[UA] The Neo-Necromancer

[Eric Cazzoli]

Hey Folks.  I've been sketching out a new adept school for the next UA games
around here, and I need some help naming the spells.  And if you can think
of any cool rumors, that would be neat too. =)
Feedback about the school in general is also always welcome too.

Thanks,
Eric

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Title: THE NEO-NECROMANCER
Abandon all your misconceptions about necromancy: Life and death is a cycle,
a circle. As long as you play by its rules and mock people's fear of it, you
can play with its flow, and ultimately tamper with the direction it spins.

AKA RE-ANIMATORS, CORPSE FUCKERS

You see it everywhere you look.
Life and death go hand in hand. When you pushed your job at the greasy fast
food joint, it struck you. Well, to be precise, it had always been
accompanying you since you were a kid. How you saw a homeless guy mug a rich
business man, stab the greedy lying bastard („I have no money on me, I
swear!") to death, and fish a few hundred bucks and a golden master card out
of his wallet—a free ticket to the bum's survival. You remembered how your
older cousin only lived because of the heart transplant from a car crash
victim. Hell, people are surviving just by wolfing down these disgusting
burgers you were handing over the counter to them, which are nothing more
than the processed dead remains of an animal's corpse stuffed in between two
shitty buns. And then they all croak, sooner or later. The dead homeless
guy's body needs to get taken off the streets, and some underpaid city
workers got shitty payment which barely suffices to keep living. Your cousin
eventually lived to rescue a cat off a tree and then fall to his own death
by breaking his back. Alot of those people eating those abhorrent burgers
get blood clots and keel over and they paid for it, paving your way over
college all the way to med school.
You're not worried about the myth of overpopulation, never even irked you.
There's always Bird Flu, Ebola, AIDS, probably worse. Not to mention cancer.
Nevermind the daily population growth—people are dying everyday, too.
So if life and death are so close together, why are people so afraid? Just
because they don't understand the deeper meaning behind all of it? No: it's
because they can't control it. And why can't they control it?
Because they're afraid and just... let it happen.
They're wetting their pants and stinking crazy afraid of what's entirely
natural, if you look at it quite pragmatically. The natural order of things.
The eternally spinning cycle of life and death. When you started laughing at
it, you didn't give a crap that you got the funny looks from other people,
because you'd seen how it gave you strength. Laughing in the face of death
and ditching the pathetic search for answers to the myriad of questions of
life—this gave you power. What you were doing was stealing that power from
the multitude of mildly annoying mysteries of life and the amassed fears of
death.
It became natural to you to celebrate death and piss all over life and the
juice you got out of it all was delicious. You were free of the fear of
death and you were able to help all the ignoramuses in dire need. You could
be the face in the crowd of M.D.s who would take some asshole's life and
give it to those who poor schmucks who really deserved it—fuck all the
bureaucracy and laws of man and ethical ambiguity bullshit.
So. While straightening out your tux for a dinner party and smiling eerily
at your own pale face in the classy mirror, you snicker at the thought of
all the idiots out there and how they stupidly think that necromancy is
ancient, that it's about embracing death and its icons and then wielding the
power of death incarnate. Those dipshits got it all wrong. Necromancy isn't
about getting dressed all gothy and being depressed and raising zombies,
it's about life and death, pure and simple. Life and death were designed as
an equation or a zero sum of positive and negative numbers. You can't change
that. Nobody can. But what you can do is mess with the equation. You add one
digit to one side, you add the same digit to the other. You can mock
people's fear over the circle of life and death, you can steal from its
eternal power, and by paying the circle a price of death in advance, you can
reap the ultimate power of life.
Aaahh... the glorious, eternal circle of life and death. While you're able
to change the flow or the direction of it, you can never actually break the
circle. With all your heart for giving back life and healing, you're a
heartless bastard for taking lives and the destruction you sow just in order
to steal your power from the circle—a passing power that fades once you've
given someone a second chance. At the end of the day, you have no power over
life and death, only influence, and your life or death will only be another
lonely drip in the bucket of eternity. To do great things for others, you do
horrible things first.

NEO-NECROMANCY BLAST STYLE
Neo-Necromancy has no blasts.

STATS
In relation to charging up and taboos, neo-necromancers normally surround
themselves in symbolism of life and death, never only one or the other. For
example, wearing a stethoscope and a skull chain, or keeping a local
doctor's calling card and an info pamphlet for a local burial institute. The
re-animators are a strange folk who don't seem to feel more attracted to
either life nor to death specifically, so they either show symbolic
fascination to both life and death or towards none of the two. In contrary
to alot of gonzo adepts, you'd probably not suspect many neo-necromancers to
be what they are at first glance. Usually more subtle, the tell is only
percievable in expressed political views on organized death, i.e. abortion,
legalization of euthanasia, or reminding people of contemporary genocide.
Right after that, they'll be talking about something cheery. Most people
just consider them to be a bit strange, since they're not too forceful about
their opinions.

