Cats carry a lot of baggage, culturally: they’re associated with death, sensuality, grace, luck and, of course, magic.

Cats carry a lot of baggage, culturally: they’re associated with death, sensuality, grace, luck and, of course, magic. Everyone knows what happens when a black cat crosses your path or that witches kept cats. The first animal familiar listed in the annals of witch-finding was a cat. Bet you didn’t know that, did you?

Your basic garden-variety cat isn’t anything special on its own. Even show cats with papers and family trees tracked better than the houses of royalty aren’t anything to write home about, mystically. Get enough of them together, though and things start happening. Four or five, and you might feel a tenseness in the air. By the time you accumulate twenty, well, that’s when things really start coming alive.

Felixomancers are absolutely obsessed with cats, and keep large numbers of them at their homes. They love them, pay them extensive attention and tend to their every need; except when it comes time to kill and consume them for greater magickal power. The paradox of Felixomancy is that although they begin the path to magick through obsessive love they are driven to kill and eat their precious pets to further their own ambition. Keeping cats goes from being an act of love to a callous facsimile of adoration.

Felixomancers must keep at least 10 cats for charge storage, although many keep far more.

Blast Style:

The Felixomancy blast takes the form of dramatic and damaging ill-fortune, similar to that of Urbanomancy but is not restricted in its location. The minor blast spell Black Cat does its damage through some small accident: an moderate burn while cooking, an accident at work, a fall down the stairs, etc. The significant blast spell Unlucky Rat is an amplified version of the minor blast: the target’s home may partially collapse on top of him, he may be hit by a car, etc. The blast almost never occurs right away unless the immediate environment is hazardous, but hangs there waiting for an opportunity to strike.

Stats:

Generate a minor charge: the felixomancer must spend at least 3 hours lavishing attention upon his cats. Petting them, calling them by name, playing with them, feeding them treats by hand; that sort of thing.

Generate a significant charge: the felixomancer must kill and eat one of her own cats. Cooking is optional, but the act of killing must be done by the adept’s own hands and must be up close and personal. No guns allowed, but the adept may kill her pet with a knife or hatchet if she is too squeamish to strangle old Muffin. Consumption of the organs, bones and skin is not required, but the adept must eat all of the meat of the animal herself. Some overly fetishistic (and creepy) felixomancers will keep the bones or hides of the cats they kill, incorporating them into decorations, jewelry, or clothing.

Generate a major charge: Kill and eat a big cat (tiger, lion, leopard, etc) using no firearms, traps poison or indirect methods of any kind. Just man and tiger, mano e gato.

Taboo: cats in a felixomancer’s care must be kept as happy and as healthy as possible, at least until he himself kills one of them. This means ample food, free run of the home, plenty of toys and affection, and regular trips to the vet for those adepts that can afford to do so. To a felixomancer, his cats are his children. Children that he occasionally kills and eats. Any death or harm that befalls his cats that he did not cause himself to generate a significant charge or dropping below 10 cats in his possession breaks taboo.

Random magickal domain: Felixomancy focuses on cats and the cultural perception of cats as magical or special creatures. It’s a grab bag of thousands of years of superstition: aura and astral sight, improved reflexes, control over individual or groups of felines, affecting causality, interacting with demons and the dead, and love (or at least lust) spells with a dash of healing from when Bast and Freya worship were still a big deal.

Charge storage: A felixomancer must have at least 10 cats at any one time. Furthermore, the maximum number of charges the adept has is equal to the number of cats in his possession. The size of the charge does not matter, but this limitation and the method of gaining significant charges tends to discourage felixomancy adepts from breaking down significant charges into minor ones. For the purposes of considering which cats are in the adept’s possession, this refers to cats that dwell within his residence, are fed there, and spend the majority of their time there. Lots of felixomancy adepts keep their cats their cats as strictly indoor-only animals both to limit possible harm to their pets and to keep smarter cats from fleeing from adepts interested in generating a significant charge.

Unlike bibliomancers, felixomancers are not required to be close to their cats when working magick, although few travel far or for very long due to taboo restrictions.

Starting Charges: Beginning felixomancers start with 5 minor charges and can easily acquire more.

Felixomancy Minor Formula Spells:

Bast’s Blessing

Cost: 3 minor charges
Effect: Just as the Egyptian goddess Bast was the goddess of healing and pleasure, so too does the adept gain an unearthly allure and sexual magnetism. All Charm or Seduction rolls receive a 10% bonus for the next 20 minutes.

Black Cat

Cost: 5 minor charges
Effect: This spell effectively duplicates the Urbanomancy spell Break Your Mother’s Back without the location restriction.

Cat’s Eyes

Cost: 2 minor or 3 minor charges
Effect: The felixomancer gains the ability to see in total darkness for 10 minutes. For an additional charge the adept may also see clearly into the Astral plane, spotting demons, astral parasites, and astrally projecting adepts.

Howl Up the Devil

Cost: 3 minor charges
Effect: The adept summons a demon and may converse or negotiate a pact with it as she wills. This in no way provides any control over the demon in question, enforces the terms of any pacts, nor prevents attempts at possession.

Land on Your Feet

Cost: 1 minor charge
Effect: the adept deducts the sum of the dice used in his magick roll from any falling damage. Furthermore, just like the spell title says, he lands on his feet.

With Catlike Tread

Cost: 3 minor charges
Effect: The target of this spell moves with no noise whatsoever. Neither dry leaves nor rusty hinges will give the beneficiary of this spell away for 10 minutes. An additional 2 charges will allow the person under this spell’s effects to bypass all man-made alarms whether she knows of their existence or not.

Significant Formula Spells:

Freya’s Chariot:

Cost: 2 significant charges
Effect: The adept exchanges bodies with the cat of his choosing (this need not be one of her own cats) for one hour. This causes an immediate level 7 Self check for the adept and the cat isn’t too happy, either. Smart adepts ensure that their body is in a locked room without any sharp or fragile objects while under the effects of this spell to prevent accidents. Should the adept’s body die while she is under the effects of this spell, she is permanently trapped in the body of the cat and when her cat body dies she will return as a lycanthrope. If the cat’s body dies it spends the rest of its life trapped in an alien body stumbling around on too-few legs and is hopefully tended to at a mental institution. Poor kitty!

Tyger, Tyger:

Cost: 5 significant charges
Effect: The caster transforms into ferocious cat-beast, merging the spirits of the felines sacrificed to make this spell possible with his own. He gains +10 to his Strength and Body score and all related skills and +20 to his Speed score and all related skills as well as claws make his hands count as sharp objects and add +1 to damage from hand-to-hand attacks. The effects of this spell last 15 minutes.

Unlucky Rat

Cost: 5 significant charges
Effect: This spell duplicates the urbanomancy spell Traffic Accident without the location restriction.