Metallic Occultism

AKA Smiths, Metalworkers, Piercers

I made this school back on the old johntynes website for 2nd edition, but it didn’t survive the purge and was never recovered (couldn’t even find it with the wayback machine, I tried) until I discovered it burried in my google docs as an untitled file when I wasn’t even looking for it. It felt like fate, so I worked on converting it to 3rd edition and fixing some of the flavor, I hope y’all like it!

Some say Metallic Occultism is as old as the concept of alchemy itself, others claim it to be a creation of the counterculture of the late 90s or early aughts. Truth is, it doesn’t matter where it started, only where it is today. In the modern day, Metallic Occultism is practiced by those who seek to build up or change what it is to be human. Smiths see modern humanity as a work in progress, something that is on the right track, but needs to be built up and fine tuned. To achieve this, smiths seek to use metal for self improvement and the improvement of others, working towards what they see as a more refined human. The inherent paradox of this though, is that in seeking to improve humanity, they move away from what it is to be human. Smiths strive to master their bodies and perfect the human form, but the tools they use to do this are anything but. By improving an object, it slowly ceases to be the original object. How much can you add to a man before he’s no longer a man?

Blast Style: This school has no blast style

Stats
The structure of M.Occultism is a bit different from other postmodern schools, in that certain spells require specific metals to be used in gaining charges for use of that spell. For example, if you wanted to make your body as hard as iron, you would need iron for the charges, no other metal would suffice. The only exception is magically enchanted metals, which can count for multiple metals depending on the magic enchanting it.

Generate a Minor Charge: Put a piece of metal into your body. Normally this is accomplished by getting a piercing of some kind, but it does not necessarily have to be done this way.

Generate a Significant Charge: Consume a piece of metal that causes you either significant discomfort or a minor medical issue. You can also generate a significant charge by getting a piece of metal put into your body that can only be removed medically. Additionally, for the duration of any significant spell, you do not suffer any medical side effects of the metals you have swallowed. As soon as the spell ends all effects of swallowing the metals occur simultaneously.

Generate a Major Charge: Consume or fuse to your body an extremely rare metal(we’re talking other dimensional metals that shouldn’t exist rare) or a metal that has been enchanted with a major amount of magic.

Taboo: If you ever purposefully remove metal from your body, you lose all charges you are carrying.

Random Magic Domain: Smiths strive to upgrade all things metal and man. A smith can improve or change metal by performing a human process with it such as ingesting it or bleeding on it. A Smith could also improve humans through a metallurgical process, such as piercing, tempering, or striking with a hammer. These changes can include increased offensive or defensive capabilities, as well as transmutation, repair, or creation of a new item made of metal (like a blade or key). Smiths can only create or improve though, never destroy.

Starting Charges: Newly created M.Occultists have 3 minor charges

Charging Tips: Gaining minor charges tends to be pretty easy as long as you have a solid source of money or free piercings. You could easily gain 2-5 minor charges a day as long as you have body room and some cash. Significant charges are also not particularly difficult to get, but getting too many too quickly can be fatal. Budget your significant charges and try not to get any more than you need at the moment of casting. Shoot for not exceeding 5 in a week, depending on the metal consumed.

M.Occultist Minor Formula Spells

Heart of Gold
Cost: 1-3 minor charge
Effect: Must gain the charge through a gold alloy. Gain an additional +10% to any roll acting on your noble stimulus for a number of hours equal to the sum of your magic roll. This effect can be stacked up to three times.

Silver Tongue
Cost: 1-3 minor charge
Effect: Must gain the charge through a silver alloy. Gain a +10% shift on Lie and Connect for a number of hours equal to the sum of your magic roll. This effect can be stacked up to three times.

Nerves of Steel
Cost: 1 minor charge
Effect: Must gain the charge through a steel based alloy. Re Roll one failed stress check. This must be done as the check fails but before you choose “fight, flight, freeze.”

Metal Mold
Cost: 2 minor charges
Effect: One of the oldest tricks in the metalworkers book. Put a piece of metal no larger than 2”x2” in your mouth and chew on it for 30 seconds. Upon completion of the ritual you reach into your mouth and take out a small object of your choosing made of the metal you used.

Freak Like Me
Cost: 3 minor charges
Effect: Many smiths are also ostracized due to their physical appearances and perceived behavior. Through this spell, they can channel a little bit of the Outsider in them and show everyone else how wrong or right they are. You can flip-flop a roll dealing with either frightening or seducing those who are not of your persecuted group. A matched success leads to either obsessive passion or total fear (Rank-5 Helplessness check).

Smith’s Hammer
Cost: 4 minor charges
Effect: A smith’s hands are her tools, and those tools really hurt when they hit someone else. Until the end of the scene your hands count as large, heavy, metal hammers (+6 for combat purposes).

M.Occultist Significant Formula Spells

Recast
Cost: 2 Significant Charges
Effect: One of these 2 charges must have been obtained using aluminum. Smiths have a long standing rivalry with Epideromancers, seeing their craft as anathema to their work. That being said, both schools seek the same goal, the perfection of the human form. Thus, Recast was created, an “improved” version of the Skinner’s Chameleon formula spell, using metal instead of flesh for the transformation. Like heated metal, your body becomes malleable, over the next ten minutes, you may craft your body to become an exact replica of another person. You won’t have their memories, voice, or mannerisms, but physically, you’ll be completely indistinguishable from the person you copied, down to your DNA. This effect lasts for the next 24 hours, or, if mercury was used for the second charge, seven full days, after which you will melt back into yourself. This spell’s effect may be ended early if the caster chooses.

My Mind is a Steel Trap
Cost: 1 Significant Charge
Effect: Must use a piece of steel for the charge. Can impeccably recall any details spoken in the smith’s presence, whether it be the recipe for grandma’s apple pie, the contents of the anarchists cookbook, or the layout to a building you recently walked through. If you roll a cherry you can also remember magically erased information.

Iron Flesh
Cost: 4 Significant Charges
Effect: At least two of the charges used in this spell must come from a chunk of iron. Until the end of the scene, your body becomes like iron. Any damage you take is reduced to melee damage with no modifiers and any attacks you make with your body deals firearms damage.

Lead to Gold
Cost: 2 Significant Charges
Effect: Actually the oldest trick in the book for a smith. Swallow a piece of metal and immediately regurgitate it(you do not gain a charge from this piece, nor do you break taboo for regurgitating it). Upon regurgitation the metal used is converted into another earthly metal. Try not to crash the value of gold, yeah?

M.Occultist Major Effects
Turn a large structure into metal, permanently alter your body to be more capable of consuming metal, create complex objects and machinery from basic metals, permanently make a part of your body have a metal aspect, create an actual, honest to goodness Philosopher’s Stone, whatever that means.