The Lycanthromancer

An ancient, dying shamanic Adepthood path, the natural enemies of demonic Lycanthropes.

The Lycanthromancer:

AKA Werewolves (and Werecats and etc.),

Humans are only animals that walk upright, and have thumbs, and huge pretensions. You have walked the inner city, where the illusion breaks down, and once again life becomes a drama of predator and prey, the quick and today's entree. The players change, but the drama remains eternally the same. You know. You can play the part of the ravenous monster so well.

Description: Shamans have been learning how to transform themselves into animals for millennia, but with the growth of Freudian psychology, and the popularity of Crowley, the philosophical underpinnings of Lycanthromancy have become more popular. The essential paradox of Lycanthromancy is that in order to physically transform into an animal, one must give up the psychological elements that made them human in the first place. As one might expect, this Adepthood path is popular with Avatars of the Savage Archetype.
All Lycanthromancers must choose one form of animal; that is their totem, and their specialty. The Lycanthromancer cannot transform into or use any other form of animal except their totem.

Lycanthromancy Blast Style: Lycanthromancy has no blast. Instead, its practitioners transform into animals and rip your throat out.

Stats:
Lycanthromancy powers cannot be used to generate charges.
Generate a Minor Charge: Do something embarassingly or strangely animalistic (should require a Self, or maybe some other, check). Have sex with someone unattractive, or someone you normally hate, just because you want sex (not because it's convenient, they're drunk, etc.) and express no regrets over it. Eat a steak, raw and bloody (not even rare). Chase a runner, growling and snarling. Swim naked with the dolphins.
Generate a Significant Charge: Do something illegal or dangerously animalistic (should require a Self, and maybe another, check). Kill someone with your bare teetch and fingernails (no fancy martial arts allowed, although you could go all kung-fu and deliver the coup de gras with your pearly whites).
Generate a Major Charge: Do something blatantly or grotesquely inhuman (requires a Self-10 check, and maybe some other check at 5 or higher). Copulate with an animal. Live naked with a wolf pack for a month. Take a permanent vow of silence (like, with a knife). Cut off your thumbs (darn shame about hitchhiking).
Taboo: The Lycanthromancer must not restrain themselves from showing their true emotions. All Violence, Helplessness, and Self stress checks are at -10%, and if the character ever has less than 10 total hardened notches in these three gauges, the Lycanthromancer loses all charges and cannot gain more.
Starting Charges: Lycanthromancers start with one Significant and two Minor charges.

Lycanthromancy Minor Formula Spells:

Bestial Endurance:
Cost: 1 Minor Charge.
Effects: The Lycanthromancer can heal themselves of injury, by licking their wounds (or just dabbling their saliva all over them, for those hard-to-reach areas). This is exactly like the Epideromancer spell Regeneration.

Foe of the Forest:
Cost: 1 Minor Charge, or 2 Charges to ingratiate one's companions as well.
Effects: This nifty little trick is one of the few in the Lycanthromancer bag that heightens one's human attributes, specifically that of the human's smell. The Lycanthromancer projects an aroma of danger and threat, that warns other animals (of all kinds) to stay away.

Leader of the Pack:
Cost: 3 Minor Charges.
Effects: The Lycanthromancer can impress their dominance on the members of a pack (or herd, or murder, or whatever) of their chosen creatures. They will accept the Lycanthromancer as their chosen sovereign, and generally follow the Lycanthromancer about, doing what they say. The spell instantly elapses if the Lycanthromancer leads the pack into an action that is blatant suicide, or completely against the species' instincts, unless they pay an additional minor charge for each 1d10 rounds of performing the proscribed action.

Power of the Beast:
Cost: 2 Minor Charges, or 3 Minor Charges if the attack is also poisoned, electrified, etc.
Effects: The character temporarily gains one natural combat ability of their chosen sort of creature, through a minor act of shapeshifting. The character cannot gain gross physical changes in this way (such as growing a scorpion's striker tail), but can make minor modifications to their anatomy (such as growing claws).

Senses of the Beast:
Cost: 1 Minor Charge, or 2 Charges to gain all of the animal's senses.
Effects: The character temporarily gains one sense of their chosen sort of creature, through a minor act of shapeshifting, or all senses if the character spends 2 charges. The character cannot gain gross physical changes in this way (such as growing antennae), but can make minor modifications to their anatomy (such as modifying their eyes to process ultraviolet light, or modifying their noses to make them more acute). This power can grant a shift of up to +50% in combat against certain adverse conditions (such as fog, darkness, etc.), but cannot increase the chance to hit beyond the base normal for the character.

Summon the Pack:
Cost: 2 Minor Charges.
Effects: The Lycanthromancer can summon the nearest members of their chosen type of creature to their side. the effect only lasts for about 10 minutes, so trying to summon a timber wolf in Saharna Africa might not wok too well. If the creature arrives, the Lycanthromancer typically casts Leader of the Pack immediately (for 1 less minor charge than normally needed).

Totem's Eyes:
Cost: 2 Minor Charges.
Effects: The Lycanthromancer can see through the eyes of one of their chosen animals. Otherwise, this is identical to the Urbanomancer spell Vermin's Eyes.


Lycanthromancy Significant Formula Spells:

Become the Beast:
Cost: 1 Significant Charge.
Effects: The character transforms bodily into a creature of their chosen sort. The character canot do this while "normal", i.e. non-Adepts, non-Avatars, and non-Unnaturals, are looking on. While transformed, the character has the typical Skills and physical Stats of a typical member of the species, but their Mind score is at -1/2, or -20, whichever is worse (to a minimum of 1). The character can transform back into a human at any time, provided no one is looking (as stated above).

Born Free:
Cost: 2 Significant Charges.
Effects: Lycanthromancers and demonic Lycanthropes are dire enemies, since Lycanthromancers want humans to fulfill their "ultimate" nature by returning to a natural state, but demonic Lycanthropes just want to tear shit up. This spell dissolves the tripartite soul of a demonic Lycanthrope, releasing the demon and animal spirits from the human to which they're bound. The demon is granted a Soul roll to resist, but for each additional siggy charge, the roll is at -15%.

The Dolittle Trick:
Cost: 1 Significant Charge.
Effects: The character can speak to animals of their chosen kind. Of course, most animals have limited intelligence, and what interests a human isn't likely to interest them that much, and the creatures might still be a lot more interested in eating you than in chatting.

I Want to F*** You Like An Animal:
Cost: 1 Significant Charge.
Effects: You fill the target human with an unreasoning lust, that overcomes their reason and sense of composure. This is identical to the Pornomancer spell Number Nine.

You're All Pigs!:
Cost: 3 Significant Charges for the first 5 people, plus another Significant charge per additional 5 people.
Effects: You transform others bodily into an animal of your chosen sort. If the targets are not Lycanthromancers, they are shaken and confused, and their Mind score is therefore at -2/3 (or -30, whichever is worse). They must make athe following Stress checks: Self-10, Helplessness-8, and Unnatural-5. The effects lasts only about 30 minutes, but during this time the targets are fairly vulnerable, and afterward they're pretty likely to be pretty freaked-out. This spell cannot go off if there are any "normals" in the area that the spell will not affect; Adepts and Avatars may make a Soul check to avoid being transformed.

Lycanthromancy Major Effects: Transform someone else into an animal, permanently. Gain the natural powers of the animal in your human form, permanently.