She is 15 years old, lives in whatever shelters she can find on her travels, and often appears as a 5’, curious and content girl with dirty blonde hair, apple red eyes, and ratty clothes. She wears a clanking metal gauntlet and a belt of woven hair. The image of a younger brunette girl in a singed nightgown lays over her own, and they are often accompanied by a ghostly black cat with glowing yellow eyes.
Grace Cyanide lives in Maelstrom, a setting where videos of the supernatural go viral every day. Her journal, I am 9 & MAGICAL, has 57 entries.
3 Alertness
2 Animals
3 Athletics
2 Brawl
3 Crafts
3 Culture
2 Drive
2 Firearms
4 Influence
3 Investigation
3 Medicine
1 Melee
6 Occult
3 Performance
0 Science
4 Stealth
4 Survival
2 Technology
1 Thievery
In addition to an accelerated healing rate, any major injuries Grace sustains are “fixed” by Obedience’s form taking the place of the affected area. The restored chunks, eyes, arms, whatever may come, appear just as Obedience’s: bluish and semi-transparent, but now functioning just as the respective physical flesh would. Currently, her left eye, middle right finger, and most of her intestinal tract have been replaced, with the last having done a significant deal of "lining up".
This restoration is the biggest key to the girls' goal that they’ve gotten so far. The bond they want so badly is within their reach- all it takes is getting hurt badly enough. Rather than opting to chop off Grace’s limbs in the name of it (which they could theoretically survive), the menagerie decided to continue Contracting so they can get hurt in ways that matter. Also, keep up with friends… and it could be that they just like the rush.
You gain the following benefits at all times.
Any Injury you receive heals quickly, reducing its Severity by one level every day, starting once it becomes stabilized. You may also Exert your Mind and spend an Action to reduce the Severity of a single stabilized Injury by 1. Does not affect Injuries suffered as an activation cost for Effects.
Battle Scars caused by your Injuries are also healed when the Injuries that caused them regenerate.
Grace grins and tilts backwards like a trust fall which comes to a sudden, jarring stop a few inches above the ground. Grace goes horizontal and rises in the air with the ghostly white dress and wispy hair of her best friend trailing underneath them. As they get farther up, they’ll straighten up and take their place in the sky, hovering eerily with a brighter red in their eyes than normal.
Chamael was the inspiration- spending time with him had them jumping off a hotel bed, determined to fly just like he could. Cham was neither happy nor impressed.
Exert your Mind and spend an Action to activate.
You may levitate off the ground at three times your normal walking speed. The effect lasts for the next minute, though you may choose to end it at will.
While in the air, your move speed and encumbrance are based on your rating in Mind instead of your Brawn and Dexterity.
Classic exorcist style, Obedience stretches, bends, and dislocates Grace's limbs so that all of the force behind the movements they make is otherworldly, where things like gravity and time matter much less.
Names are powerful things. When the girls learned Obedience’s name, it was like a lock clicking open… alongside the traumatic memories came potential energy, an embrace of the unnatural and a further understanding of what it means to be a ghost. Obedience can tap into the plane she exists on to move there instead of the physical world, bringing Grace's body as her host along for the ride.
You gain the following benefits at all times.
You may move easily and without a roll in any of the following situations.
Obedience may jerk Grace’s body out of the way of incoming attacks, or swat them away completely. She becomes a little more “present” as she does so, brighter for just the flash of a second it takes her to deflect the damage.
Obedience would do anything in her power to protect Grace. It’s not just because Grace is what keeps her tethered to this world; they are best friends, and their bond is what makes them stronger in more ways than they can count.
You gain the following benefits at all times.
You have 4 Armor, which reduces incoming damage from all sources of physical attack except Fire. Armor from multiple sources does not stack. This Armor cannot be circumvented with Called Shots.
Whenever your Armor reduces incoming Damage, you are immediately made aware of the source of the Damage. You may pinpoint their location for 30 seconds.
Grace, Obedience, Horatio, Sally, Hope, and the Breaker all reside (or are contained) in Grace's head, each with a stake in her staying alive. They see through her eyes and beyond into their own planes, and their warning system is as quick as any singular thought.
