The process takes quite a bit of time, as Luci must properly bind this object to its ideal image by bathing it in The Well. A process that, if witnessed by a normal person, would likely result in some minor traumatic occurrences. Luci watches over the item the entire time to make sure it is not swallowed up into the inky mess. A lengthy sweat-inducing endeavor, but by its end, when Luci pulls the item from the reservoir, it is all worth it.
The items in question will sport a dark tint on the paint job and if Luci desires it, she can make its primary or secondary colors as dark as she wants. The symbol of The Well, a fragmented snowflake that closely resembles broken glass, will appear embossed somewhere visibly on the item, marking it as improved.
The Well is oblivion and vice versa. There is no being or creature exempt from the prices that it exacts upon those that meet it uncordially. And like a hook, when it sinks its fangs into you, it will rip you root and all at even the slightest weakness.
The Well is also eternal. As long as the universe turns and toils, and unless someone has the power to circumvent or mimic the powers of Oblivion, upgrades items will persist ad infinitum.
Idealism was always thought to exist solely in concept, to associate reality with mental ideals as opposed to material objects. That somewhere in the cosmic lands above, a perfect image of this "thing" exists, and only its material imitations are founded in "reality". But what if a material object could be elevated closer to the status of its ideal perfect image? A question Luci had asked herself for a period, and while it took some time, she managed to find a way.
This Artifact has been upgraded.
This Artifact receives 3 extra dice to all actions taken for its intended use. Attacking with an upgraded weapon grants +3 Weapon Damage instead of additional dice. While it is upgraded, the item cannot be destroyed. Upgraded Armor cannot be shredded. If it is a piece of Armor, it instead receives half that amount as bonus armor rating, rounded up.
Upgraded weapons count as any material your opponent might be particularly vulnerable to. Upgraded Armor cannot be circumvented by called shots. Upgraded Devices do not run out of fuel or energy.
All the participants stand within the circle, grasping an engraved metal rod, while the terms of the covenant are read aloud and the participants repeat the terms, and once they are all said the circle glows with arcane light and the covenant is sealed.
You may make an oath with any number of physically-present, Sapient targets. Communicate the oath's terms to the targets, including the requirements and penalties for each participant. If all agree to the terms, you must Exert your Mind and all participants must Grasping the rod during the ritual 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 targets 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 targets, 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.
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 targets that the oath you are proposing will be supernaturally enforced.
A large arm sprouts from your upper or lower back.
Exert your Mind and spend an Action. This Effect cannot be used unless You are in your Yaksha form..
You gain an additional limb that functions as a standard human arm and hand. Lasts two hours.
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.
You may dedicate your extra Quick Action to contest any attempt to escape your Grapples. If you do so, you roll your full dice pool to contest and retain your Action.
You may turn this Effect on and off at will during its duration.
You may only use this Effect once per day.
Your Extra Appendage is incapable of fine object manipulation.
On this artifact, there is a sizable aperture that leads inexplicably to a mass of hot metal fibres.
To activate this effect, the user reaches in and tears off chunks of fibre, which writhe and wrap painfully around the user's outstretched limb. They briefly cool and solidify, taking on the limb's appearance, before dislodging and becoming independently animate.
After three minions have been summoned, the aperture will close and remain closed until any minion is destroyed or the effect ends.
Thin metal membranes stretch outward from the centre, allowing for flight, and a frayed mouth opens across the front, mimicking the aperture on the artifact.
The minions can perceive and communicate using their antenna-like fibres and mouth respectively. They can rest in an amorphous state on your person, but take on the form of whatever appendage they first came into contact with otherwise. Their foremost edges can sharpen at will, and can deliver hot, piercing strikes as needed.
Increase your sacrificial Injury's Severity by 1 and spend an Action.
Summon up to 3 Sapient amorphous limbs at your location. They last until they are destroyed They are controlled by the GM but will follow any commands you give. This Artifact may have at most 3 minions active at a time.
If you do not have a sacrificial Injury when you activate this Effect, take a new Severity-1 Injury.
The Dream Engine's preliminary calibrations have begun. Fine detail is still a little tricky, but the hardlight projector can now reliably produce simple shapes at scale. If you can imagine it, you can build it, provided "it" is a smooth, mostly featureless polyhedron of translucent blue light.
Exert your Mind (unless you are Sculpting) and spend an Action. Select a Location within 50 feet.
Select one of the following alterations to create out of hard-light originating at the target:
The alteration begins to form when you activate this Effect and finishes forming on your initiative in the next Round. Until it finishes forming, it is not guaranteed to function.
This alteration lasts one minute but may be prematurely destroyed or altered. Your alterations may be broken through with appropriate tools. Anyone attempting to break through must roll Brawn + a relevant Ability. A cumulative Outcome of 6 across all attempts breaks a hole large enough to move through. See the extended system text for GM guidance on various tools.
You may sculpt your walls, domes, or tunnels as you create them, without any additional activation time or cost.
Possibilities coalesce. The Dream Engine's PDL (pronounced 'pedal') Drive selects a place the user Could be, and then resolves it into a place they Are, with at least 90% accuracy. This is probably not what Heisenberg intended with his indeterminacy principle.
