Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

DragonParadox · Jun 25, 2022

Character Sheet

Name: Molly Carpenter
Age: 18
Gender: Female
Caste Mark: A Brass Sun in a Spiral of Jade Waves
Exp: 0
Essence: 4
Mote Pool: 18/18
Permanent Willpower: ●●●●●●●●●
Temporary Willpower: ●●●●●●●●●
Soak: 6 (Ebon Scales Underarmor)
Health Levels: 0//0/0//-1/-1/-1/-1/-1/-1/-1/-1//-4/-4/-4//Inc
Double slashes mark where your hit boxes are for the purposes of healing

Attributes

PHYSICAL

SOCIAL

MENTAL

Strength ●●●●●

Charisma ●●●●○

Perception ●●●●○

Dexterity ●●●●●

Manipulation ●●●●○

Intelligence ●●●●●

Stamina ●●●●●

Appearance ●●●○○

Wits ●●●○○

Abilities
(Bold are Favored Abilities)

TALENTS

SKILLS

KNOWLEDGES

Alertness ●●○○○

Animal Ken ○○○○○

Academics ●○○○○

Athletics ●●○○○

Crafts ●●●●○
Specialty: Mechanics

Computer ○○○○○

Awareness ●●○○○
Demonic Guide: DC -2

Drive ●○○○○

Finance ○○○○○

Brawl ○○○○○

Etiquette ●●●●●

Investigation ○○○○○

Empathy ●●●●●

Firearms ○○○○○

Law ○○○○○

Expression ○○○○○

Larceny ○○○○○

Medicine ○○○○○

Intimidation ●●●●○

Melee ●●●●●

Occult ●●●●●
Specialty: Kakuri the Night Realm

Leadership ●●●○○

Performance ○○○○○

Politics ●○○○○

Streetwise ○○○○○

Stealth ○○○○○

Science ○○○○○

Subterfuge ●●●○○

Survival ○○○○○

Technology ●●○○○

Backgrounds

Arsenal ●●● (Magi-tech Small Arms; Body Armour; Medical Supplies)
Black Market Access (Rare Metals)
Crafting Assistants ●● (More than Shoe Elves)
Cyberdevils ●●● (Intelligence ●●●●; Computers ●●●; Technology ●●●; Occult ●; Academics ●; Willpower ●●●●)
Demonic Guide ●●●●● (Demonic Aspect: Demon Weapon)
Mentor (Michael Carpenter) ●●●●●
Resources ●●●●(Chicago Synthetics)
Contacts ●●●● (William Olcott)

Inherent Bonuses
+2 to all Initiative rolls (Demonic Guide)
+2 to Social interactions with all Denizens of Yomi Wan (Demonic Guide)
-3 to all attempts to escape confinement (Charm)
+2 Dice to all rolls in sub zero temperatures (Charm)
+1 Die to Appearance+Intimidation when your armor is visible (Ebon Scales)
Parry difficulty reduced to 4 (Dark Sun Shield)
-2 to all DCs of social actions against lesser Creatures of Darkness (Charm)
-1 to all soak rolls (Charm)
-1 to all DCs when wet
x3 Movement speed natively (Charm)
Doubled result for initiative (Charm)

Shintai: Devil-Tyrant Avatar Shintai
Strength +1, Dexterity +4, Stamina +1

Demonic Aspect:
-Demon Armor (x2): +4 Soak
-Hardened Devil Body (x4): +12 Bruised Health levels
-Swift Stride: Movement speed and jumping distances are doubled.

Charms
Key Charms:

Lanka: Demon City of the Rakshas
Kakuri: the Night Realm

-No Category-

By feeding raw infernal Essence into any endeavor, the Demon Prince may perform feats far beyond mortal limits.

System: Select any single Ability when purchasing this Charm. At any time, the player may reflexively spend 1 Essence to add (the Attribute being rolled + the Ability in question) dice to all rolls using this Ability for (Essence rating + 1) turns in combat, or minutes outside of combat.
This Charm can be repurchased to unlock additional Abilities, but Essence must be spent to add dice to each Ability separately. The very first purchase of Key to the Kingdom unlocks all of the character's Key Abilities, but subsequent purchases only unlock one
Ability at a time.

The Infernal shapes her heart, soul, and Essence into the shape of a realm of her devising, featuring whatever oddities of geography or natural law suit her nature.
System: The Infernal crafts a new Hell-realm within her own Exaltation. By meditating in specific circumstances selected while learning this Charm (such as in perfect darkness, while covered in blood, or to the sound of screams) and making a Wits + Occult roll against a difficulty of her own Willpower (which acts as the effective Gauntlet rating for this internal realm), she may disappear into her Kingdom for up to five days, making it impossible to find her. She can linger no longer, however, and must spend at least that much time in reality before visiting again. Spending five full days within the Kingdom resets the difficulty and cost of her Shintai transformation.
By paying 2 Essence while crossing over into her inner landscape, the Infernal may also bring up to a score of willing, restrained, or unconscious individuals along with her. Visitors to the Kingdom may stay for as long as they wish (indeed, they may even become
permanent residents), and are free to depart whenever they desire – so long as they are able to walk to the border of the realm. While the Kingdom must be composed of geography which makes this possible, nothing stops the Infernal from importing soldiers to man guard posts, or adorning the realm with prisons, natural hazards, and the like.
While within her personal Hell, the duration of the Infernal's Shintai form becomes indefinite rather than scene-length: she may wear it until she chooses to dismiss it, or until it is destroyed.
Upon learning the King and the Kingdom, any Charm the Infernal knows which consigns a being to a particular Hell may instead be used to entrap them in the Infernal's Kingdom.
The Infernal must have an Essence rating of at least 3 to purchase this Charm.
Signature Effect: When the Infernal dons her Shintai form, and while that form persists, the world around her within (Essence x 500) yards warps and twists, gaining many of the features of her Kingdom. Any time the Infernal uses a stunt incorporating the features of her Kingdom, she reduces the difficulty of that action by one.