Generate a Minor Charge: Prove how much you mock the fear of life and death
and you can steal some power from the eternal circle. Have sex with a corpse
for over four hours and treat the corpse like a living breathing person,
spend a day „watering" someone's crops in a field with acid and then
„planting" pebbles in place of seeds, crash someone's somber funeral
ceremony with an onoxious sex and kegging party, or treat someone's wounds
by putting dirt and malicious insects into them and wrapping them with used
and infected syringes and bandages.

Generate a Significant Charge: Drastically speed up the flow of the circle
towards death by renouncing fear of it and celebration of life in vastly
more potent ways. Bury people alive in a cemetary, found a cult of twenty or
more people who worship and celebrate death itself just like you do, host
and participate in necrophiliac group orgies of at least twenty living
people and twenty corpses each, or open up a shop which is a morgue by day
and a loud and obnoxious nightclub by night. You get the big idea, don't
you?

Generate a Major Charge: The big guess is this: you must die and be
artificially brought back from death. Either somebody must use mundane means
like hospital hardware and skills, or by means of someone else's magick. You
have to be clinically dead for several minnutes, at least. The only catch is
that you must not have issued your revival in any way, as that would
disprove the non-existance of your fear for death. If anybody brings you
back from death, they must do it out of their own motivation and despite you
having reprimanded them in life that you wouldn't have wanted that to happen
as you'd like to see what comes after this life. You should always be
marking those checkboxes that tell medical staff „do not resuscitate" you,
whenever you get the chance.

Taboo: You can only tamper with the circle so much before it cuts you off
and mercilessly drones on without you. It's taboo to celebrate or support
life in any way outside of your magick. You have to let decay and death
occur where it may, you can only draw out its finality with the power you've
stolen from it. You cannot mundanely tend to or cure the wounds and diseases
of other people unless you use your magick for it. You yourself may not cure
or tend to yourself at all, not even with your magick, and receiving
anything even remotely related to first aid or medical attention breaches
taboo. You cannot corpulate or reproduce with the living as that would mean
you are a slave to the circle, you can only do the former with the dead.
Eating, body hygiene, or consumption of substances are not allowed to you
beyond what is the bare minimum necessity to survive, otherwise you'd be
celebrating the joys of life and disproving your own lack of fear for death.

Random Magick Domain: Anything that deals in healing, regeneration, and
restoration of life. To a more distant extent, communications with the dead
is inherent in the random domain—hooking up with ghosts and demons is also
in its immediate unnatural proximity.
Starting Charges: Two minor charges.

Charging Tips: Most casual re-animators have a hard time holding the balance
and holding onto alot more than three minor charges per week. More efficient
and zealous neo-necromancers can easily make about four to six minor charges
per week and one to three significant charges at the same time.
It helps alot to found your own personal death cults and hold parties in a
morgue owned by you, but then it's only a question till regular society
starts pointing the finger at you and calling you a nutjob. Which,
obviously, they are, not you.

Notes: We've got to be a bit overly literal about this because it's a weird
worldview and very personal. The taboo of neo-necromancers forbids them from
seeking medical or magickal help against their wounds and ailments, but if,
saying for instance, they'd get beaten to a pulp by some shmuck on the
streets, unconsciously taken off by para-medics, and treated against their
will in a hospital, the re-animator wouldn't be breaching taboo. Of course,
the moment they regain their consciousness and can move, they'd better
escape the hospital before the cosmos drains them of all their charges.


NEO-NECROMANCY MINOR FORMULA SPELLS
Slow Regeneration
Cost: 1 minor charge
Effect: Natural convalescence is drastically increased in velocity. Instead
of 1 wound point per individual wound per day being restored, the rate is 1
wound point per wound per hour. This effect lasts for a number of hours
equal to the sum of the dice rolled in the magick check. You can spend an
extra minor charge to increase the number of hours the effect keeps working
on—you get to roll two extra dice and add their face-up digit to the total
amount of hours.
Someone who's already under the effect of this spell cannot accelerate it by
having it cast on him or her multiple times. Until the effect wears off,
it's a waste of charges to cast it onto someone again.

Minor Cure
Cost: 1 minor charge
Effect: This spell automatically lifts a minor ailment, for example a cold,
a light flu, an annoying but unworrysome constipation, and so on. It takes a
few minutes until the target of the spell actually notices, usually the sum
of the dice rolled in the magic check indicates how many minutes. Once that
time is over, they feel greatly refreshed and are certain that they've been
cured.

Proxy Senses
Cost: 1 minor charge
Effect: With this spell, the neo-necromancer can „jack into" someone else's
senses and perception for the next few hours, up to an amount equal to the
sum of the dice rolled in the check. That „someone else" can be a living
person or even a corpse, it doesn't matter. The only prerequisite is that
the re-animator has to have physically touched the subject before.

Spirit Speak
Cost: 1 minor charge
Effect: This spell lets the re-animator summon up a demon or a ghost, as
according to the typical rules given for that in the Unknown Armies
handbook. You have to spend another minor charge to get rid of it
immediately after this communication, though. If you let it loose, you can't
get rid of it like that anymore, it's just too late. At that point, you can
only have it tie into a living body with a significant spell.

