[UA] Re: Paradoxes

[Chris Cooper]

--- Shawn Isenhart <isen0011 at umn.edu> wrote:
 
> If I stop eating I will become beautiful.
> I can control my life through controlling my food.
> I'm unhappy so I binge which makes me unhappy.
> 
> Any of these could become an awesome school.  Folks
> who starve 
> themselves for charges.  Folks who can't stop
> eating.  Folks who go on a 
> power binge, and then purge it all out.

ESURIOMANCY

Esuriomancy is an ancient school of ascetic magick
that had a recent revival in the Information Age.
Instead of invigorating a school, which was largely
small fry, the new school plucked at the heartstrings
of a disjointed glamour-hungry youth and found
salvation in a new faith to the Devouring Mother. 

ASCETICISM
All cultures have had ascetics, those who chose to
eschew the material world and society to endure
privations in order to understand the divine. India
had fakirs, China had Buddhists, and Europe had
anchorites.

In Europe, the ascetics had a long, quiet, solitary
life if they kept to themselves, lived in caves, and
sat on top of poles all day. They were quiet and pious
and where lauded as long as they stayed away from the
masses. As evidenced by Bishop Priscillian when his
vows of poverty and chastity started spreading around
the town of Avila, the church suddenly thought
different when tithed income suddenly dropped.

Charged with heresy with side orders of witchcraft,
devil worship, and sexual orgies, Priscillian was
declared guilty, excommunicated, and killed. The early
church installed a much more materialistic bishop to
ensure the money flowed. That was European
Asceticism's day of glory.

Ascetic Priscillianism still drifts about Spain. It of
course never ended well when spiritual people went
against the flow of money. What did you think happened
to the Cathar Heretics in France? Christians and
Gnostics had to suffer for that one. Jewish Gnostics
were just snubbed not stabbed. Only in the East did
ascetics continue to flourish.

After their haphazard and humbly unrecorded history of
intolerance, the Ascetics dwindled, with an occasional
unwashed crackpot finding some lost soul to prentice.
Ignored or at least occasionally shot at in the World
Wars or Revolution of the Week.

In the sixties, Beatles went to see gurus in India and
suddenly the occasional wandering hermit was
surrounded by truth seeking hippies and groupies. In
communes, the Ascetics taught new adepts with the
amazing fertilizer of street drugs. 

By the seventies, people merely liked talking about
the amazing spiritual power of the fakirs and the
psychic strength of Buddhist monks but no one really
wanted to miss tea for the ability to levitate a rock.


For two long and dry decades, Erusiomancy went back to
being the school of freaks in a subculture of freaks,
until the mid-nineties when the anorexics found
companionship and rebellion against society

ANALATRY

What started out as a rebellion against conventional
decree that anorexia nervosa is a dangerous
psychological neurosis, anorexics united by the
internet argued that anorexia is a lifestyle choice.

As a uniting symbol, Ana evolved to symbolise the
anorexic choice, she became an imaginary but
supportive mother figure. 

In the late eighties Olga Vermeer stumbled into
Amsterdam’s occult underground and her worldview took
another unhealthy turn from sorcery. She was a victim
of incestuous sexual abuse from a young age and from
her preteen years drifted between self-injury and
anorexia. Guilt prevented her from divulging her
abuser. For Olga, admitting her emotional damage would
be an intolerable weakness, the shame of complicit
sinfulness. 

It was not a big surprise to be targeted by a series
of abusers when the distinction between rape and
serial one-night stands was nonexistent. After another
meaningless night of consensual but involuntary sex,
the last of her innocence, her untouchable soul was
befouled with the sticky fingerprints of dirty magick.


With glittering and hungry eyes, flesh-worker showed
her his secret and he reached in and touched her in a
special place. When he was finished, he stroked her
cowed head whispered at her to keep their big secret. 

In a daze, Olga went home and threw away her blades
and buried her knives, curled up in bed, and just
stopped eating.

As her family’s concern mounted, she entered a stark
decline shut off to emotional access. She hovered
between life and death and entered a twilight trance.

In her delirium, Olga saw and was comforted by a
beautifully skeletal woman whom she knew as Ana. When
she woke up in hospital fed with tubes and drips, she
knew she had received something sacred, a vision. 

Olga launched into the world fervent with her good
news, Ana was real and anorexia was not just a
lifestyle choice but a spiritual path, by wasting away
the ugliness, the true beauty of the truth shone
through.

When they had filled her with enough spiritually
diminishing substance, Olga had the strength to
escape.

