Modern day prospectors, sifting through the trash for nuggets of power.

Note: I started writing this up in 2001, but hadn’t thought about it in years until I saw Requiem_Jeer’s Archaeomancy . His post and issues raised in the comments to his post helped motivate me to return to and complete this project.

Consumer culture does not encourage holding on to things. The twin mechanisms of single-use items and perpetually upgrading product lines train us to think of things as having value only briefly, and once that time is up to dispose of it and move on. And it is not just objects our modern world treats this way. Experiences that once were life-changing events have become one-time-use commodities. (See 13 countries in 10 days! Sit on the emperor’s throne! The bus pulls up, you take your picture, and move on.) Disposable friends, disposable careers, disposable homes, disposable lives. But in every thing there remains untapped potential, a residue of value lost and forgotten, but very much real. Detritomancers gain power from the latent value others have let slip through the cracks. By gathering up what others have thrown away, they harvest all that potential and then can use it to reshape the world. For this reason, Detritomancers are sometimes called trash men. Since they also have to keep whatever they collect, they are sometimes called packrats.
Most things of course have a value that can be measured in money. More important for a detritomancer however are those things that are thrown away despite deep personal or intrinsic value. The more strongly the item was valued for itself, the more power lies within for the detritomancer who lays hands on it. Trash men can only gain charges, however, from things that have truly been thrown away. They cannot gain a charge off something they paid for, no matter how little. Indeed, they cannot gain a charge off something given to them, for even if it’s free, it is being treated as something worth retaining – its potential value has not gone unnoticed in the symbolically necessary way. Similarly a charge cannot be gained by stealing an otherwise appropriate item, or from something the detritomancer herself threw away. Only by catching what has been dropped on the sidewalk, abandoned on the roadside, swept into the gutter does a packrat gather something of mystic rather than mundane value.
Detritomancy Blast Style: The person’s body, something so many in the world take for granted, breaks apart on the person. With a minor blast, a muscle could get pulled, a joint dislocate, or a minor blood vessel burst. With a significant blast, bones break, muscle tears, and organs fail. However, a person’s ability to be affected depends on how much they care for their body. Someone who eats at McDonalds every day and never exercises could take significant blast damage from a minor blast; a gym bunny or Shaolin monk might be immune to a detritomancy blast entirely. (Note: No detritomancer has ever used a blast on an epideromancer. No one is entirely sure what would happen if one did.)
Generate a minor charge Spend an hour searching for discarded newspapers, dropped change, and other commonly tossed items. You must pick up any discarded item you see. If you cannot find even one piece (say, because TNI dropped you off in the middle of the Gobi desert), you cannot collect a charge. If you notice but do not pick up some piece of trash, you do not get a charge for that hour of searching and the clock starts over. You do not have to take trash that has been placed in a trash receptacle, but if you take anything from the container, you must take all the trash in it.
Generate a significant charge: There are three ways to generate a significant charge. First, find an item of significant monetary value. Items collected for their monetary value must be worth at least $1,000 but less than $100,000 – a working car abandoned on a lonely stretch of road, an antique watch someone assumed was a knock-off, an old collection of baseball cards or comic books, etc. A CD containing a large company’s database of its employees’ personal information would also qualify.
Second, find an item of significant symbolic value – a woman’s diary from when she was a teenager, a collection of love letters from a high school sweetheart, or a baby’s bronzed booties. The item need not actually have value to the person who threw it away, but rather must be the type of item that the collective unconscious recognizes as having intrinsic worth. For instance, Lucy Watkins, Godwalker of the Flying Woman, uses her 99% channel to free Abby Danforth from all emotional ties to her husband (see Statosphere p. 36). No longer caring anything for it, Abby throws away the ring she’s been wearing: her husband’s high school class ring with the inscription “Abby and Ronny 4-ever, May 1966”. Despite the fact that the ring now means nothing to Abby, it has sufficient markers to symbolize value to most anyone who saw it, and so plays into the symbolic tension at the heart of detritomancy.
