Right. So this is basically an unholy amalgamation of thanatomancy, plutophagy, and cthonomancy, I guess?
The Vicariturge
AKA karma whores, Fausts, commodites
Vicariturges are the boddhisattvas of late-stage capitalism. In an
era where content creators are turning every aspect of their daily
routine into Youtube vlogs and Patreon extras, and an increasing
portion of the population can only pay their medical bills by
panhandling with a sob story online, it’s no wonder an adept school
has come about, too.
Where normal people are motivated by money to do this, or sometimes
in the maligned hopes that expressing their suffering to strangers on
the internet might help them heal, Fausts, like any kind of adept,
are only in it for the peculiar mystical power of such digital
flagellation.
Central Tension:
Vicariturges devalue and desecrate their most precious experiences,
beliefs, and connections in exchange for assigning them a dollar
value.
Generate a Minor Charge:
All vicariturgy charges come from the creation and sale of
vicariturgy fetishes, somewhat
like those of thanatomancy. Each
fetish is a physical embodiment of meaningful loss, grief, or trauma
experienced by the adept. The charge comes from the exchange of the
fetish for money (which can be received in digital form).
Charging only works if the buyer
has no prior personal
connection to the vicariturge.
There are a couple other important things to note regarding
vicariturgy fetishes of any charge level. First, they must be made
incorporating a symbolic or physical part of the pain they represent
(more details below).
Second, selling a fetish in no way unburdens the karma whore.
(At least, not emotionally or spiritually. Selling a fetish made from
the corpse of your boyfriend murdered by unnatural entities can at
least kill two birds with one stone as far as avoiding police
questioning.)
Not only do they not feel better after selling it, but doing so also
prevents them from healing that pain. If a fetish was made
from a failed stress check, for example, that notch cannot be healed
in therapy. If it represents the loss of a Relationship, and the
Faust later reconnects with the ex in question, they can never get
close again enough to recreate a mechanical connection with each
other via the Relationship rules.
It should go without saying that there is a limit of one fetish per
instance of suffering.
Lastly, there’s no particular restrictions on the materials
fetishes are made from aside from the aforementioned representation
of the pain. A gold-plated locket with a strand of hair and a tongue
depressor dipped in blood from the same person are worth the same in
mystic terms to a vicariturge. Likewise, the price is irrelevant to
charging. Being able to offload fetishes for a quarter is often a
boon to Fausts who make off-putting art objects from living remains.
That said, creating fetishes is an emotionally laborious and highly
meaningful process for karma whores. They aren’t known to half-ass
it, even if they need a charge in a hurry. If the end result is
a tongue depressor dipped in blood, then most likely acquiring the
blood was itself a complex and ritualized process, with personal
significance to the karma whore.
With all that out of the way, vicariturgy fetishes worth a minor
charge can either include a symbolic representation of a lost
Relationship (the person needn’t be dead, just gone from the
commodite’s life) or a physical part of a beloved pet or friend
(not one who’s “top 5 relationships”-tier), or an item related
to a failed stress check or an abandoned objective which was tied to
the commodite’s obsession or one of their passions. For example, a
commodite who was stabbed in an alley (failing a Violence check in
the process) might make jewelry incorporating the bit of knife tip
that got fished out of their chest cavity at the emergency room.
Generate a Significant Charge:
Significant-value fetishes
must include
a physical
part of a lost
Relationship (again, they
don’t need to be dead; nail
clippings are enough if
you’re squeamish or
insufficiently vindictive.)
Because this is highly limiting, innovative Fausts have found
another option: you can sell a minor fetish for a sig charge if
and only if the manner of selling it or the buyer is upsetting
enough to provoke a stress check itself on the Faust, and they fail
it. For example, the gaucheness of selling part of your dead child’s
body to your own parent as some kind of awful keepsake of their
grandson is likely to cause a Self check. Or, perhaps they’re
selling the mummified paw of their beloved family dog to some freak
charger who is going to use it for something unthinkable, which they
described to the Faust in detail, provoking an Unnatural check.
