Abstracting the empirical world into pure mathematical truth. Also magic.
Nickname: Savants (or idiot savants if you’re in a pissy mood)
Mathematics is a quest for complex, quantified abstract truth. Mathemancy takes that same quest to a level of reality-breaking obsession.
The mathemancer analyzes deep truths to discover the underlying structure. Solved problems are not interesting. What is undiscovered is irresistable, and the mathemancer probes deeper. She is uninterested in the things of the world, and interested in the deeper underlying meaning.
Savants are good at prying deeper and analyzing the logical underpinnings of the world. They lose track of the real world as they explore the nature of reality.
But Mathemancy is not just mathematics; it’s magic. It doesn’t just explore the structures of logic and numbers; it unleashes an understanding of the subtle absolutes that can only be eked out with utter academic discipline and complex structural analysis. Mathemancy ponders the infinite within the infinite.
But the truth of the Universe is a strange thing. As the Mathemancer goes deeper, they begin to jut against strangely human truths. The human-centered universe. The numerology of the 333 Archetypes. The secrets of the ever-tilting Statosphere. The Mathemancer encounters these strange facts, and the strange facts may, terribly, take notice.
A Savant stares at the universe with a detached and dauntless drive for pure understanding. But the Savant runs the risk of the universe staring back.
Generate a minor charge: Spend four continuous hours working on a single mathematical problem, without solving it. Finishing a problem that takes more than four hours will get you a charge for each four hours you spend without a solution. You have to be sincerely working on it the whole time.
Generate a significant charge: Expand the world’s knowledge of mathematics, even slightly. Publishing a peer-edited academic paper is the most common way to get a significant charge, but other methods are possible.
Generate a major charge: Transform the world’s knowledge or use of mathematics. Newton and/or Liebnitz could have generated a charge for developing calculus. Matteo Ricci could have, too, for the interchange of European and Asian mathematics. It’s not enough to develop a new field of mathematics: you have to change the way the world does math.
Taboo: Mathemancers must keep their mathematics pure, which is to say abstract and theoretical. A mathemancer who makes any practical use of mathematics more advanced than counting loses all charges. Balancing your checkbook, splitting up a check, and translating from Farenheit to Celsius are forbidden to you.
Symbolic Tension: Mathematics is rooted in science and engineering, rendered into the purely theoretic. It is precise but untethered. Mathemancy describes and analyzes the world, but maintains the purity of abstraction.
Random Domain: Mathemancy grants a detached, theoretical understanding of things. It can also transform the concrete into the hypothetical.
Solving a Complex Problem: Several formulas will refer to “solving a complex problem.” This requires a variable amount of time (specified for each formula) and a check against a Mind-based Mathematics-based skill. Skills like Accounting and Computers can be used with a -10% shift, or General Education at -20%. This is always a major check. You can’t used Mathemancy for this.
Minor formulas
Consuming Insight
1 minor charge
A combination attack and divination, usable on yourself or someone else within line of sight. For the next day, the subject is consumed with analyzing a single question (subject’s choice, generally something they care about). During that time, they’ll be distracted from everything else, getting a -10% shift to all checks and automatically missing out on many details and easily-ignored things. At the end of this time, the subject gains an extremely useful insight to the problem they were considering – depending on context, this could be either a +20% shift to a single skill roll, or a revelation of some useful and previously undiscovered truth.
More Fucking Trajectories
1 minor charge (plus all the rest)
For the next hour, you (and only you) get a +30% shift to all Body and Speed skills due to your uncanny insight into the forces of motion. However, the practicality of this formula also violates taboo and you lose all charges. Mathemancers hate using this (hence the name), but had to develop the formula because they were getting beaten up too much.
World of Ideals
2 minor charges
By observing any system (whether social, mechanical, biological, or magical) you can understand how it’s supposed to work. This will give a pure and simplified description of the theory of how a thing should work. It won’t identify how it actually does work, or whether it’s functional or broken, but it will show the design intent. For the sake of this formula, universal forces like evolution and entropy count as purposes.
Matrix Quantification
3 minor charges
Sometimes abstract computation can be comforting in its detachment. Use this formula within an hour after someone (including you) calms down from a failed Stress Check. You need to understand the details of what was upsetting, but you needn’t have been there firsthand. Solve a complex problem (see above), which takes about ten minutes. If you’re using this formula on someone else, explain the mathematics to them – they’ll also need to solve a complex problem with about ten minutes work.
