The Ignotamancer (V1.0)

Obscurity and Trivia-based magick.

The Ignotamancer
(AKA Trebeks)

You know that Knowledge is Power - of course, everyone else knows it too. What the bastards don't know is what knowledge is important. The world doesn't belong to the guy who knows how to make the hydrogen bomb. It belongs to the guy who knows that both JFK and LaToya Jackson were born on May 29th. What others see as random minutia, you recognize as an instruction manual for the Cosmos. Use it.

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You were in front of your TV, ticket in hand, when the Pick-3 number for the day came up on the screen.

Nine. One. One.

Crap. You saw it coming, of course. The fact that you were $500 richer was nice, but you knew what everyone else in NYC was going to be saying.

911. Same number as the day, and the same day the Twin Towers went down one year ago. Well, whoop-de-fucking-do. Half the town was going to be insisting that this wasn’t a coincidence – that there must be some sort of ominous portent involved. Others would be repeating, like a mantra, this was nothing special. Coincidences happen. It’s no big deal.

You know better. 911 shows up in an expansion of pi at the 1533rd decimal place. Elizabeth the 1st was born in 1533, and everyone intelligent knows that she had Mary Queen of Scots killed in 1587, in Fotheringay. An anagram of Fotheringay is “Gaynor Thief”, which is an obvious reference to the theft of Matchbox Twenty guitarist’s Adam Gaynor’s prize guitar on September 18th, 2000. The guitar was returned, of course, exactly one week later.

Admittedly, the path at that point got a little more complicated. It took you from Matchbox Twenty to the atomic weight of cesium to 19th century Cloisonne moon flasks to Abraham Lincoln’s shoe size (14) to Streptococcus mutans to Chairman Mao’s widow’s birthplace to the KATE SMITH radio hour to . . . well, okay, it took a little while.

Doesn’t matter. In the end, it was obvious. On 9-11-02, in NY, the Pick3 winner was going to be 9-1-1. And it had zilch to do with the terrorist attack a year ago. That’d be the OBVIOUS connection, but you know better. Occam was an ass, and his razor is as dull as Helena Vnouckova, owner of the world’s largest napkin collection. The secrets of the universe are buried, and they are buried deep, under hundreds of thousands of millions of seemingly pointless minutia. It takes a truly talented mind to unearth them.

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Of course, the central paradox of Ignotamancy is that you're full of shit. The chance that any connection you usually see between the billion bits of information bouncing around inside that skull of yours is meaningful is just about nil. Meanwhile, others are learning how to fix cars, cook meals, write laws, and cure cancer. Yeah, we know - there's some profound reason that before Joe McVicker invented Play-Doh exactly 200 years after Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born. You're going to be a blast at parties.

Ignotamancy Blast Style
Ignotamancers have no blast.

Stats
Ignotamancers gain charges in two ways: learning useless information, and finding ways to utilize the useless information they've already garnered.

Generate a Minor Charge: Learn 500 new pieces of trivia at one sitting. It doesn't matter if it's 500 digits of pi or the five hundred largest cities in Asia, as long as it's at least 500 pieces of new (useless) information. This generally takes the ignotamancer between one and four hours, depending on the format of the information. For instance, it's easier to gain information straight from a list than from an encyclopedia.

Learn a piece of obscure trivia about someone or something famous. While the trivia learned is inconsequential, the level of fame is not - a US Senator from a large state would probably do, but a US Representative wouldn't cut it.
Complete a difficult crossword puzzle (a NYT puzzle will do - but not one from a kiddie book or USA Today). Answer an unprompted "general knowledge" question that the nearest 20 people could not answer. (A question about the capitol of Kenya would count; even a question about the best way to get to Luigi's Deli across town would be okay. But you aren't going to get a charge for telling someone what your favorite color is.) Watch Jeopardy! (one you haven't seen before!) and shout the answers at the screen.

The Ignotamancer may not receive more than one minor charge from one of the above sources before needing to move on to something different. Thus, he will not gain two charges from learning 1000 places in pi at one sitting. On the other hand, he could learn 500 places in pi, watch Jeopardy, do a crossword, read an encyclopedia, surf the net for some flotsam and jetsam, and so on. The more sources, the better, for the ignotamancer knows that true power comes only by connecting completely unrelated information.