Moving into Germany, she found and discovered the
secret community of anorexics. She eventually
discovered a cabal of anorexic Wicca pariahs. These
Wicca had discovered an Ascetic Master, and where
being trained by him paying with board, lodging and
sexual servicing. 

When she started preaching to them the truth of Ana,
the Thin Goddess, with access to nascent magick, she
created a school of adepts.
 
The Wicca anorexics took to Analatry quickly, faster
than to the old fart-bag Ascetic. It was not too long
before they learned what they could from him and
bounced him back into a life of drunken homelessness.
Bolstered by knowledge in sorcery and their new faith
in Ana, the new esuriomancers spread the word, and
travelled, developing their school on the road. By
using their new religion as an outreach program, they
infiltrated websites, mailing lists, and therapy
groups to placate girls and women suffering doubts
from their secret discipline. 

Those anorexics deemed possessing the right potential
where recruited into the Petite Church of Skinny Bones
where they worship the Thin Beautiful Mother.

In two years after her Vision, Olga’s priestesses of
petite founded a stable resource and outlet for their
ministering duties. Within four years of finding
religion and some of that recovering in hospital, the
brittle-toothed and sallow-skinned Olga fervently
worships Ana, a name for the Devouring Mother, a mask
of the Mother. By starving herself, Olga found the
holy spirit of Ana inside her and could let it out
into the world.

Analatrists perform the same steps to magick as
Ascetics do, by privation and starvation they gain
magickal power through harmful sacrifice. The
cachexia, the thinning away of their impure and ugly
bodies was the mark of been blessed by the grace of
Ana.

Anyone can be Ana’s friend; all you have to do is stop
hiding your inner beauty with earthly substance.
Analatrists can only train anorexics, any other sort
of eating disorder needs another sort of twist. It is
suspected that there might be a Bulemic mageekian but
these rumours are unsubstantiated and binge eating
plutophages have chewed out their own niche.

Analatry is a modern, revived version of Erusiomancy,
the ancient school of divine ascetic magick. Since
meeting, the two schools have parted ways. They refer
to Asceticism as Old School Esuriomancy and Analatry
as Young School Asceticism.

Esuriomancers came in two flavours, thin, old, and
boring Ascetics and skinny, young, and flashy
Analatry. There is gender discrimination in the
official Analatry cabal but nothing in the adept
school itself. Thus, most Analatrists are female but
Ascetics are mixed. Of interest, there is a
demarcating age difference between the schools; people
over 30 are normally Old School Ascetics, those under
30 are Young School Analatrists. Perhaps old
Analatrists do not die they just go to Asceticism.

OLD SCHOOL ASCETICS
Generate a minor charge: Fast for a day without
eating.

Generate a significant charge: Fast without water
until you suffer an isolation check.

Taboo: Ascetics must eat when thirsting or drink when
starving, but neither both nor neither in the same
day. 

YOUNG SCHOOL ANAS
Generate a minor charge: Sacrifice sustenance for day
without eating.

Generate a significant charge: Dance a dizzy spell of
ecstasy. The Analatrist must roll under her Wasting
skill to generate a significant charge.

Taboo: swallow anything with calories. If food is
swallowed, but is regurgitated within the same round;
Ana has blessed you making you vomit it all up and you
keep your charges. Water is a freely permitted
sacrament. 

Ironically, recovering in hospital does not void
charges because you are fed “Nil by Mouth”, but you
cannot gain any new ones either. 

Blast: The esuriomancy blast causes the victim's
stomach and digestive tract to clench up painfully.
This can cause pain, nausea, vomiting, and internal
bleeding. The significant charge causes many small
tears in the digestive tract, causing it to flood with
blood. The bleeding causes additional discomfort with
nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. 

Symbolic Tension: This is different for the two
subschools. The young-school esuriomancer destroys her
body for the sake of beauty. An old school
esuriomancer has a much weaker symbolic tension: she
releases her mind by starving her body. 

Two Schools: An Esuriomancer who is female, under 30,
and trained by TBM is a member of the Young School,
and uses the Young School Minor Formulas (as well as
Common Formulas). Others are Old School Esuriomancers,
and use Old School and Common Formulas. Because of the
weaker symbolic tension of the Old School, all Old
School Esuriomancers have to pay an additional charge
for all common formula spells. 

Random Magic: Hunger and self-control; old School
random magic also deals with fanaticism, while young
school random magic relates to concepts of beauty and
attractiveness. 

Charging tips: See the Hungry Thirsty mechanics below.
Most esuriomancers earn a minor charge a day most
days, and get a chance for a significant charge often
but irregularly. This can be very risky, though -
someone who seeks charges indiscriminately often ends
hurt or hospitalised and unable to continue.

