Chronophagy - an Unknown Armies Magick School

Chronophagy

aka

Clock-Stoppers, Day Trippers, Time-Burglars

     Out of all the fundamental forces that govern the world that humans live in, the least harnessed by far is Time; we've tamed strong and weak nuclear forces to produce our power and electro-magnetism to store and transfer it. Yet time remains utterly elusive, even with it being the way that we measure other forces in physics such as velocity, there's also a subjective component to the passage of one moment to the next, everyone has felt time quicken or slow, or for a moment to seem like it has come before. Time has always been the topic of scientific, spiritual, philosophical and artistic endeavors, trying to explain or understand the force that pulls, pushes and eventually dooms all of our lives and life's works to dust, memory and oblivion. All is lost under Time's cruel embrace, except to the Chronophage, the time they make others waste they get back from themselves in little starts and snippets. Why, with enough theft, one could achieve immortality. You just have to find a big enough sucker.

Chronophages, Clock-Stoppers, Day-Trippers (or behind their backs, Time-Burglars) have always been very rare. It's not that the school is difficult to master due to some potency or particular arcane bent, but rather that most people really can't muster the commitment necessary to really become a master (or was it slave?) to time. People don't really respect the time that they're given to begin with, we while away hours watching television that serves no purpose, we read books and play games, none of which really advance us in any way. Not you though, you truly live each and every moment because you know it is precious, you stole it. The typical chronophage is a deeply unhappy person, generally one who has reasons to believe that their lives have been wasted in some way. They justify their actions by claiming that they will value the stolen time more than their victims.

Many Chronophages live strange, fractured lives due to their powers, warping your past and future while in the present isn't particularly conducive to developing a coherent time line, and as a result they are often forced to use their magic to give themselves perspective on the oddly de-coupled events that often befall them. No matter how curated their lives become, there's always the temptation to meddle just a little bit more, to craft a more perfect you out of the largely meaningless dross that makes up most people's lives.

The central paradox to Chronophagy is that by wasting the time that others have, they make an active sham of the time that they purport to value. They spend so much time planning how to efficiently waste the time of others that they forget that life is largely what happens in-between the so called 'important' things.

Stats

Generate a Minor Charge: Waste someones time in a marked way. Tying someone up on the phone when they obviously want to leave, make someone late for the bus by distracting them, slit someones tires and make sure they're not on time for work. As long as at least an hour of their time has been rendered null-effort, you get a minor charge. The charge is given upon the target's realization that they're not going to make their appointment, or that they've spent more time than intended or needed doing a task. Only purposeful wasting of someone else's time is enough, if the Chronophage reads the directions wrong and gets everyone lost on accident, they don't get a charge.

Generate a Significant Charge: Absolutely wreck someones day, and we're not just talking in a metaphorical sense. Ruin a long-term project in a work-place through misleading memos, crack the foundation of a building under construction, 'accidentally' tip the cargo of a ship over, drive your car into a store-front window. The more time and effort that is wasted in cleaning up your efforts, the better, especially if it involves multiple people rather than an individual. As with Minor charges, the clock-stopper gains it upon the target's realization of the amount of work and effort that has either been wasted or will be required to repair the situation. As before, only deliberate actions count towards charge-generation

Generate a Major Charge: Ruin a once in a lifetime event for someone else. Chain call your prey dozens of times before their Ivy-league interview, detain someone on their way to the birth of their child, cut the fuel line of a space shuttle hours before launch. Major charges are hard to predict because you never know when you're going to catch a person on the most important day of their life.

Taboo: Like time-based Sharks, stagnation and inaction is death to a day-tripper's magick, making them as much of slaves to the passage of time as non-chronophages. A time-burglar must always be engaged in some sort of purposeful, meaningful action at all times. Stuff like doing your taxes, washing your house's windows, organizing your books by their ISBN, all would be fine; playing video games without training for a tournament of some sort, reading for pleasure or simply just sitting around and spending an afternoon drinking would be right out. Sleep is a tricky prospect because it can be considered both a necessity and an extravagance, Chronophages are allowed to rest, but only once they drop from exhaustion. If they do not have at least some sort of exhaustion penalty when they head to bed, they're in danger of breaking taboo. Chronophages must also respect the time that they have stolen, they cannot apologize, nor make amends for taking it from their inferiors.

Random Magick Domain: Simply put, their personal time line, with a minor in time as a whole. Anything that deals with the exclusive passage of one event to another, or one's perception of those events can be affected by Chronophagy. A Day-Tripper couldn't turn back the clock and make you do something different, since they have no ability to directly control you, but they could make you repeat the same action over and over again. Chronophagy is extremely powerful, but it is narrow in it's use and it's poor at effects that directly affect another living being beyond those that can be explained purely in a temporal manner. In addition to that, clock-stoppers have issues with trying to affect something (beyond themselves, of course) they have already used their powers on, once they've made a change, it's harder to make another change. In game terms this is represented by each repetition of a Chronophagy power on the same target after the first is successful taking a cumulative -10% shift.

