Phobomancy: Fear-based Magick part 2

[Carl L. Congdon]

Now, since I sent you the meat of the school, let's see what nasty mojo
they can whip up.

Minor Effects:

Cold As A Thousand Tombstones
Cost: 1 minor
Effect: Boosts the Phobomancers attempts at intimidation/interrogation
by 5% multiplied by the one's place of the roll (ie. if the roll was 23,
the Phobomancer gets +15% added to his Social rolls to intimidate.) If a
successful match is rolled (ie. the Phobomancer rolled a 33), then the
bonus is 10% multiplied bu the one's place (in this case, +30%.)

I Know What Scares You
Cost: 1 minor
Effect: On a successful Phobomancy roll, the Phobomancer finds the
general Mental Stress that underlies your Fear Stimulus. If a match or
OWACOWA is rolled, the fearmonger uncovers the *specific* Fear Stimulus.
Very handy info, but not without risks: If the Phobomancer rolls a
matched failure or BOHICA, s/he also finds out the basic Fear
Stimulus--by experiencing it. A Stress check on the related Mental
Stress is in order.

Lulling the Lamb
Cost: 1 minor
Effect: Allows the Phobomancer to extinguish the natural reservations
people have about someone they don't know. This, of course, allows for
all sorts of error judgements on the part of the victim! In game terms,
this allows the Phobomancer to add 10% to all Social rolls directed
toward the victim, while the victim loses 10% to all rolls that would
allow him or her to spot the character flaws in the Phobomancer.

Into The Shadows
Cost: 1 minor
Effect: Adds 10% to all stealth/hiding related rolls by the Psycho.
Creates a mental "blind spot" in the pursuers'/victim's/guards' minds
which makes them overlook what might be obvious to anyone else in that
situation.

Panic Attack
Cost: 2 minor
Effect: This is the Phobomancer Minor Blast. It is similar in effect to
Psychotrauma, in the fact that the damage is all mental. If it succeeds,
the victim takes damage as per a Minor Blast and must spend the next
turn making a rank-5 Stress Check on the general category of his/her
Fear Stimulus. Note that, if the person is actually confronting his/her
specific Fear Stimulus and a Successful Match is rolled, Significant
damage will result, and the Fear- check goes to 8! It has no effect at
all on those who's Fear Stimulus has been Hardened to 8 or higher.

Go Numb
Cost: 2 minor
Effect: This allows a Phobomancer or another person chosen to ride out
the effects of a Failed Stress-check. It witholds the effects of a
Failed Stress roll for up to an hour, by which time the source of the
Failure should have passed. After that hour, the spell wears off
gradually, allowing the the beneficiary to re-roll the Stress Check at
two ranks lower. This spell cannot be used again if the beneficiary
fails this new roll. Minimum Stress-rank can be reduced to is 1.

Know The Scent Of Fear
Cost: 3 minor
Effect: Allows the Phobomancer to track someone s/he has run afoul of in
the past. S/he will know exactly where the person is living, or, if in
pursuit, where the person is currently hiding.

Significant Effects:

Bad Dreams
1 significant charge
Effect: This is the Significant Blast of the Fearmongers, and it waits
until the victim is asleep to attack. The truly unnerving part is that
the damage from Bad Dreams duplicates what was done to the victim in the
nightmare, one that seemed to relentlessly dredge up the victim's worst
fear and amplify it. This Blast has been responsible for numerous
unsolved crimes--and numerous Sleeper reprisals. No effect on those who
are Hardened to 10 on the stress meter responsiblefor their Fear
stimulus.

Vertigo
1 significant charge
Effect: Causes the victim to be unable to move without disorientation.
If the victim rolls over the Phobomancy score, but under his/her Mind,
s/he can move, but at a -20% penalty for anything involving heights or
fine motor skills. If s/he fails, forget it! Movement under his/her own
power is out of the question.  Lasts for about a half-hour.

Hex
2 significant charges
Effect: If the Phobomancy roll is successful, the Psycho puts a
repeating hex on the victim. For a number of times equal to the one's
place on the roll, the Phobomancer gets to flip- flop the rolls of the
victim, conjuring up critical moments of doubt and defeatism in the
victim's mind. Thus, if the Phobomancer rolled 52, s/he could only
flip-flop two rolls on the unlucky victim. Note that the Psycho must be
able to see the victim, and that this spell can't be overlaid on top of
a Hex that's already functioning.

Regain Control
2 significant charges
Effect: Allows a Phobomancer to heal long-term psychic trauma. In game
terms, the Phobomancer sacrifices a notch on a Hardened meter to cancel
a Failure on the *same* Meter. Thus, if the Phobomancer was attempting
to bring bach someone with 3 Hardened notches and 5 Failed on the
Helplessness meter, he could bring the person to 4 Failed and 2
Hardened. Thus, the victim loses some "armor" but is now more able to
cope. Matched successes allow the Phobomancer to cancel two
Hardened/Failed notches in the same Madness Meter. Note that if there
are *no* Hardened notches in that particular Stress, then the spell
automatically fails. Also, no swapping from different Stresses! Hardened
Unnatural cannot counteract Self-failure.

