Emphysemamancy

The magick of heavy smoking ''They were coming for him. He could smell them, out there in the darkness. His lungs burned as he ran through the concrete warren of decaying, rotted buildings, grimed with the smoke and filth of decades. He slipped on a wet patch, and stumbled, falling to the floor. As he picked himself up, he caught a half-glimpse of a hairy, animal, hunchbacked thing somewhere off in the shadows behind him. “It can’t be,” he thought frantically, “they can’t have summoned up the Camel so quickly.” Spurred on by his fear of the horror behind him, he ran on  through the gloom. Red lights bobbed and flickered up ahead – and to his right. Lighting cigarettes in mouths of his enemies. The circle of tiny, potent fires closed around him. Light from the broken windows illuminated tendrils of smoke twining in the air, circling him. The trap was complete. He was doomed. A figure stepped out of a doorway, climbing over the broken remains of the wooden door. “You were foolish to think you could run. You know the rules. Nobody quits on us.” “I had to try.” “Perhaps…it doesn’t matter.” The figure flicked ash from the end of his cigarette. Both men carefully watched the patterns and shapes of the falling ash. “Ah, well. I am sorry.” The fetid stench of the Camel filled the chamber. The executioner smiled. “Any last requests?” “One last smoke?”'' Adepts have been trying to discover the mystical potential of cigarettes since the early years of this century. Life in the Occult Underground is somewhat trying, and many need some little something to keep them going, keep them stable. Plus, it was a big image thing. However, cigarettes remained stubbornly unmagickal for decades.The increasing awareness of the link between smoking and ill health, especially cancer, proved to be the kick needed. The first Emphysemamancers appeared in the mid-70’s. The school is closest to Dipsomancy, but Emphysemamancers (or Smokers) tend to look down on boozehounds. Then again, Smokers are mostly cynical addicts who spend way too much time in coffee shops at (sometimes literally) unearthly hours.

There are persistent rumours that the higher echelons of the tobacco industry suppressed the truth about the harmful and addictive nature of cigarettes to protect their own exclusive mastery of Emphysemamancy. The leader of this conspiracy is popularly known as the Marlboro Man, although younger Smokers call him the Cigarette Smoking Man or Cancerman. Whatever name he goes under, he is feared as a powerful sorcerer who can quite simply smoke a person’s soul away.

Generate a Minor Charge: Smoke a packet of 20 cigarettes. One charge per pack.

Generate a Significant Charge: Smoke a cigarette you lit with a historical significant lighter, or use a historically significant ashtray. These aren’t exactly the most common items. Samples include lighting a cigarette from the Eternal Flame at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, or Jim Morrison’s lighter.

Generate a Major Charge: No-one is quite sure how to get a Major Charge – or if they do know, they aren’t telling. Some believe that a Historically Significant Cigarette could do it, but the only known example is a certain cigar associated with a certain president. Another theory killed three Adepts, who were trying to light a specially built 20-foot cigarette using an erupting volcano.

Taboo: Go more than an hour without smoking. If the Smoker is sleeping, they can go for three hours before they must light up or power down. Emphysemamancy kills its practitioners, if they aren’t coughing up black gunk, they aren’t wielding magic.

Random Magic domain: Fire, smoke and ciggies.

Starting Charges: Emphysemamancers start with no minor charges, but they usually have four or five packets of fags on them…

Emphysemamancy minor spells:

Smoke Gets In Your Eyes: This is the Emphysemamancy minor blast. The Smoker blows smoke at the target. Anything touched by the smoke cloud is scarred, discoloured and burned. This blast can affect unliving objects, but only does a small amount of damage to anything other than flesh. Costs 1 minor charge.

The Dangers of Passive Smoking: You sit in a smoke-filled room and you can smell the air that has been in other people’s lungs. You can feel the germs and foulness seeping into your own body. An Emphysemamancer using this spell can share any ill effects that afflict him with all those breathing the smoke from his cigarette. If the Emphysemamancer is shot, poisoned, sick, cursed, whatever, he can spend a minor charge and use this spell to divide the damage or nastiness. The spell only works for one round, so an Emphysemamancer who gets shot twice in two rounds must cast the spell twice to split the damage.

Smoke Trails: Smoke always, always goes unerringly for the nearest non-smoker. With this spell, the Emphysemamancer coaxes his smoke to hunt for another target. The Smoker casts this spell, and describes the physical characteristics of the target (“the nearest man with a gun”, “a copy of ‘the Necronomicon’”, “anyone wearing shoes with dirt from my garden on the soles”). The smoke can only perceive physical attributes, but gets into everything and can drift into almost any hiding place. The range of this spell is limited by weather conditions, but it normally limited to a single large room or very small building. Outdoors, the smoke gets blown off course easily. Costs 2 minor charges.  It Keeps Me Thin: Using this spell, the Smoker can go without food or water for 24 hours. 1 cigarette and 1 minor charge are all they need to keep going. However, if they use this spell 3 days in a row, they lose 5% from their Body stat.