Minor Formula Spells

Backwards Glance

Cost: 2 Minor Charges

Effect: Similar to the Cliomancer spell 'Past Sight', 'Backwards Glance' allows you to examine events which transpired in the past at your current location. Unlike 'Past Sight' you must stipulate a general time frame, so "Show me what has happened here since I was last at this location" works, but, "How did Vinnie the Snitch die here?" wouldn't. The caster can witness up to three hours of time in this way, though to an outside observer it would only seem to take a few moments and longer spans of time can be achieved by casting the spell multiple times in the same place, subject to the normal penalties for that, of course. The vision you receive with this spell is not like reading reports or watching a film, it's more like you suddenly remember having been witness to the events first hand, except your recall is near perfect.

This Magic Moment

Cost: 2 Minor Charges

Effect: You can charm a single moment of time to break in your favor, not exactly ensuring success, but certainly stacking the deck. The next roll you make can be flip-flopped. If this spell is used in combat, it does not take an action. You can only use this spell on yourself.

Paradoxical Familiarity

Cost: 3 Minor Charges

Effect: With this spell you can push your senses outwards and synchronize them with the environment around you for the next three hours. This has several benefits:

• You are always aware of exactly what time it is.
• You can, with a fair degree of accuracy, estimate how long any given action would take, barring exceptional success, failure or luck. Smaller actions are easier to read, and it helps to have enough information to at least make an educated guess. You could guess how long it would take the guard to get from the security station to the office you're looting (93 seconds) or how long it would take to run from your apartment to Francois the fear-mage's house (8 minutes, 24 seconds), but estimating how long it would take for say, an objective to be completed would be impossible without at least some information.
• You can cast this spell as a reflexive action when presented with evidence that your timeline is not the same as that of the objective one around you. If successful you can save yourself from having to make tests on your shock gauges, though not from any other unfortunate consequences that may arise.

How About We Try That Again?

Cost: 3 Minor Charges

Effect: The Chronophage may make a target repeat the same exact action that they did the previous round. So, for example if Terry the time eater were to slap 'How About We Try That Again?' on Gladys the sweet old lady in the supermarket while she is testing the weight of two melons and he rolls under his 'Chronphage' identity, she would be stuck there weighing fruit twice as long than she would have otherwise. If cast in combat, this spell doesn't ensure that an attack that was previously successful would be again, as the circumstances around the target will have certainly changed, but it does force the target to waste an action. You can also cast this spell on yourself, which can aid you in completing a task that you've already succeeded once at.

Just A Second Of Your Time

Cost: 3 Minor Charges

Effect: The Day Tripper can yank a bit of time from their target and as a result they can take an additional action for one round, and their target takes none. This extra action can be 'banked' for use at the adept's discretion, but only one moment at a time may be held in such a way. Using the spell more than one round in a row on the same target imposes a -10% shift on all actions per each round above the first, this is in addition to the normal penalty that Chronophages suffer for iterative uses.

Remember What It Used To Be Like?

Cost: 3 or 4 Minor Charges

Effect: You can turn back the clock on an object by touching it and infusing it with a bit of time mojo. This has two effects, depending on the age and condition of the object in question. If the object is broken down from age and use, then it can be restored to working condition in the adept's hands, a rusted and busted gun could would work like it's new, a car on cinder blocks in your yard could be drivable within moments. If the object in question is currently in good working order, and you're willing to spend an additional charge, it can be reduced down to it's component parts. The well-cared for glock can be turned into an un-assembled pile of gun parts, the brand new Jaguar can be turned into a mass of metal ingots, lengths of rubber, plastic beads and glass panes.

I Already Slept Tomorrow

Cost: 3 Minor Charges

Effect: Drawing upon the timeline of a version of yourself that has eaten & slept recently (Sunday mornings are especially popular) you obviate any requirement for a night's rest, a single meal and whatever hydration that you'd normally consume to feel at your best. This spell only can be used once every 48 hours, your body can only exist on stolen sleep for so long.

Ironing The Wrinkle In Time

Cost: 4 Minor Charges

Effect: There's so much to do in a day, and so little time in which to accomplish everything. When you're honest with yourself however, most of what we do in a day amounts to little more than maintenance or busywork; mowing the lawn, washing the dishes, taking out the garbage, all to get back to where we were before we started in the first place. This spell cuts down the time of any mundane, repetitive tasks by half for a full day. Only prosaic, simple and well-known tasks can be affected by this spell; counting grains of rice that you have spilled, arranging your dishes by size, cooking dinner, etc.