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Spend an Action. Select a Location which is at most 100 feet away horizontally or 25 feet away vertically. If you have activated this Effect 10 times it the last minute, you must Exert your Mind. This Effect cannot be used unless you are not currently being observed.
You jump to the chosen location. If jumping blind or landing precariously, must roll Dexterity + Athletics to land safely. You will never take fall Damage from successfully landing a jump made with this Effect.
You may opt to trade your free movement for a Super Leap if you are jumping less than 50 feet or if you are closing a gap to an opponent and spend your Action on an attack.
Instead of physically passing through the air, you are teleported directly to your destination. You may hop to the other side of walls or escape grapples but can travel no farther than 3 feet when doing so.
The Dream Engine is calibrated to detect the final, lingering brainwave patterns of the departed, ready for their integration to the Unconscious Collective. As of Firmware Update 2.0, it can also detect the delta wave fluctuations caused by the presence of objects of paranatural or alien origin.
Upon activation, faint blue waves pulse from the device, cascading across the ground, becoming more vibrant around any detected objects in the area.
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Exert your Mind and spend an Action.
You automatically detect all objects with Alien properties and humanoid remains within 300 feet of you for the next hour. You have a clear sense of both the distance and direction towards any detected items. When you detect objects, instead of learning nothing about them, you may observe each object with all of your senses.
The Dream Engine reinfuses dead flesh with the spark of old muscle memory. The body remains frail, but the mind is made keen as ever, drawn from the swirling collective unconscious. Minds in shattered shells are not long for this world, but for your purposes, they will last.
Exert your Mind and spend one minute. Select a Dead target within arm's reach with at least half its skeletal structure remaining.
Your target rises as an Animate being. They remember their past life and retain their same personality. They can communicate as they would have been able to in life. They may roll Mind, Difficulty 8, to resist any commands you give them.
The creature lasts one hour until it dies again. It is revived at full health. Any Injuries it had in life are not accounted for when determining its penalties or progression towards re-death, though they may affect its ability to perform certain actions at GM's discretion.
Raised creatures have their Abilities set to the same that they were in life. Their Attributes are all the same as they were in life, except Dexterity, which is fixed at 1. Raised creatures have access to any Effects they had in life.
You may end this Effect prematurely as a Free Action.
This Effect ends if you are stunned, fall asleep, go unconscious, are incapacitated, die, or if your total Stress ever exceeds 5.
Every three hours the device restarts a process, as the final red light on it dims to nothingness, a slight hiss is heard if one listens closely. As over the course of thirty seconds the three lights regain their glow, first the red, followed by the yellow and green lights, ten, twenty and thirty seconds respectively, before the lights dim back down to their normal passive brightness such that only those looking closely can notice the three lights.
Within the first ruin that Russ found that contained the documents that sent him down the path that he is currently on, was the diagram for a device that is meant to connect to the spaces between the C1 to T12 vertebra. the device serves a three-fold purpose. The first being that it powers the rest of the planned augmentations to the human body through intercepting the signals that the body sends related to pain and stress. The second is that it forces the body and mind to always operate at peak performance regardless of physical or mental damage, Finally the device is the interface for future enhancements and allows those that undergo such complete transitions to maintain a sense of "humanity" or "wholeness" through sanitizing incoming and outgoing signals such that the mechanical enhancements and the fragile and erratic biological mind don't become adversarial and work together as a complete whole. Unfortunately, those who created the blueprints for this device made it far too good at its job with it attempting to prevent any signs of injury from reaching the brain, thus requiring an immense willpower to even recognize when one is beginning to bleed out. With the device even going so far as to change the information that is coming from one's own senses such that they can't even perceive the injury in themselves should it be pointed out to them. While the device is attached to the spinal column it can be removed through a delicate and time-consuming process of unlinking the parts from the body, but should one violently be ripped out of a user's body the damage could prove to be debilitating.
You gain the following benefits as long as you are wearing this Artifact.
Your Stress from Injuries and Mind Damage is reduced to 0.
Anyone who touches this Artifact will notice it warping their mind and may drop it. If they choose to hold or use it, they immediately receive the following Trauma: Delusion: Unbreakable (When this character receives an injury, they must roll self control to become aware of it. This character may not take actions to stabilize or heal any injury they are unaware of and must roll self-control to accept treatment of such injuries from others). If they lose possession of this Artifact, the Trauma heals over the course of the next day.
This device is a piece of chrome the size and shape of the back of a spoon. When placed against the skin, small hypodermic needles sprout from the device and attach it to the user's bloodstream. There, it filters and releases lifesaving drugs into the bloodstream, granting complete immunity from contracting new diseases and added resiliency in all other cases.
WARNING: The immunizing drugs have been shown to reduce inhibitions in test subjects.
You gain the following benefits as long as you are wearing this Artifact.
You get +2 dice to any Body resistance rolls you make. You also gain the following effects:
The mad scientist can craft steel helmets that protect their wearers from mental influence and attack.
You gain the following benefits as long as you are wearing this Artifact.
You get +0 dice to any Mind resistance rolls you make. You also gain the following effects: