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Exert your Mind (unless you are Sculpting) and spend one minute. Select a Location within arm's reach. You must be in an area abundant with Underground.
Select one of the following alterations to create out of stone 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 indefinitely 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.
Pale glowing outline around a person protected by the barrier. If person protected by the barrier is hit, the place where he was hit glows more brightly briefly, before going back to normal. If barrier is broken, the outline itself seems to shatter.
Many scholars of occult ran into a problem of not being able to put up a powerful enough barrier, either due to low mana capacity, low mana throughtput, troubles with concentration, or all three at the same time. But what if instead of creating one strong barrier, you just created multiple weak ones in several layers?
Of course, you could always run into a problem of creating a barrier too weak to fully protect against any significant attack, and you are sacrificing some of the advantages of single-layer barrier, like it restoring itself to full power every three-five seconds, or being able to create one in a split second if necessary. On the other hand, you receive what is effectively a barrier which does not requires your full focus to keep it functioning, and can be created even if you aren't the most capable magic-wise, and will be able to provide at least some level of protection against any attack, unless you manage to completely botch the rite
Exert your Mind and Spend an Action to activate. Select a Animate target within arm's reach. Roll Intellect + Occult at Difficulty 6.
If you succeed, you create a Barrier around your target, which absorbs the next Outcome Damage. The Damage reduction from the Barrier is applied before Armor, and is treated like Armor by any effects such as Armor Penetration. You may only have 1 active barrier at a time.
The Barrier will fall after an hour, 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.
She pulls out a firework and uses it to rocket herself into the air
Exert your Mind (unless you win a coin flip) and spend an Action to activate. Select a Location which is at most 50 feet away horizontally or 10 feet away vertically. You must use up Fireworks in order to 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.
The Assimilator reaches their tendrils into their victim's brain, manually combing through their memories using the collected brain power of themself and their victim, all the while, those on the outside see their victim twitching, their eyes flickering at the speed of the memories viewed.
Activation Roll: Charisma + Assimilation (11 Dice)
Exert your Mind and spend an Action. Select a Living, Animate target within arm's reach. 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 must maintain Concentration while the effect is active. Roll Charisma + Alertness at Difficulty 6. The target may resist by rolling Mind at Difficulty 6.
If you succeed, you are able to view your target's memories. If you fail, the target knows you're attempting to read their memories.
You may ask a number of specific questions about their memory equal to your Contested Outcome. For example, “what is their computer password,” “What were they doing at 4:00PM yesterday,” etc. You cannot get answers to broad, analytical questions like “are they a good person?” or “what are their plans for the future?”
Each question you ask and memory you replay takes a single Round to read.
This Effect is not obvious, and the only sign you are using an Effect is the target blinking twice in quick succession. If someone suspects that an Effect was used, they must roll Perception + Alertness, Difficulty 8 to pick up on your Tell.
The user yanks on the top and tiny particulates of various diseases stream out toward the target. Thousands of different plagues and illnesses permeate the body and cause the target to wither and runes made of sores form across their chest. The gown makes the shoulder of the wearer weak and prone to dislocation. The diseases will be cleared by a simple red delicious apple, decreeable by reading the runes.
Exert your Mind and spend an Action. Select a Living target within 25 feet. This Effect cannot be used unless the target has hurt anyone. Roll Intellect + Medicine at Difficulty 6. Your target may resist by rolling Body at Difficulty 8.
If you succeed, the target is afflicted with a Condition that causes any number of the following symptoms:
The affliction is not treatable by modern medicine. It may be diagnosed by rolling Intellect + Occult at Difficulty 6, and can be cured by eating a ‘red delicious’ apple.
Anyone who touches this Artifact will notice it warping their body and may drop it. If they choose to hold or use it, they immediately receive the following Battle Scar: shoulder subluxation. If they lose possession of this Artifact, the Battle Scar heals over the course of the next day.
At some point—somewhere between all the nights she spent curled next to Bapha's twitching tail and the mornings spent cleaning blood off her shoes—Vita started hearing the way monsters think. Not words, exactly, but wants. She doesn’t bark commands. She echoes them, speaks them in the secret tongue stitched into fur and scale. It was never a spell. It's just that the beasts listen now. And worse, they obey.
Bapha hasn’t noticed. Or maybe he has, and he’s pretending not to.
When Vita activates this effect, the creature’s body convulses—like it’s being yanked on invisible wires. Its limbs twitch violently. It tries to resist, but there’s no fight in its eyes anymore—just a blank glaze and eerie stillness. The world around her goes muffled, like someone turned down the volume of everything except the sound of wet breathing and bone creak. People watching know something unspeakable just happened. They can’t say what. But they know.