Generate a Significant Charge: Learn a piece of extremely obscure, hard-to-get trivia about someone or somewhere during an important day in history. Learning the mileage on the car JFK was driving in the day he was assassinated would qualify, as would finding out what he ate for lunch. (You don't get a charge if you learn both things, though - as noted above, it's all about breadth of knowledge, not depth.) Finish a thick (200+) book of tough crosswords. Win money on Jeopardy!. Answer an unprompted question that not one of the nearest 4000 people could answer.

Generate a Major Charge: Answer an unprompted question that not one of the closest 10,000,000 people could answer - note that it's likely that at least a few of those people are ignotamancers themselves. Learn a piece of trivia about someone or somewhere during an important day in history that no more than one other person knows about at that time. This includes the subject of the trivia, if it is about someone. For instance, suppose that the day he nukes Baghdad, Dubya tells his hairdresser (and no one else) that he used to have bad dreams when he was a child about being attacked by Donald Duck. Unless you're the hairdresser, you wouldn't get a major charge out of discovering this information. Not unless GWB was dead at the time . . .

Taboo: You've only got so much space in that brain of yours for information, and there's no room for useless crap. You know, like how to change a tire, fix a computer, bake a lasagna, perform the Heimlich maneuver (though you'll be quick to point out when you see the maneuver being done that Heimlich was a vegetarian). And what time does your flight leave for Vancouver, again? During any given period of time, the amount of useless information you learn must be considerably greater than the amount of useful information you learn, or you lose all charges. On that note, you cannot have any knowledge skills above 10% unless they are completely esoteric, and you cannot have ANY skills besides Triviamancy above 50%. You simply don't have the time to focus on anything else but your craft.

Random Magick Domain: Ignotamancy is powerful magic for dealing with obscurity. Ignotamancers are singularly good at drawing order from chaos, in that they can recognize what is truly important.

Starting Charges: Newly created ignotamancers start with five minor charges.

Charging Tips: Ignotamancers find it easy to get at least 4-5 charges a day, and can often get more. A little Jeopardy, a little surfing on the Internet, a few hours in the library, and they're all set. Significant charges are a lot harder to come by, but with the advent of the Internet a hard-working Ignotamancer can usually pick up a sig charge or three every week by just combing through the 'net looking for dirt on important people and places. Of course, the very fact that it's on the 'net means that most trivia about people and places isn't as obscure as the Ignotamancer needs, hence the slow rate of sig charging.


Ignotamancer Minor Formula Spells

I Remember Reading Something About That
Cost: 1 minor charge
Effect: This spell is identical to the Cliomancer's Trivia spell in all ways but two. The spell may not be used to learn information of more than a couple paragraphs in length - you can't pull up city maps or complete instruction manuals. On the other hand, you are not limited to material currently within the realm of public information. Anything that was unclassified to the public at any point is fair game. In fact, if you spend one extra charge, you have access to any classified written information that has had at least 1000 readers. You won't be getting launch codes with this spell, but the material in classified operations manuals for large corporations or organizations is fair game.


Judges?
Cost: 1 minor charge
Effect: You can cast this spell to treat a check you just failed as a success, as long as you failed the check by 10% or less. This spell cannot be used to cancel matched failures or fumbles. If you do it in combat, it does not take an action.


Clarity
Cost: 1 minor charge
Effect: You can cast this spell to help you choose between two or three courses to take in the immediate future, in support of an immediate goal. This is an excellent spell to cast to determine whether the guy you are chasing ducked down the right-hand passage or left-hand passage, or whether it's wise to leave the place you're hiding, instead of turtling for a few more minutes. Best of all, you'll never go wrong when deciding whether you should buy the veal or the duck at your favorite restaurant. This spell does not predict the future, though - you can't walk into a casino and cast Clarity to determine whether to bet on red or black at the next spin of the roulette wheel.


Tip of the Tongue
Cost: 2 minor charges
Effect: This spell allows a target to remember a piece of information that they have forgotten, even if the knowledge only spent a split second in their short-term memory.

Example: You're tracking down a Mechanomancer that tried to kill you with an exploding football. You have a photograph of the clockworker, but no other information. You could walk into a bus station, flash the photo, cast the spell, and be 100% sure that the gal behind the counter will remember where and when she saw the guy last, even if she only saw him for a moment.

