It’s a common belief in the Occult Underground that Telimancy grew out of Fulminaturgy. It makes sense if you don’t know either school very well; obviously the bullet school came from the gun school. Those familiar with both know better than to make that mistake. There’s no known founder for telimancy, but most historians in the Occult Underground believe that the founder had a career in aerospace, most likely working on a long-term space mission of some kind, given the most popular spells.
The armigers of fulminaturgy are concerned about what the gun means in the society that birthed it. Ammo counters, by their own reckoning, have a much more simple line of thought. A gun without a bullet is fundamentally useless. You can posture about its symbolism all you like, but without ammo, it’s just an object, no different than any club or bat. Therefore, the bullet is the true force behind the firearms that helped birth modern society, and the gun should be dismissed as the service top it is. Ammo counters attempt to liberate the bullet from the shadow of the gun by finding ways to harness its power without simply shooting it, becoming guns in their own right. Many use slings. Some glue bullets to bombs to serve as shrapnel. One ammo counter in St. Louis likes to use a drone to drop bullets from above.
Ω: 1
Domain: Potential, movement, destruction, and the throughline between them
Minor Charge: Damage someone with a bullet. You can’t use a gun, that person cannot have consented to it, and it has to deal a meaningful amount of damage via movement or explosion. The bullet has to deal the harm directly; if someone slips on a bullet and cracks their head? No charges.
Significant charge: Same as minor charge, but the person has to be hostile and willing to seriously hurt or kill you. You have to commit to the bullet’s inherent worth and capacity for violence even in the face of danger.
Major charge: Kill six people in six hours using bullets. Same rules for damaging someone with a bullet for a minor charge. Each person must be killed in a different way.
Taboo: There are three taboos for the school. The first is that an ammo counter must have six bullets on their person at all times – exactly six, like the lauded revolver. To serve as a gun, one must be loaded, and if one must be loaded, they should be fully loaded. If an ammo counter falls under or above six bullets, they have an hour to amend it before they lose their charges.
The second is that you cannot discard a bullet. To get rid of a bullet, you must consume it as part of a spell or otherwise benefit from getting rid of it. Attacking with the bullet counts, but so does selling it or throwing it into the bushes as a distraction or giving it to a child to earn their trust, so long as you materially benefit from it. Avoiding the first taboo does not count as materially benefiting from it.
The third is that a bullet you own can’t be loaded into a gun. You can fire someone else’s bullets from a gun you own, but no self-respecting gun would give their bullets to another gun.
Shuffle the Shells
Cost: 1 minor, 1 bullet
Removed from the context of a gun, a bullet becomes a small and generic object in the same way that a walnut or a marble might. If you put a bullet in a closed container, its potential shifts in the darkness and you can pull something else out instead, roughly the same size and holding some kind of energy: a battery, a seed, a vitamin, etc. It can even be a different bullet.
Straight Shot
Cost: 1 minor, 1 bullet
Toss a bullet over your shoulder as you start traveling. You get 20% to Pursuit rolls as long as you’re traveling straight in one direction. Spell lasts for a number of minutes equal to the casting roll or until you turn by 10 degrees or more, whichever comes first
Tracer Round
Cost: 2 minor, 1 bullet
Say a person’s name, spin a bullet on the ground (consuming it) and see where it points. This will give a clue to the person’s next destination. Roll the dice and keep the result for your next roll to track or pursue this person.
Curveball Visionary
Cost: 2 minor, 1 bullet
You can substitute your Telimancy identity for any Knowledge roll concerning trajectories, as if you had a PHD in Physics. If you find a mysterious metal box in a smoking crater, you know instinctively what path it took to get there and where it came from. Likewise, you can determine the absurd path that your protege’s bottle rocket will take from its launchpad to the mayor’s bedroom window before she lights the fuse. You can also determine whether an object’s flight has been or will be influenced by someone else’s Telimancy.
Misfire
Cost: 2 minor
The school’s minor blast. Allows you to remotely fire any unloaded bullet within ten meters. Not as good as firing it normally, but still does hand-to-hand damage. This will not aim the bullet for you; it has to be pointing at the target already. You may pay 1 extra charge to fire a bullet already in a gun; if the gun’s being actively wielded, its owner gets hit with a Helplessness 3 check.