Pushing beyond her limits, the Infernal shatters the boundaries of her flesh, her soul, and the chains of fate to assume the ruling form of the Demon Emperor-to-come.

System: After having already donned her Shintai form, the Infernal may trigger a second, more radical transformation. This requires the expenditure of 1 Essence, 1 Willpower, and a successful Essence roll against difficulty 8. This is reduced to difficulty 7 if the Infernal has any dots in the Cult background, or difficulty 6 if she has Cult 5.

Her second-stage transformation builds upon her first, adding an additional +3 bonus to Strength, Dexterity, and Stamina, two more Bruised health levels, and three more Aspects, which must be chosen at the time of this Charm's purchase. Finally, select a second Signature Charm, which applies to both the second-stage transformation and the Infernal's base Shintai.
Donning the second stage Shintai form once again grants the Infernal a new, undamaged Health track. If she is destroyed in her Unbound Eschaton form, she is knocked back into her normal form and suffers five automatic levels of unsoakable lethal damage.
The Infernal must have an Essence rating of at least 4 to purchase this Charm. Succeed or fail, she may attempt her second-stage Shintai transformation only once per story.

Lanka

Though the Infernal may be battered and broken, she will not fall, nor give her foes the satisfaction of experiencing pain.

System: The Infernal reduces all wound penalties by one, her movement penalties do not degrade any further when Crippled or Incapacitated, and she does not fall unconscious when her Incapacitated health box is filled with bashing damage. This Charm's effects are permanent.

The Infernal seeds her attacks with the fire that began the world and which may very well end it: the poisonous radiance of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the legend-destroying power which erupted above the floodplain of Bangladesh, and which is now the dream secretly nurtured at the heart of Lanka. A target struck with this Charm dies from the inside-out as her flesh erupts into geysers of sinister emerald flames.

System: After successfully striking a target and inflicting damage with an attack, the player may reflexively spend 1 Essence to inflict (highest of Strength, Charisma, or Intelligence) levels of automatic aggravated damage.

The Infernal refuses, with utter and immovable implacability, to permit any force in the cosmos to gainsay her will.

System: Any attempt to cause or force the Infernal to betray, undermine, or abandon her Intimacies automatically fails. Furthermore, she may reflexively spend 1 Essence or 1 Willpower to become immune to all thought and emotion-altering magic for the rest of the scene.

The Infernal's resentment and anger manifests itself within her flesh, granting her demonic features.

System: Select one Aspect from the list of Demonic Aspects (with the exception of Hardened Devil Body, which cannot be chosen). The Infernal can manifest this feature for a scene by taking an action to concentrate and rolling her Essence rating against difficulty 7, or by reflexively spending 1 Essence. Her Demonic Aspects automatically manifest while her anima flares.

This Charm can be purchased a number of times equal to the character's Essence rating. If the Infernal has multiple Demonic Aspects, she can manifest as many as she wishes with a successful roll or Essence expenditure. If she wishes to suppress some or all of her Aspects when her anima flares, she must succeed at a Willpower roll against difficulty 7 to do so. These do not have to be the same as her Shintai Aspects.

Transcendent Anathema
Any attacks the Infernal possesses which would inflict lethal damage, inflict aggravated damage instead.

Flight
The Shintai is capable of flight at its normal movement speed, whether this is accomplished through wings or levitation.

Extra Limbs
The Shintai possesses more than the normal complement of arms and legs, or perhaps sports a prehensile tail or trunk, or perhaps can manipulate its immediate surroundings with telekinesis. When the Infernal takes multiple actions, each subsequent action raises its difficulty as normal but doesn't suffer a penalty to its dice pool.

The Infernal's flesh is fortified with the power to survive the very tortures of Hell.

System: The character permanently gains two Wounded (–2), one Mauled (–2), and one Crippled (–5) health levels.
This Charm can be purchased a number of times equal to the character's Essence rating. It only enhances the Infernal's regular health track, not her Shintai form.

The Infernal scribes a litany of the pain and hardships she has endured upon her heart and her very bones, fortifying her flesh against harm.

System: The Infernal permanently lowers the difficulty of all soak rolls by one.

The Infernal calls forth the shattered masonry and brazen decorations of Lanka and forges them into armor which adorns her flesh like a second skin. Ancient demonic script glows faintly upon this shell, incoherently attempting to speak of the glories of the Demon City.

System: Reflexively spend 1 Essence to activate this Charm. The Infernal adds the highest of her Strength, Stamina, or Charisma to her soak rolls for the rest of the scene, but raises the difficulty of all Stealth attempts by +1 due to the glowing script that adorns her armor.

Every drop of blood spilled in rage or hatred is a tiny prayer uttered to the Infernal, and she draws nourishment from such gifts.

System: The first time in the scene that the Infernal witnesses an act of violence – a serious one, one where someone gets hurt, bleeds, weeps – she regains 1 Essence on the spot. The Infernal cannot be the one to have instigated the violence, either by her own hand or through the direct actions of those following her orders. It must be a gift offered up to her by the world.

Kakuri

There is no oubliette so deep or dark, no Hell so vast and benighted, that it can hold the Infernal back from seeking her freedom.

System: The Infernal permanently reduces the difficulty of all attempts to escape from physical restraint or confinement by three. This Charm applies to physical actions (such as attempts to break out of a clinch or pick a lock), social actions (such as to seduce a guard), and mental actions (such as to come up with an escape plan, or determine the weak point in a wall).

