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.
A hole opens in the middle of my chest, four little tentacles come out of it ready to capture anything I point them towards.
Spend an Action.
You may withdraw an item from your stash, or add an item that is within 30 feet of you to your stash. You may only stash targets which are not possessed by someone else, and are freestanding and unattached.
You may store Objects in your stash, each no larger than something which could fit inside a briefcase (15 liters), and you may store up to 3 things at a time.
Anyone who witnesses you during this Effect's activation will almost certainly be disturbed to see a small opening in the middle of the chest, muscle torn with bark enveloping it and small tentacles coming out.
The damage of the protective spell reaches a peak, with all targets intending to harm Cassie suffering a gruesome fate.
This Effect activates whenever you deal at least a Severity - 3 Injury to a target with your Inversion Touch or a target takes 3 or more Mind Damage from your Mind Breaker effect. It does not require an Action or Exertion. Your target should be intuitively based on the triggering event. This Effect cannot be used unless anyone besides the triggering creature(s) (except you if you botch the activation roll) takes no damage from this effect. The area within 10 feet of you immediately and obviously becomes imminently dangerous. Roll Dexterity + Athletics 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 10 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.
Anyone hit by the blast may roll Body at Difficulty 7 as a Free Action, and reduce their Damage taken by the Outcome.
Anyone who witnesses you during this Effect's activation will almost certainly be disturbed to see the flesh of all affected targets invert.
The Colonel levels his ethereal Ember Spewer from across the field, gathering shards before firing. A thousand feet away an ally is saved from the swing of an axe, as it corrodes into dust, and the soldier wielding it suffocates till unconsciousness from the almost lethal embers.
You gain the following benefits as long as you are in the Fog Of War (amorphous) and engaged in combat with firearms.
+2 dice to all firearms rolls.
You also gain the following effects:
Jeremy Soap blows into a bubble wand, infusing the bubbles with his will. This causes the imbued bubble to launch at high speeds towards a target and slam into it, similar to a cannonball.
Exert your Mind and spend an Action to activate. Select a target within 300 feet. You must actively and obviously use Bubble Wand to activate this Effect. Roll Charisma + Influence Difficulty 6. The target may contest by rolling to Dodge or Defend as a Reaction, Difficulty 6.
If the contested Outcome is positive, the target takes that much damage plus 3. Armor is fully effective against this damage.
Eden scars from Cyber Genesis Begin to open up and those that are paying Attention will notice that the smart bugs and animals begin to run and the small plants immediately begin to decay as the field around him begins to mimic the same field that gave him his health scare.
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As the Zone covers more and more ground. Anything caught inside of it that does manage to stay alive is immediately hit with the sound of an engine or nuclear reactor running at full blast not allowing you to hear anything.
Basically, ever since Eden’s brush with cancer and his hazard surgery to try to fix said cancer His body has been changing more and more. The surgery initially restrained the effects and made him more resistant to radiation, but once the disease was “Cured” Or at least the harmful symptoms disappeared. He started to notice that his body physiology began to change more and more in the cybernetics he put into himself after the surgery began to evolve, as if they were alive. This development is his body. Airing out overflowing radiation that it produces
Exert your Mind and spend an Action.
You create a hemispherical dome of radiation originating at your Location, with a radius of 60 feet. and lasting for 5 minutes. While active, you are always fully affected by your zone as if you were standing in it. The area inside your zone is affected in any number of the following ways:
Any time someone leaves your zone, they remain affected by your Zone Effects for an additional 3 Rounds as if they were still within the zone.
Your zone blends with the environment, seeming to arise naturally from local effects. Observers who roll Perception + Alertness and achieve an Outcome 4 or higher notice that it is unnatural.
The mobster's been through tougher scrapes than this. A few cuts and bruises won't stop them.
You gain the following benefits at all times.
Your Stress from Injuries is reduced to 0. Does not reduce Stress from Mind Damage.
The Vampire has grown wicked fangs in place of their canines, allowing them to thoroughly drain a person of blood should they get ahold of one.
You gain the following benefits as long as you are biting and you are engaged in unarmed combat.
+2 dice to rolls for Attacking, Defending, and Clashing without a weapon. Unarmed attacks do +2 Weapon Damage (instead of -1).
You may Defend against melee, projectile, or firearm Attacks from any range and Clash with those in range of your Attacks. Attacking materials like steel or spikes will not Damage you unless it has an Effect that does so.
You also gain the following effects:
No terrestrial animal dares defy the will of the beastmaster. The beastmaster exerts their dominance over an animal by locking eyes and giving a primal cry. The creature immediately becomes docile and eager to please.
Exert your Mind and spend an Action. Select a Non-Alien Creature within 20 feet. This Effect cannot be used unless the target is a terrestrial animal.
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.
The Werewolf’s body, long caught in the crossfire between human and beast, has developed a powerful coping mechanism. It draws upon the conflict, healing severe injuries in a matter of days.
You gain the following benefits at all times.
Any Injury you receive from a source other than silver or fire. heals quickly, reducing its Severity by one level every 6 hours. Any Injuries you receive while this Effect is active do not deteriorate over time. However, any Battle Scars caused by such an Injury will remain unless it is Properly Stabilized as normal.
You may Exert your Mind and spend an Action to reduce the Severity of one of your Injuries by 2. Does not affect Injuries suffered as an activation cost for Effects.
Injuries you receive from silver or fire. are increased in Severity by 1.
The survivalist is adept at following an animal through any terrain. Once they find a recent track, they may focus their will to illuminate the trail of their target. Any part of the target's trail within eyeshot glows a bright, misty green. Even the trails made by vehicles the target was riding in are illuminated.
Exert your Mind and spend a minute. Select a Sapient target within 20 feet. You may select a target at any range if you use up fresh tracks of the target. At the end of your investigation, roll Perception + Survival at Difficulty 6.
You learn all the following information about your target:
The quality and specificity of information gained depends on your Outcome.
Any information you gather is revealed by illuminating the trail in a glowing light and made publicly available.
You cannot investigate the same target more than once per day.