An outgrowth of classic/political urbanomancy that grew tired of the armchair charging favored by much of the adept school – mastering the city through planning committees and studying maps over feeling out the city with your own two feet, talking to its people face to face, seeing it with your own eyes. Occult scholars will note that a similar viewpoint led to the development of ‘outsider urbanomancy’, but the Vecturian breed took a slightly different route. Rather than casting itself as completely separate from the city, invisible and without protection, it treats itself as a living cell inside of its blood stream: public transit. Hundreds of thousands of people go by bus and train every day – blue collar, white collar, homeless, housed, young and old, straight and queer. There are few better ways to get a wide cross-section of the city, united by a single desire to get from point A to point B. How influential for a mode of transit often disregarded, especially in the United States.

Vecturian Urbanomancy lacks the raw power of the classical style, to the point that it doesn’t even have a proper blast. This leads to both traditional and outsider urbanomancers looking down on them for lacking the necessary dignity or being too attached to comfort to go all the way, respectively. However, the low cost of charging makes it very accessible and very subtle. My Routes is also much less likely to conflict with cliomancer charging than My Turf, allowing turnstylers to make alliances that their more traditional colleagues cannot. 

Ω: 2

Domain: Community, movement, infrastructure, the individual in the crowd and the crowd in the individual

Minor Charge: Travel 20 miles by public transit in 24 hours.

Significant charge: Travel the entire length of a bus/train route, end to end. You can only get one sig charge from a route per month.

Major Charge: Be on the maiden journey of a new bus route or train tunnel. 

Taboo: First, your charges are city-specific. If you move to a new town, you can’t spend or gain charges until you go back to your old stomping grounds or release all currently held charges. 

Second, a turnstyler has to use travel to familiarize themself with the unknown parts of their city. You can’t travel in a vehicle with a motor unless you’re with a virtual stranger without losing all your charges.

Minor Spells

White Rabbit Syndrome – 1 minor

Anybody familiar with public transit learns to accept what they can and cannot change. Worrying about whether the bus will be late is for *other* people. Upon casting this spell on someone, your target feels a strong sense of anxiety about an upcoming appointment or event for the next ten to twenty minutes.

Black Rabbit Syndrome – 2 minor

Anybody familiar with public transit learns to accept what they can and cannot change. That’s usually easier than accepting a knife to the chest. Casting this spell allows you to change a stress check to Helplessness as long as you’re actively trying to reach a destination. Alternatively, you can delay the stress check for two hours or until you reach your destination, whichever comes first. 

Lost in Transportation – 2 minor

What one man leaves, another man may find. Public transit gives as it takes. Cast this spell when entering a public transit vehicle. You can actively choose to sacrifice an item; if you don’t, you’ll lose something anyway. When you leave the vehicle, you’ll find that you’ve gained something of roughly the same value that someone else lost. Try to leave quickly; the other person might not be happy with the trade.

Tickets, Please – 3 minor

Upon casting this spell, you can procure a ticket or pass for local transit. If the fare is based on how far you need to travel, it’s good for travel up to a number of miles equal to the casting roll. Otherwise it’s good for the rest of the day. Most turnstylers will have a fully-loaded pass at all times, but this is useful if you need to drag someone along who wasn’t expecting it, or you need a ticket for someone who wasn’t on the train when it started moving.

Voice of the Station – 3 minor

An urbanomancer of the people needs to be able to poll on the go. Upon casting this spell, you may ask a yes/no question and receive the majority response of everyone in your current group, along with how large the majority is.

Destination: Her – 4 minor

Cast this spell on someone you want to track while you can see them and while you’re in a public transit vehicle. You know the nearest bus stop or train station to their location for a number of days equal to the sum of your roll. 

Strangers on a Train – 4 minor

Public transit brings people together from all walks of life, whether or not they want to. Upon casting this spell, choose two people who are strangers to each other, thrown together due to shared obligation (public transit, jury duty, the DMV, etc.). They’ll feel a connection to each other and feel compelled to strike up a conversation. Resisting this urge is a Self 4 check; are you really that afraid of talking to a stranger?