Clear the Air
3 significant charges
Effect: This causes any demons, revenants, astral parasites, tenebrae,
entropics, ghouls, etc. active in ten feet of the caster to flee the
area of risk Significant damage. It does not work on enfleshed
supernatural creatures, such as golems or unnatural servants.

Feeding the Nightmare
4 significant charges
Effect: The Phobomancer summons and binds an Entropic, sending it to
hunt down and attach itself to a person or group of persons, who the
Fearmonger must know. For this Effect, the Phobomancer gives the
Entropic some of his/her blood. This not only gives the Entropic the
information to hunt the victim, but it also gives the Entropic a Mind
score equal to the caster's Phobomancy score! That's right, now it has a
brain and it's *really* dangerous. Further, if the Fearmonger does
nothing else but concentrate, s/he can communicate telepathically with
the Entropic to get details as to where the victim is and what's going
on. Note that many in the Occult Underground won't be too quick to clue
into what's happening; after all, it can't be an Entropic because
they're nowhere near subtle, right?

Nothing Can Stop Me Now
4 significant charges
Effect: The phobomancer chooses a specific victim to hunt down and kill.
Using this spell, s/he rolls her Phobomancy. If the victim has at any
time been sucessfully intimidated or has been magickally attacked by the
fearmonger in question, add 5% to the Phobomancy roll for each
successful time. Thus, if the victim had been bullied around twice by
the Phobomancer and had two successful spells cast on her by the same
psycho, then the Phobomancy roll gets a 20% bonus.
    If successful, the roll turns the Phobomancer into a
near-unstoppable killer, fueled by his victim's own fear. He gains Wound
Points equal to the roll plus any bonuses. All damage is subtracted from
these additional points first. If he matches, the roll-plus-bonus is
also divided between his Body and Speed, which is boosted for the
duration of the hunt. An OWACOWA does all of the above (total being the
Phobomancy score plus bonuses.) Note that the Body/Speed scores have a
maximum of 90, and Wound Points can't go beyond 250.
    Also, the phobomancer must make an attempt to go for the straightest
line possible between his victim and him. No pausing to order a hot dog,
no robbing a bank and then taking a stroll in the park and *then*
killing the target, none of that. However, it should be considered
acceptable for the Phobomancer to gloat, or systematically take out any
police/ bodyguards before taking down the victim. All bonuses disappear
after the victim is killed.

Personal Hell
5 significant charges
Effect: This spell lasts for 24 hours, or until the victim is completely
insane. It causes the victim to fixate unreasonably on the subject of
his/her Fear Stimulus, to the point where s/he starts seeing things out
of the corner of his/her eye related to the fear. As the day goes on,
the victim becomes more and more divorced from reality, which becomes
more eerily surreal and seems to conspire against the victim, digging up
long buried memories and forcing him/her to confront the fear in the
most dramatic manner possible. These episodes only occur when the victim
is alone, but the victim will (naturally) seem paranoid and jumpy,
catching hallucinations out of the corner of his/her eye and mishearing
conversation in the worst way.
    Near the end, when the victim becomes completely divorced from
reality and the victim is face-to-face with his/her fear, the victim
must roll for his/her Fear Stimulus, no matter *how high* the victim's
Hardened rank is. If the victim fails, s/he goes straight to insanity,
with five Failed ranks in the Stress related to her fear. If the victim
succeeds, s/he recovers (but still having to make a rank-6 Unnatural
check), but may have a *lot* of explaining to do.
    As mentioned above, this spell subtly works its way into the cracks
of its subject's psyche. The descent will be sudden, but should seem
gradual. Generally, this spell is only used when harassment by an
intelligent Entropic or being hunted down by a superhuman slasher just
doesn't seem to say enough to the victim in question.

Major Effects:
Raise an army of rotting dead. Rip down the veil between the dead and
the living. Trap someone in an eternal nightmare. Turn someone or
yourself into a monster. Condemn someone to die in the most hideous (to
them) fashion possible.

<sarcasm>
Thanks for the deluge of e-mail about Phobomancy. Your constructive
criticism and enthusiasm was an inspiration to me.
<sarcasm off>

Also, someone asked me what the central paradox/tension was in the
school of Phobomancy. It seemed so obvious to me at the time I first
thought of it: in order to rid themselves of demons, Phobomancers
embrace their demons (and usually become demons, as well). Or, they
descend into inhumanity in order to triumph over their human qualities,
one of which is the capacity to be vulnerable.

Now I'm not so sure. Comments, questions? Flames will be ignored.


--
Poets, priests, and politicians
Have words to spend for their positions
Words that scream for your submission
And no one's jamming their transmission...
And when their eloquence escapes me
Their logic ties me up and rapes me
 -The Police, "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da"