I'm Sorry, What Were We Talking About?
Cost: 3 minor charges
Effect: This spell slams the target's mind with dozens of pieces of useless information. At least three or four of these pieces of information "stick", and the target cannot help but take a few seconds to integrate them into his consciousness. The subject cannot integrate any other new information into his consciousness in this time, and any information in short-term memory at the time (i.e., anything learned in the last six seconds) is forgotten.
Example: Alicia is having lunch with a twitchy new contact in the Underground. She foolishly tries to calm him down by letting him know she works for TNI -- that he now has a friend who has friends in high places. Unfortunately, Twitch's best friend was just eviscerated by TNI, and he begins to freak out. Alicia blasts him with I'm Sorry . . . causing Twitch to forget about Alicia's news in favor of pondering the relationship between the number of seams in a baseball and Pele's shoe size. A few seconds later, Twitch sits down and asks Alicia to forgive him - what were they talking about again?

This spell is less useful in combat or other high-stress situations, where instinct is more important than thought. However, targets are distracted enough to receive a -30% shift to skill checks for a round.


Needle From a Haystack
Cost: 3 minor charges
Effect: This spell allows you to call upon your past knowledge to help you pull a bit of wheat from a pile of chaff. Specifically, it allows you to know what the most important bit of information is among a collection of information. This might be a pile of photographs you took at a crime scene, a collection of phone numbers from someone's Rolodex, or a guest list for some fancy UG party, but it can have no more than 100 items. You must have at least a general question in mind when you cast this spell - "Who can lead us to the one-armed man?", "Which photo will lead us to the fleshworker that stole my eyebrows?", and so on. If there is absolutely nothing useful in the collection, the Ignotamancer loses no charges. If an item would lead to even a slightly useful piece of information, however, the spell succeeds. This spell does not inform the Ignotamancer why the photo/name/number is important, only that it in some way will help him answer his question.


Lookin' Smart
Cost: 4 minor charges
Effect: More than one Ignotamancer has managed to win a space behind one of the Jeopardy podiums. Unfortunately, there are few jobs that pay people to memorize pi, surf the web, read the dictionary, and do crossword puzzles 16 hours a day; the majority of Ignotamancers lead lives of abject poverty. And the less said about most Ignotamancer's social skills, the better.
This spell was created to give you a fighting chance to not completely embarrass yourself when you meet Alex. That's Trebek, not Abel. After casting this spell you'll find yourself wearing a fancy new set of clothes; it's your call on exactly what they'll look like, but a $500 outfit is not out of the question. Also, if your Charm skill is less than 50%, it rises to 50%. The spell lasts for a number of hours equal to the sum of the dice you rolled during your Ignotamancy check.


Ignotamancer Significant Formula Spells

Connect The Dots
Cost: 1 significant charge
Effect: This spell allows you to weave the obscure useless information you've collected into two or three pieces of less obscure, somewhat useful information that helps answer a question. The question must be straightforward, e.g., "Who really murdered John F. Kennedy?" or "Where is the guy that melted my friend's face?"

Example: Alfred has noticed that someone has been following him around for the last two weeks, and is eager to find out more about his tail. Alfred casts the spell, asking, "Who hired the man tracking me?" Suddenly, he's able to connect together a few dozen disparate facts into a more coherent picture of what's going on - "The guy who hired your tail is the same old man responsible for the warehouse fire down at the docks last week, and he's got a daughter that just graduated from Vassar last year with high honors." Alfred begins combing the newspapers looking for information on police suspects regarding the arson, as well as cross-referencing the local phonebook with the last names of Vassar grads.

It may be that the police have no suspects (or that they're not reporting on the investigation in the papers), and that the Vassar lead is too difficult to follow up on, but it's a start. Heck, it's possible that Alfred has already memorized the list of Vassar graduates from 1945 on.

The Ignotamancer may cast this spell multiple times to either gain more information addressing the same question, or follow up leads from previous answers. Questions about the future cost 2 extra charges, and the information discovered is necessarily more vague and uncertain.


All-Seeing, All-Knowing
Cost: 1 significant charge
Effect: Your Notice skill increases to 100% for a number of hours equal to the sum of the dice. Absolutely everything you see, hear, smell, taste, and touch during this time will be noted and stored away in your long-term memory, and you have a preternatural sense during this time to know what details you're taking in might be important and which probably are not. (You can look at this as having a low-low-powered Needle From a Haystack effect working continuously during the spell's duration.)


