Stele’s name comes from the Shadowhunters franchise that Angel loves so much- a stele in this case is an intricate thin tool made of adamas, heavenly metal. Most of its bullshit runes come from that franchise. When the bat is in use, all of these runes, bullshit or not (he really doesn’t know), flare up in their inky, energetic red. Whichever rune is most in use with the effect flares the brightest.
Activated Rune: Bind To
This Artifact cannot be broken.
If this Artifact is lost and in no one’s possession, it finds its way back to its creator during the next Downtime.
This Artifact's creator is always aware of the direction and distance to this Artifact.
This Artifact's creator must have it with them to have restful sleep. They cannot regain Mind or Source while separated from this Artifact.
Angel hefts up a bat or anything similar and swings it from a ways away. Despite the lack of physical contact, the target is struck across the face and put into a pleasant, smiling daze like Angel’s previous default. They may look around or ask questions like “Why am I here again?”.
Activated Rune: Calm Anger
Expend a point of Battery and spend an Action. Select a Animate target within 20 feet. Roll Brawn + Influence at Difficulty 7.
If you succeed, the target will suffer a dice penalty equal to the Outcome for the next 3 Rounds. Dice pools may be reduced all the way down to 0 by this penalty. This breaks Concentration.
Angel Cooper takes up his bat and grins in anticipation, then swings it down or around towards his target. If and when he hits, the reverberation one feels when a bat connects with something rings through him. It makes every rune on his bat that’s been activated flare up on the bat itself, as well as Angel’s forearms, searing like hot red ink until he can calm his mad adrenaline.
Angel’s strikes may “build up” reverberation on a successful enough attack. In these instances, the target feels a painful buzzing sensation as the energy of the swing penetrates bone and shatters an extremity to uselessness.
Activated Rune: Power
This Artifact can be used as a club / improvised weapon. It is roughly the same size as a club / improvised weapon and just as difficult to conceal.
Attack by rolling Brawn + Melee, Difficulty 6. Successful attacks deal Contested Outcome +4 Weapon Damage. The target's fully effective
You also gain the following effects:
Super driving skills
You gain the following benefits as long as you are wearing this Artifact and you are piloting any vehicle.
You receive +2 dice to any rolls to pilot a vehicle.
You also gain the following effects:
....
You gain the following benefits as long as you are wearing this Artifact.
Your senses are enhanced in the following way.
Any senses which have been heightened cannot be overloaded. Battle Scars you receive cannot affect these senses.
The Claw of Akhekh is an old Gauntlet that magically bonds to a host, taking the place of their right arm. It is made of a strange living metal, and is similar in shape to the claw of a dragon. It possesses numerous mystical abilities, including the power to stretch and warp its shape, extending over 30 feet from its wielder. It is intelligent, capable of independent action from its wielder, but can be controlled through the magical bond it creates, as well as feedback from the tendrils it extends into the body of its wielder. The Gauntlet can remove its tendrils from the Wielders body and be removed, but this removes the benefits it grants to the Wielder.
You gain the following benefits as long as you are wearing this Artifact.
You gain an additional limb that functions as a standard human arm and hand.
Each additional limb you posses can take one Quick Action per Round without incurring a -2 dice penalty to your main Action. Any Battle Scars that affect or remove your additional limb will heal in a single week.
Your extra appendage can stretch to reach an additional 30 feet.
Your extra appendage is not connected to your nervous or circulatory systems, and you will not take damage if it is hit by an attack or destroyed.
The Claw of Akhekh is a powerful weapon, capable of tearing through flesh and armour with ease. The strengthened bond with its Wielder allows it to draw on arcane energies the Wielder isn't using to strengthen its strikes.
You gain the following benefits as long as you are wearing this Artifact and you are engaged in unarmed combat.
Your unarmed attacks deal +4 Bonus Damage, and Brawn no longer acts as Armor against them. The target's other Armor is fully effective against this damage.
You also gain the following effects:
There's just something about a man in shades that is hard to pass by.
Exert your Mind (unless you win a coin flip) and spend at least one Action to activate. Select a Sapient, Living target within 20 feet. Communicate a command to your target. Roll Charisma + Influence at Difficulty 6. The target may resist by rolling Mind at Difficulty 7.
If the contested Outcome is positive, your target will be compelled to follow your command to their best understanding of the letter and spirit of the command until they have completed it or for your Outcome in hours. You cannot issue another suggestion to the target until 10 minutes after they have completed the first command or 10 minutes after a failure.
The target is unaware that they are under supernatural influence and feel they are acting of their own free will. If you fail, they realize that you were attempting to influence them supernaturally with your command.