The chill of the Night Realm forever abides within the Infernal's heart, leaving her inured to all lesser chills and discomforts. Indeed, they become a source of strength to her.

System: The Infernal is completely immune to environmental hazards based on freezing cold, from arctic nights to raging hailstorms. When she has to soak direct attacks based on ice or supernatural cold, she lowers the difficulty of her soak roll by two. Finally, the Infernal adds two dice to all rolls while subjected to cold-based environmental hazards from which she is protected by this Charm.

The Infernal's stare flays away all dissimulation. Shorn of pretense, she beholds her target at his very worst, plucking forth the knowledge of his greatest sin.

System: The Infernal spends a turn examining her target, and then her player spends 1 Essence and rolls Perception + Empathy against a difficulty of the target's (Wits + Subterfuge). Success tells her what deed in all of his history the target is most ashamed of. With three or more successes, the Infernal also learns some specific details of the sin (names, dates, things she might have seen had she been present to witness the act). With five or more successes she may even learn details the target himself doesn't know, such as longterm consequences of his sin which would further compound his guilt.

The Infernal breathes upon the black mirror of her heart, and becomes someone else.
System: The Infernal spends 1 Essence, spends a moment concentrating, and dons a perfect illusion which causes her to appear to be someone else. This can be either a real person, or a fictitious individual of the Infernal's devising. This illusion fools all five senses. Deduction may reveal the Infernal for an impostor, but imperfections in the disguise itself never will. The illusion persists until the Infernal reflexively dismisses it, or until her anima flares.

With a dismissive gesture, the Infernal befouls her target's efforts with the darkness and soul-biting chill of Kakuri.
System: Concentrating fully upon her target, the Infernal's player makes a Willpower roll against difficulty 7. If in combat, this is her action for the current turn. For each success she rolls, her target loses one die from whatever action they're currently attempting.

Monsters lurk in every heart. Empowering a person's inner darkness, the Infernal makes that monster real. She must approach a mortal and breathe into their mouth to use this Charm. Her victim's shadow twists and distorts, becoming a demon of Kakuri before climbing into the target's flesh and inflicting a brief, agonizing transformation.
System: Spend 3 Essence while within kissing distance of the target. Over the course of a few minutes of indescribably painful transformation, the Charm's victim becomes a bakemono – a sort of monster that shapeshifters know as fomori. The Infernal may reclaim her gift of inner darkness, making the bakemono human again, but this inflicts a number of levels of aggravated damage equal to (7 - the Essence the Exalt opts to spend undoing her curse).

The Infernal offers reprieve from the torments of existence. This is a trap, but one her foes may willingly step into.

System: The Infernal needs merely extend a hand for her target to understand that she offers relief from some ongoing source of misery. The Infernal may deliberately choose the sort of relief she offers, or may simply offer relief from whatever most torments the target. Examples of valid torments include the pain (and associated wound penalties) of injuries or chronic health conditions; a vampire's Clan weakness; a super natural being's susceptibility to frenzy; a derangement of the mind; the drawbacks of a demon's Torment; an ongoing curse laid by a magician; or anything else the Storyteller feels is in line with the above examples.

If the target accepts the Infernal's offer, she may sanctify the pact by spending 1 Essence. The target immediately ceases to suffer from the relevant torment. This reprieve lasts until for a number of weeks equal to the Infernal's Essence rating, or until the target refuses to do anything the Infernal tells him to do, whichever comes first. In no case does this Charm actually fix the problem – the target is still wounded, cursed, or deranged – it merely alleviates the symptoms for a while.

The Wicked City

The Infernal shapes whatever tools she finds herself in need of from the invisible wellspring of her own Essence, then allows them to dissipate back into nothingness when their presence no longer serves her.
System: The Infernal can work five times faster than normal when creating, modifying, or repairing something, or ten times faster than normal if it's something complicated and mechanical like a car or computer. Generally this Charm enhances Crafts or Technology actions, but might also apply to coding a program with Computer, creating explosives with Science, or preparing a meal. By spending 1 Essence or 1 Willpower, shecan manifest whatever tools she needs for as long

Pouring her Essence into a "smart" device, the Infernal usurps whatever is made in false imitation of a mind and makes it into her servant.
System: The Infernal spends a moment focusing on a computerized device within her line of sight, such as a networked computer or a car with onboard GPS, then spends 1 Essence and rolls Charisma + (higher of Computer or Technology) against difficulty 7. Success summons one of the numberless spirits of the Wicked City makes it into the Infernal's slave. While this Charm remains in effect, the targeted technology is
essentially "alive" and obedient to the Infernal's commands. Hollow Mind Possession's duration lasts as outlined on the following chart:

Successes	Duration
1	One Day
2	One Week
3	One Month
4	One Year
5+	Permanent

The Infernal combines conviction and Essence to bend the world around her to her implacable will. A faint shimmer in the air marks the use of this power as she lifts and moves objects telekinetically.
System: After a moment spent in concentration, the Infernal spends 1 Essence and rolls her Intelligence + Occult against difficulty 6. This Charm remains active for the rest of the scene, and allows her to telekinetically lift and move objects within her line of sight. If she tries to wrest an object away from another character, or perform fine manipulations, her successes form her dice pool to do so. Otherwise, her successes on the activation roll determine her strength in lifting and moving objects:

Successes	Maximum Weight
1	One pound
2	20 pounds
3	200 pounds
4	500 pounds
5	1000 pounds
6+	1000 pounds/Success

With 3+ successes, the Infernal can "fly" by moving herself around telekinetically. She may also grapple or strike her opponents using telekinesis, using a dice pool of Intelligence + (lower of Occult and Brawl or Melee). These attacks inflict bashing damage, and the Infernal's Temporary Willpower acts as her effective Strength value.