Third, find an item of significant personal value. To collect a charge on the basis of personal value, the item must have strong personal meaning to whoever threw it away, and the trash man must know this background. So finding a kindergartener’s macaroni and glitter artwork in the trash won’t generate a significant charge (how many of these go in the trash each week?), but if the trash man knows it was made the day before the child went missing and was on the distraught mother’s fridge until yesterday, the 5 year anniversary of the child’s disappearance, then it’s worth a significant charge.
No matter how many of the three categories an item falls into, it can only generate 1 significant charge.
Generate a major charge: Find an item in the trash of incredible monetary value or unique symbolic or personal value. Monetary value: An item worth at least $100,000 – a platinum and diamond bracelet accidentally knocked into the trash at a jeweler, an original Rembrandt that sat in a family’s attic until space was needed for that treadmill they never use, the Hope diamond… Symbolic value: The real Declaration of Independence after someone swapped it out for a cheap replica, the nails used to put Jesus of Nazareth on the cross, the boots from Neil Armstrong’s moon walk, etc. Personal value: The only manuscript of a book the artist has struggled to write for 20 years, or the engine for a car someone has been trying since middle school to build in his garage would do it, as would a family heirloom passed down for 8 generations tossed out with the costume jewelry. Oh, one other possibility: take home an abandoned child. (They must not symbolically belong to anyone, so they must be under the age of 8 or so (too young to belong to themselves) and not yet officially be an orphan or ward of the state.)
The same requirements for symbolic and personal value listed under significant charges apply to major charges. If an item fits more than one category (almost a certainty, at this level) it does not generate multiple charges.
—Note: Theoretically, one could just stumble across something worth a major charge. This should never happen unless it is a carefully considered plot hook. As with a major charge for any other school, it should take a great deal of work to bring about the circumstances that would result in a major-charge item being thrown away and subsequently collected, for instance by befriending our car-building individual above and convincing him to not only abandon his life’s task, but throw out the engine with the trash as a symbolic statement. —
Taboo: Detritomancers have two taboos. First, they cannot get rid of anything, including but not limited to things they’ve collected for for a charge. They have to add any newspaper they read or McDonalds wrappers they find to their stash. If they destroy, lose, give or throw away any of the items they have collected, they lose all charges they are holding. There is one exception: when they spend a major charge, the item that got them the charge disappears completely, every drop of its value and potential consumed in the casting. (Yes, this applies even to an abandoned child taken home.) Intentionally throwing away or abandoning something, in particular, is bad for a trash man: doing so costs her not only all the charges she is presently holding, but the next charge of the appropriate type she collects as well. (Given their obsessive focus on untapped value in objects, most are near-clinically obsessive-compulsive hoarders anyway, so doing so would likely also require Self or possibly Helplessness stress checks as well.) Second, she cannot use any item she has added to her stash for its mundane purpose or allow anyone else to do so either. For instance, a packrat might have collected a room full of discarded newspapers over the years, and could bundle them up to use as furniture, but could not look back through them to find that article on Alex Abel’s charitable donation to a local asylum. Similarly, having collected a disc full of peoples’ personal data, she could not sell that information to an interested bidder. Intentionally using a collected item for its mundane purpose or letting someone else do so costs him all charges he’s currently holding. Accidentally doing so, or if someone else does so against his will, costs him one charge of the appropriate type.
Random Magick Domain: Detritomancy is about disregard and negligence. You couldn’t use it to make someone love you or devote themselves to a cause, but you can use it to make them skip their anniversary dinner or leave their new car out during a hailstorm. The detritomancer herself is the flip side of this coin: seeing the value hidden in what has been denigrated or neglected.
Starting Charges: New detritomancers start with 4 minor charges and roughly 50 pounds of collected detritus in their hoard.
Charging tips: Theoretically a driven detritomancer with a steady supply of Adderall could rack up 24 minor charges in a day. Practically speaking, though, probably no more than 2 or 3 minor charges a day are possible; remember, gaining a charge requires spending a solid hour concentrating on the streets and picking up EVERY discarded item you find. Skip one pissed-on piece of newspaper and the hour is wasted. Spending tons of your time wandering through crowds picking trash out of the gutter could also lead to Isolation stress tests, not to mention the attention of the police and/or the mental health profession. With a good Notice skill, the adept should be able to pick up 1-2 significant charges a week

