Population Census "The Dreamlands are not quite the inverse of the physical lands, but all entities in one exist in the other."

1
Requires Seasoned
The power to detect all nearby Alien beings.
Used by Minerva McAlaster, Created by Polymorph.
(You must actively and obviously be using silver fox pendant.)

Minerva lets out a breath, kneeling down and closing her eyes. For a moment, she slides into the Dreamlands, and examines the records there, reading the most recent census. As time is malleable in the Dreamlands, it just happened.

Using the system text Alien:
Alien: Something that is not of this world or not common to this world.


Exert your Mind and spend two Actions performing the following ritual: kneeling down, and closing her eyes, meditating for a short moment. You must actively and obviously use silver fox pendant to activate this Effect. You must maintain Concentration while activating this Effect, and it fails if you are interrupted. You must make a Trauma roll when you use this Effect. Its Difficulty cannot be reduced by any means.

You automatically detect all Alien beings within 1 mile 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, as well as their distance and direction.

You receive a common name for each being you detect.


Community Activated Gifts

Exert your Mind and spend an Action. You must actively and obviously use Imperial Raiment to activate this Effect.

Summon a single Stray Dog 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 2 minions active at a time.

  • Attacking: Minions can make melee range attacks with 4 dice to attack.
  • Body: Minions have 4 Body.
  • Movement: Minions can move 45 feet per Round as Free Movement, and double that when performing an all-out Sprint.
  • Intelligence: They have dog-level intelligence, but are capable of communicating information back to you. They cannot actively use Equipment.
  • Actions: Minions cannot dodge or Defend. Any Perception checks they make are rolled with 8 dice.

Possession of this Power grants the following Trauma at all times: Animal Lover.

On the backpack:
It's easy enough to mistake for any backpack at all, and Delphyrion has not put a label on it. They have lost quite a few beakers and pens to it whenever they mused about their next experiment, as they often reach epiphanies by saying, "If only I had [food item]". Perhaps that's why the artifact works this way.

On food quality:
For some reason the output quality directly ties to the price of food in Orlando. So, put a 5-cent pencil in the backpack, and you'll get a 5-cent quality potato fry.
Also, yeah, make sure it's 5 minutes exactly. This is a theoretical number; no one has tried to test its limits, hence its reference to Schrodinger.
(On a critical fail, one fails to retrieve the food in time and it is either underdeveloped or spoiled.)

On the black goo:
Delphyrion themself isn't sure what it is, nor do they ever remember to analyze it. It doesn't seem to leave any residue on the backpack itself, though it stains quite horribly on porous material including skin. With enough washes it should go away.
If consumed, call the Poison Control Center and pray.
(Also pray that you are not Dephyrion, the chemist who has had 0 interaction with any religion at all, and therefore still thinks priests can get pregnant.)

On Madness:
One gets uncontrollably angry at the sight or mention of any food that did not come out of the backpack. It feels as if one is running a state-of-the-art restaurant, yet people line up for the nearby McDonald's instead. Delphyrion feels this way towards content farms like 1-minute arts.

Expend a point of Battery and spend 1 minute. Roll a single D10 as a critical failure check. If you roll a 1, the Effect fails, and you think the backpack has created the intended food item. In fact, it appears and smells more delightful than it should, to the point that you are urged to eat it right away no matter what. You will develop Vertigo upon eating the food as it turns out to be incredibly poisonous.

Choose an Object which could fit inside a regular backpack (up to 27 liters). It must be Non-Alien and generic. You cannot create explosives. You cannot create firearms.

Roll Intellect + Crafts to fabricate your chosen Object. The Difficulty is assigned by the GM and depends on the specificity of your chosen Object. The created item lasts 2 hours.

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: No Outside Food - upon sight or mention of food that you did not create, roll Self-Control to contain the urge to cannibalize yourself or the person who brought up the food. If they lose possession of this Artifact, the Trauma heals over the course of the next day.

  • The Difficulty for the fabrication roll increases based on specificity. Something like a "shirt" would be Difficulty 5, whereas "Police uniform" would be Difficulty 9. The Outcome determines overall quality and how well the item fits the request.
  • You can fabricate a container of something so long as it contains a single type of thing (such as a tank of water) or it is designed to be packaged together (such as a first aid kit).

