Unknown Armies Update Wiki
Advertisement

Aka Pervs, Creeps

People are capricious and ugly creatures. We claim to be refined beings, holding our societies and morals as the pinnacles of our high-minded reason. Really, all we did was slap those things together because it made satisfying our base, atavistic needs safer and easier. The human consciousness is a tiny canoe atop a stormy sea, and while we can row as hard as we like, we are always at the mercy of the waves. Pioneers of the field of psychology knew this, and so do you.

No decision we make isn't tinged with our powerful, suppressed desires. The id runs the show, behind all the other needs and responsibilities we work so hard for. It is always just behind us, pushing forward, and that constant push, though sometimes gentle, does work on all that we work on. Everything we do is ultimately a subtle expression of those crass and untamed needs. Many of the world's finest artists were delighted to realize this, and it is your creed.

These drives are often frightening, but they are the foundation on which all of our world is built. There is no part of us that is more natural, and more powerful. Many people would risk their reputations, give up their hard-earned livelihood, and even alienate their friends and family for the sake of satisfying these urges. The pornography industry happily acknowledges these needs, and provides for them. The internet, that place of anonymity, is rife with plenty of material to scratch whatever itch there may be. They are your bread and butter.

The paradox of Voiromancy is that it celebrates that our base needs made our civilized human society possible, but in doing so they reject the socializing and interpersonal relationships that are necessary to lead from one to the other. They refuse contact with polite society, but in doing so they also deny their beloved Freudian drives the purposes they serve.

Stats

Generate a minor charge: Spend $100 of your own money on pornographic material, subscriptions, and merchandise. You get a charge whenever the total amount of money you've spent increases by $100. For example, if you spend $25 a week on smut, you get a charge each month. If, during the first week of the month, you spend $50 on dirty movies, you get a charge after you pay your $25 bill on the second week, and the second week of every month thereafter instead of the last. Furthermore, you get an additional charge once you've spent your first $100 on a particular site subscription. Seeing as how "property" is a flexible term on the tubes, this means you'll likely pay multiple times for the same material. That's okay, though, as you're still supporting your id ideology by supporting a new carnal altar.

Generate a significant charge: Meet someone publicly affiliated with one of your patronized smut companies in person, and take home an "artifact" from the meeting, such as an autograph, commemorative merchandise, or something touched or owned by the other person. You may charge up from multiple meetings with the same person, but you need to collect an artifact for each charge, and each meeting must be at least six months apart. Taking home multiple artifacts from the same person from the same meeting does not grant any extra charges.

Generate a major charge: Acquire the concrete, physical evidence that a figure important to society has indulged in something that their community would consider shameful. This doesn't have to be sexual in nature, just something previously thought to be beneath the figure. Any of the women who were involved in the "Wienergate" scandal would've gotten charges, had they been Voiromancers. The same goes for Frank Willis, the security guard who first noticed evidence of wiretaps during Nixon's Watergate scandal.

Taboo: You must not allow anyone to openly acknowledge you as deserving admiration, prestige, or otherwise being an exemplary pro-social member of society. This doesn't mean that you wipe your charges every time someone tells you "thanks" or "you're welcome" (although it could, if this is spurred by an honorable or noteworthy action), nor do you have to openly antagonize everyone all the time. You just cannot stand out as a positive impact on your surroundings. Careful with that Noble passion.

Random Magick: Voiromancy is the magick of secrets, suppressed and frustrated desires, and the alienation that results from people hiding shameful things. It's excellent for snooping, obscuring, loosening or tightening inhibitions, and playing on people's consciences and "true" natures. It's got a variety of applications, but it isn't exemplary for any particular one of them, nor is it useful for affecting things physically.

Note Well: This influence over secrets has convinced many in the Underground that the Western (and possibly both) schools of Cryptomancy are all but finished.

Formula Spells

Minor

Why Hello There (4 Minor): When you cast this spell, choose a target by full name and state something that you know will tempt or arouse their baser desires. The target will subconsciously seek out a way to indulge that temptation. They won't drop everything they're doing, but won't exactly be operating at optimal efficiency. Once a way to indulge presents itself, the target will slake that desire every chance they get until the next time they sleep. A victim of this spell can break out any time they become aware of their behavior with a rank-4 self check.

Creeper (2 Minor): To cast this spell, you need something the target has touched in the last 24 hours. For the next 72 hours, whenever the target is not in the company of anyone they know personally, you will have a general sense of their location, and their direction in relation to you.

Mystic Voyeur (3 Minor): Similar to a spell once used by the Western Crypts - and presumably still used, if there's a single one left - this grants the user the skill of Aura Sight for an hour, at a level equal to their Magick skill.

Instant Pariah (2 Minor): For the next five minutes, everyone mostly ignores you, doesn't remember your face, and will only really notice your presence if you do something significantly noticeable - merely suspicious action won't cut it, and as soon as you're out of sight, you get another chance to not be noticed even by the same people who just saw you pointing a gun. As an unfortunate side effect, anyone without a prior established attitude towards you will treat you with contempt while you are under this spell.

You Know You Want It (1 Minor): Similar to the Pornomancy spell of the same name, this gives a +20% shift to the caster's next social interaction roll, as their arguments suddenly sound more reasonable and desirable than normal.

Guilty Conscience (1 Minor): When someone does something they know is wrong, and aren't absolved to their satisfaction, it tends to weigh heavily on them. This spell simply multiplies that weight. For the next hour, one particular secret the target has comes to the forefront of their mind. How they respond to this is uncertain, but it's likely that if the adept can chat with them enough to gain even the slightest amount of trust, they'll spill the beans. What the target feels the need to reveal is beyond the control of the adept, but subsequent castings can get them to reveal other things, if they don't get fed up with telling their secrets to some weirdo they just met. This spell has two caveats: One, if someone gets a particularly hefty weight off their chest, they may be thankful of the adept's generosity and cause a taboo. The other is that if the target is already familiar with the adept for some mundane reason, they may break the spell by passing mind check. After all, you may trust a stranger at a bar with your dirty laundry, but you wouldn't feel the same about a coworker.

Significant

Ecchi-splosion (1 Significant): The target of this spell suddenly suffers from a profuse and forceful nosebleed. This may only distract them at first, but if the flow isn't stoppered properly within 30 seconds (or three combat rounds) the victim has, at that point lost enough blood to go into shock. If this happens, or it is stopped and stays stopped for 30 seconds (or three combat rounds) in a row, the nosebleed stops as mysteriously as it began.

Privacy Piracy (2 Significant): To cast this spell, you must know one embarrassing or shameful secret of the target. Suddenly, everyone the target is acquainted with will just somehow know about their secret. Depending on the secret in question, most people probably won't act any differently. Close friends and family members, on the other hand, may be compelled to snoop, and will likely react badly when they find out the truth about what the target has been keeping from them.

Ressentiment (4 Significant): To cast this spell, you must know that the target, either an individual or a group, is in search of something that is important to them or their goals. You don't need to know what the thing itself is, just that the target is looking for it. For a number of days equal to the sum of the dice, the targets will find themselves distracted or redirected by false leads whenever they make a conscious attempt to find whatever they're looking for. If you taboo, or if the target somehow stumbles upon the sought-after thing by chance, the spell will end.

Advertisement