This is an ability that Grace didn't notice manifesting as much as some others- lately they've all been on high alert, and she just thinks it's adrenaline.
You gain the following benefits at all times.
Your Perception rating is increased by 1. You may Exert your Mind to automatically gain an Outcome of 5 on any roll that uses Perception (Cannot be used on combat rolls or Power activations).
You also gain the following effects:
Grace begins calling a cat and waving a ball of yarn. Obedience’s old kitty, Horatio, appears as a ghostly form covered in soot which trails behind him in wisps as he pads out from under a chair, in a closet, out of a trash can... Horatio was loyal to the end, and will "die" over and over again fighting for his girls, and fighting ferociously. Their bond is also strong enough to take the way Obedience could understand her cat in life a step further, so that they can understand each other clearly.
Horatio usually resides in Grace’s mindscape, along with the rest of the menagerie, unless Grace is in a place private enough that he can come out and play.
While Obedience's life force was tied to the tree, bitter as the bark and as slow to progress, Horatio was hidden from her; she was too unfamiliar and for awhile, taken to anger. But he never went far, watching over her out of even her sight... the most loyal of cats, our beloved Horatio.
Exert your Mind and spend at least two Actions performing the following ritual: Grace walks around waving her ball of yarn calling out for Horatio and inspecting places he could come out from. to activate. You must actively and obviously use A ball of yarn to activate this Effect. You must maintain Concentration while activating this Effect, and it fails if you are interrupted.
Summon a single Horatio at your location. They will last until they are destroyed. They are controlled by the GM but will follow any commands you give. You may have at most 1 minion active at a time.
Minions have 4 Body and can make melee range attacks with 5 dice to attack and +1 Damage. Your minions can move 20 feet per Round as Free Movement, and double that when performing an all-out Sprint. They cannot dodge or Defend. They have dog-level intelligence, but are capable of communicating information back to you. Any Perception checks they make are rolled with 3 dice.
Your minion is able to Stealth with a 8-dice pool.
Grace holds an apple (likely bruised and a little old) in her hands and focuses on good memories. With help from the Dead Kid Tea Party, the potency of the memories imbues the apple with a healing effect that reminds the target of whatever place feels like home to them. The fruit crackles as its composition changes, glowing Obedience’s ghostly blue from inside. The glow follows the bites of apple as they move from the target’s throat, to chest, to stomach.
“Happy thoughts, huh? Good on you, kiddo.”
The apples started when Grace became homesick in England. Missing Jersey and her old hidey holes, and farther back, her bedroom… blanket caves were always her favorite. Before she was able to recreate that with Chamael’s help, her desperation gave her a fix.
Grace made the realization that allowing her mind to wander off to bitter and bad memories changes the apple to be just as bitter, soaked in cyanide. She's on guard about it now, and is considering possibilities...
Exert your Mind and spend 1 minute to activate. Select a Living target within arm's reach. You must use up apple in order to activate this Effect. Choose a specific Injury on your target that has not yet been treated with this Effect and roll Intellect + Medicine at Difficulty 8.
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.
If your Outcome is greater than the Severity of the Injury you were attempting to treat, you may apply any excess Outcome to other Injuries on the same patient.
During a Downtime, Grace can banish traumas from her or another’s mind by singing the nursery rhymes she used to calm herself down in the past. Usually, it’s “Rain, Rain, Go Away”… sitting across from the target, holding their hands, the way she thought it should be. All that’s really required is spending time relaxing and listening.
It was getting difficult to deal with the torrents of trauma from the jobs, and Grace can’t exactly go and see a normal therapist. Happy thoughts are already in her toolkit.
Exert your Mind to activate. Select a Living target within arm's reach. Over the course of one Downtime, 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, you may remove one of the patient's revealed Traumas without incurring any Experience cost.
Your patient is required to Treat the dead with respect, they can hear you; and while they might not care enough about you to take offense, Grace certainly cares enough about them to get offended in their place. for the next month. If they violate this rule, your treatment is immediately reversed.
Obedience is able to temporarily puppet Grace’s movements to manipulate objects around them. As with all powers, the three eyes occupied by the girls glow their apple red while Obedience’s pale blue form grows a little stronger. They are also willful enough to land blows as if from cold hands on targets.