Daily Double
Cost: 2 significant charges
Effect: For the rest of the day, you may double your effective skill level for any and all skill levels less than 40%.


If It Hadn't Been For The Horse, I Never Would Have Gone To College
Cost: 2 significant charges
Effect: This spell slams the target's mind with thousands of pieces of useless and bizarre information simultaneously. Unlike with "I'm Sorry . . ." this is just too much information to process, and the target's mind simply breaks down. In general she is going to want little but to stumble away slowly -- her Mind score effectively drops to 10, and all Body, Speed, and Soul-related checks are made at -40%. This lasts for a number of minutes equal to your Ignotamancy check; after the target recovers, she has no recollection of anything that transpired during this time.


Phone a Friend
Cost: 3 significant charges
Effect: Think hard about a question - ANY question, from what your mother's hair stylist charges for a shampoo to what Alex Abel will be having for dinner tonight to the correct procedure for making weapons-grade anthrax. Pick up a phone, dial 1 and then the first ten numbers that come into your head. A phone will start to ring next to the person best able to answer your question that is also near a phone - unlike the Entropomancer spell Long Distance Call, you never have to worry about not getting someone on the other line.

You've got 30 seconds, bub - ask your question, and get paper and pencil ready. The person on the other side will be surprisingly happy to talk to you. If their Soul score is less than yours, they tell you exactly what you want to know, without hesitation or evasion, in as concise a manner as possible. So if you asked about the anthrax, you wouldn't get the gritty details - just a brief primer on what the most important steps are.
If their Soul score is equal to or greater than yours, they will still be inclined to help, but they will not be forced to give anything but an evasive answer about matters that are of obvious importance (though being evasive will trigger a Self-5 check).
So you can ask Alex Abel about what his greatest weakness is, but he'll probably tell you that it's that he doesn't have someone in town right now who can run over and put a gun in your mouth. Ask him what his favorite color is, and he'll probably answer without hesitation. Of course, he'll remember all of this, track you down, and erase your impudent ass from existence, but at least you'll know he likes mauve.

For obvious reasons, you can only Phone a Friend once a day.


Hide Between The Lines
Cost: 4 significant charges
Effect: When you cast this spell, you become, for all intents and purposes, an obscure piece of information for a number of minutes equal to your Ignotamancy check. As long as you don't draw attention to yourself (e.g., by attacking others, stealing large objects), you will be completely ignored. This spell works similarly to the Dipsomancy spell Just a Harmless Drunk, in that people need to make a Notice skill check to realize that you're there at a -40% shift if you're just walking around, and a -60% shift if you're trying to conceal yourself.

It differs from Just a Harmless Drunk in that it works on those who see you through a camera or see your reflection; this spell even works on those trying to scry you magickally. However, if you draw attention to yourself in any way, you become "not obscure" to those around you, and lose the benefit of this spell towards them. Thus, you cannot engage in any combat whatsoever and still enjoy the benefits of this spell.


I Knew You Were Going To Do That
Cost: 5 significant charges
Effect: After you cast this spell, you can synthesize so much seemingly useless information that you can actually predict another's future actions with amazing accuracy. You can only study one person at a time, but you don't have to study them for more than a second before moving on to someone else. The degree of accuracy and the amount that you can see into the future depends both on your target and the level of activity. You can study a typical bank guard for ten seconds and know that he's almost certainly going to be looking down to tie his shoes approximately five minutes from now. You can study a bored housewife for a minute and know what and where she's going to be eating dinner this evening. On the other hand, you're not going to get nearly as good a read on the actions of a powerful entropomancer.

In general, for every X seconds you study someone boring, you get a very good read on what they'll be doing up through 20X to 100X seconds from now. Avatars are a little harder to read, but not much harder, given that in many situations an avatar's actions can be predicted based on their channels - for every X seconds, you get a read on future actions through 5X to 50X seconds in the future. Chaos mages and godwalkers and other notably powerful folk (or, just interesting and unpredictable people, or average people in chaotic situations) are more difficult to read - as a rough rule, for every X seconds you get a read on future actions through 2X to 10X seconds in the future, and predictions are less certain (though never worse than 75% accurate). Finally, extremely violent situations cause your foresight to drop to no more than a round or two.

The benefit of this spell in combat is obvious - every small peek into the future gives you an edge. You get a 50% bonus to all attacks, and either a 50% bonus to dodge OR a free dodge action each round. That's assuming you studied the guy you're swinging at (or the guy swinging at you) for at least a couple of seconds in the last round or two, of course.


