In Nomine Revisited: Mimeurgy.

I dunno. Like so many other things I’ve written, it seemed a good idea at the time.

Mimeurgy – Google Docs

Mimeurgy

The practitioners of this Sorcery claim that its history stretches all the way back to the early Roman Empire.  This is, broadly speaking, true. They also claim that the secrets of Mimeurgy have been passed down to the present day in an unbroken line of esoteric wisdom, teacher to student, since that time.  This is unambiguously false: the modern incarnations of the Mimerugic Circles owe their origins to the members of a dubious Metuchen, New Jersey social club and part-time illegal casino that operated during the 1950s.  Hell likes to reactivate Mimeurgy every so often; they find it fairly simple to fake an appropriate historical record.

Mimeurgy’s main strength is that it can be performed in public; it uses almost no formal esoteric tools for its workings, or, indeed, the spoken word.  Yes, I am afraid that your sudden realization is, alas, quite correct; we are talking about them.  Mimes.  The people with the badly painted faces and the dressing in the black and the beret and all the rest of the warning signs: some of them are even worse than they appear, difficult as it may be to believe.

Mechanics

Generally speaking, the major mechanical difference between Mimeurgy and ‘regular’ Sorcery is that the former requires neither incantations nor traditional equipment when performing ‘standard’ Sorcerous rituals.  This makes the rituals longer (add 25% to all times to cast), but also a bit more silent (remove half the CD of a successful roll from the total Disturbance generated from any one ritual). The only exception to this is Awe Demon: a Mimeurgist must spend 1 Essence in order to successfully cast this ritual.  No self-respecting demon is going to be impressed with mere name-dropping (actually, charades) coming from a Mimeurgist.

There are also several rituals that are specific to Mimeurgy.  If a regular Sorcerer wishes to learn them, he’d better go get some white pancake makeup and a beret.  They do not take extra time to cast, as the rituals are specifically designed with Mimeurgy in mind.



That Thing With The Exaggerated Body Language

(Command/1)
This is a specialization of Suggest; it can only be used to encourage feelings of annoyance, frustration and belligerence (at any level) in others.
Time: 1 minute
Essence: CD

That Thing With The Flower

(Command/1)
The target must roll against Will -3; if failed, the target is stunned for CD combat rounds.
Time: five minutes
Essence: 2

That Thing With Imitating Other People

(Command/2)
This ritual allows the Mimeurgist to designate any two people as having switched psychic signatures.  All mundane attempts to track either will be at the appropriate roll -3; failure means that the wrong person is shadowed, tracked, checked out, etc.  Celestials and metaphysical tracking methods have no penalty to their rolls.
Time: five minutes
Essence: CD

The Thing With The Box

(Focus/3)
This ritual reduces the effects of disturbance in a given area.  Subtract the CD from a successful roll from all Disturbance done within its radius (a six foot cube, centered on the Sorcerer – the cube cannot be moved, by the way).  The effect lasts for fifteen minutes.
Time: 10 minutes
Essence: CD

That Thing With the Hat

(Focus/5)
This ritual allows the Mimeurgist to temporarily store completed Sorcerous rituals in ‘storage’ until needed.  Only one item may be imbued at a time; a successful roll will allow it to store a cumulative number of successfully completed rituals equal to the CD of the successful roll.  The original rituals must be rolled ahead of time and the Essence spent. The item will lose its storage capacity after a week.
This can also be used to store non-Mimeurgic Sorcerous rituals.
Time: one hour
Essence: CD + 2

That Thing With The Rope

(Summon/3)
This summons a random ethereal with the Image of a mime.  It is usually used as a method of ensuring one’s escape…
Time: fifteen minutes
Essence: 5

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