The girls’ forms have joined enough now that Obedience’s gestures no longer stray from Grace’s body. One hand joined at the middle finger, another melded into the Gauntlet- they are nearly locked in place, just how the girls want it to be. They are able to manipulate objects in the first place in the way most ghosts are; through a force of powerful (in this case combined) will, sending ripples through the currents of a half-existing realm which flows erratically adjacent to ours.
You gain the following benefits at all times.
You can interact with things that are within 75 feet without needing to physically touch them or be near them. Any rolls made for Actions taken in this way use a Mental Strength of 2 in place of your Brawn rating, a Mental Agility of 2 in place of your Dexterity, and otherwise use your own Attributes and Abilities.
Telekinetic actions have the following restrictions and behaviors:
Horatio slips into existence for a second around Grace, carefully holding a piece of notebook paper in his teeth. Disappearing again and bounding through the aether, he brings the message to the target and appears beside them as well before entering their mindscape to deliver. The target gets a mental image of Horatio presenting the note with a cat’s mix of pride and disinterest.
The development of Grace’s mindscape built a home for Horatio. He’s used to making his way in and out of it- ghosts are in some ways merely memories, after all, so where else would he stay?
Exert your Mind and spend an Action to activate. Select a target any distance away from you. You must have a specific target in mind, but you require only an intuitive understanding of them, such as their name, face, or Location.
You open up a line of communication to your target, and may converse with them as long as you maintain Concentration
The conversation will only be perceived by the intended recipient. You must share a common language for your target to understand the message.
Spirits do not need to breathe, eat, drink, or sleep as humans do. It’s only logical that a girl that binds herself to so many would start to take on their attributes. This power is passive and not any more obviously supernatural than Grace already is.
The third spirit to possess Grace, Sally, made the ghosts’ influence “spill over” in a sense.
You gain the following benefits at all times.
You may go five times longer than a normal human without food, water, sleep, and air.
Because of the girls’ joint life force, Grace cannot be killed by mundane means. Perhaps she never could, or perhaps she hit a benchmark in power that solidified this. The only thing that can truly take her down is the removal of her belt of dead man’s hair, and of course, an exorcism. On the event of her death, Obedience and the rest of the menagerie leave with a heartbroken wail as all of Grace’s injuries, hunger, thirst, and exhaustion that were prevented by her catch up and wither the girl into a bloody husk.
When Grace and Obedience first met, Obedience saved her life. She had been fatally wounded, curled on the pavement and crying in a pathetic anger before her attacker. Neither of them wanted her to die, and that is the reason they joined in the first place. Light filtered through the blue, wraith-like form of her future best friend became some perversion of the light at the end of the tunnel… and she woke up healed.
You gain the following benefits at all times.
If you would take an Injury that would kill you, you don’t die. Instead, you survive in an Incapacitated state. This state lasts for the next hour, at which point you fully return to life.
While Incapacitated, your only weakness is a proper exorcism, and if you take damage from it, you will die. Damage from other sources will still be dealt and can cause Battle Scars, but will never kill you. If your weakness is not immediately intuitive or obvious, attackers may be able to make some sort of knowledge roll to discover it, at GMs discretion. After you return, the Injury that would have killed you, as well as any Injuries sustained while Incapacitated, are healed. Battle scars obtained during this time remain.
A shiver wracks Grace and Obedience’s body and a faint blue glow illuminates their left temple from the double eye tattoo there. They have a moment of vertigo as their consciousness is pulled back and forth from beyond the “veil” to gather a sense of who’s hanging around in it.
The girls’ power continues to grow with their search for the mess they made from Pandora’s Box. They’ve already gotten ahold of the feeling to emulate when they know they’re headed towards a spirit of interest; they’ll be able to conjure up that feeling again from now on.
Exert your Mind and spend an Action to activate.
You automatically detect all Spirits within 300 feet of you for the next hour. This includes any who come within range during the duration. You have a sense of how many valid targets are nearby and their direction, but you are not aware of their exact locations.
Even while this Effect is not active, if any Spirits come within 300 feet of you, you may roll Perception + Alertness, Difficulty 7 to detect them.
