, and someone else can find or steal the item if they get to the pillow first. If used on baby teeth or other non-permanent teeth, this formula is free, but it won’t give anything worth more than a dollar.

Significant Formulas

Hexray
1 significant charge
To use this formula, you must take an exray of the subject and examine it. You learn about the subject’s general health, any outside force affecting their mind or body, their Obsession and Passions, any magical abilities they possess, and any active enemies who have ongoing plans to cause them harm.

Overbite
1 significant charge
This is the dentomancy significant blast. It operates like A Cure For Pain, but heals and inflicts damage equal to the result of the dice.

Improvements
1 significant charge
The subject grows a bristling gory mouthful of huge, horrible teeth, fangs and tusks for the next 24 hours. They gain a Bite skill equal to the result of your die roll, or their own Struggle score, whichever is better. This does damage like a big sharp melee weapon: the dice result +6. The teeth are very visible, clearly monstrous, and difficult to conceal.

You Can’t Handle the Tooth
2 significant charge
Only usable while removing the subject’s tooth. Remove a single Hardened or Failed notch from the subject. The tooth then turns into a one-use talisman that, when presented strongly, causes a target to experience whatever caused the Hardened or Failed notch – this requires an identical Stress check for the victim, plus a Rank-3 Unnatural Stress check. Anyone can use the tooth talisman, anywhere, by presenting it strongly.

Dazzling Smile
2 significant charges
Inflict up to 10 damage on the subject with dental surgery. Until the damage heals, the subject gets a +30% shift to Charm, Lie, and all appearance-based skills, even if this brings the subject above their usual maximum. The subject’s teeth become perfect, white, and straight while this formula is in effect.

Major Effects
Create a pain-inflicting golem servant out of teeth. Kill one person to bring another back to life. Transfer a permanent disability from one person to another.

What You’ve Heard
“Little Ben” Mendoza provides incredibly cheap dental care to the Filipino community of Los Angeles, and spreads his reputation by word of mouth. He also offers illicit services to the local Occult Underground, providing both magical care and (just as often) regular old dentistry to local dukes in need. Because of his usefulness in the Occult Underground, even some of the nastiest cabals leave him unbothered.