Fear is the mind-killer, and the phobomancers are dying to bring it to you.

Once the most terrifying weapon in Hitler’s occult arsenal, this school is now doubted to even exist any longer. But linger it does, in tiny cabals dedicated to a return of Nazi glory and in lone defectors from this evil history and the few students they take. Many phobomancers are sadists, lovers of the infliction of fear for its own sake, but others see the greatest experiences of fear as the most human of all moments in our lives, or the loss of rationality in moments of extreme fright as a transcendent ecstasy, a communion with the primal Lacanian Real breaking through the Symbolic. In one way, phobomancy is the mirror opposite of irascimancy; that school gains power through angering others and loses it by feeling anger oneself, whereas phobomancy involves intentionally inflicting fear on oneself in order to be able to cause it in others. Phobomancers have no street names, but those hanging on to their Nazi heritage refer to themselves as Nebelherren (Fog Lords).
Phobomancy Blast Style: The target’s body tenses up so much that it damages itself. The specific effects vary, but mimic the physiological effects of extreme or prolonged anxiety.
Generate a minor charge: Intentionally expose yourself to something you are afraid of enough to get an aderenaline spike and crash. (See Sidebar 1 below)
Generate a significant charge: Intentionally and knowingly expose yourself to something you fear enough to trigger a stress check. If you are already hardened against the check, no charge is gained. (See Sidebar 2 below)
Generate a major charge: Intentionally and knowingly undergo a ritualized exposure to your greatest fears. This ritual must require you to make three stress tests against the same meter (no significant charges are gained for these tests), and at least one of the checks must be a Rank 10 check. You must not be hardened against any of the checks, and if you fail to complete the ritual, you do not get any charges.
Taboo: Phobomancers must embrace that which causes fear in them, but only for mystical purposes. If they give in to fear for mundane purposes, they lose their symbolic mastery over “the oldest and strongest emotion of mankind”. In game terms, this means that if they use their Fear stimulus to re-roll or flip-flop, they lose all charges they are carrying.
Random Magick Domain: If anger is a battering ram (see PoMoMa p. 92), then fear is a blindfold. It kicks the person’s awareness into overdrive, but robs her of the ability to deal with what she senses. Phobomancy clouds the mind and the future, forcing people to react to what is present and immediate without context or foresight. Like one stumbling in the dark, it makes the person move forward while lacking the ability to take precaution against what is in front of her.
Starting Charges: New phobomancers start with five minor charges.
Charging Tips: Minor charges are relatively easy for a phobomancer to come by. From roller coasters to bungee-jumping, the way of the adrenaline junkee is an easy path to power. Significant charges are also not difficult to come by for the determined phobomancer, but she must balance the accumulation of power with the human fragility of her psyche. A young phobomancer might feel comfortable getting two significant charges a week or more, but as the hardened and failed notches pile up, this level of power becomes too risky to pursue very often.

***Sidebar 1:Rules for adrenaline spike and crash. Upon exposure to the fear stimulus, +10% shift to Speed for 10 minutes, then -10% shift to Speed and Mind for one hour. Multiple attempts stack, but there’s a limit to how frequently you can do it, and no crash, no charge. ***
***Sidebar 2: Holy crap, won’t a phobomancer become hardened and/or crazy way too fast? Answer: ordinarily yes, they would. However, most all phobomancers have a Mind skill that lets them stay in the game longer (at a cost). They call it Embrace the Darkness. On a successful Embrace the Darkness roll, a phobomancer may take a new (no more than 24 hours old) Hardened mark and turn it into a temporary Failed mark on the same meter. Unlike an ordinary Failed mark, this temporary mark will resolve itself and go away without further work in 1-5 weeks (d10 divided by 2, round up), assuming that the phobomancer does not max out the meter and go permanently insane in the meantime. So the phobomancer can reduce the rate at which she becomes hardened by living with the worse consequences of their fears instead. Thus phobomancers are a particularly mentally unstable lot, in that their stress meters fluctuate much more than most people’s. Even with judicious use of Embrace the Darkness, though, phobomancy is a short road to madness and sociopathy unless the phobomancer also seeks frequent therapy. However, it is usually impossible for a phobomancer to fully open up and share the nature of her psychological traumas with her therapist. As an optional rule, then, apply a -10% shift to both her roll and the therapist’s roll when checking the effectiveness of therapy unless the phobomancer can find someone who knows about magick and the occult underground to get her treatment from. ***

Minor Formula Spells:

Scaredy-Cat
Cost: 1 minor charge
Effect: The target appears to others to be very frightened. The consequences of this are up to the Gamemaster, but in general it will negatively affect the target’s social interactions with others (e.g. he may seem intimidated, or incompetent, etc.). The spell does not actually make the target feel frightened; it only affects how others perceive him.

Steel Resolve
Cost: 1 minor charge
Effect: Fear the target is feeling is diminished or stopped altogether. Any fears, ordinary or supernatural, are weakened by 10%. (E.g. if the target had a -20% shift due to fear, it would weaken to -10%). The target also gets a +10% shift to any rolls to resist fear while the spell is in effect. Steel Resolve lasts for minutes or combat rounds equal to the sum of the dice roll.

Fear Ward
Cost: 2 minor charges
Effect: The caster wards an object or area. Anyone approaching the warded area makes a soul check with a -20% shift. If a target passes the check, she feels that she is in danger from some unseen force until she leaves, but does not suffer any actual penalties. If a target fails, she feels the same thing, but all her actions are at a -10% shift until she leaves the area. The effect lasts for days equal to the sum of the dice roll when cast. For an extra minor charge, one additional die can be rolled and added to the total.