Even if there are no Spirits within 300 feet of you, you become aware of the direction the closest one is in, as well as a rough sense of its distance from you.
Grace covers her eyes and counts to five, slowly fading out of existence as she does so until completely gone. While she counts, Obedience is looking for hiding spots, though this has become less obvious over time as the loss of Grace's eye locked that area from moving independently.
Grace knows the importance of staying hidden. Being able to wriggle into small spaces already is helpful, but being able to slip past people in broad daylight is required for swiping necessities. This power is most often used for sneaking into the cargo holds of planes to travel long distances.
Exert your Mind (unless you win a coin flip) and spend at least two Actions performing the following ritual: Grace covers her eyes and counts to five to activate. You must maintain Concentration while activating this Effect, and it fails if you are interrupted.
You and any clothes or equipment you are wearing are obscured from sight for the next hour. All attempts to detect you via sight fail. Detection attempts via other senses where sight would assist are rolled at a -2 dice penalty.
Entering Combat or being Injured does not cause the Effect to end early. Anyone you attack will immediately notice you; anyone else may re-roll to notice you each time you take a Combat action, at -1 Difficulty per Combat action you have taken. When the Effect ends, it is disabled for 1 hour.
Grace conjures her Stake Flames in her small palms and presses them slowly to to the scar. They cleanse as rubbing alcohol would; burning, hissing, but sterilizing. If Grace fails to keep herself calm over the bizarre nature of using her Stake Flames to heal (a confusion that "reopens the wounds"), she comes out of treatment a little worse for wear, and the flames are more painful and a bit less controlled.
Columbus, Ohio: Doctor Murphy and Grace work together to remove the S.I.N. chip from it’s place, wrapped around Guido’s brain stem. Fatal exsanguination and paralysis are major risks, and between Grace’s assistance, all she can think about is how she’ll fix it… she is tired, and worried beyond consolation, and she keeps thinking of the fact that she made a promise.
The surgery was successful, but the stress unlocked something new, and Grace was able to use it later on to fix a scar of her own. The fear of the flames has stopped bothering them in short bursts, but a long minute spent deep in the memory can still be too much for them sometimes.
Exert your Mind and spend a minute to activate. Select a Living target within arm's reach. Make a Trauma roll when you activate this Effect. Select a Battle Scar on your target to treat.
The treated Battle Scar will heal over the course of the next week.
Grace focuses her energy towards pulling someone into that pathway. If successful, the target’s vision will flutter in and out between their real-world view and being flat on their back, laid out on a table surrounded by cakes and tea sets in a desaturated forest clearing. The Dead Kid Tea Party stares down at them with hollow, prying eyes: Grace, Obedience, Sally, Horatio, and Hope staring into the grey area between your body and your consciousness, and reading.
The pathway to Grace’s mind for other souls is wide open. In the past, visitors have been relatively invited, but as Grace becomes willing to do more… what's keeping her from yanking someone in through the door?
Exert your Mind and spend 1 minute to activate. Select a Living, Animate target within 20 feet You must maintain Concentration while the effect is active. Roll Intellect + Influence at Difficulty 6. The target may resist by rolling Mind at Difficulty 7.
You are able to view your target's memories. The target is aware that their thoughts are being probed but not of the source of the probe. The Effect ends if the target moves out of range or your Concentration is interrupted.
You may ask specific questions about their memory - “what is their computer password,” “What were they doing at 4:00PM yesterday,” etc - but you cannot get answers to broad, analytical questions like “are they a good person?” or “what are their plans for the future?”
Each question takes as long as it takes to answer to read. When replaying a full memory, it is replayed in double time.
Called for and slipping out from behind Grace’s head like an ash-black Cheshire, Horatio comes padding silently from behind the girls' head, down to their arms. A quick swipe of his claws, and a wound is opened- but on Obedience’s arm, not Grace's. The girls drip the ethereal blood into the mouth of the target, sharing the substance free of all physical impurities and full of life that won't quit to cleanse them. The target glows faintly blue from their throat, to their chest, to their stomach as their body is cleansed, but the process is not complete until 15 minutes later when they spit up blackened, viscous and diseased-saturated fluid.