Significant Formula Spells

I've Seen This Before

Cost: 1 Significant Charge

Effect: By spending a turn in rapt concentration the clock-stopper can gain insight what will happen in the next turn of combat. The combat round unfolds as normal, but the time eater is allowed to simply change their action after being informed of what every one else intends to do. This can cause bizarre situations in which someone who was once shooting a gun is now pulling a trigger and cradling a firearm that is no longer in their hands, or someone feeling like they're perfectly fine only to look down and realize that they have a knife sticking out of their chest. This of course can cause Unnatural and Violence checks depending on what is happening. The clock-stopper remembers both sets of events.

Where I've Been Tomorrow

Cost: 2 Significant Charges

Effect: If you've been to a place in the future, that means that the you the exists in the present will be there eventually, which means that you've already been there – from a certain point of view. After using this spell you can gain a decent idea of what awaits you in the structure that you're intending to enter, you get a rough idea of the lay out and which doors are locked, as well as how many people are currently inside. The knowledge isn't like a magic schematic or tracking device, it's more akin to the sensation of having been to a place several times.

So It Goes

Cost: 3 Significant Charges

Effect: This spell is cast in two parts, (the charges are spent when you first cast it) in the first part you take a magickal snapshot of your form at that moment, your bodily condition, your clothes, even how hungry or thirsty you are. From that point onwards, this snapshot acts as a template that can be accessed and then assumed at your discretion, as long as you succeed at another Chronophagy roll. So if you're bleeding out on the floor from a gunshot wound to the chest you can use the second half of the spell and return yourself to the temporal snapshot you took when you in your pajamas, right after breakfast last Wednesday. This magickal restore point stays around for a week before it has to be renewed. Please note than this can only affect your body and the clothes that you have on, so no stacking yourself up with twin assault rifles and body armor, the most you can get are the standard things that you have on you, in your pockets. Watching this unfold from the outside would certainly warrant an Unnatural check, with the severity depending on how big the shift is in your clothing and condition.

That's Not What Happened

Cost: 3 Significant Charges

Effect: Looking at the universe with a sneer - the time mage engages in the one of the oldest and most venerable arguments from the world of childhood make believe, "Nyu-uh, that's not what happened!" Using this spell the time-burglar simply reverses one distinct action of their choosing that happened within their proximity. This is a terribly powerful effect, but it comes with several limiting factors, the most important is that they have to be a personal flesh-and-blood witness to the event in question that they wish to reverse, the second is that it has to be a particular action, rather than a set of actions. So if Francois the phobomancer kicks your door down in a Halloween mask, knocks out Rocko the Muscle in the process and then bashes your cellphone into pieces with his baseball bat, you would have to choose between changing either Rocko being knocked out, or your cellphone being smashed, but not both. You could also choose to keep the door from swinging open that turn, but Francois could simply try again next turn. Being a witness to this spell is a Rank-5 Unnatural check.

Passed Discrepancies

Cost: 4 Significant Charges

Effect: When you think about it, most of what defines us as people are the various anxieties, traumas and negative experiences that have been inflicted upon us throughout our lives. These scars shape the types of reactions that we have to further stresses, and those reactions strongly govern how we choose to spend our time. This spell allows you to tug upon the underpinnings of your traumas and shift them around. You can reassign your hardened and failed notches across your shock gauges, two per usage of this spell. These changes can affect the various types of normally permanent madness if you knock yourself below 5 in it, but those points have to go somewhere. The changes to your personal time line necessary to underpin these shifts are made instantaneously upon the casting of the spell, you are the only one who remembers the new version of events however, which almost certainly sets you up for a bevy of Unnatural, Isolation and Self checks when you are inevitably faced with evidence of your original timeline.

That's Not Who I Was

Cost: 4 Significant Charges

Effect: Almost all of our identity is bound up in how we spend out time throughout our lives, it's not as if you're going to become a master of target shooting if all you do all day is fix cars, and being a world-class athlete is right out if you're not willing to run 10Ks while also holding down a 9-5 office job. This spell lets you change the time you spent int the past, so all that time making pointless money as a stockbroker? You spent it training Judo. All that wasted effort chasing after a man who would just leave you five years later? You were in the army instead, learning how to field strip a rifle. Upon the casting of this spell, the adept can shift a number of identity points around equal to the dice rolled, with a maximum being their Chronophage identity. The player is allowed to supplant old identities, come up with new ones and reinforce ones they already have, with the exception of their Chronophage identity, which cannot be changed with this spell. The time-burglar is the only one who remembers the changes, so any one in your life who knows you still thinks you're a stockbroker who's husband left her, but the actual skills underpinning that identity would be gone and replaced with those of a bad-ass who spent years training her body and learning how to kill. Living a stolen life makes it difficult to maintain relationships, and every casting of this spell reduces all of them by 5%, in addition to that, any direct evidence that the life that the adept remembers is not their own causes Shock Gauge checks, with the severity dependent on how overwhelming the proof in question is.

Chronophagy Major Effects: Trap someone in a 'Groundhog Day' scenario, render a person or object immune to the ravages of time, bring someone else (or yourself!) back from the dead, permanently shift to any particular day in the history of the world - it takes another Major Charge to get back.