030 - Gutter Magick Redux

Gutter Magick Redux

Gutter magick is a charmingly ill-defined concept in Unknown Armies. Despite playing fourth-fiddle to adepts, avatars and ritual magick, the DIY ethos to playing around with synchronicity and sympathy is flexible enough to bend to any purpose. Here are six new categories of effects that can be summoned up by jabbing reality in the soft parts.

Clue: Ad-hoc divination, like a hunch without the banked roll. Dowse for answers or try to divine a connection to prompt the GM to give you a lead related to the target. The results are unpredictable and down to GM fiat but with the understanding that if it's completely useless why would anyone do it?

Ward: In counterpoint to curses, sometimes you want to baby something through rough waters. It’s no replacement for a bulletproof vest but the next time the warded object or person falls in harm’s way knock 1d10 points off a single instance of physical damage.

Mind-shield: Gain two sticky "phantom" hardened notches on a shock gauge, but they only apply when dealing with specific circumstances and only once. If you whip up protection against the mental hardships of financial ruin the Helplessness check from being arrested after a failed robbery isn’t covered.

Relationship Goosing: This is the gutter magick version of your esprit de corps bonding ritual or a love charm, it will influence an existing relationship but can’t create something that doesn’t exist. If you’ve been a neglectful parent and are regretting becoming estranged from your son this is one way to get the reconnection ball rolling. Nudge an existing relationship in either direction by 5% with a successful ritual.

Countertilt: Duelling occultists aren’t always of the calibre that can fry each other’s brains with blasts. Alternatively maybe you’ve magicked up something you wish you could take back. With countertilting you can pick apart a gutter magick effect already in place. That said undoing is tricky, putting toothpaste back in the tube always takes more effort and usually makes a mess. A successful countertilt removes the sticky quality from an existing gutter magick effect.

Demon-baiting: Demons are a surefire source of magick, by picking at the cosmic fabric that separates life and death like a scab you can encourage something to come through. There’s no guarantees of exactly what you'll get and the likelihood is that someone ends up being taken for a ride but sometimes you’re desperate or stupid, or both. It’s quick and dirty and the results are the same, with a successful ritual if there's a demon in the area it has a shot at nabbing your body as per "Unwitting Victims" on pages 103-104 of Book 2: Run. You're leaving the keys in the ignition and the door open, what happens next depends on the neighbourhood. Hopefully you've got some friends who can negotiate with it.

Layering Multiple Effects
Reality bruising is a sneaky way of jacking up the universe and poking something out of place before it snaps back. It’s like fixing a flat bike tyre by tying off the tube around the puncture, you can get away with it but riding around on a Gordian knot is asking for trouble. Some effects, proxy rituals for example, are intended to be built up to, the following applies to everything else.

For starters it’s progressively harder to stick additional effects on to a target, a cumulative -10% shift applies to gutter magick rituals for someone with an existing reality bruise floating around them. Secondly having a bunch of unresolved jury-rigged magick hanging around can get messy, leakage happens. Every three days more than one unresolved effect is attached to someone a new casting roll at the existing penalty should be made, failure dissipates the effect. Whether the caster or the target suffers any unnatural phenomenon as a result is up to the GM.