If all these checks succeed, the failed notch goes away. If one fails, the formula fails, the charges are lost, and you can’t try again.
Modeling
3 minor charges
The Savant formulates an abstract mathematical model of a physical, nonmagical, inanimate object.
To use this formula, you need the object at hand, and it can’t be larger (mass or volume) than you. Solve a complex problem (see above) that takes a day of work. If you fail, charges are wasted. If you succeed, the object you have modeled ceases to exist as anything other than the abstraction the model represents. To retrieve the object, solve another complex equation which takes about ten minutes to solve, representing a sort of numerical lynch pin worked into the initial equation that completes the model. If you fail you can keep trying once a day. When you succeed, the object appears again in front of you when you’re done.
Significant Formulas
Frame of Reference
1 significant charge
Gives the subject an instant understanding of their place in the universe. The subject (which can be you) solves a complex problem (see above) instantly. On a success, they understand their current purpose and position in a global or cosmic scale. Success or failure, though, they also must make a Rank-10 Isolation Stress Check.
Large Number Theory
1 significant charge
A risky formula with uncertain effects. Compress yourself into a mathematical pattern. Solve a complex problem (see above) which takes a week’s worth of work (8 hours a day) to do. If you fail, the charge is lost. All that is left of you is that formula, so you’d best write it down.
While you’re gone, you don’t exist, physically or mentally. You don’t breathe, age, or even think. People still remember you just fine, though.
The next time someone solves that pattern (from what you wrote, or a copy, or some other way), you’ll appear there. This also requires a week’s work and solving a complex problem – anyone who fails can’t try again, but they can pass it on to others.
Many who use this spell report that they come back with insights about the fundamental structure of the world, messages from the Invisible Clergy, or urgent warnings from beyond. The veracity of these insights is hard to establish.
Pure Abstraction
2 significant charges, plus one per additional subject
In an instant, you disappear into a bodiless Otherspace. You can bring along others as well within sight range, at a cost of a significant charge each. (If they’re unwilling, you must roll above their Mind.) You enter a world of pure mathematical computation. Returning to the physical world again requires solving a complex problem (see above). Each attempt takes about a day, and every individual needs to make the check separately. Those who return land in a random (or fate-guided) location, which may be near or far from where you left.
Going into the bodiless otherspace is an Isolation-7 Stress check. Using this formula on those who are bad at math is a particularly bizarre and callous way to kill someone and should be treated as such, probably a Violence-5 Stress check.
Cosmic Chaotic
2 significant charges
You can sense changes to the Statosphere and discern when probability has been manipulated. This formula detects any tilts plain as day, as well as manipulations from Entropomancy and Pornomancy, and can even discern some of the subtle hand of the Invisible Clergy. This won’t detect everything supernatural, just effects that manipulate fate, luck, or probability. Lasts until you generate a charge, break taboo, or use a formula.
Eureka!
5 significant charges
This requires a day’s worth of work, and solving a complex problem. If you fail, you just die. If you succeed, there’s no immediately discernible benefit. It probably does something, but there’s no clear way to tell.
Maybe it’s the worst formula ever. On the other hand, some mathemancers swear that after using this formula, they live a charmed life with a new aligned purpose. Others seem to believe that this formula can correct imperfections in the fundamental nature of reality. Or that it is a ritual of devotion to some fundamental force of the universe. Or that it aligns the user to the Invisible Clergy or some particular Avatar. The Cosmic Chaotic formula can easily detect that the formula was used but provides no further insight.
Nobody knows for sure, but one thing’s clear: It’s a lot of abstract magical power going somewhere, with no visible effect.
Major Effects
Upload your consciousness to an AI. Tilt the economy to your bidding. Turn an idiot into a mathematical savant. Insulate someone from manipulations of fate and the Statosphere.
What You’ve Heard
Dr. Lucinda Briggs is a cryptographer who works to encrypt and condense everything into pure information. She might be trying to destroy the world — she’s not sure, though, because she makes a habit of encrypting her own thoughts and plans until she needs to decode them. Whatever sinister plans she has, she has locked away using her own custom formula.