If Grace needs to clear an area of disease, she may have Horatio cut a bit deeper so that she can walk a spiral, dripping blood that soaks into the ground and cleanses it just as well. This is an effect partially left over from Obedience's time as a tree, learning root systems and what it means to be connected to the heartbeat of the ground.
Pesticides, maggots, lockjaw… there is no room for restrictive impurities in Grace’s body. They were sick of it, literally and metaphorically, so they found the cleanest thing they’d always have and made use of it. Blood that never darkens or catches disease, blood that embodies will and aid. Obedience will heal- she needs only herself to do so. Horatio has the short end of the stick with his guilt, but even that is temporary.
Exert your Mind and spend 15 minutes to activate. Select a Living target within arm's reach.
You may cure any any diseases or poisons afflicting your target even if you have not diagnosed or fully understood it. You may only cure diseases which can be treated with modern medicine. During treatment, the malady you are treating does not progress or cause additional damage or other effects.
You may use this effect to sanitize a 15-foot radius, destroying all poisons, toxins, diseases such that they are inert and cannot affect any new targets
Grace’s horror show isn’t as traumatic to look at as it is to be targeted by; dealing mind damage in the form of fear and stress, being forced to live out Obedience’s burning for a few moments… the screaming, flames, and reflections are violently transferred to the target as they suffer the onslaught.
Being on the receiving end of this is brutal. It’s the girls’ oldest ability; the betrayal and pain that was strong enough to keep Obedience’s soul from rest. So when it’s all forced into someone’s mind in a few seconds, it’s the most reliably terrifying thing contained in the five foot frame.
Exert your Mind and spend an Action to activate. Select a Sapient target within 20 feet. Roll Intellect + Influence at Difficulty 6. Affected targets may resist by rolling Mind at Difficulty 8 with a -3 dice penalty. If they are incapacitated or unconscious, they fail automatically and their Outcome is 0.
If the Contested Outcome is positive, the target takes Mind damage equal to the Contested Outcome. If you deal at least 3 Mind damage, the target will gain a new Trauma selected by you (the GM can overrule you at their discretion). This Trauma may be removed by Effects or mundane therapy, as normal. Affected targets are aware that they are being attacked and can generally tell who did it.
Anyone who witnesses you during this Effect's activation will almost certainly be disturbed to see Obedience’s form vibrating and flickering in and out of sight like a camera shutter, classic horror movie style; the echoing screams that accompany Stake flames come from her own mouth, which opens with a distending jaw, pulling Grace’s unnaturally along with it. Their eyes and anything reflective on their body (including sweat and saliva) reflect orange violent fire.
The memories of crackling flames, shrieks, mournful yowling and responding jeers build a swirling cacophony around Grace, sparking against the ground until they catch with ghostly flames. Once a target is chosen, the circle darts across to them and grows with the force of the attack. A mentally resilient target might be able to calm themselves and breathe enough to realize that the flames aren't real- and once they do that, the flames lose their power.
This memory comes easy. While the flames still bring some stress, the girls are used to using them to their advantage by now; the anger, in fact, has become part of the fuel to the fire.
Spend an Action to activate. Select a target within 45 feet. Roll Intellect + Occult Difficulty 6. The target may contest by rolling Mind, Difficulty 6.
If the contested Outcome is positive, the target takes that much Damage plus 4. Armor is fully effective against this damage.
This Gift's Cost is capped at 2 and cannot be increased further.
Grace brings Sally out from her designated satchel and sets her in front of the dead body (or token for it). Grace’s eyes flashing red, then Sally’s, then the targets- like a chain- means the connection is successful.
Expend a point of Battery and spend an Action to activate. Select a Dead target of which you have a Fetter that was important to them.
The target can communicate in your language for the next hour.
Connor creates magical temporary tattoo paper that individuals can draw a picture on and enhance themselves with Conners brand new item for sale.
Exert your Mind, use up this A temporary Tattoo (unless you succeed on 1d10, Difficulty 7), and spend 30 minutes to activate. Select a Living or Animate target within arm's reach. 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:
The augmentations you provide are not outwardly visible nor obvious.