Whenever the universe dares to mar the Infernal's immaculate and ideal self, she may exert her will to reset herself to her default state of perfection.
System: Whenever the character is the subject of any supernatural power that seeks to transform, infect, taint, transport, or control her body or spirit, she may reflexively spend 1 Essence or 1 Willpower and roll Willpower against difficulty 7. Success undoes the hostile magic before it can finish affecting the Infernal, protecting her completely, and immunizes her against repeated attempts to exert the same sort of influence for the rest of the scene. Alternately, the Infernal can spend 1 Essence to radically accelerate her healing for 24 hours. So long as she takes no strenuous activity, the Infernal heals all bashing damage or one level of lethal damage per 15 minutes of rest. An hour of rest mends one level of aggravated damage.

The Infernal visits a deep place between nightmare and inspiration, and there she glimpses the dim shape of a horror with which to shake the pillars of Heaven. She casts her vision into the teeth of impossibility and shatters them with her Essence, laying bare a path to make the impossible real. Everything past that is just putting in the work.
System: The Infernal may Craft Splendors, Devices, Prodigies and Prodigies

The Infernal connects herself to the underlying structure which precedes all communication, and then networks those around her into that understanding as well.
System: The Infernal's player rolls Willpower against difficulty 7. Success allows her to speak the language at the heart of all languages for a scene. Anyone who hears her words comprehends them, and finds that any attempt they make to speak in her presence
comes out in the same ancient tongue. This enforced comprehension ravages the mind and body, and who hear the Infernal and respond to her suffer one level of bashing damage in the form of bleeding eyes and terrible headaches. The Infernal may spend 1 Essence to spare those she converses with this harm and the associated pain, should she feel magnanimous.

Hell of Boiling Oil

The Infernal's strength surges as though she were at the spiritual center of the cosmos so long as she rests within befouled or deadly liquid.
System: So long as the Infernal remains fully submerged in tainted or deadly liquid, she replenishes her Essence as though she were resting in a Dragon Nest and heals all bashing damage or one level of lethal damage every fifteen minutes. Examples of valid liquids might include raw sewage, the waters around the runoff pipes of Pentex chemical refineries, or a bathtub filled with bleach.

The Infernal is a sea monster, and the depths hold no terrors for her of any sort.
System: This Charm conveys the following benefits:
• All rolls made while the Infernal is wet (whether that means she's standing in the rain, submerged in water, has just stepped out of the shower, or has just upended a bottle of water over her head) are made at –1 difficulty.
• The Infernal can swim at three times her landlocked movement speed, and can breathe underwater.
• The Infernal can stand or move across the surface of any liquid as though it were solid ground, as she desires.
• The Infernal can survive unharmed in any sort of hostile aquatic environment, from the crushing depths of the deepest trenches to the boiling sea of fat and grease that is the Hell of Boiling Oil.
• The Infernal suffers no penalties or difficulties while attempting to perceive her surroundings while submerged. She can hear and see clearly around herself out to at least 200 yards despite impediments such as churning silt or being in the absolute darkness of the sub-light layers of the ocean.

The Exalt's habitual distrust makes her senses supernaturally keen and her sense for danger keener still.
System: Reflexively spend 1 Essence or 1 Willpower. For the rest of the scene, the difficulty of all Perception rolls drops by three, to a minimum of difficulty 3, and the Infernal adds her Perception to her base Initiative rating (in other words, Perception + Dexterity + Wits).

The Infernal may hide herself away within any body of liquid, no matter how small or shallow, vanishing even into a puddle or cup if need be.

System: The Infernal spends a moment in concentration, and then vanishes into her liquid hiding place at the end of the turn. She may see and hear anything that occurs nearby, as though through a pane of thin glass. While hiding, she cannot be detected by any mundane means, even by diving in after her. Nor does she enjoy freedom of movement herself: she is effectively dispersed into her hiding-place at the point of immersion. If her hiding place is disrupted or dispersed (such as by dashing out the contents of a cup of coffee, or someone drinking it), or else evaporates or otherwise vanishes, the Infernal is forcibly ejected.

Hell of Burrowing Maggots

The Infernal garbs herself in hellish authority; all lesser wicked things are like writhing worms or mere grains of sand cast before her, and instinctively recognize this imbalance.

System: Whenever the Infernal deals with a lesser creature of darkness than herself, she permanently reduces the difficulty of all social actions (including the activation roll of powers to suborn the will of such creatures) by two. "Lesser" creatures of darkness include all beings that qualify for that moniker which are of lesser power than ancient vampires, Maeljin Incarnae, Yama Kings, Malfeans, the greatest of Black Spiral Dancer heroes, other Exalted, and the like. Jaggling or Gaffling-level Banes and all fomori are always lesser beings.

Wheresoever there is neither hope nor respite, there the Infernal marks herself at home.
System: The Infernal needs never make a Survival roll to remain safe, comfortable, and fed in hostile, barren environments such as deserts, tundra, or areas of urban blight. The difficulty to feed and protect others in such environments is reduced by three (minimum of 3). By
spending 1 Essence, she becomes completely immune to environmental damage for the rest of the scene.

Opening her inner eye and attuning it to spiritual desolation, the Infernal gains the ability to detect potential servants or rivals, and to weigh the souls of those she meets.
System: Reflexively spend 1 Essence. For the rest of the scene, the Infernal becomes aware when she stands in the presence of any creature of darkness, though she doesn't inherently know what sort of supernatural being any given individual may be. Furthermore, by concentrating on a specific individual for a few moments and making a successful Perception + Occult roll against difficulty 6, she can behold the subtleties of their anima and learn their current emotional state, as well as some clues about their nature. If you wish to embellish this with aura colors and the like, a chart can be found on page 136 of V20.

