I've thought a radiation-themed adept school would be appropriate for Unknown Armies for a while, but it really started to take shape for me after I watched the excellent 1979 Japanese movie, The Man Who Stole The Sun. The symbolic power of the A-Bomb and the protagonist's aimless but consuming obsession feel very on brand for UA, even though nothing supernatural happens in it. There are a handful of references to it littered throughout the school. It's kind of like the offspring of Taxi Driver and Breaking Bad, but a lot more whimsical than either.
Just a boy and his plutonium.
Anyway, here's the school.
Phosphomancy
AKA Curies, atom splitters, half-lives
(Not to be confused with Photomancy.)
"They say radiation’s harmful
It’s a fact of life
Without it, we would die"
Nuclear Babies – Oingo Boingo (unreleased)
The cold war may be over, but humanity will forever live in the
shadow of The Bomb. The effects of atomic annihilation are as
ingrained as the imprints of its victims in the rubble of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki.
There’s something very Promethean about a manmade force of
such unspeakable creative and destructive power. We have devices
whose energy output exceeds that of the sun many times over, and yet
we put them to such prosaic ends: threatening other countries,
powering industry, and so on.
Nuclear power demands respect – and yet we don’t respect it.
Systems of its regulation are laughable in comparison to the worst
case scenario should they ever fall through, and despite a colorful
history of disasters and hand-wringing scientific papers. We can
never put the genie back in the bottle, and today most people don’t
think twice about it as they go about their lives.
The central tension of phosphomancy is encapsulated in inverting this
mentality: atom splitters pray at the altar of the A-bomb. Their god
was born in the Trinity test. To invest their bodies with radiation
is to harbor a divine spark; to build a nuclear bomb is to hold the
power of the sun in their hand. As mere mortals, they are unworthy to
turn this divine wrath against others, but they live to be subsumed
by its blinding light.
STATS
Generate a minor charge:
This is not possible for phosphomancers. They can split up sigs if
they need to for rituals or the like, but there are no minor spells
and no minor random magick in this school, just as there are no
half-measures in nuclear war.
Generate a significant charge:
There are two methods:
either sustain a dose of ionizing
radiation sufficient to
permanently alter their health, or acquire sufficient fissile
material to power an atomic bomb.
For the former, a few hours in a tanning bed won’t cut it; a few
minutes standing right next to the elephant’s foot will. See below
for radiation mechanics.
For the latter, “acquire” means it’s your personal property,
not just in a lead-lined truck you’ve been hired to drive between
facilities. Equivalent or greater explosive yield to Little Boy or 13
kilotons of TNT qualifies as “sufficient”.
You may notice that doing this enables the other charging method.
Many Curies have, too. It’s common to see them worship with
fetishes made from radioactive plutonium or uranium isotopes, usually
involving ritual actions that expose them to sufficient radiation to
charge.
Generate a major charge:
Two methods again. You can
sustain a fatal dose of radiation, or
singlehandedly build a
functional atomic bomb or
nuclear generator.
“Singlehandedly” means
that you personally own
all the materials that go into the bomb and all the equipment with
which you make it. This
does put rich half-lives
at a big
advantage, but that was true anyway, because they can afford a lawyer
if they get caught pinching
plutonium.
Taboo: You
must insist on respect for
the object of your
worship. Any time you
bear witness to someone making
dismissive or blasé
comments about nuclear
power or nuclear war, failing
to take proper precaution around radioactive materials, or
disregarding the chain of
command for their usage, you
have to correct them in no uncertain terms. This can make charging by
acquiring and compiling bomb components tricky, of
course. You don’t have
to force them to act
differently, but at the
least you should issue a dire warning and
remind them what they’re dealing with.
Simply addressing heresy is not enough, though. You need to
proselytize as well. If you ever pass a week without making some kind
of public statement, such as counterprotesting at a rally for
disarmament, publishing an opinion piece in the news, or teaching
your middle school science class how to build a nuke of their own,
you break taboo. This can be avoided only if you’ve made meaningful
progress on building a bomb or generator of your own during that
time.
