Milk-based magick.
Don’t laugh. Milk is very, very magickal.
Generate a Minor Charge: Spend two hours working with milk. You can drink it, make food with it, sell it, distribute it, or squeeze it out of a cow. Doesn’t matter — every two hours you spend doing something milk-related, you gain a minor charge.
Lactomancy is a minor school. Lactomancers don’t generate significant or major charges.
Taboo: Harm your milk. If you spill milk, let milk go bad, or otherwise spoil or waste any milk you own or care for, you lose all charges.
Blast Style: The victim of a Lactomancy blast has their digestive system flooded with harmful bacteria. This causes immediate and intense stomach cramps, as well as uncomfortable digestive problems. (The problems last until the damage is healed.)
Random Magic: Purity and decay.
Symbolic Tension: Milk is a symbol of purity and health (at least in Western culture), but it actually isn’t actually particularly necessary nutritionally and turns bad very quickly.
Charging Tips: If you work full time on a dairy farm, cheese counter, or milkshake shop, you can probably earn 4 charges a day. However, it’s pretty safe to say that on any given day that you do so, you’ve got a 50% chance to break taboo in one way or another, so you will probably be walking around day by day with either 2 or 6 minor charges. Don’t bother to save them up: they’re easy come, easy go.
Starting Charges: 4 minor charges
Minor Formulas
Don’t Cry Over Spilled Milk
1 minor charge
This provides a sort of “psychic first aid.” You must touch the subject and say something kind. Erases a single Hardened or Failed notch they gained in the last minute.
Strong Bones
2 minor charges
The subject (which can be you) must drink milk that you have prepared in some way. Add 10% to the subject’s Body and all Body-based skills. The subject takes 3 less damage any time they take damage, and is immune to any effect that specifically harms bones. Lasts an hour.
Does A Body Good
3 minor charges
Soak a wounded body part in milk, or if it’s internal have the subject drink the milk or bathe in it. This formula then heals damage equal to the sum of the dice. You can heal yourself or other people. Also temporarily clears up any skin conditions.
Curdle
3 minor charges
This is the Lactomancy minor blast. It does damage equal to the sum of the dice.
Lactose Intolerance
5 minor charges
Point at someone within line of sight and say “Lactose Intolerance” (in any language). The subject will suddenly become vastly more intolerant. Any prejudice the subject already holds against any group of people (not individuals) becomes pronounced, intense, and vocal — they can no longer temper it or keep quiet about it. The subject is prone to fits of violent rage toward anyone who triggers their rage stimulus.
The next time the subject consumes a dairy product, they’re immediately hit by a Lactomancy minor blast and the effect ends. Otherwise, the effect lasts one month.
Today, I played a totally UA game. I was playing the milkman in a game set in rural Iowa in 1953.
I was not playing an adept. I was playing an Avatar of the Two-Faced Man. But the milk jokes went around the table a lot anyway, so I told everyone I would write up and post Lactomancy tonight.
So here it is!
Hah!
Behold the astounding MILKMAN!
Okay, go ahead and laugh.
A friend pointed out I was missing a “Make People Lactate” spell. Ah well.
Kidding, kidding. But in all seriousness, nice work. I really like the Lactose Intolerance spell.
I like the idea of a spell that makes people lactate. You might also consider spells that play on “milk of human kindness” or “land of milk and honey”.
Aw man, now you guys gave me an image of some sicko using lactomancy to mass produce human milk cheaply with captive women.
Remember, in UA, adepts are sick dudes. If it is possible to do something sick, twisted, and profitable, someone is going to do it.
“I am the milkman. My milk is delicious.”
Love it.
Since it’s harder to get, and since most people find it gross for anyone but a baby to consume it, human milk might be worth significant charges if someone wants to write up some significant formula spells.
That… Actually makes sense.
How about: For every day you only eat/drink human milk, you gain a significant charge. Eating any other food or drinking anything else ruins it. It should be noted that a milk-only diet isn’t exactly healthy for your digestive system, and cannot be done every day.
But what would they use these sig charges on? Besides a Sig blast, of course.
Well, probably some permanent body boosts ala epiduromancy would be appropriate. Not speed though.
I’m surprised. At first glance. the concept looked frankly stupid, but this treatment of it actually works really well.
Which is not to say that a cabal of magical dairyworkers will be appearing in my game anytime soon, though.
Thanks for your extremely harsh kind words, Wellbutrin!
Significant Spells:
Land of Milk and Honey: Does a Body Good, but for 24 Hours throughout an amount of space equal to a small house. Recipients must drink milk or the like to benefit.
Alternatively, get one of TedPro’s Mellimancers to aid the caster for some sort of much more powerful ritual version.
Mother’s Milk: Target regresses psychologically to an earlier stage of development for a number of rounds equal to the tens die. More charges, more regression. (Possibly too powerful or the domain of Maternamancers.)
Got Milk?: Weakens the target’s bones, effectively causing osteoporosis. -20% Body Shift for an hour.
Alternatively, causes a parade of random celebrities to appear and make fools of themselves.
Milk of Human Kindness: Share a milk drink with target and gain a +10% shift on social interaction rolls for the next hour.
Somebody else has to do the charges for the spells, but at least it’s a start.
Major Charges, if they are deemed to exist, are gained in a fashion similar to that of Dipsomancers, namely by finding and consuming ancient or historically important milk or cheese. However, in line with the school’s particular tensions, the milk product must have gone rotten by the time you get to it. As such, consuming it will likely lead to a body check to avoid becoming seriously ill. The charge might be lost if its source gets vomited up.
I don’t really have any idea about what the effects might be, but what the hey.
Stop hack the program!!!
I’m pretty sure that, although it would be restricted to female characters, it would be appropriate to be able to gain a significant charge from undergoing lactation. Possibly a major charge for supplying X amount of milk or doing particular things with your milk.
This could also cause tension between male and female adepts. Heh.