Exert your Mind and spend an Action. Roll Brawn + Athletics at Difficulty 6.

If you succeed, you create a barrier around yourself, which absorbs the next Outcome + 4 Damage. The Damage reduction from the barrier is applied before Armor. You may only have 1 active barrier at a time.

The barrier will fall after two hours, or if it absorbs the full amount of Damage. When a barrier falls, you cannot use this Effect again for a minimum of 2 Rounds.

That to destroy earth's music is to create confusion;
that to wreck her appearance is to blind us to beauty;
We indulge her children within us.

Spend a minute to activate.

You become disguised in a manner of your choosing. The disguise lasts for two hours, or you may end it early at will.

The new appearance may have a different sex, age, and race to your own, and you may alter height by up to a foot and your weight by 50%. Your disguise cannot directly mimic an existing person. You may change the appearance of your outfit. A disguise cannot affect your Attributes or other stats.

Anyone who witnesses you during this Effect's activation will almost certainly be disturbed to see black veins pulse, and skin slacken and fold away.

This Gift's Cost is capped at 2 and cannot be increased further.

This Effect ends if you take an Injury or are stunned or incapacitated.

  • While you may alter your outfit's appearance, this does not grant or store equipment.
  • When narrating disturbing content, be cognizant of your group's tone and accommodating to those who would like to "fast forward" through the description.

Take a Severity-1 Injury and spend one minute. You must use up blood, paint and paper in order to activate this Effect.

Summon a single samurai at your location. They will last until they are destroyed. They are controlled by the GM but will follow any commands you give. This Artifact may have at most 1 minion active at a time.

  • Attacking: Minions can make melee range attacks with 6 dice to attack and +2 Damage.
  • Body: Minions have 8 Body.
  • Movement: Minions can move 45 feet per Round as Free Movement, and double that when performing an all-out Sprint.
  • Intelligence: Minions have dog-level intelligence, and cannot communicate back to you. They may use equipment.
  • Actions: Minions cannot dodge or Defend. Any Perception checks they make are rolled with 8 dice. Your minion is able to Melee with a 7-dice pool.

After you finish activating this Effect, you cannot move quicker than a walk (max 15 feet per Round) for one minute and suffer a -1 dice penalty for an hour. Exhaustion’s penalty and duration stacks with multiple activations.

You may only use this Effect once per day.

  • Exhaustion penalties and duration stack. If you activate this Effect or another Effect with Exhaustion, your penalty will worsen, and the duration is increased by one hour.

Stock Activated Gifts

Exert your Mind and spend an Action.

You automatically detect all illegal materials within 50 feet of you for the next hour. You have a clear sense of both the distance and direction towards any detected items. You do not learn any details about the detected items.

  • This includes any objects that come into range during activation.

Exert your Mind and spend an Action.

Whenever you use your Movement, after all other calculations, the distance you may travel is doubled.

  • Any Encumbrance penalty to your movement still applies, but you do not suffer from any sort of exhaustion.
  • Damage from a collision depends on your speed at the time, as well as what you hit. GM's discretion, but generally moving faster than a car on the freeway and hitting a dense, solid object like a wall or a tree should be lethal. Mundane armor will not apply, but any supernatural forms of protection will.

Exert your Mind (unless you win a coin flip) and spend 1 minute. This Effect cannot be used unless you drink blood directly from a human until it injures them. Choose a specific Injury on yourself that has not yet been treated with this Effect and roll Brawn + Occult 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 you drink blood directly from the vein.

  • When narrating disturbing content, be cognizant of your group's tone and accommodating to those who would like to "fast forward" through the description.
  • Unstabilized wounds do not degenerate during treatment.

Exert your Mind and spend 1 minute. You must use up at least a gallon of water in order to activate this Effect. Choose a specific Injury on yourself that has not yet been treated with this Effect and roll Brawn + Survival 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.

  • Unstabilized wounds do not degenerate during treatment.

Exert your Mind and spend an Action.

Your senses are enhanced in the following way. Lasts for three hours.

  • Thermal: You are able to "see" heat signatures within your line of sight.
  • Hearing: You automatically know the origin location of any sound you hear, and you can tell which Action caused the sound.

  • Your thermal vision allows you to judge temperatures of surfaces fairly accurately as long as they are within livable temperatures.