The suffering of Hell is eternal, and as such, the Infernal preserves her flawed and decaying servants, that they might further serve her will.
System: Whenever a bakemono – a sort of cursed mutant that werewolves know as fomori – acts to carry out the Infernal's will, the various torments of its mutant state are held in abeyance. If its acidic powers normally rot its body from the inside-out, they cease to do so while it slaves on her behalf. If the spiritual corruption festering in its flesh is killing it with a variety of aggressive cancers, they go into remission. If the use of one of its powers normally causes it great damage and pain, it no longer does so. Even derangements of the mind inflicted by the creature's fallen state are temporarily set aside while it does the Infernal's bidding.

Hell of Being Skinned Alive

The Infernal moves with the ferocious speed of the killing winds of Hell.

System: The Infernal's movement speed is permanently tripled, and she doubles the result of all Initiative rolls. By reflexively spending 1 Essence, she can instead increase her movement tenfold for her Essence rating in turns. Outside of combat, her movement speed increases by one factor for every full minute she continues to run (so after a minute of running flat-out, her movement speed is quadrupled; after another minute, it is quintupled) until it caps out at a tenfold increase.

The Infernal's nature is that of the killing wind. Murder nourishes her, as it does the Hell from which she draws her power.

System: Whenever the Infernal murders a sentient being, the act nourishes her as though she had justeaten a four-course meal. If she slays a ghost or spirit, then she can reflexively roll Dexterity + Occult against a difficulty of its Willpower. Success conjures a vortex
of crimson flaying winds which slice its dissipating substance into stray motes of Essence. The Infernal regains 2 Essence, and the ghost or spirit is destroyed. Condemning a jaggling-level or greater spirit that is not a creature of darkness
in this fashion "rolls back" the number of times the Infernal is considered to have attempted to don her Shintai form during the current story by one, reducing its cost or difficulty accordingly (to a minimum of Essence 2, Willpower 2, and no roll requirement).

The Infernal wraps herself in a mantle of Essence which devours the attention of the weak-willed, making it feel like an impossible burden to notice the Exalt or interfere in her affairs.
System: Spend 1 Essence and roll Charisma + Etiquette against difficulty 4. Anyone whose Willpower rating is equal to or lower than the resulting successes cannot notice or acknowledge the Infernal unless she directly interacts or interferes with them. If she's taking some indirect action that would distress a character were he to acknowledge it (such as reading his diary or murdering his spouse), and that character has Willpower 5+, they can spend a point of Willpower and make a Willpower roll against difficulty 7 to attempt to acknowledge and confront the Infernal. This Charm lasts for one scene.

The first of all acts was to name. Each titan tearing themselves from the roiling chaos and defining themselves against it. A fact that no debasement could ever wholly take from them.

Echoing that act their heirs turn their hands on their own souls; naming each part according to their own design, thereby becoming in small part like those spoke themselves into being.

System: The infernal spends 5 essence and meditates for at least one scene, turning inwards to look at their own soul. Once there, she must make a willpower roll to search her own memories for something that defines her.

It can be nearly anything; important memories, strong beliefs, trauma, what matters is that it's true and personal to the exalt. This can be very unpleasant, and lower successes should result in facing less comfortable things.

Whatever she finds, the infernal then names and begins the process of shaping into a new facet of her soul. She may have no more than her essence rating of these. If one is destroyed its body dissolves into iron wind, and the element of her soul it embodies is numbed in whatever manner is appropriate until she repeats this ritual at +1 DC to find and reform it.

If the infernal dies instead her essence manifests as screaming wind and flees to the nearest clone, killing it in her place. This wounds the infernal's spirit, dropping her one essence level that may not be regained by any means before she reforms the facet she replaced.

Once named facets may be embodied or dispelled with a thought, supposing they aren't currently destroyed and are in the infernal's presence, but she must pay 1 mote to copy over any memories directly.

As they are subordinate faces of the infernal's soul she may not use her charms through them to directly affect the world. However, as they are still part of her they may still affect themselves.

In general this means abilities that solely impact the infernal and do not rely on active interaction. The infernal may not use excellency through a clone any more than she may fire a shotgun with her nose, but can defend any part of her 'face' with equal strength. When doing so they share the infernal's essence pool.

By default the clones form as an approximation of the infernal as a mortal, perfectly loyal to its creator, fully aware of what it is, and in possession of her memories. They each have Essence X 10 points to spend on merits and gifts at 1 point per dot.

Fivefold Courts of Fate

The Infernal's burning sight perceives the Essence patterns forming the structures of Creation. Recording those patterns, she erases the difference between the image and the object.
System: The Infernal touches a mundane object, spends 1 mote of essence, and rolls Intelligence+Awareness at DC6. Success allows her to deconstruct the object into a record of its essence pattern, and store this record in any digital storage device she has on her, at the rate 1 kilobyte per gram of matter in a form of a read-only file that cannot be copied or altered by any means (this is a perfect effect), but can be transferred as normal between devices. The objects stored in such a way can be rematerialized as long as the Infernal is touching the device storing them. Doing so erases the file from her memory or the storage device. The Infernal is instinctively aware of all objects she has stored in such a way on all digital storage devices in her possession.
Once the Infernal reaches essence 4, this charm can be repurchased in order to allow storage of magical objects. For magical items, the transfer rate is 5* dot rating of the object being stored kilobytes per gram, and the cost is 1+dot rating of the object being stored.

