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.
Angel's body expands rapidly, starting from her lower legs to her arms to her head. Muscles becoming even more defined than they already were, growing a few inches along the way. Her eyes are now a distinctive pale yellow with dilated pupils. The hands transforms into paws as her nails grows into long, angular claws.
After Angel had an experience of attempting to drink olive oil to "bulk up" as a replacement for other sources of calories, a distinctive feeling came over her; a clear switch presented itself in her head to exchange the calories she took in exchange for temporary gains. She also discovered that the switch only presents itself after taking 1200 or more calories, the amount of calories needed by the transformed body for a dietary snack.
Exert your Mind and spend a Quick Action to activate. You must use up 1200 calories of food 5 minutes prior to transformation in order to activate this Effect.
You transform into Were-Hyena for 30 minutes. You have access to all of your Powers while you are Were-Hyena, and you can use your equipment. Your Battle Scars, Injuries, and physical Liabilities are carried over between forms. While transformed, your Attributes are the same.
Your alternate form is its own deadly weapon. Unarmed attacks made in your alternate form deal +3 Bonus Damage (instead of the typical -2).
You do not suffer any Penalty while in your Alternate Form.
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.
You are incapable of fine object manipulation while transformed and can only hold or grasp things in a crude, clumsy way.
You consume the coke, snorting being traditional but pouring it down your throat works too. Suddenly, your body is supercharged with the power of Florida and Crackheads, your words becoming frenzied howling and grunting, and your body becomes able to take and give a beating.
Use up this gram of coke and spend an Action to activate.
You transform into a crackhead version of yourself for 3 minutes. You have access to all of your Powers while you are a crackhead version of yourself, and you can use your equipment. Your Battle Scars, Injuries, and physical Liabilities are carried over between forms. While transformed, your Attributes are the same.
Your alternate form is its own deadly weapon. Unarmed attacks made in your alternate form deal +3 Bonus Damage and Brawn does not act as Armor against them.
You do not suffer wound penalties while in your Alternate Form.
You cannot speak any coherent verbal language and must resort to other means of communication.
Exert your Mind and spend an Action to activate.
You transform into testing for 30 minutes. You have access to all of your Powers while you are testing, and you can use your equipment. Your Battle Scars, Injuries, and physical Liabilities are carried over between forms. While transformed, your Brawn is increased by 2 and your Dexterity is increased by 1.
Your alternate form is its own deadly weapon. Unarmed attacks made in your alternate form deal +3 Bonus Damage (instead of the typical -2).
Whenever you enter Combat, roll Mind, Difficulty 7. If you fail, you cannot choose which targets to attack.
You cannot speak any coherent verbal language while transformed and must resort to other means of communication.
Upon concentrating on someone's injury for a extended period of time, The Wendigo can force himself into a feeding frenzy in a moment of desperation, undergoing a transformation into a beast of terrifying origin. The cracking of bones and the stretching of skin as dark black fur grows and covers the head. His legs snapping into a more animalistic style, his skin on his skull seemingly vanishing as the bone forms into a nightmarish representation of a deer skull.
Nobody likes the sound of bones snapping, let alone watching such a thing happen. Watching someone be forced to contort in painful and unusual ways as their bones rearrange is something no man should see.
Exert your Mind (unless Seeing someone with a Severity 4 or higher injury) and spend an Action.
You transform into The Wendigo for 30 minutes. You have access to all of your Powers while you are The Wendigo, and you can use your equipment. Your Battle Scars, Injuries, and physical Liabilities are carried over between forms. Reverting from your Alternate Form cannot cause your existing Injuries to kill you. Instead, you remain Incapacitated.
While transformed, your Brawn is increased by 1. You do not suffer any Stress while transformed.
Your alternate form is its own deadly weapon. Unarmed attacks made in your alternate form deal +3 Weapon Damage (instead of the typical -1).