Your command can be an order to take an immediate Action and a conditional request. You cannot order a target to "do nothing," and they are free to take other Actions as they fulfill your request. Your command cannot be obviously self-endangering or self-destructive. The Effect ends if following your command would cause a target to cross one of their Limits in a way that would necessitate a Trauma roll.
You must have some means of communicating this command to your target, but no one other than you and them will understand or perceive it.
This Effect ends if you are stunned, fall asleep, go unconscious, are incapacitated, die, or if your total Penalty ever exceeds 5.
Tiny nano machines swarm out of the ring and cover the users body in a thin sheet. The tiny bug like bots arrange themselves into a latticework over the user and once all are in place thin little cuts are made along the users skin in square patterns. Tiny rivers of blood well up at all locations of the nanites and are quickly sucked into the nanomachines, they then start cutting the small squares of the skin and prying them up the tiny bits of dermis sticking to the muscle and sinew underneath but being pulled anyways until they eventually come free. Unable to patchwork skin on the eyeball the bots flood into the occular cavity and surround the eye forming a kind of sheen over the cornea and feeding it visual info while the effect is activated. Each bug holds the square of skin over itself like a kind of card. When activated they flip the skin cards around to the underside where a hazy reflection of the surrounding area is put forward on the other side of the skin card.
Expend a point of Battery and spend an Action.
You are obscured in one of the following manners. Lasts 30 minutes.
While this Effect is active, any Effect that would obscure you from other, additional senses fails automatically. If someone discovers you, this Effect will not help you hide from them for the next minute. This Effect does not end early when you activate an obvious Effect, attack, or receive an Injury.
Anyone who witnesses you during this Effect's activation or for its duration will almost certainly be disturbed to see Tiny stadium bugs flipping skin cards.
The ring on Polamedes right hand starts to glow and grow until it is the size of a large dinner plate. Thin strands launch themselves from the now enlarged ring and hook into the flesh of the arm. The skin from finger to elbow flays backwards in strips like a swissroll. Under the skin tiny nanomachines start to assemble into a latticework, tightly packed but slowly expanding struggling to contain a large glowing blue energy. As the energy builds the ligaments in the elbow pop and shred and are replaced with thin strands of nanomachines support fibers. The forearm expands outward pulsing with energy, ballooning before causing it to collapse back in on itself releasing a large blue-black beam of electric-plasma that fires from the arm towards the target. The super charged beam of energy shoots towards its target, anything hit with the beam will slowly start disintegrating as the molecular structure holding it together is ripped apart and the cohesion between cells comes undone.
Afterwards the skin strips hang loose before the tiny bots start punching holes in the stipes and then threading them together with slimy stitches. Once all stripes are restitched the disconnected hands fingers break backwards pulling themselves back towards the wrist and reconnecting.
Exert your Mind and spend an Action. Select a target within 45 feet. Roll Intellect + Technology Difficulty 6. The target may contest by rolling to Dodge or Defend as a Reaction, Difficulty 6.
If the contested Outcome is positive, the target takes that much Damage plus 4. Armor is fully effective against this damage.
Anyone who witnesses you during this Effect's activation will almost certainly be disturbed to see Skin peeling off arm to make cannon..
Tiny nano bugs emerge from the ring and encircle the hand of the user.
The hand is severed and rapidly transported to the site of the jump once there voxel cubes emerge from it and form the portal.
The stump from the hand bleeds out blue black voxel discharge and blood while forming into the other end of the portal.
Once the user enters the portal they are slowly dissolved into voxels and those bits are transported unseen to the other end of the portal, where the user is reconstituted block by block.
Starting with the inside organs and ending with the clothing.
Finally the hand reattaches to the stump and the portal of voxels falls to the ground discolors into blood.
The first link in what hopes to be a long chain. A single node that will hopefully ensure the creation of more nodes. Making the conceptual reality, Polamedes starts building a chain that he will use to alter the very foundations of this world. Starting small a short hop from point to point.
Expend a point of Battery and spend an Action. Select a Location which is at most 75 feet away horizontally or 15 feet away vertically. Make a Trauma roll when you activate this Effect.
You jump to the chosen location. If the landing is precarious, the GM may call for a roll to land safely. You will never take fall damage from successfully landing a jump made with this Effect.
Instead of physically passing through the air, you are teleported directly to your destination. Does not allow you to go through walls.
Anyone who witnesses you during this Effect's activation will almost certainly be disturbed to see “The user is viscerally deconstituted and reconstituted at their entry and exit point.”.
A simple silver ring with a single blue box with the number 0 etched into it. Uses Ram to power uses of it.
Expend a point of Battery and spend 15 minutes. Choose a specific Injury on yourself that has not yet been treated with this Effect and roll Intellect + Technology at Difficulty 6.