Your alteration "heals" over the course of the next month, after which it is fully cured.
Edgar stores this vile fluid in his throat, which is naturally produced by his body. Those exposed risk degenerative madness, typically involving hallucinations of the dead (see ghosts, dead people call them on the phone) or experience parasitism (maggots or other insects crawling under their skin). The only cure is to eat at least a pound of cadaver flesh, a corpse at least 24 hours old. If confronted with such a corpse they are likely to have an episode, believing it smells (& tastes) like the most delicious food they've ever imagined...at least, until they finish eating it.
Use up this transparent ichor and spend an Action to turn a sticky fluid coating a surface into a trap. This trap lasts until triggered or disarmed. This Effect cannot be used unless skin contact is made. Roll 11 dice Difficulty 6, penalty does not apply. Choose one of the following symptoms:
The trap looks like a sticky fluid coating a surface and can only be discovered as a trap by those with preexisting knowledge of such traps. Anyone who is aware of the trap may intuitively avoid, trigger, or destroy it.
Any Living target within within arm’s reach that uses the trap as a sticky fluid coating a surface will trigger it. Your target may resist by rolling Body at Difficulty 7.
When the trap is triggered, the target is afflicted with a Condition that causes the chosen symptoms. Symptoms begin to appear immediately, and will remain and continue to worsen until the affliction is cured. The affliction is contagious and will spread to new targets. Anyone who comes into direct contact an afflicted individual of the same species must roll Body, Difficulty 8. If they fail, they become afflicted. Otherwise, they are immune to the spread.
The affliction is not treatable by modern medicine. It may be diagnosed by rolling Intellect + Occult at Difficulty 9, and can be cured by consuming at least a pound of flesh from a cadaver more than 24 hours old. Gifts or supernatural Effects and Powers which would cure or prevent this affliction do not cure or prevent it, but instead offer a clear diagnosis and provide information regarding the method of treatment without requiring a diagnosis roll.
Sometime around the Salem Witch Trials, a girl was discovered by her senile, witchcraft-paranoid grandmother, talking to her cat. This may not have been a problem if the cat, Horatio, had not rolled in soot and appeared to the grandmother as some sort of shadow demon that her little granddaughter was communicating with. By some unlucky stroke, this grandmother was as respected in the village as she was fierce on her opinions, and the poor little girl was burned to death.
The Spirit (who has forgotten her name) was buried under an apple tree, which she bonded to; this bond has inexplicably kept the tree alive through sun and storm up until modern times, as The Spirit watches society develop around her. In these times, a little girl named Grace happened to take a liking to the apple tree. She would pass it on her way home and often spent time under it, eating apples, drawing, or reading. The Spirit took notice but was unable to communicate with Grace until the day that Grace was attacked near the tree- some druggie with undoubtedly ill intentions. The Spirit, enraged, is able to drive him off through the force of that rage and talk to Grace for the first time.
Grace lays dying on asphalt as The Spirit tells her an idea- let her inhabit Grace’s body to keep her alive, please, she doesn’t want to lose her. Grace agrees out of fear of dying, and The Spirit possesses her- two souls now living in one body peacefully, who soon become best friends.
Grace’s return to her home was met with terror; a bloody, filthy version of your own daughter with apple-red eyes and, most obviously, the flickering form of someone else overlapping hers. She was driven out violently and now scavenges in the woods under the helpful instruction and advice of The Spirit, seeking a way to keep The Spirit bound forever.
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Place of Residence: Surrey Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, England
Update 1: Since the beginning of the games, Grace has become more cautious and straightforward. She isn’t as shy as she used to be, and lost her nervous stammer- perhaps she’s growing into a sapling of a good contractor.
Update 2: Grace has gained two things- a tattoo from Connor Inkz, and imprisonment. Despite the caution she’s gained, Grace was poisoned and landed herself in the hospital. A supernatural runaway isn’t the type you can just let go, and well...
Update 3: Grace, escaped with the favor of a Harbinger, has worked out with The Spirit that they need to wear a jacket for cover in public, even if The Spirit is offended by it. The jacket sufficiently covers The Spirit, unless you look especially close.