Anyone who witnesses you during this Effect's activation or for its duration will almost certainly be disturbed to see Watching a man turn into a beast mostly know in legends, hearing his bones snap as they stretch into a new form, its not meant to be observed..
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.
Whenever you enter Combat, roll Self-Control. If you fail, you cannot choose which targets to attack and cannot stop fighting until there are no targets remaining.
While transformed, you automatically fail any Mind roll to resist an impulse and suffer -3 dice on all other Mind rolls.
Jake tensed his body just as he was once instructed... before an overwhelming pain coursed through his body, feeling like he was burning alive from the inside out. He couldn't help but scream as he felt his back start to swell like a balloon, his skin darkening substantially as he held his head. He coughed up blood and bile as his arms began to unfold and expand, his skin growing soft and malleable - then the true horror began.
His body would swell and shrink, swell and shrink, like a mix between a bubble and a lung... And it kept growing. Eventually, it grew until it was twice his original size before unfolding into an array of flesh, bone, and blood, dancing and layering on itself as it took on a new, terrible form: his head was longer, like the Xenomorph if half of the back of its head was missing. His jaw opened and fell slack, easily going past a foot in length. His back was heavily arched into a slouching position as it looked incredibly swollen, spines protruding at random points from it as it's spine extended out before slowly retracting back in. Then there were his limbs... His arms were thin yet layered with muscle while his legs were spindly and long, his feet and hands now reduced to bone talons and claws respectively. Instead of a cry of pain, it let out a series of wet clicks before it's throat opened to reveal a flesh sack, which inflated as the thing let out a deafening roar, declaring dominance and a demand for bloodshed.
Exert your Mind and spend an Action to activate.
You transform into Abberant Humanoid for 30 minutes. You have access to all of your Powers while you are Abberant Humanoid, and you can use your equipment. Your Battle Scars, Injuries, and physical Liabilities are carried over between forms. While transformed, your Brawn is increased by 1 and your Dexterity is increased by 1.
Your alternate form is its own deadly weapon. Unarmed attacks made in your alternate form deal +3 Bonus Damage (instead of the typical -2).
You do not suffer wound penalties while in your Alternate Form.
Anyone who witnesses you during this Effect's activation or for its duration will almost certainly be disturbed to see His body twisting, stretching, and folding out like someone knitting his corpse into a new form..
Possession of this Power grants the following Battle Scar: The area of his chest where his heart is located is swollen, the veins around it inflamed and a deep red and blue, making it hard or impossible to hide..
While transformed, you automatically fail any Mind roll to resist an impulse and suffer -3 dice on all other Mind rolls.
You cannot speak any coherent verbal language while transformed and must resort to other means of communication.
The werewolf unleashes their inner beast, transforming into an imposing hybrid of human and wolf. Their head reforms into that of a wolf, robbing them of speech but bestowing a maw of deadly fangs. Grey fur sprouts from their body as it swells with muscle, ripping any tight-fitting clothes. While transformed, the werewolf is impulsive and driven more by instinct than logic.
If The Werewolf is struck my moonlight, they are compelled to transform.
Exert your Mind and spend a Quick Action.
You transform into a werewolf for 3 minutes. You have access to all of your Powers while you are a werewolf, and you can use your equipment. Your Battle Scars, Injuries, and physical Liabilities are carried over between forms. Reverting from your Alternate Form cannot cause your existing Injuries to kill you. Instead, you remain Incapacitated.
While transformed, your Brawn is increased by 2 and your Dexterity is increased by 2. You do not suffer any Stress while transformed.
Your alternate form is its own deadly weapon. Unarmed attacks made in your alternate form deal +3 Weapon Damage (instead of the typical -1).
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.
While transformed, you automatically fail any Mind roll to resist an impulse and suffer -3 dice on all other Mind rolls.
Possession of this Power grants the following Trauma at all times: Whenever you are struck by the light of a full or gibbous moon, you must roll Self-Control to resist transforming. Triggers a max of once per night.