If you succeed, the Injury is reduced in Severity by your Outcome. If you reduce its Severity to 0, the Injury is fully healed. Otherwise, it is partially healed and will heal the rest of the way at its natural rate.
This counts as a successful Makeshift Stabilization if the Injury was not already Stabilized; any Battle Scars caused by the Injury will remain.
Anyone who witnesses you during this Effect's activation or for its duration will almost certainly be disturbed to see The finger that the ring is applied too has the skin peel back around the ring and is fleenced all the way to the palm. In the opening thousands of tiny insects (nanomachines) flood out of the ring and into the opening created in the hand. Tiny lumps can be seen under the skin traveling into the body of the one they are healing. While healing the target the nanobots can be felt crawling within the targets body and are puked out upon completion..
Gustav evokes the savage nature of his bound Passengers using there understanding of combat to brutally slash, claw, and bash his opponents. during combat the faintest hint of a shadowy outline of a well dressed man shrouds Gustave's striking limbs as he deflects attracts that should be impossible.
You gain the following benefits as long as you are wearing this Artifact and you are engaged in unarmed combat.
+2 dice to rolls for Attacking, Defending, and Clashing without a weapon. Unarmed attacks do +0 Weapon Damage (instead of -1). The target's Armor is fully effective against this Damage.
You may Defend against melee, projectile, or firearm Attacks from any range and Clash with those in range of your Attacks. Attacking materials like steel or spikes will not Damage you unless it has an Effect that does so.
You also gain the following effects:
Gustav evokes his dark passengers contract drawing on there knowledge of languages. he opens up his journal and speaks a dark incantation in Hebrew, after which his passenger whispers a running translation into his mind allowing for continued communication.
Exert your Mind and spend an Action.
You may understand and communicate to Creatures, humans, and Sapient beings as if you are fluent in a relevant language for the next hour.
This also includes understanding any recorded communications from the relevant targets, including writings, scent trails, etc.
Gustav acts as a conduit for his dark passengers to broker a deal with the target, as this negotiations go gustav draws demonic symbiology on the target and speaks in a cascade of different voices and languages finally finishing the contract and leaving the target with a small scar. the scars look varies depending on the power gifted but will always look like a body part from an animal that best fits the augment.
Exert your Mind and spend an Action. Select a Living target within arm's reach. You must make a Trauma roll when you use this Effect. Its Difficulty cannot be reduced by any means. The target can easily Resist.
You may add one augmentation to your target. Each augmentation counts as a Battle Scar and can have exactly one of the following Effects:
By transplanting a body part from another creature, you can grant a Powers intrinsic to that body part to the subject.
The augmentations you provide are not outwardly visible nor obvious.
Gustave evokes his demonic dark passengers through his archaeologist Grimoire. he walks around the area taking notes occasionally placing lose objects in the area in to the shadowy journal. as he does so a long arm from a well dress individual will stretch out from the journal to return the items back to Gustave. the info gathered is written in Latin with intricately drawn details.
Spend a minute. Investigate an area with a radius of up to 500 feet You must make a Trauma roll when you use this Effect. Its Difficulty cannot be reduced by any means. At the end of your investigation, roll Intellect + Occult at Difficulty 6.
You learn the following information about the area:
This Gift's Cost is capped at 2 and cannot be increased further.
Gustav Uses his Archeologist Grimoire to contract with a lesser demon of vice, negotiating a deal for his party of sinners. after which the sinners go out for a day in town committing sins and indulging in vices on behalf of this demon. as the group Gambles, Drinks, and cheats their way through the day they discuss the heavy things on their mind. allowing it all to flow away in the deluge of vice.
Exert your Mind to activate. Select a Living target within arm's reach. Over the course of one day, your patient must communicate with you and reveal at least one of their Traumas to you, including the details of those Traumas and the circumstances of how they were acquired. After the full treatment time has elapsed, roll Charisma + Occult at Difficulty 6.
Your target may Resist. If your treatment is successful, you may remove one of the patient's revealed Traumas without incurring any Experience cost.
You may heal a Trauma on any number of targets with a single activation of this Effect, but any Traumas which you treat are revealed to the entire group.
Gustav Takes up his Archeologist Grimoire Speaking the Terms of the pack clearly to the party involved. as he does so he spreads a coating of cocaine onto the pages of the grimoire using his fingers to draft the contract in the dust, Darkness flows forth from the pages as the cocaine turns blood red drawing from gustavs blood. Finally the lines of coke float up to the targets nose allowing for easy contract sealing.
You must use up cocaine in order to activate this Effect.
You may make an oath with a physically-present, Sapient target. Communicate the oath's terms to the target, including the requirements and penalties for each participant. If all agree to the terms, you must take a Severity-1 Injury and all participants must Snorting cocaine to seal the deal.
