Driven Crazy. By a stupid mathematical puzzle.
Power: Minor.
History: Rubiyot Khamiger got bored with simple Bibliomancy, and developed a sadistic turn of mind. He decided that people deserved to suffer for their fixation over the written word and devised several ways to make them suffer. One was this simple Sudoku puzzle that would subtly rearrange itself every time you got within two moves of solving it. He wrote out maybe twenty or so copies and charged each one up, just to be good and nasty.
Effect: You have to make helplessness check at level 2, or you cannot put this innocuous little sudoku puzzle down for at least an hour. You can’t solve it and it enrages you to the point of vexation. You lose your temper and throw things for 10 minutes and lose complete awareness of propriety or surrounding unless you make a self-check at level 3. You attempt to solve the puzzle and curse loudly as you fail. You disturb everyone around you and eventually will either provoke a fight or get yourself removed.
Description: A simple sudoku puzzle from a newspaper ironically named “The Fishwrap Times.” It says across the top. “Once you start, you can’t put it down.”
Antidote: To beat the sudoku puzzle, you cheat, and write a linear program to solve it mathematically. You’ll find at least 3 or 4 solutions to it in one move, which will short-circuit the defensive spell.
Is the thing that triggers the helplessness check starting it or seeing it?
Go with seeing it. As soon as the GM mentions “Oh, you see a sudoku puzzle,” no powergamer or defensive gamer will pick the sucker up.
It can be picked up or looked at more than a glance, that is you look closely enough to see two or more of the numbers in the squares. If you have a big pile of crap and they have to find a clue, they’ll have to deal with it one way or another.