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Adepts
Verbotenmagick
Copyright TedPro

An obsessive school of ever expanding taboos. Collaboration with Joanna

Bouwman.
Nickname: Straitjackets.
The name of the school comes from an actual occult academy set up in
New York City by some very fussy would be adepts. They were attempting
to study how adept magick worked and decided on the fake German
name to describe the work they had developed. Other verbotenmagickers
can develop on their own as solitary magicians, often when their own
OCD turns to ridiculous levels sufficient to bend reality.
Verbotenmagick deals with taboos and restrictions. Over time, a
verbotenmagicker picks up (and often eventually discards) restrictions on
their actions, then use these restrictions to gain power. As a side effect of
this domain, verbotenmagick has formulas that can sense and mimic
other adepts.
Generally, a verbotenmagicker will know their actions are irrational,
awkward, or even bizarre. They will keep doing them anyway. Rules are

rules.
Creating Taboos: Verbotenmagickers need more taboos to charge.
Gaining a new taboo requires a dedication ritual that requires about 10
minutes of work. It can be done secretly or publicly, and requires a
promise (sincere or not) to follow the new taboo forever. Be sure to list all
your taboos and keep a record, because you will be following all of them.
Taboos can include both forbidden deeds (never step on a crack) and
required deeds (always wear lucky hat when going outside). They can
only be for voluntary habits, not thoughts or circumstances or external
events. Every taboo must have some restrictive or compulsory effect.
If a verbotenmagicker breaks a taboo, they cannot ever use the same
taboo again, even with a ritual. Once broken the taboo will never come
back. They cannot even use a similar taboo unless it is much more harsh.
Generate a minor charge: Follow your taboo even though it causes you
inconvenience or embarrassment. Over time, the same circumstances
become less and less likely to earn new charges.
Generate a significant charge: As for a minor charge, but you must
endure serious loss, injury, or risk of death to fulfill your taboo.
Generate a major charge: As for a minor charge, but you must change
the course of history for the worse to fulfill your taboo.
Taboo: Voluntarily breaking any of your taboos causes you to lose all
charges, and to lose permanently the ability to charge up from that
taboo.
Symbolic Tension: Verbotenmagick finds freedom in restriction. A
verbotenmagicker can do anything, at the price of not being able to do
anything.
Random Domain: Barriers and restrictions. A verbotenmagicker can

create, enforce, or bypass restrictions.

Charging tips: Depending on your taboos and how much you are willing to
embarrass yourself, you can probably gain 1 to 5 minor charges a day.
Significant and major charges are on a case by case basis and usually
only happen during play.
Starting charges: Select and write down up to five current taboos with a
reasonable level of restriction. For each current taboo, you start with one
minor charge.
Minor Formulas
Unfettered
1 minor charge
You immediately bypass one physical barrier, lock, or restraint. This can
get you out of handcuffs or through a security system, but cannot stop
people from noticing and reacting to you. Bypasses a barrier only once.
I Never
1 minor charge
By looking at a target, you become aware of something they would never
do, and specifically the most interesting or useful such answer. For adepts
and avatars, you will learn what their taboo is if they have a meaningful
taboo. Adept taboo takes priority over avatar taboo if both apply, and you
will not necessarily be able to tell an adept from a regular person with a
similar taboo. Casting multiple times on the same person always gets the
same result.
Proud Nail
3 minor charges
Hit somebody else with some OCD for a change. Pick a target you can see
and something around them that could be rearranged. The target will feel
compelled to rearrange or fix that thing to their liking. This might mean
cleaning a room, editing a piece of writing, or restacking a bunch of
plates. If they cannot do so, they will need to get away from the thing or

make a Rank 5 Helplessness check instead.

How long it takes to fix something varies, but it will be at least ten
minutes and no more than 8 hours. The target will still respond to their
surrounding and immediate threats, but will come back to fixing it
afterward.
Comfort of Habit
2 minor charges
Obsessions and compulsions can be a way to manage stressful situations.
Use this formula when you fail a Stress check, without taking an action.
This formula delays the Stress check results (and any further ongoing
Stress checks that come up afterward) for about an hour. During that
time, though, all your current taboos will be in full action with greatly
exaggerated effects, and you cannot generate any new charges.
You can also use this formula on a willing ally, but in this case it costs 2
extra minor charges, and during the delay period, you are both greatly
affected by your current taboos.
Creative Constraints
4 minor charges
An enhancement and restriction all in one. Pick a target (friend or enemy,
but not you), a skill, and one of your current taboos. If the target follows
that taboo, they will get a +20% in the skill you specify (or a similar skill
if they have one). If they break the restriction, they will immediately
make a Rank 8 Helplessness check with normal results.
The target will be aware of the restriction and the bonus, but will not
necessarily know the effect is supernatural. Note that you can give any
nonmagical skill, but you cannot give a taboo unless it is one you are
currently able to use for charging. Lasts until the target sleeps or breaks
the taboo.
Significant formulas

Creative Trend
2 significant charges
This formula is like Creative Constraint, but it applies to everyone within
your line of sight. This could be a whole stadium if you are dumb enough
to do that. Duration is separate for each target, and lasts even when they
leave (but does not affect new people who arrive.). Until someone else
breaks the taboo, you get the skill benefit yourself as well.
Law Beyond Death
1 significant charge
Verbotenmagickers cannot sense or summon demons, but if one is around
they can affect them. Choose one of your current taboos and a demon in
your presence. The demon must follow that taboo for as long as they
remain in the living world, or until you break the same taboo.
Analysis and Synthesis
1 significant charge plus cost of other formula
Copy a formula from another school. To make this work, you will need to
be currently able to charge from the taboo of the other school (or
something extremely similar) and you must understand the basics of how
both the school and formula work. Pay the price of the formula you are
copying, plus an extra significant charge. Note that schools with a taboo
that does not affect mundane actions (like cliomancy and
mechanomancy) will not work with this formula. Note that once you
violate the taboo for a school, you can never use this formula for it again.
This formula will not work on avatar channels.
Some verbotenmagickers manage to infiltrate another school using this
ability. Some poor souls end up actually believing they are just very
inefficient adepts of another school because of this formula.
Breeze Through Borders
2 significant charges
You render yourself welcome in a place. This affects things like language,
cultural cues, and human reactions, but not personal appearance, official
records, magic responses, or physical security. You would not suddenly be

wearing appropriate clothes, but you would know what to go buy. So long
as you remain in the place, you will speak the language, understand
cultural norms, and be accepted as someone who belongs there. Lasts
until you leave the place, deliberately break cultural norms, or get caught
as an outsider. This could take years.
My World
5 significant charges
Pick one of your current taboos. In your presence, everyone else will
attempt to follow it too. (And if they fail, they must make a Rank 6
Isolation check.) They will not even notice it is odd until you are gone.
Some adepts use this to smooth things over, some use it as an awkward
form of mass mind control, and a few use it just to make the world more
comfortable for them.
Lasts until you break any taboo, or generate a charge from any other
taboo.
Major Effects
Add or remove a magical limit from someone. Or, hey, spend an extra
significant charge, and copy the major effect of another school using
Analysis and Synthesis.
What You Have Heard
Die Akademie Der Verbotenmagick is an occultist academy that started as
an attempt to understand the underlying principles of stray adepts they
have encountered. Their scholarship is terrible and their fake German is
even worse, but they have managed to infiltrate other cabals and factions
for periods of time by imitating their magic. They are quite likely to get
shut down by TNI or the Sleepers unless they learn to behave.
TedPro | profile | Jul 08, 15 | 7:24 pm