Packetfate: Tear off the inner wrapper of a cigarette packet and you’ll find a weird little set of numbers and symbols. The mundane believe that those symbols are a code used by the packager or printer. Emphysemamancers know that those sigils are communications from the divine. The Smoker can use a new packet of cigarettes and 2 minor charges to divine the future of the person who bought the packet. See the Plutomancy spell Economic Forecast for ideas, but Packetfate is a bit more personal and descriptive.

Light Up Anywhere: Watch someone trying to light a cigarette on a windy day. They cup their hands, frantically nurturing a tiny flame, praying and yearning for the fire to bring them nicotiney goodness. Emphysemamancers are far past putting up with the world messing with their smoking habits. This spell allows a Smoker to light their cigarette. Anywhere. In a hurricane. In an Antarctic blizzard, on an icefloe which is sliding at an angle of 60 degrees into the icy waters. With a lighter than hasn’t had fuel since 1942. While falling.

Basically, the Smoker gets one round in which they can light a cigarette. The universe will do its best to give them a chance to light up. Winds will die down around the Smoker, rain will stop. Attackers will choose another target. The Smoker may even hang unsupported in mid-air for a round while lighting up.

This spell isn’t a perfect defence, it’s just a quick breather. Emphysemamancers attempting to abuse this spell will draw the wrath of the strange forces, and their lighters will never ever work. This spell costs from 1 to 3 minor charges, depending on how much out of its way the universe has to go. The only action the Smoker may take is lighting a cigarette during the free round, but he may also roll a hunch for the next round to represent the moment of preparation he gains from this spell.

Emphysemamancy significant spells:

Excuse Me, Is That Part Of Your Lung: The sig. Blast. Blow some into someone’s face, watch them cough up their guts. Only works on living targets.

Addiction’s Yellowed Smile: This spell allows the mage to affect someone else’s desires. Choose one addiction or desire and cast this spell. If the target is vulnerable to that desire, this spell multiples the intensity of that longing by a considerable amount. This spell cannot create a feeling, only intensify it. This spell can enhance greed, lust, hunger, thirst, homesickness, and similar feelings. The intensity of this spell depends on the margin of success when casting it. It costs 1 significant charges.

Words In the Ash: When this spell is cast, the Emphysemamancer holes an ashtray and names a person. The nearest ashtray to that person sends up a small puff of ash to attract the target’s attention. For the next ten minutes, any messages drawn into the ash in one ashtray appears in the other ashtray, allowing a limited form of written conversation. A Smoker may also spend a minor charge and push a small object into the ash. This object is teleported to the other ashtray. The object must be small enough to fit into the ashtray. This spell costs 1 significant charge for every ten minutes of use.

Smokerings: Circles. Pentagrams. Wards and bindings. Rings and forms to hold the unseen. This spell allows the Emphysemamancer to trap magickal entities in a smokering. This spell is fairly wide-ranging, it can catch demons, ghosts, Tenebrae, non-entities, astral parasites, revenants, astrally projecting people – any spiritual entity that happens by. The ring only lasts a short time (1 to five rounds), but the target cannot leave the confines of the ring during that time. This spell costs 3 significant charges.

Smoke Gets Into Everything: With this spell, the mage can quite literally smoke himself away to nothing. He can become nothing but smoke. He must spend one significant charge and smoke a cigarette to temporarily reduce his Body by 10%. The Smoker gradually becomes more and more gaseous until he is nothing but a cloud of cigarette smoke. In this form, the mage may fly, pass through the smallest gaps, sneak into anywhere. He perceives the world in a strange way, but can still see and hear. High winds and air fresheners can severely damage a smoky wizard.

The last cigarette used in this spell becomes the Smoker’s link to the solid form. He must basically unsmoke himself using this cigarette, flowing back into the lighted tip and becoming material again. The spell’s duration is therefore dependent on this last cigarette. The Smoker must get in and out before the cigarette goes out. If the adept trusts someone, they can have cigarette extinguished, and then lit again when they’re ready to reform. Of course, if the cigarette isn’t lit again, Mr. McCloud of smoke is stuck.

If someone is smoking the final cigarette, and the mage tries to reform – I dunno. But it is going to be messy.

My Life Is One Big Cigarette Butt: Smoking calms the nerves. But when you’ve seen what some Smokers have seen in the mystical haze, you need something stronger. This spell allows the adept to take some memories, some bad stuff, and stick it all in a cigarette. Then you just smoke it, and throw the end away, and you’re free.

This spell transfers astral parasites, curses and the bad effects of trauma (hardened and failed checks) into a cigarette butt. One nasty experience per use of this spell, so if a mage gets 2 Hardened, 2 Failed and an Entropic in his head in one encounter, one casting of MLIOBCB will get rid of it all. This spell costs 5 significant charges.

Of course, the cigarette butt is still out there, and if it’s destroyed, everything gets dumped back into the mage in one big blast. Having all the pain and fear hit you in one sudden shock is a lot worse than experiencing it the first time…

Copyright Gar, posted on the official UA website July 22, 2002