The Empress calls. Her subjects answer.
System: The Infernal spends 1 mote of essence and rolls Charisma + Leadership against the difficulty of local Gauntlet while concentrating on memories of those who serve her, or died in her her name. Upon success, up to the (successes) phantom copies of those she was thinking about rise from her shadow. They are only images and cannot affect the material world, such as opening doors or smiting someone with magic, but otherwise retain all memories and abilities, and can fully think, and communicate, and distract enemies in combat. The only person they can physically interact with is the Infernal, and the only objects they are other conjurations of the Infernal's anima, such as Tool Transcending Constructs. The summoned servants persist for a scene and then dissolve back into shadows they are. The originals might gain some vague dreamlike memories of their service - mechanically they receive half the experience their shadows got.
Upon reaching essence 4, the infernal gains an option to harden the light the servants are woven from to grant them material bodies by paying 1 additional essence per hardlight summon. If they are able to manipulate some internal energy reserve, such as chi, they are formed with an empty reserve of it.

The infernal finds her footing on the five pillars of her soul, dancing among them under the life giving light of the will that encircles them all.
System:
By leaning into the essence of one of the five pillar-cities of her soul the infernal may enter a shift centered on its themes. So long as she acts in tune with that nature success builds on itself; each overall check she passes using the relevant skills will add +1 dice to the pool for all of them up to +3.
She may only adopt one shift at a time, and actively using abilities in the domain of another city immediately resets the bonus and pushes her to that city's shift.
Rolls that use skills other than those outlined below do not end a shift, but only benefit from the bonus if clearly in line with the one currently in use.
The Red City: Law, Leadership, Craft, Melee, Alertness, firearms
The Emerald City: Academics, Occult, Science, Technology, Finance, Computer
The Sapphire City: Expression, Politics, Performance, Subterfuge, Athletics, Larceny
The Amethyst City: Medicine, Investigation, Empathy, Intimidation, Etiquette, Stealth
The Golden City: Survival, Brawl, Awareness, Streetwise, Animal Ken, Drive

The servants of the Empress and the extensions of her will. The Infernal makes this saying a reality.
System: The infernal spends 1 essence and rolls charisma+leadership. She then selects up to that number of willing allies within the scene to effect for the remainder of it. Whenever they make a roll, the Infernal may choose to act instead, substituting their appropriate dice pools for her own, and rolling at the same difficulty as they would have had. Multiple actions performed through this Charm suffer a climbing dice pool penalty similar to normal multiple actions rule.
The Infernal and her proxies get the ability to communicate telepathically, and the Infernal may roll Perception+Awareness at difficulty 8 to access the senses of her proxies.

The Qiao of the Mo Kung

Sweating a sheen of unholy brass wrought from the fires of their Essence the Infernal transmutes her form to more than human resilience, able to shake off even more punishment.
System: Spend 1 Essence and roll Willpower against DC 8; each success increases your Stamina by one up to a maximum of 8 for one scene

Sorcery

•••• The alchemist can now raise attributes above the normal human maximum of five, adding a total of two dots across attributes for up to a scene, though these often require exotic components that cannot simply be purchased. Other formulas are more potent as well, and made much more easily: second rank creations can be made with a travel kit now.

Formulas known

Tier 1 Formulas

Factory Fog and or Alchemical Aerosol Mist
Unbreakable Mirror: a mirror that cannot be smashed, chipped or otherwise broken by normal force.
An incredibly strong super glue, more potent than even the strongest commercial epoxies.

Tier 2 formulas

Malcoffee: A vial of liquid that allows the drinker to go a week with only a single hour of sleep per night without penalties.
Healing: In addition to the effects of Speed-Healing, this potion heals up to two bashing or lethal levels immediately.
Speed: Though it shares a name with a common drug, Speed is not chemically related to it. It is much safer, and just allows the user to run twice as fast for the duration of one scene. However, this is still exhausting, and after the scene, the user makes a Stamina check (difficulty 6) or else suffer -2 on all physical die rolls due to exhaustion for the next hour.

Tier 3 formulas

Astarte Venerian: A Series of nacreous Potions and Lotions that move the user closer to the perfected ideas of beauty in all aspects charm, wit and attraction. Similar to the library background for abilities and Spheres, this decreases the Xp cost of Social attributes, lowering the XP cost by one per day to a minimum of 1XP. In the case of Appearance it can automatically increase after Current rating weeks.
Nabu Mercury: Strange seemingly liquid silver pills that sharpen the senses and mind in all facets, taken 3 times daily At the rising, crowning and drowning of the sun. Similar to the library background for abilities and Spheres, this decreases the Xp cost of Mental attributes, lowering the XP cost by one per day to a minimum of 1XP.
Prima Metallum: A metal that is stronger than titanium but as workable as aluminum, that retains an edge perfectly almost forever. Armor made from it gains an extra soak die against basing and lethal without additional restriction, melee weapons gain +1 damage and -1 difficulty to hit

Tier 4 formulas

Aelgean Marble: An oddly warm Stone formed from a viscous yellow bright concoction taking the form visually similar to Sunburst marble allowing the possessor of the stone to resist passive forms of harm that detract from health such as Poison. This lowers the difficulty to resist Poison by one and adds a dice to the resistance roll on successful creation for every two successes after another dice is added.
Magic Cleaner: A clear liquid that when poured over an enchanted object removes the magic from it. This functions similarly to unweaving with the number of dice used identical to the number of successes during the potion's making. If drunk by or injected into a magic user, the potion instead acts as a difficulty adder, with each two successes beyond the first one adding one level of difficulty to any magic using roll by said person. The effect is identical to getting drunk, and lasts as long as it takes the potion to metabolize (same time frame as strong alcohol)
Bodybuilding: For Stamina+3 hours, the user has two dots added to their Physical Attributes. During this time, the Attributes may be above 5, and the user will be extremely hungry as their metabolism tries to keep up.

