[UA] [UA]: Cliomancy rethought and new sanity/karma ideas

[Matthew Rowan Norwood]

I was thinking today about Cliomancy, which several people have
criticized for not having a paradox like the other schools.  I was out
running along the Freedom Trail in Boston from Old North Church (the
start of Paul Revere's ride, a block from my office) to Bunker Hill, and
I thought about the trail as a Ley line.  One of the big theories about
ley lines, of course, is that they were simply the straight paths taken
by humans and animal herds betwen two points... the quesion of causality
is the place where mainstream scientists and new-agers split.  I thought
about the thousands of people who walk that trail out of a sort of
religious reverence for these "holy sites" along the trail, which tied
into the idea of nodes of power along these lines which were the sites
of burial grounds, churches, etc.  It all gets tied into Chinese
geomancy, etcetera.

Maybe Cliomancy is a modern version of that kind of magic?  The kicker,
of course, is that the "inherent power" of these sites is only the
result of the reverence paid them... sort of like Iconomancy for
locations instead of people.  I can see Cliomancers driving Route 66
through the US, visiting each city along the way and stopping to see
every kitsch-laden tourist trap there, not because these sites are
significant, but because the masses _think_ they are.  Maybe by
subscribing to the popular notion of history and the arbitrary attention
paid to certain sites over others, the adept gains control over the way
this arbitrary significance gets assigned.  Random facts suddenly become
significant to people, while other are forgotten.

If one wanted to tie it in with the geomantic aspect a little more,
maybe some of the formula spells could be replaced with power over
locations and how they are seen: making a bar suddenly unpopular, making
a road invariably mislead travellers, making a space into the adpet's
"private sanctum", etc.  In fact, that sounds like it could be a very
cool school in its own right... put the Feng Shui back into UA!  If I
were to do that, though, I'd probably change Cliomancy's taboo to: Never
contradict "official" history.

Anyway, I then had a totally unrelated idea: I remembered how XP were
called "karma" in Shadowrun, and how they tied in closely with magic (as
in, mages needed lots of them to do stuff, while normals were often more
concerned with cash).  I thought it might be cool to try to work up a
Hindu/Buddhist/Christian/Jungian notion of Karma/Sin/Guilt/Projection
into a game system.  It would tie in with sanity rules and with
Passions, but UA would need a lot of tweaking before it would work.
I'll keep you guys posted as I work on this...

Matt Norwood


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