On top of all that, you cannot seek medical care for radiation you
sustain for the purpose of charging, or any adverse health conditions
that result from it.
Random magick domain:
radiation, mutation,
disaster and
indiscriminate
destruction; more
symbolically, weaponized
science and the
hubris that
comes with it, collective
ignorance of existential
danger, and
raw energy on a scale greater than humans can comprehend.
Ω: +0.
Mechanics for Radiation
In game mechanic terms, doses high enough to generate a significant
charge (ballpark figures, between 100-1,000 roentgens) provoke a
Fitness test. On a matched failure or better, you feel sick for 1d10
hours (and probably shit yourself) but recover fully. On a fumble, or
if your Fitness score was in the negatives (see below) prior to
rolling, you develop cancer in 1d10 days, probably leukemia. See Book
4’s writeup of ustrinaturgy for more details on how that works in
game terms.
Your Fitness score also accrues a negative shift equal to the ones
place of the test every time you are irradiated enough for a sig
charge. It’s suggested the cumulative penalty be tracked in secret
by the GM, as with wound points. Every month you spend without
sustaining further radiation, the penalty drops by 1d10.
A
major charge-worthy dose also
provokes a Fitness test,
and on anything less than a crit,
you have a number of hours
to spend that charge equal
to the sum of the dice
before you are too disabled by acute radiation sickness to do
anything but die in agony. On
a crit, you
get to repeat this
test once a day for a week, and if
you pass them all, you
survive, although your
Fitness is penalized by an amount equal to the
highest of those rolls,
reduced over time as described above, and
any children you have will be horribly mutated and unlikely to
survive their infancy.
Phosphomancy
Significant Formula Spells
Atomic Abjuration
Cost: 2
significant charges.
Effect: The
atom splitter
enchants a homeopathic
crystal purported to ward off
ill health
such that it actually does. This
spell only works if the crystal in question is radioactive, although
it doesn’t have to be hazardous
enough to provoke a Fitness
check against radiation. Whenever
the bearer of the crystal (which
can be the atom splitter, but doesn’t have to)
would enter into harm’s
way, be it exposure to a
deadly virus
or the path of a drunk
driver, synchronicity
protects them from harm. The
one exception is that the
crystal has no effect on radiation. This
effect occurs a number of times equal
to the ones place of the casting roll, after
which the crystal disintegrates
into slightly radioactive
ash.
Demon Core
Cost: 3
significant charges.
Effect: The
curie targets a radioactive object
and any
number of demons
within a
yard of
one another. As long as the
object chosen is radioactive enough to qualify for generating a
significant or major charge for direct exposure, the
demon(s) are bound to the object, and cannot move more than one
yard from it. Because
of how radioactive
decay works, the
object’s radioactive
emission will eventually drop
low enough that it no longer qualifies for the spell, at which point
the demons are free. Additionally,
every time
the half-life period
of the object’s radiation passes, the range from it that the
demon(s) can move doubles.
I Am Become Death
Cost: 1
significant charge.
Effect: This
is the phosphomancy blast spell. The
atom splitter inflicts
horrific radiation burns on the target, subjecting them to
a Violence (5) check as well
as a Fitness check as if they just received a
significant charge’s worth of radiation (see above).
I'm Number Nine
Cost: 1
significant charge.
Effect: The
next time the half-life
attempts coercion, the stress
check provoked is a Violence
(10) or Helplessness (10) check, as
their target perceives them to
be as dangerous as a head of state with their hand inches from the
big red button labeled
“launch”. What they’re
being coerced into is irrelevant to the apocalyptic implications of
refusing (although they still
can). As
soon as the coercion is
resolved, they return to viewing
the half-life as they did before.
Manhattan Projection
Cost: 1
significant charge.