Minor Formula Spells:

Laziness
Cost: 1 minor charge
Effect: The target of the spell has a -10% shift for one minute or one combat round. The adept may spend extra charges to increase this shift by -10% per charge. For 2 charges per -10% shift, the adept can extend this effect by one minute or one combat round. (So if Smiling Jim wants to whammy someone with a -20% shift for three combat rounds, it would cost 2 minor charges for the first round, 4 minor charges for the second round, and 4 minor charges for the 3rd round = 10 minor charges.) The spell is essentially the same as the Entropomancy spell Taste of Chaos, except it works by targeting the victim’s motivation, not the balance of cosmic chance. The target just doesn’t feel like giving it his all. Note, therefore, that this spell can only target beings that have motivational states, so it’s useless against a sentry gun or a minor clockwork, but may be used against a demon and possibly against an Automaton.

Too Much Junk Food
Cost: 1 charge
Effect: The detritomancy blast spell. The person’s body falls apart in ways typical of those that don’t use or misuse their bodies – sprains, strains, minor tears, and so on. As stated above, someone who really doesn’t take care of their body may take significant blast damage, whereas someone who takes excellent care of their body might be immune. This decision is of course entirely up to the GM’s discretion, but in general 3 factors seem important: the target’s Body score, the target’s Body description, and how high a skill the person has in general athletics or something similar, with the latter 2 being more important. So someone with Body 70 (Blubbery) and General Athletics 15% would probably take significant damage, while someone with Body 30 (Old War Wound) and General Athletics 30% might still be immune.

Simple Carelessness
Cost: 2 minor charges
Effect: Make the target drop some item he is carrying without noticing. If she has something in her hands at that time, this item will be dropped; otherwise, in the next 15 minutes she will drop some random item on her person at the time the spell was cast (her wallet, an old Starbucks receipt in her pocket, could be anything). For an additional 3 minor charges, the caster can specify an item, and if the target is carrying that item, it will be dropped, but if the item is not on the target, they drop something random and the extra charges are lost.
Note: A detritomancer cannot gain a charge from any item discarded due to this spell.

Past Due For Some Maintenance
Cost: 2 minor charges
Effect: Accelerates the breakdown of some inorganic object. For instance it could make the paint on a house peel faster than normal, cause engine gunk to build up in weeks rather than months, or make a gun rust like it hadn’t been oiled after its last firing. The effects are not immediate, so it would do little good to cast in on the engine of a car that was currently chasing you, but would have an effect if you cast it on their car a week or two ago (in anticipation of double-crossing them today). This accelerated wear down continues until the item is destroyed or gets a thorough restoration, after which the effect is cancelled. Items housed in special conditions to preserve their quality like paintings in a museum or (probably) a Bibliomancer’s prized finds cannot be targeted; it’s like they are undergoing constant upkeep.

Forgetfulness
Cost: 3 minor charges
Effect: Make the target forget about one event he is currently planning on attending – it could be that business meeting scheduled for tomorrow morning in the conference room or the dinner reservations at Chez Louis for his anniversary next month. This spell makes the event completely slip the target’s mind; however, it does nothing to stop her from looking at her planner the next morning and realizing that the meeting had slipped her mind. If the target has a great deal of investment in making the appointment when the spell is cast (say, it’s with The Bad Man and he’s guaranteed he can provide the target with the ritual component she’s been seeking for a year), she can resist with a successful Mind -20% roll, in which case the charges are not lost.

Everybody Cuts Corners
Cost: 3 minor charges
Effect: This spell causes a minor lapse in security procedures in the caster’s location – someone might not log out of their computer while they go to the bathroom, or not shut a security door all the way behind them, or switch the security tapes over 2 minutes late, etc. If there are no security measures in place in the caster’s location, the charges are lost. Successful casting does not tell the caster what breach of security has happened, only that one did happen.

This Too Shall Pass
Cost: 4 minor charges
Effect: Some events stick with us emotionally, replaying whether we want them to or not. Others roll off us without effect. This spell guarantees the latter. The caster picks one Madness Meter. On a successful roll, she automatically succeeds on her next check on that meter with a rank equal to or lower than the 10s place of her roll. Stress checks of a higher challenge get handled normally, and the spell is not discharged by a check if the caster passes due to hardened notches she already has. Passing a check due to this spell does not give a Hardened notch.
Example: Sally expects a rumble tomorrow and only has one Hardened spot on her Violence meter, so she decides to cast This Too Shall Pass targeting that meter. She rolls a 61 against her Magick: Detritomancy skill of 70. She will now automatically succeed on her next Violence check of rank 6 or lower. That night, a mugger kicks her from behind and tries to steal her coat. The attack causes a Rank-1 Violence check, which she automatically passes because she has 1 Hardened notch, and the spell stays in place. If the mugger had shot at her instead and made her take a Rank-2 Violence check, the spell would have gone off, making her automatically succeed the check but leaving her unprepared for tomorrow’s engagement. If the mugger had turned out to be a Sleeper operative that kidnapped her and tortured her for an hour, she would have made a Rank-7 check normally but the spell would still be in effect.