Significant Spells

My Routes – 1 significant

You dictate a single route to monitor. You know the location of every bus/train/etc. on the route. You know if any magick is cast on those vehicles and you can specify one other activity to sense. The spell lasts for a week and can be cast on up to three different routes at the same time.

Last Exit to Anywhere – 2 significant

Upon casting this spell near a road, you create a temporary bus stop, nearby infrastructure morphing into a sign or a bench to accommodate, a hapless driver being told to take a sudden detour. Within a minute, a bus will come by to pick you up and take you away, no questions asked besides ‘do you have fare’. This is commonly used to enact getaways or evacuations, allowing Vecturians to extract a large number of people in one go – provided they have fare.

Rags Washed Clean – 3 significant

No one knows the ins and outs of public transit like the unhoused and wandering. While classic Urbanomancers prefer to break them down into mindless warriors, Vecturians take a different approach, working them back into society. Upon casting this spell, touching your target on both shoulders, they get a boost to Status rolls equal to +10% multiplied by the ones place of your roll. This boost applies to the next five rolls they make while engaging in public transit – so long as they are visibly homeless. Typically, a Vecturian will give someone the boon and ask them to use a portion of their newfound luck to help them out in return. The turnstyler can cast it on themself if they’re homeless, but it’s only good for one roll; this is ultimately a spell that requires engagement with the community. It’s also only good for one roll if the target is an outsider urbanomancer – their purposeful separation from the protection of the city makes them metaphysically difficult to reintegrate them.

Bus Sweet Bus – 4 significant

Upon casting this spell while in a bus/train car or bus stop/train station/etc., it gains the amenities of a 3-star hotel for 24 hours. The seats become as comfortable as a decent mattress. Unopened bottles of cold water and bags of pretzels can be found sliding and rolling around on the floor; vending machines will release their holdings with the lightest shove. Dirty clothes stuffed behind a chair will be laundered and ironed over the course of three hours. If there’s a bathroom, you’ll be able to take a proper shower in it. It may cause minor Unnatural checks to people who aren’t expecting such luxuries, and authorities may ask you what you’re doing with that bag of dirty clothes, but otherwise it’s purely beneficial. The spell was initially used for the creation of temporary bases during an Occult Underground civil war, but more altruistic chargers realized that turning a bus station into a weird hotel could provide a well-needed boon for the unhoused.

This spell also interacts unusually with outsider urbanomancy. While it’s not an outright violation of taboo for an outsider urbanomancer, having that much comfort is against the principle of the matter, and it’s distinctly uncomfortable for one of them to stay in such an area for an extended period of time. Spending more than an hour there is usually grounds for a Self 3-4 check. Outright choosing to sleep there is Self 5.

Godot’s Eternity – 4 significant

Waiting for the next bus always seems to take longer than it should. That’s because it does. Upon casting this spell at a public transit stop, time stops moving forward for you and everyone waiting with you, creating a pocket dimension where the clock simply doesn’t move, the outside world appearing to loop. This lasts for a number of minutes equal to the casting roll. Noticing that something’s wrong forces an Unnatural 4 check. 

Purple Monkey Busdriver – 4 significant

Whisper a rumor into someone’s ear while in public transit while holding something belonging to someone else in the city. Within 24 hours, the rumor will reach that person as other riders gossip or overhear things, spreading like a virus; it usually takes longer the more high-class your target is. Your casting roll counts as a Lie roll to get that person to believe the sincerity of the rumor. 

Third Rail Siren – 4 significant

The closest thing the school has to a blast spell. Public safety is a matter of community consensus. This spell allows you to turn that consensus inside out. When cast on a group, they collectively begin ignoring any safety warnings or guidelines. This will not cause people to throw themselves into danger without reason, but it will take little convincing to get someone to, say, stop wearing a safety helmet because their hair looks better. Resisting dangerous suggestions while under this effect causes an Isolation check of 5-8, depending on how large the group is.

Major Effects

Create a new bus stop or train station anywhere in the city, permanently. Exchange the lives of any two people in the same train car. Ensure that you never, ever miss the bus again.