Minor Healing
Cost: 2 minor charges
Effect: This spell can rapidly close a serious wound. It restores a number
of wound points to a single wound equal to the sum of the dice rolled in the
magick check. You can spend up to two extra charges to increase the potency
of the effect on the same wound, rolling another die per extra charge spent
and adding that to the total of wound points restored to the wound, but you
can never magickally heal the same wound again with this spell.

Minor Revive
Cost: 4 minor charges
Effect: This spell allows a re-animator to bring people back to life if the
conditions aren't too bad yet, and the cosmos is more lenient on letting the
subject return from the dead. The first condition that allows this is that
the target of the spell cannot have had her wound points maxed out by means
of a major wound, only a minor wound (a significant First Aid or Medical
Doctor skill check can let you figure that out). Secondly, the subject's
death may not have occurred longer ago than thirty minutes. If it's
possible, the subject is brought back to life, with the wound points of all
wounds being reduced by 1 point each until it's sufficient for the subject
to technically qualify as „alive" again.

NEO-NECROMANCY SIGNIFICANT FORMULA SPELLS
Fast Regeneration
Cost: 1 significant charge
Effect: Natural convalescence is drastically increased in velocity. Instead
of 1 wound point per individual wound per day being restored, the rate is
several wound points per wound per hour—the amount of wound points restored
per hour is equal to the sum of the dice. This effect lasts for a number of
hours equal to the ten's digit of your Neo-Necromancy skill. You can spend
an extra significant charge to increase the number of hours the effect keeps
working on—you get to roll one extra die and add its face-up digit to the
total amount of hours.
Someone who's already under the effect of this spell cannot accelerate it by
having it cast on him or her multiple times. Until the effect wears off,
it's a waste of charges to cast it onto someone again.

Significant Cure
Cost: 1 significant charge
Effect: This spell automatically lifts a serious ailment which does not
qualify as a terminal disease, for example a possibly deadly flu, a lethal
form of diarrhea, and so on. It takes a few minutes until the target of the
spell actually notices, usually the sum of the dice rolled in the magic
check indicates how many minutes. Once that time is over, they feel greatly
refreshed and are certain that they've been cured from their disease.

Flesh Memory
Cost: 1 significant charge
Effect: With this spell, a re-animator can „jack into" someone else's senses
and perception and read their precise sensory memories by licking the
sensory organ in question. If, for instance, they lick someone's eye, they
can see what they saw, or if they lick their ear, they can hear—you get the
idea. The re-animator can then scan through all memories that are within a
timespan of days equal to the sum of the dice rolled in the check. The
subject of this spell may be a living person or a corpse, it's up to you.

Significant Healing
Cost: 2 significant charges
Effect: This spell can close a serious wound almost immediately; people can
see the tissue regenerating at enormous speed and the wound closing up
before their eyes—at the GM's discretion, this may very well be cause for
some Unnatural checks for any onlookers. The spell restores a number of
wound points to a single wound equal to the number rolled on the dice from
the magick check (just like when you compute firearms damage). You can spend
up to two extra charges to increase the potency of the effect on the same
wound, rolling another die per extra charge spent and adding that to the
total of wound points restored to the wound, but you can never magickally
heal the same wound again with this spell.
Significant Revive
Cost: 3 significant charges
Effect: This spell allows a re-animator to bring people back to life if the
conditions aren't too bad yet, and the cosmos is only barely lenient on
letting the subject return from the dead. The subject's death may not have
occurred longer ago than roughly one hour. If it's possible, the subject is
brought back to life, with the wound points of all wounds being reduced by 1
point each until it's sufficient for the subject to technically qualify as
„alive" again.

Tumor Tissue Homunculus
Cost: 6 significant charges
Effect: Extracting the tumor tissue or cancer growth from a living creature
(a human being is fine, although you may face some other consequences), you
can use this spell to shape and create a homunculus out of it (see pages
100-101 in the handbook for the details on homunculi), giving it life.

Pseudo Rez
Cost: 6 significant charges
Effect: This spell allows the neo-necromancer to bring any corpse back to
life but it's a horribly flawed power. You can't cheat the cosmos out of
death too easily, can you? The subject's death may not have occurred any
time ago. The corpse is then possessed by a demon, and doesn't give a damn
about what the neo-necromancer wants it to do. Sometimes, it's a demonic
version of the person who the body once belonged to—it'll seem like that
person at first, but over time you'll notice the twisted differences. It's
not possible for the re-animator to drive out the demon at any point once
the spell is cast.

NEO-NECROMANCY MAJOR EFFECTS
Truly resurrect someone anyone you want to, anyone who's been long-dead.
Perform a miraculous healing of all wounds, ailments, and impairments—make
someone who was tied to a wheelchair walk again, make someone's terminal
cancer permanently disappear. Raise an army of corpses that are inhabited by
demons.
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