Effect: The
atom splitter touches an
object up to the size of an armchair, and it becomes sufficiently
radioactive to provoke a
Fitness check at a significant charge level (see
above). The caster immediately has to make that check for standing
right next
to it, but they don’t gain
a charge from doing so. Without
a geiger counter or Rad-O-Vision (see below), the object appears
unchanged upon examination.
After a number of minutes
equal to the ones place of
the casting roll, or after
that many people are subjected to the Fitness check, it
returns to normal.
Mutagenesis
Cost: 2 significant charges.
Effect: Playing on decades of
cultural tropes around post-apocalyptic mutation (and almost nothing
to do with actual science), the Curie mutates
themself or a target
they touch for
a number of minutes equal to
the total of the casting roll.
This
manifests in game terms by
letting them exchange all the
features of one of the
target’s mundane identities for
different ones, chosen from
the following (see
Book 1: Play):
provides wound threshold, provides initiative, coerces
Unnatural, coerces Violence, medical (affects
self only), and
provides firearm attacks
(which manifests in some kind of biological projectile weapon).
Undergoing
such a mutation provokes an
Unnatural (5-6) check, and
anyone present to witness the transformation, including the Curie,
faces an Unnatural (2-4)
check.
Mutually Assured Destruction
Cost: 2 significant charges.
Effect: The
half-life mystically binds
two objectives together, one
of which they must either be working toward, and
the other of which must go against one of their passions or
be diametrically oppose to their own objective. Once
this binding is in place, should
either objective be completed, the other is instantly completed as
well. Every party working
towards both objectives
is notified of the binding, through
a vivid dream, unnatural
omen symbolically linked to the two objectives, or series of obvious,
synchronous signs.
Rad-O-Vision
Cost: 2
significant charges.
Effect: The
atom splitter gains a
new Specific Information identity (see
Book 1: Play) with a
rating equal to the sum of
the casting roll dice. This
identity, which shares the name of the spell, makes
them a human geiger counter. They
now see
radiation as
a kind of bright haze, with
intensity corresponding to
the amount emitted. A person
sunbathing on a nice Summer day will
have a little extra ambient glow. A
nuclear reactor will be bright enough to make the atom splitter wince
without eye protection.
Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
Cost: 1
significant charge.
Effect: A
single target the
phosphomancer can see at the time of casting is
overwhelmed with existential dread to the extent of paralysis. They
become certain nuclear annihilation is
imminent and there’s
nothing anyone can do to stop it. Taking
any action that only makes
sense if the victim
expects
to be alive the next day is
only possible if they overcome
a Helplessness (10) check.
This effect lasts a number of
minutes equal to the ones place of the casting roll.
The Cost of Lies
Cost: 2 significant charges.
Effect: The Curie warps
synchronicity around some complex bureaucratic process in
a way that tangibly and directly affects people’s lives. This
spell cannot
just gum up the
voting process on a bill in
the senate that relates to
the allocation of resources to
homeless shelters, for example. Such a bill certainly affects life
and death tangibly for
unhoused people, but not in a direct enough way for this spell.
What the spell can do (for example) is generate some
procedural SNAFU that results in somebody getting fired from a job
they can’t afford to lose, cause a workplace accident causing up to
a total of 5d10 wounds, or allow a criminal to escape life in prison
or death row through some abstruse technicality or disappearance of
evidence.
As you’d expect, this spell cannot be used to aid a Curie in the
acquisition of bomb or generator components for the purpose of
charging.
Major
Charge Effects
Neutralize every warhead in one world power’s nuclear arsenal,
confer a permanent supernatural identity to someone in the form of a
pop-culture-style genetic mutation, put a neighborhood through all
the effects of a nuclear detonation except the radiation (EMP,
disastrous shockwaves, everything catches fire), power electrical
infrastructure or other machinery with the energy of a nuclear power
plant for a month, create compelling, falsified intelligence
indicating an impending nuclear strike by one nation against another.
