The beastmaster shouts, and their human voice cracks into a deep, bestial roar. Their body swells with muscle, clothes melting into a thick pelt of fur. Seconds later the beastmaster is gone, and massive grizzly bear stands in their place.
Beastmasters may also take the form of any large animal that is local to their current environment.
Exert your Mind and spend an Action to activate.
You transform into a brown bear or any region-appropriate large animal for one hour or until you choose to end the Effect. You cannot transform into a flying creature. See the Extended System text for stats.
While transformed, you cannot use any equipment (including Artifacts and Consumables), and you do not have access to any of your Powers. Any equipment you are wearing transforms with you.
Injuries and Wound Level are carried over between forms. However, transforming can never kill you; you merely remain Incapacitated until your Injuries are sufficiently healed.
Possession of this Power grants the following Trauma at all times: Intolerance for society. When you are in a situation with strict social protocols (like a trial or a formal dinner) roll Self-Control not to enter a flight or fight response.
A blue light pulses from your hands
Exert your Mind (unless you win a coin flip) and spend 1 minute.
You may cure any Non-Alien diseases, toxins, or poisons afflicting yourself even if you have not diagnosed or fully understood it. You may cure diseases or poisons even if they are not treatable through modern medicine. During treatment, the malady you are treating does not progress or cause additional Damage or other effects.
You may treat Alien maladies and curses. If there is some method to cure them, you learn what it is. If the malady does not provide its own means of curing it, it is cured.
Whenever you cure a disease, poison, or toxin, if it had inflicted any Damage, you are healed for half that Damage.
Apex Cryptid: The Primordial Shift
The moment you activate this power, a deep, guttural resonance hums through the air—like a chorus of ancient, forgotten beasts calling from the dark corners of the earth. Your body twists and stretches, bones popping and muscles coiling into unfamiliar shapes. Your skin ripples with patterns that seem to mimic the natural camouflage of apex predators long thought extinct. Scales, fur, or chitinous plates may shimmer across your form, shifting with every step as though the essence of cryptids from across the globe surges through your veins.
Your human instincts dull as primal instincts take hold. Words become foreign; the structure of language replaced by a heightened awareness of your surroundings. The scent of fear hangs like a thick mist, every sound sharpened into a potential threat or prey. Your hands become crude tools—talons, claws, or massive, rugged fingers that can grasp but never delicately control.
Stress dissolves as the primal mindset overtakes you. The noise of human worries is replaced with the singular clarity of survival and dominance. In this form, you are an echo of the unknown, the whispered terror of campfire stories given flesh.
Apex Cryptid → Amalgamation of Cryptids: The Unveiling
If the battle turns against you—if pain strikes deep and the cryptid essence within senses true danger—a terrifying metamorphosis unfolds.
Your body convulses, and the injuries that should cripple you instead fuel a grotesque evolution. Limbs elongate and twist, growing jagged with predatory adaptations stolen from creatures lost to time. Gills flare along your neck. Serrated fangs emerge where human teeth once sat. The eyes of countless predators open across your body, each gazing with predatory instinct.
For one breathless minute, you become the embodiment of earth’s cryptid lore—a walking nightmare of mismatched power. Movement becomes instinctive, effortless. Every step feels like a hunt, and every breath crackles with the potential of the predator’s pounce. The air itself seems to recoil, bending to your unnerving presence
Exert your Mind and spend an Action.
You transform into Apex Cryptid for 30 minutes. You have access to all of your Powers while you are Apex Cryptid, and you can use your equipment. The Injuries and Battle Scars of your Alternate Form and your true form are tracked separately.
While transformed, your Attributes are the same. Your Stress is reduced by 2.
If you take Injuries totaling 4 Severity or higher while transformed, you recover all Injuries and change into Amaglamation Of Crytids Across the earth. All dice rolls are at -1 Difficulty for the next minute or until this Effect ends. Cooldown 1 day.
Your alternate form renders you unable to speak any human language and incapable of fine object manipulation. You can only hold or grasp objects in a crude, clumsy way.
After this Effect ends, you cannot move quicker than a walk (15 feet per Round) for one minute and suffer a -1 dice penalty for an hour.
The Necromancer stands over a corpse and makes a series of grandiose lifting gestures. The corpse rises from the ground as though suspended by invisible strings, barks a pained groan, and lands on its feet, now a full-fledged member of the living dead.
Take a Severity-1 Injury and spend an Action. You must use up a corpse in order to activate this Effect.
Summon a single zombie 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.
A magic word is spoken from an ancient Atlantian Grimoire in a forgotten dialect, and a magical, shimmering barrier of force surrounds the caster. When the barrier is struck, a bolt of lighting reaches out from the barrier and strikes the attacker.
Exert your Mind and spend an Action or Reaction. You must actively and obviously use An Ancient Atlantian Grimoire held in one hand and used as a spell book to activate this Effect. Roll Intellect + Occult at Difficulty 6.
If you succeed, you create a barrier around yourself, which absorbs the next Outcome +4 Damage. Any Damage absorbed by the barrier is reflected back to the attacker, up to a maximum of 4. Their Armor applies in full. The Damage reduction from the barrier is applied before Armor. You may only have 1 active barrier at a time.
You must maintain Concentration while using this Effect. The barrier will fall if you are interrupted, 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.
Expend a point of Battery and spend an Action. This Effect cannot be used unless can only be performed in the dark..
You phase out of reality for up to 10 minutes. During this time, you cannot affect the outside world but may take mental and self-targeting Actions. You cannot move. Nothing can interact with you in any way.
When you activate this Effect, you may limit its duration to a period of your choosing. If you are able, you may also end it as a Free Action on your initiative.
The vampire sucks a copious amount of blood from a human and replenishes their own cursed flesh.
Exert your Mind 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.
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 yourself.
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.
The Witch wiggles her fingers at her broomstick, and it leaps from the ground with a whoosh of wind. She may then hop on and fly around. It’s so fun, she often finds herself cackling uncontrollably.
Exert your Mind and spend an Action. You must actively and obviously use a broom to activate this Effect. This Effect remains active for two hours.
As long as you are conscious, you are immune to falling Damage and may hover in place mid-air. 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:
By focusing, the Thief may shroud their hands in shadowy tendrils that seek nearby objects like static-charged hairs. They cast themselves across any surface the Thief touches, acting as anchors that allow the Thief to scale even the sheerest walls.
Exert your Mind and spend an Action.
You may move easily and without a roll in any of the following situations. Lasts 2 hours.
The Vampire may channel their inner beast and take the form of an animal. It is said they may transform into either a wolf or a bat. If used too often, the Vampire risks losing themselves to their beast forever.
Exert your Mind and spend an Action. You must make a Trauma roll when you use this Effect. Its Difficulty cannot be reduced by any means. If you fail or Botch, you receive one Mind Damage and a new Trauma.
You transform into a vampire bat or a wolf until you transform into something else or choose to return to your original form. See the Extended System text for stats.
While transformed, you cannot use any equipment (including Artifacts and Consumables), and you do not have access to any of your Powers. Any equipment you are wearing transforms with you.
Injuries and Wound Level are carried over between forms. However, transforming can never kill you; you merely remain Incapacitated until your Injuries are sufficiently healed.
Possession of this Power grants the following Battle Scar: A disfigured face with bat-like ears.
The detective squints, drawing on years of police experience to find any hidden drugs, weapons, or other illegal objects, no matter how well-hidden.
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.