Generate a Major Charge:
Sell your soul in fetish
form. What exactly this
means is
likely somewhat subjective to
the individual Faust, but
it generally
requires a proxy ritual or similar. Invariably,
upon completing the transaction, they
take a Self (10) check.
The ensouled fetish is
also a very potent symbolic
item, and
dangerous to the Faust,
even in the hands of mundanes who don’t understand
what it is.
Taboo: The
first taboo for
vicariturges is to spend
any of the proceeds from their fetish sales. This
one is broken strategically
pretty often, since adepts
are often hard up for rent money, and
they are able to stockpile for
as long as they want.
Spending two bucks on a beer or two
grand
on a
new (used)
ride both
break taboo equally
(assuming you’re
not making monthly payments on the beater.)
Second, vicariturges can’t cope normally with their emotional
anguish without tabooing. If they lose their Favorite in a tragic
accident but eventually find another, they taboo once the bond is
strong enough to write it on their character sheet. Similarly, if a
commodite wants to heal a failed Helplessness notch in therapy rather
than making a fetish about it, or bury Fluffy in the yard without
commodification, those would also break taboo.
Blast Style: Vicariturge
blasts are cast
via cursed fetishes. Specifically,
the fetish in question must come from either a
violent incident that produced a
failed stress check or the
violent or sudden death
of someone or
some (living) thing
important to the karma
whore. Upon completion of
the sale, the cosmos will
bend synchronicity to
recreate whatever
loss happened that
spawned the fetish.
As an added benefit to karma whores, a cursed fetish whose blast has
been carried out disappears if unobserved, or else decomposes rapidly
or simply disintegrates if not perishable.
Random Magick Domain:
Desecration, martyrdom,
the intersections
of commerce and human
expression, exhibitionism
and misery, spectacle
and private pain.
Generally speaking, vicariturgy can only improve the lot of others
at the caster’s expense. Karma whores can never make any good come
to themselves from their own suffering using their magick.
Ω:
+0.
Neither taboo is too
difficult, essentially boiling down to not doing things that you
mostly wouldn’t even have to consider if you didn’t practice
vicariturgy. Charging is
restrictive in some ways, but there’s
nothing stopping a lazy
Faust from selling
fetishes on Facebook
Marketplace all day and
never having to leave home in
order to stockpile juju.
A Note on Timing: A
lot of vicariturgy spells
must be cast in the
process of selling a fetish.
In face-to-face
transactions, this is simple enough. However,
given the online behaviors
that spawned the school,
there’s actually an edge
to remote sales. In
this case (assuming the
casting roll is a success), the
karma whore gets to choose
whether the effect begins
upon the
receipt of payment, their
shipping the fetish, or
the fetish’s being delivered to the buyer.
There is one downside to this, which is that if someone buys your
freaky matted hair doll and has it shipped to a vacant address in the
middle of nowhere, it’s liable to mess up the spell.
Minor Formula Spells
Commercial Commiseration
Cost: 1 or
more minor
charges
Effect: When
you cast this spell, you
enchant the money someone
paid you for a fetish (normally,
it doesn’t matter if they
pay in cash, but in this case it
has to be.)
You can spend any
number of minor charges
when you cast it; each
case adds an additional use
of the effect before
it runs out and the money
becomes mundane again.
While handling the cash and thinking about the buyer, the commodite
experiences their current emotional state for up to about fifteen
seconds per use of the spell. Note that only the commodite can make
use of this effect, since they are the one bonded by commerce to the
target.
Keep Your Blood Money
Cost: 1 minor charge
Effect: As
part of casting this spell, the Faust must
return the fee they were paid
for a fetish created
due to failed stress check.
This
is the one case where giving up fetish
money does not break taboo.
If they were paid in cash,
they need not place
it back in the buyer’s
hand; it’s fine to Paypal
them the same amount or leave
it in their mailbox.
