Theurgy (God/guilt-based magick)

[James Palmer]

[Note: this is my attempt to create a 'hunter' school of magick that fits
within the UA paradigm.  It's slightly twisted.  No offence meant to
anybody, as usual.]   

Magick is a notoriously complicated, obscure, paradoxical, and often just
plain stupid art, and no school of magick better demonstrates this than
theurgy.  It's also one of the oldest still-functioning schools, with its
origins lying in the Papal Inquisition of the 13th century.

Although originally created to investigate heretics, the Inquisition
eventually broadened its mission to include witches, sorcerors, and other
magick-using types.  It was a long, dark battle, and took its toll on the
inquisitors.  When you've seen your friend bitten to death by a thousand
tiny invisible mouths before your eyes, you can turn to almost any means
to fight your foes.  

And some inquisitors did.  They began to use the tools of the enemy
against them.  After all, they had access to hundreds of occult books, had
seen dark and loathsome rituals performed, knew the witches perhaps better
than they did themselves.  They were making the ultimate sacrifice -
risking their immortal soul in order to defend others.

90% of the rituals they'd seen were rubbish, of course, and most of the
'occult' books the product of derangement rather than devilry.  But they
worked a lot better for the inquisitors than they'd even done for the
'witches.'  The central paradox of the use of 'devil-magick' for God
produced a powerful charge.  The inquisitor's own guilt became their
unconscious power.

Only a tiny number of theurgists - perhaps ten in total, and all ordained
Catholic priests - are practising today, summoning demons and sacrificing
animals to gather power to use against foul sorcery. Those members of the
occult underground who have come up against them have generally been
baffled at their power, especially when they saw a ritual they knew to be
nonsense produce a fearsome effect.  One or two have worked it out - but
nobody's yet tried telling a theurgist the exact nature of where his
power's coming from.  If the nature of theurgy became more widely known,
the slang term for them would be Greenelanders.

Theurgy Blast Style: The target's own sins - as perceived by the
theurgist - turn against him.  Angry men literally burn with rage, the
gluttonous swell and burst, and so on.  Se7en may give some aid.  In the
case of magick-workers, they are affected by their own blast style - this
is often especially dangerous for dipsomancers, who are likely to be
intoxicated enough to take serious damage.

Stats

Generate a Minor Charge: Commit a sin within a ritual context - bow down
before a pagan idol, have sex, sacrifice an animal, blaspheme.  Only one
charge can be drawn from each ritual, which normally take between fifteen
minutes and two hours. 

Generate a Significant Charge: Commit a serious sin within a ritual
context - human sacrifice, summoning a demon, rape.

Generate a Major Charge: Do something unspeakably vile within a ritual
context - child rape and sacrifice, for instance, or 'selling your soul'
to a demon. 

[Note: I know that under strict Catholicism idolatry and murder are
equally bad.  On the other hand, the magick is drawing energy from the
theurgist's own personal guilt, and most people feel a damn sight more
guilty over cutting somebody's heart out than over bowing down before a
Greek statue.  All this depends on the theurgist, of course; play it by
ear]

Taboo:  Make sincere repentance and get absolution.  Also, if a sin ever
becomes 'casual' to the theurgist - i.e, if he becomes hardened enough
that he wouldn't take stress from it - then it generates no energy. 
Serious theurgists go rapidly down the wonderful chute of insanity.  Note
that the Catholic Church provides a lot of support to its priests, both
from other priests and trained psychologists, which will help to erase
those low-level hardened marks.  

Random Magick Domain:  Anything that tracks down or harms magick-workers,
as well as 'traditional' sorcery or witchcraft effects.

Starting Charges: Newly created theurgists have four charges.

Spells to come.