[UA] Rogermancy

[Brian Covey]

Okay... so the whole point of being an adept is that you're so obsessed 
with some central concept, idea, or thing that your whole world revolves 
around it, and you get the ability to actually influence reality with 
your viewpoint. So I had this idea. A friend's mother just lost her 
partner over the holidays, and I'm watching my friend deal with this, 
and hearing about how it's affecting his mother. Being an insufferably 
sick bastard, I just thought of a way to put a UA spin on it. I don't 
know why, and it's not really a school of magic per se, but I've taken 
to calling it "Rogermancy".

What if you met someone that was absolutely perfect for you, that made 
you happy, that fulfilled you completely, and they died? And you really 
just could not let go and/or move on? What if you obsessed on them so 
much, they were so central to your world and your place in that world 
that they became your obsession skill, and an unconscious, maadi 
(spelling?)-style magic thing started happening? You don't know it, you 
don't understand it, you just know that you come home from work every 
night, and pore over photo albums, you read their letters, you get drunk 
to dull the pain, you listen to their old answering machine tapes...

...and occasionally, you swear you see them out of the corner of your 
eye. The phone rings, and one day, you hear a few words in your dead 
other's voice, clear as a bell. "Don't worry. It'll be Okay." (My dad 
died when I was a kid, and I had this happen once. Later, I found out 
that a huge number of people that suffer losses report this sort of 
thing, and it was most likely a dream. It's still a really weird memory 
to have.)

That's not the worst of it, though. It would be okay if you could just 
convince yourself that you were slowly going insane. One day, it happens 
when you're not alone. Someone else is there with you, and they see your 
other, too. Just for a second, though, oddly silent and slipping out the 
back door of your house as you both come in the front. But you both ran 
to the door and looked down the hall, but there was no one there, and no 
footprints in the fresh snow outside, either.

And there's that letter on the kitchen table, ink still wet, telling you 
that they're sorry for leaving and they wish you could be together 
again, but you can't. And on and on and on.

Basically, you're so wrapped up in this other person that you're causing 
hallucinations; first just visual or audible ones in your own head, but 
as the obsession deepens, you start screwing with the physical world to 
the point where notes will write themselves, answering machines will 
pick up voices, a favorite shirt will never lose their scent, and when 
the mojo is really, really flowing, you assemble a fake UA fairy-style 
body that lasts a few seconds. Just long enough for a credible witness 
to see it, which re-starts the whole cycle of grief, pain, and 
confusion, and keeps the obsession going.

I don't really see any sort of happy ending for somebody stuck in this 
sort of a nightmare, though. How many blown self and/or isolation checks 
would even finding out what's actually going on set off in your head? 
How do you pierce the illusion in the first place?


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