Significant Formula Spells

What’s The Point?
Cost: 1 significant charge
Effect: The spell targets a person’s commitments, making what are normally reliable sources of motivation inert. When cast, one or more of the target’s Passions or Obsession loses its ability to trigger a flip-flop. On a successful cast, the adept can choose one Passion. The target cannot flip-flop by means of that Passion for 6 hours. On a matched success, the caster can affect either all the target’s Passions or the target’s Obsession. On a crit, all the target’s Passions AND his Obsession are affected.

Slipping Through The Cracks
Cost: 1 significant charge
Effect: As the Kleptomancy spell Hide in Plain Sight. You become very difficult to notice. As long as you are quiet, move slowly, and do not take combat actions, you can remain completely unnoticed. Anyone actively looking for intruders can spot you with a successful Notice roll at a -40% shift, but no one else even has a chance. You can be noticed normally by anyone seeing you in a mirror or through a camcorder. The spell lasts for 15 minutes or until you enter combat, talk above a whisper, or otherwise draw attention to yourself.

Your Body, Your Temple
Cost: 2 significant charges
Effect: This is the detritomancy significant blast. As with the minor blast, the extent to which the target takes care of his body affects the result of the spell. For an average target, the spell does significant blast damage. For someone who takes exceptional care of her body, the spell might only due the equivalent of minor blast damage (adding the dice together rather than taking the roll as the damage). Against an old, chronic boozehound like Dirk Allen, it might do significant damage plus one or even 2 extra dice. (Alternately, the GM might let you role 3 or even 4 dice and take the two you want without spending rounds concentrating.)

Alley Cat Augury
Cost: 2 significant charges
Effect: This spell allows the caster to gain insight into the future through the time honored tradition of divination through an animal’s entrails. Specifically, the caster must disembowel a stray cat. (Other runaway domesticated animals might work at GM’s discretion, but not vermin like rats or wild animals like deer.) By killing the animal and examining its entrails, the caster may, with a successful roll, gather vague but useful information on a particular topic. (Note: depending on the character’s background, slaughtering a stray cat or watching someone else do so could require Violence, Helplessness, or Self checks. It could be quite disturbing watching a detritomancer inquire his way through a box of kittens…)

I Don’t Need This
Cost: 3 significant charges
Effect: If This Too Shall Pass is an ounce of prevention, I Don’t Need This is a pound of cure. With a successful cast, the target loses one Hardened notch or one Failed notch on a Madness Meter of the caster’s choosing. Note that while This Too Shall Pass can only be cast on oneself, I Don’t Need This can affect any willing target. To take effect, the caster must remove some part of the target’s body – this could be anything from plucking a hair to cutting off a knuckle. The target holds the body part while the caster casts the spell, and then the target throws away the body part. When the body part is discarded, the target’s memory of the event that caused the Failed or Hardened notch is erased from his memory and the notch is erased from the relevant meter. Alternately, if the caster is also the target, he may hold on to the body part, and for an additional 1 significant charge, make someone he touches with the body part make a stress check on the same meter. If the spell is removing a Hardened notch, the rank of the victim’s stress check is equal to the rank of the lost Hardened notch. If the spell is removing a Failed notch, the rank is equal to two times the rank of the Failed notch removed. Only one attempt of this sort can be made per body part.

Dumpster Dive
Cost: 3 significant charges
Effect: For 24 hours, the target cannot purchase any item by payment or barter. For the duration of the spell, he can only take things he’s gotten for free. He can scrounge, beg, borrow, steal, and accept donations, but cannot give or promise to give any kind of compensation for what he receives. Under certain circumstances, this may prompt a Self or Helplessness stress check (“This offer is a steal! Why am I not signing the papers??”) or, if the target realizes he is being magickally manipulated, an Unnatural stress check.

Detritomancy Major Effects: Gain the ability to walk unnoticed through any customs security for life. Make someone abandon their life’s goal. Cause a massive sell-off in one company’s stock. Weaken a cause (like rooting for the Cubbies or the War on Drugs) at a regional or national level.

What You Hear
Park Su-Jik, a detritomancer in Pyongyang, North Korea, has taken up residence in the unfinished Ryugyong Hotel, a 105-story structure that lay abandoned from 1992 until 2008. He thinks they’ll give up on it again and that he’ll be able to take possession of it and get a major charge. Of course, if it worked and he spent that charge, the whole building would disappear…