Counterspells are the simpler form of countermagic. Here, the sorcerer just attempts to blunt the incoming effect, sapping its strength and possibly even causing it to fail. A Wits + Occult roll at difficulty 8 cancels successes one-for-one. If the sorcerer scores enough
successes that their opponents effect fails, all costs paid for it are still paid. The sorcerer can spend a Willpower point to aid countermagic, but they must achieve one natural success for it to work at all: simple force of will cannot work unless channeled through a ritual.

Acquired Counterspells:

Human: This covers mortal magic, that is magic that is drawn and shaped by mortal intent, be it the internal powers of the psychic or the channeling of a sorcerer or wizard
Vampires: ????

Sapphire Ritual of Exorcism

The sorcerer adorns a chamber with ritual implements reflecting the five elements, the sun, the moon, the stars, and the grave, then slowly focuses her Essence into a purifying mandala of absolute reality which splits apart any unnatural joining of matter and spirit.

System: The character enacts an hour-long ritual, then spends 5 Essence and makes an Intelligence + Occult roll against difficulty 8. Success ends any form of possession afflicting the ritual's subject, ejecting the possessing spirit or shade. Because of the ritual's length, its subject must usually be restrained in some way if they don't consent to the exorcism. This spell terminates possession by spirits and ghosts, mind and
spirit-riding with powers and so on.
It immediately evicts demons from their hosts (whether that be mortal flesh or a graven idol), and can even separate spirits bound to the souls of their victims– although host suffers 10 dice of lethal damage as the Bane rips its way free of their flesh, rolled at a rate of one die per minute over the course of 10 agonizing minutes.

Calling the Calibration Gate

The sorcerer offers her Essence to the four points of the compass, then strikes the ground. When she straightens, an ancient, crumbling archway stands before her, granting passage into the otherworlds.

System: Spend 4 Essence and make an extended Intelligence + Occult roll (difficulty 7). Upon accumulating five successes, the Exalt summons a gateway which allows anyone who walks through it to pass into the Spirit World or even should they be so bold into the howling madness of Outside. The Calibration Gate remains present for a number of minutes equal to the sorcerer's Essence, at which point it vanishes as suddenly as it appeared.

Awakened Eye of the Dragon

This hour-long ritual awakens the spiritual Essence of a Dragon Nest and grants its blessing to the Exalt and her companions for one full cycle of the moon.

System: Spend 5 Essence to begin the ritual, and roll Wits + Occult (difficulty 7) to contest with the spirit of the Dragon Nest. It is otherwise identical to the Rite of the Opened Caern (see Werewolf 20th Anniversary edition, p. 206).

Intimacies
Charity Carpenter Love/Resentment
Michael Carpenter Love/Admiration
Harry Dresden Frustrated Crush/Hero Worship

Merits/Flaws
Enemy ● ● (Knights of the Blackened Denarius)
TBA

Nightmares
The memory of your experience in Arctis Tor haunts you, nightmares of what might have been had you not found your power then, not only your fate, but that of your mother and Harry. Upon awakening, you must make a Willpower roll (difficulty 7) or lose a die on all actions for that night. A botched Willpower roll indicates that, even when awake, you still believe that you are locked in a nightmare.

Vengeful (Fetches)
You have a score to settle with the spirits of terror for all you have suffered, and given they are monsters that feed on terror you see no reason not to settle it. You may temporarily resist your need for vengeance by spending a Willpower point.

Touch of Frost (Lessened)
You bear with you a touch of uncanny chill, a pleasant enough feeling on a warm summer's day, but in the dead of winter one is well reminded that the season has teeth.

Anima Control
The Exalt's anima is restrained until they have spent 4 Essence in a scene

Brigid's Heir
Sometimes in dreams touched by fire green and gold Molly bears witness to an age unspeakably ancient. Once per story, she may buy an ancient sorcery spell without needing a mentor, grimoire, or other reference.

Once per scene The Infernal may replenish two points of Essence whenever she learns secretive or forbidden lore of the supernatural world, or binds an unwholesome being into her service.
Solars, Infernals, Alchemicals, and Dragon-Blooded gain (3 + Essence rating) points of Essence when the sun rises each day, whether they can see the sunrise or not. Abyssals, Lunars, Sidereals, and Liminals gain the same amount at sunset.
If an Exalted character begins a scene at 0 Essence, she gains 1 Essence.
In the Nevernever, Solars, Lunars, Sidereals, Infernals, Alchemicals, and Dragon-Blooded gain 1 point of Essence every three hours.

Anima Power: While intensely studying an object, situation, or individual that is within her line of sight, the Infernal may spend 1 Essence and ask one question about it,which the Storyteller must answer honestly. The Infernal can only ever use this power a single time on any object, situation, or individual. When the character's anima is flaring, great staring eyes open within its emerald flames, and the Infernal becomes impossible to ambush or strike with an unexpected attack, even if her foe is invisible.

Gear:
Daemon Weapon

Does STR +2 Lethal Damage
Drawing the blade as part of and attack is done as if the infernal has the weapon to hand at all times
Cannot cut, burn or otherwise harm you allowing for stunts that cannot be done with common weapons
As it is a portion of your soul and exaltation attempts to break or sunder it are practically impossible and attempts to disarm you of limited use as you can dismiss and redraw the weapon with an action.
If the weapon is ever outside the range of where your anima would burn it is automatically returned to the depths of your soul in three rounds

Clippy, demonic assistant currently invested in your phone.