The Shivers
Cost: 2 minor charges
Effect: This is the phobomancer’s minor blast. It causes the victim’s body’s fight-or-flight response to kick into overdrive: his heart races, sweat pours, his hands tremble, and his muscles tighten up to the point of spraining or even pulling tendons or ligaments.

Cause Fear
Cost: 3 minor charges
Effect: This is the phobomancer’s bread and butter. It inflicts a supernatural fear of the caster on the target, requiring him to make a stress test against whatever meter is associated with his Fear stimulus. The Rank of the challenge is equal to the 10s place of the caster’s roll. (A critical inflicts a Rank 10 check; otherwise rolls under 10 fail) The caster may spend up to 4 extra charges when casting, and for every two charges spent, the initial Rank of the challenge is increased by 1, to a maximum of 10. If the target fails his stress test, he must flee the caster’s presence. If he passes and stays in the caster’s presence, or if he flees but tries to approach again before the spell wears off, he must test again, though he only gets one hardened or failed notch regardless of how many times he has to check. Every 5 minutes or one combat round, the Rank of the test diminishes by 1 until it wears off completely.

Time is of the Essence
Cost: 3 minor charges
Effect: Faced with a decision, the target feels as though he must decide immediately or else something bad will happen. (E.g. “He’s going to get away if we don’t act now!” or “I think we’re going to miss the boat if we don’t take this deal, Frank.”) The target cannot take time to critically assess the options he’s facing. Instead, he uncritically latches on to whatever the first grounds for deciding are that present themselves. If nothing immediately obvious presents itself, the target chooses randomly. If the target does not face a relevant choice situation within five minutes of casting, the spell fades and the charges are lost.

Plague of Nightmares
Cost: 5 minor charges
Effect: The target suffers terrible nightmares the next time she sleeps. Restful sleep is made impossible, so the target is exhausted the next day. All checks governed by Speed and Mind are at -10% until the next time the target sleeps. This spell can be cast multiple nights in a row, and if it is, the exhaustion penalty is cumulative up to a maximum of -40%. After reaching -40%, the target gets a night of restful sleep even if targeted with the spell again (and the charges for such a casting are lost).

Significant Formula Spells:

Curse of Phobos
Cost: 1 significant charge
Effect: This spell gives the target a serious phobia of the caster’s choosing. The phobia must be a common and general phobia, like fear of the dark, enclosed spaces, or heights. It cannot be anything unique (like “fear of his gun”) or uncommon (like “fear of the floor”). GM’s should use discretion in deciding what phobias to allow. The phobia lasts 30 minutes or 5 combat rounds. Any dice rolls made in the presence of the object of the phobia are at -20%, and if the target tries to touch the object of the phobia, he must make a Helplessness stress test with Rank equal to the 10s place of the phobomancer’s roll plus 2 (maximum Rank 10).

Repelled Mind, Repellant Body
Cost: 1 significant charge
Effect: This spell makes the target socially repellant for 24 hours. Other people instinctively feel on edge and uncomfortable around him, describing him as “giving them the creeps” or “just not quite right”. All the target’s social rolls are at -30% for the duration of the spell.

Scare You To Death
Cost: 2 significant charge
Effect: This is the phobomancy significant blast. It causes explosive hypertension in the target’s body, resulting in breakdown of the target’s muscular tissue, especially skeletal muscles and the heart. The target feels like he is having a severe panic attack, literally dying of fright. When fatal, it often looks like the target died of Takotsubo’s cardiomyopathy, a distension of the left ventricle of the heart. Non-fatal instances often cause rhabdomyolysis, where shredded muscles dump myoglobin into the bloodstream, which can damage the kidneys.

Emptiness of the Void
Cost: 2 significant charges
Effect: For 24 hours, the target cannot use his Fear stimulus to flip-flop or reroll. In certain circumstances, this may call for a Self check, as the target is alienated from an integral part of herself.

I Can’t Deal With That Now
Cost: 2 significant charges
Effect: For 24 hours, the target finds making choices highly anxiety-provoking. Even simple choices like what to wear or eat for lunch make the target irritable and nervous to the point that they are put off as long as practically possible. More significant choices fill the target with dread and a sense of incompetency that lead him to angrily and increasingly irrationally avoid committing to an option, even if the consequences of inaction are dire.

High Octane Nightmare Fuel
Cost: 4 significant charges
Effect: This is a more powerful version of Cause Fear. Those targeted with it describe it as making the caster appear like a God of Fear, vengeful and awful. One casting affects a number of targets up to the 10s place of the caster’s roll divided by two (round up). If the caster’s roll is higher than a target’s current Wound points, that target must flee immediately or pass out for minutes equal to the caster’s Soul stat. If the caster’s roll is under a target’s current Wound points, the target must make a Rank 8 Helplessness check or flee. If the roll is a fumble, the victim has a heart attack, losing 75% of his total Wound points and collapsing. If he survives this, the cardiac patient must make a Body Roll at a -30% shift to keep from passing out. If the target flees, he cannot knowingly approach the caster for 24 hours or else he suffers the effects of the Curse of Phobos. If chased or surprised by the caster, the victim suffers the effects of The Shivers.

Phobomancy Major Effects: Inflict or remove a permanent, crippling phobia. Frighten a nation into a course of action. Prevent anyone from predicting or divining a planned event or action.

What You Hear: A cabal of phobomancers living in a remote village in Argentina have been scaring themselves to death for generations now to prevent anyone from picking up on their plot to cause a global Aryan uprising. The world is leaving them behind, but they may yet have the determination to wrench it back toward a Fourth Reich.