[UA] New Bibliomancer Significant Spells

[James Palmer]

On Wed, 19 Apr 2000 sneadj at mindspring.com wrote:

> I received my comps of PMM on Monday and was quite impressed. 
>  While it was all excellent, I particularly like Bibliomancy, 
> Personamancy, and Urbanomancy, and the Alter Tongue.  

Why, thank you.  :-)

(And your AM supplements are lovely pieces of work, by the way,
especially Shamans.)

> However, I noticed the Bibliomancy only had 5 significant spells.  
> Since almost all other schools have more than that, I decided to fill 
> in the gap myself.  What do folks think of these two spells?  Any 
> other suggestions for other Bibliomancer significant spells?

Only one of mine got used, so here's the other six -

Translation (Practical L-Space) 
Cost: 1 significant charge 
Effect: Allows you to move from your current location, which must contain
over ten thousand books, to another location, also containing at least ten
thousand books.  You cannot transport any written material with you when
travelling this way.

Mimesis (Africa and All Her Prodigies) 
Cost: 2 significant charges
Effect: Brings into existence any character from a book you have read.  
The simulacrum produced can have no skill higher than the caster's
Bibliomancy and has only the knowledge about their life that the adept
does.  They believe themselves to be real, but will crumble into the dust
that accumulates on the tops of bookshelves if asked sufficient questions
to reveal their own falsity.

Cross-Genre (Never Go Towards A Scream) 
Cost: 2 significant charges
Effect: Imposes the 'rules' of a particular literary genre upon the
'scene' you are currently participating in.  For instance - turning the
scene into a 'locked-room thriller' means everybody behaves very
decorously, violence is off-stage, and the villain will be the least
likely person in the room. Turning it into a 'medieval analogy' ensures
lots of people behaving in an eponymous fashion and endless long
discussions.  You get the general idea.

If the 'rules' impose clash too violently with the preexisting reality
(putting a Mills & Boon reality on a combat scene, f'instance), the
universe splits off a bud.  Normal reality keeps along its normal path,
minus the adept, while the adept is transferred to a sub-reality behaving
according to genre rules, which continues until he realizes the mistake
he's made and deliberately violates the genre rules - commits rape when
he's meant to be a children's hero, for instance.  The spell is also ended
if anybody says "Hey, this is just like being in a ..."

Aphasia (Jelly Virulent Apocalypse Hunted) 
Cost: 3 significant charges
Effect: Deprives the target, who must have just spoken in the presence of
the adept, of the ability to use language.  They become unable to speak
coherent sentences, read, or understand what people are saying to them -
it's worth an Isolation-7 and Helplessness-5 check.  The effect lasts
until the target sleeps.

Identification (It Was Like I Was Really There) 
Cost: 3 significant charges 
Effect: This is cast on a particular copy of a fictional work as a trap.  
Its next reader will be sucked into the text.  Anybody who reads the book
after that will find them described as a minor character, or a face in a
crowd scene, or a picture in a book within the book ...  They can only be
freed by the reenactment of the scene around a copy of the book, in full
costuming where possible, upon which point the victim will reappear.

The Death of the Author 
Cost: 3 significant charges 
Effect: Kills the author of the book you hold while you cast the spell.  
They do get a Body check to resist - otherwise they seem to go naturally
(heart attacks are common).

James


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