Upon the payment’s return, if the spell works, the buyer faces a
rank-3 stress check of the same meter as the fetish’s impetus due
to hallucinations that set in at a random point within the next 1d10
hours.
Gone But Not Forgotten
Cost: 1 minor
charge + up
to 1 significant charge
Effect: The vicariturge
enchants a
fetish made in memory of a
dead Relationship upon
selling it with a vestige of
their talents
in life. While the fetish is
on their person, the buyer
gains a single use of one of
that person’s identities at
the percentage it held when
they died.
This spell can be used to confer magickal identities, but only at
the expense of a significant charge on top of the base cost.
I’ll Never Let It Happen Again
Cost: 1 minor
charge
Effect: As
they sell a fetish
borne from a violent death or
an attack
that caused a
failed Violence stress check,
the commodite
enchants it with a ward.
There is no way for the
commodite or the buyer to tell if the spell worked, but
if it did, the next
time the same thing would
happen to the buyer, synchronicity
smiles on them and causes the
attack to miss.
By “the same thing,” we’re talking a pretty high level of
specificity. For example, a warded fetish from a dog that was hit by
a car will not prevent any car accident. It would, however, activate
on a street in the same city, or in a prospective accident with the
same make of car.
If the casting roll is a critical fail, synchronicity’s smile is a
sadistic one, and the buyer can look forward to suffering the same
harm that prompted the creation of the fetish at some point in the
next 1d5 days.
No Pain, No Gain
Cost: 1 minor charge
Effect: The
Faust must cast this spell on
someone who is already interested
in buying a fetish. If
it works, the target is
overcome with sympathy or pity for
the Faust when they tell
them the inevitable sob story
behind the merchandise, and
insist on paying more
than the asking price (if
they do decide to buy it).
The exact amount varies,
but you can expect at least
as much as the buyer’s
Status score in USD. Note
that this does nothing to circumvent the taboo of actually spending
the money.
Vicarious (Blunt Force) Trauma
Cost: 1 minor charge
Effect: This
is the vicariturgy
minor blast. Generally,
it
will be a lesser version of
the fetish’s impetus. For
example, a fetish made
with a bit of grey matter
from the karma whore’s dad
that died of a stroke used
for a minor blast is going to
cause a minor aneurysm or even just a burst blood vessel.
Deals damage as fists and feet and provokes an Unnatural (5) check,
as is typical.
What Doesn’t Kill Me Makes You Stronger
Cost: 2 minor charges
Effect: This
spell must be cast as the karma whore makes
the sale of a fetish whose
impetus was a
failed stress check. The
fetish becomes a good luck totem of sorts, warding
the owner from shocks
to the same meter of
the check that was the fetish’s impetus. The
next time the buyer would
face a stress check of that
meter while they have the
fetish on them, the stress
check’s
rating is
reduced by two ranks (if it’s
below rank-1, it simply
doesn’t faze the buyer.)
Significant Formula Spells
Is This Loss?
Cost: 2 significant charges
Effect:
The vicariturge
must
physically touch a
fetish at least four
hours
after selling it as part of
casting this spell. Once they
spend the charges and pass the roll, the
fetish begins to emanate the
negative emotions they associate with it like
a targeted miasma on the buyer.
So long as the buyer of this fetish is within thirty yards of it,
they are overwhelmed by depressive malaise so severe that doing
anything more than taking care of their body’s basic needs,
including getting rid of the fetish, requires a Self (4)
check.
This effect lasts for four days, which is incidentally a typical
amount of paid bereavement leave in the US states where that’s
required of employers.
Needful Thing
Cost: 2 significant charges
Effect: As
they sell it, the Faust
transforms a
fetish made in memory of a
dead person with
whom they had a Relationship
into a vessel for their
demon. (Naturally,
this only works if they have in fact remained around in demonic
form.) The
demon appears inside
the fetish after 1d10
days. It
can communicate telepathically with the buyer and cause
one minor unnatural phenomena
per day, originating from the
fetish.
There’s one other requirement here: there has to be a contract
involved in the sale of the fetish, signed by both the Faust and the
buyer.