Record the oath as a Condition. If a party breaks the oath, the Condition ends and they suffer the oath's penalty.
When crafting your oath, you may incorporate any of the following penalties:
The target cannot be compelled to agree via a direct threat of violence, another Effect, or another oath. If you would like to use clever wording to mislead the target, you must succeed a contested Intellect + (Culture or Influence) roll.
You may revert a penalty for breaking one of your oaths on any participant other than yourself.
When crafting your oath, you may opt to enforce compliance. If you do, any participant that wishes to break the deal must take 3 Mind damage and succeed a Self-Control roll. They may attempt once per day.
Whenever a participant breaks the oath, you are immediately made aware and may even witness the act as if standing nearby.
It is obvious to your target that the oath you are proposing will be supernaturally enforced.
Gustav evokes his pact with his dark passengers to move them with their might. Raising his Grimoire he speaks a quick spout of Hebrew under his breath, an invisible large hand seems to grab Gustave around his waist and drags him to where he requests like a doll being bandied about.
Exert your Mind and spend an Action. This Effect remains active for two hours.
As long as you are conscious, you are immune to falling Damage. Additionally, you may glide as you fall, traveling 35 feet horizontally for every 10 feet you fall. While gliding, you fall at a minimum speed of 10 feet per Round.
You may ascend into the air and fly using your mind. Your Free Movement is Mind x5 feet/Round, including vertically. You cannot Dash. When sprinting, roll Mind and add your rating in Mind plus 1 to the outcome, multiply by 5 to find your sprint speed. Your encumbrance limit is 10 lbs per point of Mind.
You are subject to the following effects while gliding or flying:
The Predatory Raiment has a cloak feature that allows its owner to hide themselves and their equipment with active camouflage. When viewed, they look like a slightly shifted and shimmering version of the surrounding environment.
You gain the following benefits as long as you are not at all wet and you are wearing this Artifact.
You are obscured in one of the following manners. You may Spend an Action to change the way in which you're concealed.
While this Effect is active, any Effect that would obscure you from other, additional senses fails automatically. If someone discovers you, this Effect will not help you hide from them for the next minute. This Effect does not end early when you activate an obvious Effect, attack, or receive an Injury.
The airship of solitude is the mad scientist's lair and preferred mode of travel. Not only does it include a full science laboratory, it can be collapsed into an incredibly small canvas cube and easily transported. The mad scientist may pilot the ship alone or rely on its autopilot features for ultimate convenience.
This Artifact can be used as a blimp. It is roughly the same size as a blimp but can be collapsed into a phone-sized canvas cube and concealed. Collapsing or expanding it costs a Quick Action.
This blimp has full science laboratory, bullet-proof envelope, and ample parachutes. Any roll to pilot this vehicle receives +2 dice.
You also gain the following effects:
Standard issue in the Future Soldier's home time, the Personal Shield Generator (PSG) projects a protective energy barrier around the body. It absorbs damage far better than traditional armor, but its battery is quickly drained. When depleted, the PSG must spend a few seconds recharging.
When struck, the normally-invisible field of the PSG flashes, revealing a bright yellow honey-comb pattern encasing the body.
You gain the following benefits as long as you are wearing this Artifact.
You have 6 Armor, which reduces incoming Damage. Armor from multiple sources does not stack.
Your Armor cannot be destroyed, and it always provides a minimum of 2 Armor regardless of any Armor penetration. It cannot be circumvented with Called Shots.
Any time your Armor prevents damage, your total Armor rating is temporarily decreased by 1. Whenever you go two Rounds without preventing any damage, it is restored back to its full value.
The Skeleton Key slips easily into any keyhole and turns without a fuss.
Spend an Action.
You may lock, unlock, and/or open any number of doors, locks, or locked targets within arm's reach of you. Cannot be used on Alien technology.
If you successfully operate a lock, you may choose to destroy it, rendering it inoperable.
The spy can do up their passport to appear as any valid form of identification.
This Artifact can change its appearance. When not transformed, it is roughly the same size as a passport and just as difficult to conceal.
Whenever you show this Artifact to someone, you may give a general description of an Object within the category of forms of identification, and anyone who hears the description and sees the Artifact will have their mind fill in the details to complete the illusion.
The way the Artifact is seen can mimic specific items (such as a particular painting, a certain person’s ID, etc), but must be of a similar size and weight to this Artifact.
The new appearance is illusory; it will hold up to scrutiny, but its composition is not altered and it gains no new functionality. Any attempt to use it for a function which it cannot perform (for instance, making bread look like a knife and then trying to stab someone) will cause the illusion to fail or allow a Perception check to see through the illusion, at the GM's discretion.