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.
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