This isn’t training. It’s contamination. The longer Vita spends tethered to Bapha, the more the line between her and the creatures blurs. This Gift didn’t come from study or practice—it seeped in like mold in forgotten places. Now when she looks at a beast, it knows her. Not as prey, not as predator—something worse: kin.
And she doesn’t even realize it’s happening.
Every command is a breach. Every flick of her fingers etches new cracks in the divide between mortal will and feral instinct. One day, she might give a command she doesn’t mean to. And something ancient might answer back.
Exert your Mind and spend an Action. Select a Non-Alien Creature within 20 feet.
For the next day, you may issue specific commands to your target which they will be compelled to follow.
Your commands can be complex and multi-layered, though they must still be specific. You cannot make them obviously endanger themselves or violate their instinct for self-preservation. The effects of the command will fade after a day has passed.
Anyone who witnesses you during this Effect's activation will almost certainly be disturbed to see the creatures, body spasms as if it’s fighting for its life before it ultimately loses, said fight and its eyes glaze over anyone who witnesses has a sense that I have done something horrible to said creature and Is immediately off put by me.
The musician assumes a powerful stance and strums a mighty power chord on their guitar. A blast of sound waves radiate outwards, destroying all who dare face the power chord directly.
Exert your Mind and spend an Action. You must actively and obviously use your instrument to activate this Effect. The area within 25 feet of you immediately and obviously becomes imminently dangerous. Roll Charisma + Performance at Difficulty 6. Targets inside the radius may attempt an appropriate Reaction at GM’s discretion. Finding a physical barrier to use as cover will cut total Damage taken in half (applies after Reaction roll but before Armor).
If the Outcome is positive, your blast hits everything within 25 feet of you with Damage equal to your Outcome + 4. If you botched the activation roll, you will also take full Damage from the blast, otherwise it will not hurt you.
You may only use this Effect once per day.
The spy is able to transform an ordinary ballpoint pen into a monitoring device that is inconspicuous enough to blend in to most settings, but advanced enough to allow 360 degree surveillance as well as audio capture, which is sent to their smartphone.
Exert your Mind and spend an Action. Select a Location within 10 feet. You must actively and obviously use a ballpoint pen to activate this Effect.
You place a ward, which is fixed to its initial location. You can hear and see through the ward as though you were standing at its location. Your wards last 3 hours. You may have at most 3 wards active at once.
The ward requires Concentration to monitor, though it will remain active until you deactivate it. It can be detected with a roll and destroyed through mundane means.
The mad scientist produces thorium cores that can be used to upgrade tools and other devices. The core supercharges the item, increasing its quality and rendering it indestructible for a period. However, once the core runs dry, the object is rendered less useful than it was before. The core crackles with blue electricity while active.
Spend 1 Action and use up this glowing blue disk. Select a non-Alien Device within arm's reach. Cannot be used to improve Armor.
Lasts the next two hours. Your target receives 2 extra dice to all actions taken for its intended use. Attacking with an upgraded weapon grants +2 Weapon Damage instead of additional dice. While it is upgraded, the item cannot be destroyed.
After the Effect ends, any upgraded targets suffer a -2 dice penalty until they are either repaired or upgraded again.
The detective can flash their badge and bark out orders to a person or a crowd, and the target will have trouble ignoring their command.
Exert your Mind and spend at least one Action. All Sapient targets within 20 feet of you are affected. You must actively and obviously use a police badge to activate this Effect. Your target cannot be engaged in Combat. Communicate a command to your targets. Roll Charisma + Influence at Difficulty 6. Any affected targets may resist by rolling Mind at Difficulty 7.
If the contested Outcome is positive, your targets will be compelled to follow your command to the letter-- but not necessarily the spirit-- of the command until they have completed it or for your Contested Outcome in minutes. 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. 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-destructive. Commands may force a target to violate one of their Limits, and they will need to make a Trauma roll once the suggestion wears off.
The Witch summons a crow, whispers a message to it, and sends it off to deliver her words. Half an hour later, the crow arrives at the recipient and repeats her message aloud in its croaking, animal voice.
Spend an Action. 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 may send a single message to your target. It can be as complex or as large as you like. It takes at least 30 minutes before it is received.
The message may be intercepted while in transit, and may be overheard, read, or otherwise understood by anyone near either you or the recipient. You must share a common language for your target to understand the message.
This Gift cannot have more than 3 Drawbacks, and its Gift Cost is capped at 2.