Starting Charges: None. 

Common Minor Formulas

Gaze Into The Abyss
1 minor charge 
Detect how hungry someone is, and their general
dietary patterns and habits. You can also use this to
detect another Esuriomancer, or, for that matter, a
Gastromancer. Furthermore, you're able to see
intangible beings made from hunger, such as
thaumovores, Esuriomancers using "Abandon the Flesh"
and demons motivated by physical hunger.

Empty Inside
1 minor charge 
A single target gains your Waste skill for an hour
with all the penalties, and will feel incredibly
hungry, no matter how much they eat. 

Indigestion
2 minor charges 
This is the Esuriomancy minor blast. 

Young School Minor Formulas

No, You're the Freak!
3 minor charges.
This spell affects a single target that becomes, in
everyone's eyes, repulsively ugly. This even affects
the subject's own perceptions. Nothing about their
appearance changes - it just somehow seems loathsome,
and any flaws or distinctive characteristics become
overbearingly painfully repulsive. This lasts a day.

Target Weight
5 minor charges
You gain a +30% bonus to any skills related to
appearance or social influence, including Charm, Lie,
and Distracting Physique, until you next violate
taboo.

Old School Minor Formulas

Greater Cause
5 minor charges 
Some stroke of luck, or change of heart, affects the
world in a way you'd consider better. You must specify
the cause you wish to forward. It won't necessarily be
a huge change, but something will change, you'll know
the result, and it will happen within a day of using
this formula.

Rebirth of the Self
7 minor charges 
You gain a +30% bonus to your Mind and Soul scores
until you next violate taboo. This also increases your
Esuriomancy skill, but doesn't affect any other Mind
or Soul skills.

Significant Formulas

Massive Purge
1 significant charge 
This is the Esuriomancy Significant blast. 

Abandon the Flesh
1 significant charge 
Your body loses consciousness and your senses are
temporarily transported to a place of your choice. You
can give a very general description or a specific one,
as long as you'd be able to immediately recognize what
you want to observe. You can't affect the place you
watch, even with magic, and you can't perceive what's
happening with your body. While you're out, your body
is very vulnerable to possession; you get no
resistance at all. This formula lasts an hour, or
until you end it voluntarily. 

Unforgettable Me
1 significant charge 
You gain +5% permanently to a Body or Soul skill
related to beauty or social influence. This can't take
your skill above the appropriate attribute. 

My Body, My Problem
1 significant charge 
Heal the sum of the dice roll to yourself. You can't
repair starvation damage with this formula. 

Vision Quest
1 significant charges 
Travel alone for an hour, and you'll start to see
things. These are typically mystical messages about
your current situation and often takes the form of a
conversation with a supernatural or totemic being, who
gives instructions. This may be a way of receiving
messages from the Invisible Clergy. 

NEW RULES
HUNGRY THIRSTY
Starvation of food and dehydration of water is a rule
system required by Eurisomancy’s Ascetics and
Analatrists. It is applicable to general gaming as
well.

STARVATION
The average human body can go without eating for about
thirty days.
 
Wasting, or cachexia, from starvation affects the
target from the second day after eating. It is as a
special Body skill called Wasting.
 
Wasting rises from 0% to 1% after the first day of
starvation and another 1% every day afterwards.
Wasting affects the Body, Mind, and Speed Stats and
Skills. Any roll on those Stats and skills equal or
below the Wasting skill watermark fails and it leaves
the malnourished person dizzy and stunned for as many
rounds equal to the lowest die off the failed result. 

If the starved person rolls a critical or matched
pair, equal or under their Wasting skill, they suffer
the sum of the roll as damage. This is exhaustion,
bruising from collapsing, or just trauma from
exertion.

The Wasting also negates any attempts mundane,
non-magickal healing and medicine if the healing roll
is equal or beneath the Wasting mark.

If the Wasting skill hits half or more of your Wound
score, all but the simplest food is toxic. When eating
roll your Wound score as a check. Failure means the
person takes the sum of the roll as damage as the body
violently and bloodily heaves up the food.

When the Wasting exceeds current wound level, the
starved person dies.

Note: Wasting can also be used to measure slow but
progressive diseases of the body, like cancer or
HIV/AIDS.

DEHYDRATION
You lose 10% off all Stats and current wound level
after the first day and 10% every day after that. Make
an Isolation check once per day, the rank equal to the
tens of the penalty. If the character fails their
Isolation stress check, the person’s three Passions
realign to Get Potable Liquids Now!

There is no cold turkey experience like someone
deprived of the water. It is like slow, slow, dry
strangulation.

By Ted Pro with Chris Cooper






       
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