Ignotamancer Major Effects
The answers were there after all, just as you thought. You can learn the complete, total, utterly true answer to any five questions you have about the past or present - answers so complete that they might fill several pages each. If you don't mind short, five-word answers, you can learn the answer to up to fifty different questions. Or you can get a pretty damn good answer about any question you have about the future, including what the winning Powerball numbers are going to be tomorrow.

Or you can make some popular practice or piece of information fall completely off the radar - suddenly not a soul cares about who wins the Oscars or the Super Bowl or knows much about Kennedy - "Who? Oh, yeah, that president in the 50's. Is he still alive?" Conversely, you can lift some information or practice out of obscurity to the center of the cultural map: "Catch America's number-one sitcom, 'Gamers', every Thursday night on NBC! This weak, hilarity results when Andrea tries out a homebrew critical hit system, while Lance's character sleeps with Joanne's character!"

I'm already posting errata! I forgot to add a duration to "I Knew You Were Going To Do That". I think a number of hours equal to the sum of the dice -- or maybe, just one day. It's an expensive spell. Incidentally, I'm eager for comments -- haven't playtested this guy yet, but I will soon. Would like some cooler names for some of the spells ("All-Seeing, All-Knowing especially) at the very least :). Forrester | profile | Oct 06, 02 | 3:31 am

I've managed to skim through most of it, not wanting to fully understand the whole package at once you know, cause that would just break taboo, but I'm liking the concept behid this, the charging up is difficult which is great, as I think that Ua could use a few, not lots, but a few more slow charging schools.. Anyway, I'll dive back into this one a little later, but for now I like. Chance Lauziere-Peterson | profile | Oct 06, 02 | 8:58 am

Interesting school of magick. Quite well thought out. The only spell that doesn't really fit is "lookin' Smart". It just doesn't go with the information focus of the rest of the spells. I'd say drop it as you can always get virtually the same effect with a couple of informational spells anyway: "What is the best way to dress for this interview / court appearance / date / brawl?" and "Where can I buy it for less than £10 in the next 3 hours?" The answer to the first is obviously based on the pattern of what the last 23 successful interviewees / defendants / suitors / survivors wore. You have memorised this, yes? The second should be easy for anybody who keeps an up to date list of second hand store opening times, prices and stock rotation schedules. Knowing the bus timetable might help as well. Niggle | profile | Oct 07, 02 | 2:53 am

500? Jesus. Most people can't handle 50 pieces of information at a time. Are you suggesting that all Ignotamancers have either 75+ Mind stat or Eidetic Memory? nonny | profile | Nov 21, 02 | 9:34 am

Jeopardy... A worthless Videomancer obsession. No really, you should be able to charge off any trivia show of substantial difficulty, including, but not limited to things like WinTuition, Greed, Who wants to be a Millionaire, Weakest Link, Freind or Foe... whatever. Also, in the same vein a good game of Trivial Pursuit, Malarky, Balderash, and other trivial knowledge games should be good fr a minor. Gives you a reason for joining mensa anyway. By the same token, Crossword puzzles could be expanded the same way.. Mensa puts out some pretty challenging worthless trivia tests. ;) Jade D Hammons | profile | Jan 10, 03 | 4:45 pm

Niggle -- yes, at the time I assumed they had eidetic memory, at least for the purposes of useless minutia. Since then I've redone the school a bit -- now, to generate a minor you just need to put the time in (no need counting the individual chunks of info). Jade -- oh, absolutely. I'm not familiar with a lot of those shows (you must be British or somethin' :) ), but any of them should allow you to get a minor charge, as long as you don't see them back to back. Forrester | profile | Feb 23, 03 | 1:09 pm

Perhaps a revision to Lookin' Smart might be to change the meaning of 'smart'. For the duration of the spell, the Ignotamancer uses a blend of trivia and self-assurance to seem incredibly intelligent. Any random collection of useless facts spouted at onlookers will sound like the Theory of Relativity, and nothing will convince them otherwise. Anything that might detract from your appearance of god-like intelligence, for example being poorly dressed or having a serious BO problem, will be dismissed - after all, all geniuses have some little eccentricities, right? Regis2001 | profile | Nov 10, 04 | 2:56 pm