No End to My Suffering
Cost: 1 significant charge
Effect: This
bizarre spell requires the karma
whore to sell a fetish based
on themself. This act does
not generate a charge, of course, but
it is part of the casting
process. If the spell worked,
that fetish
becomes sort of like a
mini-proxy
for the karma whore. The
next time they would suffer
wounds, the
first 33 are dealt to the fetish instead, so
long as the buyer has kept it
on hand. This
causes the fetish to
disintegrate noticeably but
harmlessly.
This effect is only active for 1d5 hours. If a karma whore casts it
again before this window ends, it replaces the previous casting
rather than creating a second instance.
Pity Party
Cost: 2 significant charges
Effect: As
they cast this spell, the
Faust focuses on
the buyer of one of the
fetishes they sold to
generate the charges for it. If
it works, they create a
sympathetic link to that buyer. The
next time the Faust fails any
stress check, if the buyer is
within a ten
mile radius, they immediately
become inexplicably aware that
the Faust is in crisis, and
feel an unnatural compulsion
to help.
If they choose not to immediately rush to the Faust’s aid, they
face a Self (10) check, but then the compulsion passes. If they
instead give into the compulsion, they risk a Helplessness (4-5)
check if anything prevents them from arriving on the scene where the
check was failed as fast as they can, or if, by the time they get
there, the Faust has left (or died).
Rubbernecking
Cost: 1
significant charge
Effect: This is the
significant blast of vicariturgy,
so its name is liable to be
literal. It works the same as
at the minor level, except
it deals damage like a gunshot.
See Some Evil, Hear Some Evil
Cost: 1
or more significant charges
Effect: Yet another
spell the commodite must cast as they conduct
the sale of a fetish. This
spell allows the commodite to
use any of
the buyer’s
five senses
(only one at a time),
regardless of distance,
so long as they keep the
fetish on their person. This
doesn’t prevent the target
from sensing things, only
allows the commodite to share sensations.
There is no obvious sign to
the target that any magick is going on while the spell is in use.
This effect lasts for an hour per charge spent during casting. If
desired, the commodite can continue to feed sig charges into the
spell as long as they want.
Signal Boost
Cost: 1 significant charge
Effect: The
vicariturge casts this spell as they sell
a fetish. One
of the next 1d10
people to
see the
fetish in the possession of the buyer is oddly compelled
by it. They will
reflexively feel the buyer
out as
to where they got it and
synchronicity will nudge them
into the vicariturge’s path
(or that of their online
storefront) or
vice versa at some point in
the next few days, unless one
or both parties is actively
trying to avoid this.
When they
encounter each other, the
target
will face an Unnatural (5)
check if
they do not try to purchase at least one fetish from the vicariturge
for themself.
The encounters this spell creates, if face to face, are fleeting and
generally in public places. It is generally hard to do more than
exchange contact information or a few bills for a fetish on hand When
they happen.
Vicious Cycle
Cost: 2 significant charges
Effect: The Faust must cast
this spell as they sell a fetish, but wait,
there’s more! The fetish
for this spell has to be made
from cash (and
cash specifically) that was
paid to the Faust in exchange for
another fetish. Maybe
it’s the
profit
from
one they sold to a dearly
departed spouse when they
first met, or
maybe
from a
sale that went horribly wrong.
If the spell works, the buyer becomes a proxy for the Faust for as
long as they retain ownership of the money-turned-fetish (see Book
1: Play, p. 180).
Major Charge Effects
Make a fetish buyer suicidal. Cause a massive riot that escalates
from a bidding war over one of your fetishes. Synchronously cause a
buyer and all their loved ones to go bankrupt. Make a buyer immune to
harm from any source except whatever killed the person the fetish
commemorates. Cause a whole city’s worth of people to turn up to
your funeral, crying their eyes out.
What You Hear: Vicariturgy
is the brainchild of a merchant avatar whose
unhappy husband tricked her into entering a Room of Renunciation
rather than having
to pay alimony.
