[UA] The Reality Mechanics: Chronomancy

[Jade Hammons]

My brain posits this alternative.

Charging Scheme:
Chromonmancers have no capacity to store charges, storing charges would require manipulating time, and would therefore be admitting that time has some form of control over them. Instead the chronomancer accepts total control over a moment for the equivalent of reaching into Time's guts and pulling out a bunch of wires you aren't really sure it needs. Cause ceases to follow effect, everything happens at once, and the Chronomancer untethers for just a moment (or forever... it's so hard to tell)

Minor effect: Following a minor effect, a minor unnatural phenomena that usually manifests in a time-related way, this effect occurs generally within an hour of the effect, and no more than 24 hours. Sometimes it's harmless but odd, all the clocks in a 3 block area run backwards for 333 minutes. Sometimes it's not so harmless as the Adept suddenly suffers 13 minutes of lost time while driving a car. The affect is generally more dangerous and more focused on the adept the more charges that were 'manufactured' for the effect.

Significant effect: Signigicant Unnatural Phenomena can happen immediatly or can linger unmanifested for a week or more. The effects on Time and the adept's personal time can be sanity shattering to the unprepared. The adept might wake up with memories of an older brother that no one else remembers, except his parents who tell him he died when he was a baby from a disease, a disease your memories say you were told he got better from. Was he real, and your actions just caused him to be killed to feul your magic? Or is the world correct, and a new timeline been overlaid onto your memories. How much of your memories can you trust.The adept may suffer days of lost time, or more.These can and do affect the outside world, but are more likely to just affect the Adept's personal timeline, ranging again from harmless and odd to potentially dangerous and well aimed based on the power the Adept yanked out of time to power his effects.

Major effect: The few Chronomancers there are are SURE no one has tried a major effect. In fact, people that have never heard about Chronomancer's often mutter, "none of you guys has ever managed any major mojo, ya know?" as they walk past, and then seem to forget they said it. Most Chronomaner's therefore keep a note that says, "Someone tried a major effect and ceased to exist, even though you are SURE no one did. Signed: You"

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Luke Pendo 
  To: The Unknown Armies RPG Mailing List 
  Sent: Friday, March 14, 2008 9:31 PM
  Subject: [UA] The Reality Mechanics: Chronomancy


  Charging Scheme

  Minor: The chronomancers gain charges by refusing to live according to the Artificial Time of the Enlightenment. There are two ways to garner minor charges for this school. First, for every day you spend in Personal Time you garner a charge, similar to the scheme for Dipsomancy and Onieromancy, just a lot slower.

  Further, you gain a minor charge from building a clock or watch designed to keep Personal Time. Yes, for a quartz watch this means cutting your own quartz crystals. 


  Significant: You gain significant charges from freeing someone from the constraints of Artificial Time. Examples include flickering the power in someone's house the day before they have a meeting that will make or break their career.

  I'm not sure if this next idea makes the charging scheme too easy, but I am tempted to include Einstein's Second Theory of Relativity - "Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT'S relativity." 
  If you directly cause an event like this happen you get a sig charge. I'm thinking of the scene from Fight Club here.

  Note: Yes, the event that makes a chronomancer counts as freeing someone - in the case of the above described trigger event, the significant charge was immediately dumped into a missing time effect as the nascent chronomancer had no idea what the hell he was doing. Normally, from the birth of a mentored adept, the mentor gets first dibs at the sig.


  Major: No one has gained a major charge yet. (Excepting, possibility, for those in the modernist predecessor in this school). An obvious way to get one is to have a personally designed system of measurement of time be accepted as a global standard.

  Another interesting thing to try is getting an extra leap second added to the calendar at the end of the year. Yes, if you can get the Earth to slow down in its orbit around the Sun, a major charge is yours!
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