WrattsCurrently, I’m working on another Adept school which is focused on turning life into a living nightmare. Yeah, I know, there’s Oneiromancy. But I don’t want to use Oneiromancy for this, I’m devising a different school.
Basically, this adept gains mojo by turning people’s lives (by mundane means only) into nightmareish, mentally scarring episodes of horror. Taboo is stuff like: you can’t sleep at night (only by day), you can’t go out into sunlight, you can’t share pleasant dreams, you can’t consume stuff that hampers your ability to dream or remember your dreams, etc.
Spells are typically about intensifying or directly inducing fear, giving hellish nightmares, “drinking” people’s fear, cracking sanity, warping reality, blending dreams and reality, etc.
I’ve got some sketches for central paradox and symbolic tension, but they’re a bit wishy-washy and I’m not happy with them yet. (I.e.: You form life into a nightmare, a dream under your control, but when you find the bad awakening, you’ll find the dreams have ended and reality eludes your grasp.)
And I was thinking of a name like “Terrormancy”, but it doesn’t really appeal to me too much. “Incubumancer / Succubumancer” were another idea I’d had.
Any suggestions, ideas, or additions?
Thanks.~
Stephen AlzisPhobomancy (Fear magick) can be found here :
http://www.scc.net/%7Eindra/ua/index.html
Maybe not anything like what you have in mind, but might be inspirational.
WrattsGood pointer.
I also spotted a Phobomancy variant on this site under the adepts, which was an interesting read. (here)
The method of gaining charges I’ve been toying with seems far more difficult than these Phobomancy schools; mainly because they involve the adept really and truly terrorizing people over stretches of time, and having to have victims that genuinely fear them.
Something along the lines of stalking someone for hours in the night and then raping them would probably grant the Terrormancy adepts a minor charge, but something like putting a bunch of people into horrid situations à la The Saw (as in, confronting ’em with choices like having to saw off a limb or die horribly, etc.) would go for significant charges. With the major ones, we’re talking about the Terrormancer’s name becoming a living myth and synonym for fear incarnate, say Freddy Krueger, Jack the Ripper, and so on.
Which leads me to an issue I have so far. How do I gauge the fear the Terrormancers reap from victims? First call would be a stress check and a madness notch, but I’m beginning to think that’s a bad idea. If such, than it should involve multiple stresses and notches, if not complete insanity and following disorders along the lines of phobia. If anybody could brainstorm up a really original and bright idea on how to handle the “reaping of fear”, I’m all ears.
So essentially, this school is supposed to be the whacky, dark path of crafty psychos, and while it isn’t subtle, it isn’t “limited to the mind”, either – it can fundamentally punch visible holes into the fabric of reality.
I was thinking of one of the spells being a minor healing spell, but I’m thinking of ditching that again because it would increase the margin of the Terrormancy school being used for any “good.” On that same note, the Terrormancy spells aren’t any good to defend yourself against fear.
Also, the blast style – I was thinking that something not unlike the Plutomancer’s blast style (causing a victim to desire harm and hurt him-/herself) would do it fine albeit under a different preface, but I’d like to know if anybody thinks that’s an unfitting idea.
From what I can tell from my sketchbook so far, it’s a pretty powerful school, but it’s also a very dangerous one to follow. That is, for other people as well as for yourself – mostly because of the consequences – for if you terrorize people without killing them (and indeed you need to do this, because the dead cannot fear you), you can rest assured that what you gave around will come back around to haunt you like you did in the first place.
If you spread the nightmares and fears like diseases, reality will try to cure itself and when it catches back up to you, you and your dark dreams and desires will find an end.
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