Romani willworkers are the setting's answer to the Dreamspeakers (Kha'vadi), and the Roma community as a whole is a significant part of the agglomeration, so it's high time Mage: The Budapest Urbancrawl GMs and players are given some details.

This post is NOT intended as an accurate representation of real-world Romani, their beliefs, or customs. It is part of a satirical dystopian conceit of mapping selected aspects of contemporary Hungary onto a distorting cyberpunk/urban fantasy lens.

Groups

Note that there is at least one more notable Romani subgroup in present-day Hungary omitted from the setting for the sake of simplicity.

Romungro

Hungarian-speaking musicians who earn their living teaching and playing music in restaurants, bars, and at weddings and funerals. Relatively well-off and proud to be somewhat integrated into agglomeration society, they mostly live in inner Yes-town (the 11th district - the district's writeup is coming soon), in newly- and recently-built housing complexes, sharing the community mostly with the elderly people who had moved into this area in the 1950s as young couples.

Their children populate the playgrounds, kindergartens, and schools in the area.

Recently, "gypsy esotericism" has become fashionable in some circles of non-Roma, and a cottage industry of potion-makers, mystic herbalists, and fortune-tellers cater to this trend in dedicated rooms of family homes.

Vlach Roma

They don't have and are not allowed permanent homes in the agglomeration, but are housed for few-week-long shifts in temporary workman's housing. They are shuttled in and out of the city in tightly controlled distinctive buses. Without them, none of the skyscrapers and other super-projects on the outskirts of the city (and the renovation and re-building after magical escapees from the rifts rampaging in the inner city) would never be possible. The regime gives them a fair wage and dangles the promise of permanent citizenship after 5-10 years of uninterrupted project contracts. None of them have yet been actually given citizenship, but that doesn't stop bigots around town from inciting hate based on the fear of "normal" people being overrun by the Vlach.

Well-connected Budapest denizens know where to find spontaneous and illegal Vlach Roma marketplaces that sell otherwise unavailable items and produce from the countryside. Marketeers (and perhaps customers also) risk deportation, so tread carefully.

Views and Attitudes

Towards the regime

Romungro are generally quite well-off, and tend to at least tolerate or side with the powers-that-be, as this is seen as a mark of an integrated middle-class in Budapest.

The Vlach Roma try to keep a low profile, stay invisible, not rock the boat, and conform - they are grateful for the opportunity to be gainfully employed, and would jump through any hoops the governments makes them for a chance at full agglomeration citizenship.

Towards the Syndicate

Non-magical Roma are not aware of the Szövetkezet—no surprises there. Roma wizards could make allies against the local version of the Co-Operative as they understand that they are the ones pushing the Szekeres-Bara autosuggestion agenda which undermines their magic, and the Alapjáradék (universal basic income), which fuels the social discrimination against Roma that they are set against.

Towards the Chinese

Vlach Roma are often employed on building projects in the Budapest Chinatown, and/or funded by the (Syndicate-sponsored) Chinese community, and have established a tenuous trade-based relationship with them.

Romungro do not mix with Chinese, are wary of them, and generally consider them part of a criminal underground.

Towards immigrant mages

Some Romungro take in homeless, among whom immigrant mages are numerous, as informal servants to help around the home in exchange for food and a sense of community. While still not treated as equals, they aren't as reviled as tourist mages usually are (who are basically vilified as insidious terrorists in the state media).

Magic

Note that the details below are made-up and/or a hodge-podge of various European folk magical practices, and are not meant to be a realistic representation of actual Romani spiritual practices.
Also, for the sake of simplicity, both Romani subgroups listed above are assumed to share the magical outlook outlined below.

Focus

The basic idea is to manifest one or more aspects of a spirit-world entity, or the entity itself in this side of the Umbra using elementally active ingredients.

Being possessed by a spirit and crossing over into the Umbra are considered impure and therefore taboo.

Paradigm

Bring Back the Golden Age!:

Elders must be respected, and ancestors worshipped, as they are the link to the ancient (semi-)nomadic ways that have kept the community alive and safe, and are the only chance of survival in this hostile and alienated urban environment.

Children must be pampered, and given the best of everything as they are the future of the community.

Practices

Craftwork, chiefly metallurgy. Making and mending pots, pans, knives, horseshoes, and wooden kneading troughs, tubs, and handles. Also making one's own instruments (violin, viola, double bass, dulcimer, and clarinet or tárogató).
Medicine and Healing. Strict ban on mixing alcohol and any kind of medicine.
Zagovory
Witchcraft. Blood is considered impure and therefore taboo.

Instruments

In rough order of importance:

Elements, as mentioned above, are the primary means of working their unique way of spirit magic. Thirty-six distinct elements (ranging from water and air through various metals and woods to animal skin and hair and foodstuffs) are differentiated in this cosmology, and many of the other instruments derive from this one.
Blessings and Curses
Fire
Animals (dogs, urban vermin (pigeons, hedgehogs, rats), but most of all horses)
Music: the 7-piece violin-led "gypsy band" accompanying a non-Roma singer
Invocation
Artwork
Bodily fluids except for blood (mother's milk, sweat, urine, tears)
Brews, Potions, Powders (chiefly chamomile)
Drugs and Poisons
Food and Drink
Religious Trappings
Traditional Dress
Dances, Gestures, Postures
Household Tools
Cups, Chalices, Cauldrons, and Other Vessels
Cards
Physical Folding Money
Offerings and Sacrifices

Rotes

Detect/Treat Evil Eye

Fill and empty a black cup dedicated to the purpose twice. Fill the cup a third time with fresh cold drinking water, and burn three or nine matches over the cup, lighting all but the first one off the previous one. When completely burnt down, throw the matches into the cup of water, counting down and negating the number you say ("Not three, neither two, nor one.").

If at least one of the matches sinks to the bottom, the person being diagnosed is cursed, and needs to be treated: they need to drink three spoonfuls of the 'coal water', then the healer massages the patient's temples, forehead, wrists, neck, and under their knees, chanting a magic formula. The cup is then ritually emptied and placed upside down, and the patient is given a soporific brew (chamomile, lavender, and valerian root) to make them sleep.

Sense Impurity

Turn a sieve around the tip of a knife while chanting a magic formula, and interpret the results based on the direction and the word that the sieve stopped at.

Cleanse Object

Boil hedgehog spines in water that has been kept covered in front of an image of the Virgin Mary, and immerse object while intoning magical formula.

Bring Luck

Tie a wide red ribbon around the wrist or wear at least one garment (socks, T-shirt, etc.) inside out.

Divine Future

Interpret the positions of nine horse hairs dropped into a dedicated wooden trough filled with salted water.

Mage: The Budapest Urbancrawl

2021/04/27

Romani in Mage: The Budapest Urbancrawl