One in the Chamber
Cost: 2 minor, 1 bullet
If you are a gun while holding bullets, then who’s to say what can be a gun and, more importantly, what can be reloaded? You can consume a bullet to ‘reload’ 1/6th of any inanimate object, rounded down. You can use this to reload a gun that takes a bullet of a different size…or you can use it to ‘reload’ your car’s fuel tank or ‘reload’ your phone’s battery or even ‘reload’ that empty PEZ dispenser in the garbage.
Instant Rebound
Cost: 2 minor, 1 bullet
The power of a bullet is contingent on its path – and whether it stays where it impacts. Slip a bullet into someone’s pocket while they’re in transit and they’ll feel compelled to leave their destination as soon as they arrive. Resisting leads to a Violence 4 check, as the compulsion will feel like a matter of physics rather than mere suggestion, and must be physically rejected.
Country Mile Misfire
Cost: 1 significant, 1 bullet
Swallow the bullet, and then look your target in the eye to curse them. This curse lasts a number of days equal to the tens place die. The bullet rules trajectory, and without its judgment, projectiles go wild. As long as the curse lasts, if the target fails on a roll to aim, throw or shoot something, it’s a matched failure. If it’s already a matched failure, it becomes a fumble.
666 in the Chamber
Cost: 2 significant, 1 bullet
You trap a demon or similar immaterial entity in the bullet used to cast this spell. This lasts for a number of minutes equal to the casting roll. While in the bullet, the demon cannot perceive the outside world and cannot be perceived. A possessed bullet cannot be consumed for a Telimancy spell, but it can be fired normally or via Telimancy blast, releasing the entity immediately where the bullet impacts. This does not assist in perceiving the immaterial entity, and it will not protect you from retaliation once it’s released.
Ricochet Recoil
Cost: 2 significant
You grant one ally one perfect shot with any firearm or projectile. A 10% increase on their next roll to shoot a gun or throw an object, multiplied by the ones place of your roll. However, to unlock that much power from a bullet, you must relinquish control over it. If the shot hits, it will ricochet off of the target after dealing damage; any attempt to predict its new trajectory or target gets a 40% negative shift. The GM will choose what the ricochet hits. The only conditions are that the secondary target will be within a number of meters equal to the ones place of your roll, and it will never, ever be something or someone you want to get hit.
Massive Misfire
Cost: 3 signficant
The school’s major blast. In terms of damage, it’s exactly the same as the minor blast, up to and including dealing hand-to-hand damage. The advantage is that, one, you can trigger up to six bullets in one go; two, the spell handles aiming for you; and three, you don’t need to pay extra to shoot out of someone else’s gun.
Odyssean Trick Shot
Cost: 3 significant
Get a picture of someone while they’re traveling. Scratch out their face with a bullet. Six obstacles will show up between that person and their destination. By default, each obstacle lasts for a number of minutes equal to the sum of the casting roll. Any rolls to get past an obstacle quicker get a 10% negative shift.
Bullet With Your Name On It
Cost: 5 significant, six bullets
Get someone to swallow all six of your bullets within an hour. If they do, you give them the new identity of ‘Bullet’ at 10% or give them a free experience check on an existing Bullet identity; it substitutes for Pursuit and coerces and evaluates Violence. If the new identity reaches 25% or higher, you become aware of it no matter where that person is; that person now counts towards your taboo total for bullets and they count as a bullet for casting Telimancy spells. Using them that way will grant a 20% shift to the spell, but it’ll also consume the person’s Bullet identity in a fiery conflagration. This causes an Unnatural or Self 5 check (from being used like an inanimate object) and a Violence 8 check (from the explosion); it also deals damage to them equal to their bullet identity when consumed.
Empty the Chambers
Cost: 6 significant
You know that you’re ‘unloaded’ when you’re out of bullets, but what happens to a non-telimancer who gets unloaded? Time to find out. Using this spell on a non-Telimancer allows you to physically extract six bullets from another human being. The target is immediately hit with the effects of several weeks of malnutrition, causing minor blast damage and an Unnatural 6 check. The resulting bullets can’t be used to cast telimancy spells – being made of raw human health conflicts too much with the base nature of a bullet. Aside from being used as normal bullets, they can be swallowed and processed like a very powerful multivitamin. After someone swallows one, anybody attempting to heal them may flip-flop the next non-magickal roll to do so. These vitamin bullets still count towards your bullet total for the purposes of taboo.
Major Spell Effects: Explode every bullet in a ten mile radius. Prevent someone from reaching their destination for six years. Extract all of the ‘ammo’ out of a company or institution or government and reload it into another. Determine the metaphysical trajectory needed to shoot a member of the Invisible Clergy.