Provides quick access to online publicly available information so long as she has an internet connection along with minor quality of life improvements like a reliable alarm a reminder for appointments.
As she does not need to have the screen or buttons light up to be active she can surreptitiously record everything happening in the same room as her while being to all mundane senses off
The phone itself still needs to be charged at the same rate as normal, though even when the battery is empty, or the phone actively turned off Clippy remains active, though unable to act. She calls the state 'the least of torments', which you think means boring.

Companions

Name: Lydia
Age: 15
Gender: W
Willpower: ●●●●●●●●●●
Essence: 4
Mote Pool: 11/8
Soak: 2
Health Levels: 0/0/0/0/0/-1/-1//-2/-2//-5/-5/5/-5//5/Inc

Attributes

PHYSICAL	SOCIAL	MENTAL
Strength ●●●●●	Charisma ●●●●○	Perception ●●●○○
Dexterity ●●●●●	Manipulation ●●●●○	Intelligence ●●●●●
Stamina ●●●●●	Appearance ●●●●○	Wits ●●●●●

(Divine Attributes are Bolded)
Abilities

TALENTS	SKILLS	KNOWLEDGES
Alertness ●●○○○	Animal Ken ●●○○○	Academics ●●●○○
Athletics ●●○○○	Crafts ○○○○○	Computer ○○○○○
Awareness ●○○○○	Drive ○○○○○	Finance ●○○○○
Brawl ●●●○○	Etiquette ●●○○○	Investigation ●●○○○
Empathy ●●●○○	Firearms ○○○○○	Law ○○○○○
Expression ●○○○○	Larceny ○○○○○	Medicine ○○○○○
Intimidation ●○○○○	Melee ○○○○○	Occult ●●●○○
Leadership ○○○○○	Performance ○○○○○	Politics ●○○○○
Streetwise ○○○○○	Stealth ●○○○○	Science ●○○○○
Subterfuge ●○○○○	Survival ○○○○○	Technology ●○○○○

Anima Power
Ankou's Eyes:
By spending 1 Essence the Ankou's Daughter can force any ghost withing her line of sight to manifest in the material world and become vulnerable to mundane weapons. After (Essence) rounds in combat or minutes outside of combat the ghost may attempt to become immaterial again, by rolling his Pathos until he gains a number of successes equal to 2x the Exingent's Essence score.
Further, while her Anima flares all ghosts in its light become clearly visible.

Backrounds:
Ressources 4
Familiar 1 (Raven)

Mentor 1 (Arawn)
(To note, this does not mean he is a bad or weak mentor, but he seemed very much the type to let Lydia figure out her answers by herself. She could propably increase this backround, representing convincing her dad to help her more)

Merits/Flaws:

Vanilla (1 pt. Flaw) Oh my gods, you're such an innocent! In a world filled with sex magick and power plays, you're the little lamb who's strayed far away from home. Jokes get past you, clues escape you, and references to anything rawer than a Disney flick go straight over your head. Maybe you grew up in a secluded place with overprotective parents; or you could be in denial about the things you see all around you because life can't possibly be that twisted… can it? Regardless, hold firm to your innocence. Once it's gone, it ain't never coming back again!

Prestigious Mentor (1 pt. Merit) Your Mentor (as in the Background Trait of that name) has a reputation that benefits you as well. When you're making social rolls to invoke your influential teacher, reduce the difficulty by -2. Of course, some folks will be somewhat less than impressed; for rolls that involve rivals or enemies of your mentor, add +2 to the difficulty unless that mentor scares the shit out of them… in which case, you had damned well better be able to live up to the fear his name invokes!

Natural Linguist (2 pt. Merit) You're especially good at understanding how people communicate. Every purchase of the Language Merit (see above, and Mage 20, Appendix II) secures two languages for you, not just one. You also get three bonus dice when making rolls based upon clear communications, typically ones employing Art, Expression, Etiquette, Leadership, and other Traits that involve "speaking their language" to impress someone else.

Acute Senses (1 pt Merit): You see with unusual, though not necessarily unnatural acuity -2 to all DCs involving sight

Self-Confident (5 pt Merit)
Those of divine blood are naturally confident, you are counted exceptionally so even among their ranks. When spending Willpower to gain an automatic success, you don't even need to lose that point of Willpower unless: The Willpower-gained success is the only success you
get for that action or… the difficulty for that action is 5 or less. This Merit kicks in only in challenging circumstances, and tasks with a difficulty of 5 or lower are just too easy to demand help from your character's self-confidence.

Regal Bearing (1 pt Merit)
Aristocratic charisma is your birthright. Although you might not actually hail from a noble family, your presence radiates dignity. Posture, features, tone of voice, aura of dominion – you're got them all. People defer to you as a reflex; subtract -2 from the difficulty of your Social-Trait rolls whenever you're trying to make an impression, and while certain folks will want to take you down a few pegs on general principle, most people are inclined to respect you even if they don't necessarily like you.

Investments:
Supernatural Awareness: Always with an ear to the currents of power you are rarely caught off guard and often the first to sense danger and opportunity. Roll Perception+Awareness (Difficulty 7) to notice the spiritual feeling of a place and to notice nearby magical effects, demonic power etc.
Marble Flesh: With a thought you can harden your flesh to living stone, potentially shrugging off even the more grievous of wounds. Make a willpower roll (Difficulty 6). If you succeed you gain +4 Soak against all damage for a scene

Charms:
Excellence of the Tireless Psychopomp (•)
The Exingent can draw on their divine Essence to fullfill its eternal duties with skill and power beyond any mortal.
System: The first time the character purchases this Charm, it may be applied to any of her Divine Attributes. At any time, the player may reflexively spend 1 Essence to add (Current Willpower) dice to all rolls using a relevant Attribute for (Essence rating + 1) turns in combat, or minutes outside of combat. This Charm can be repurchased to unlock additional Attributes, but Essence must be spent to add dice to each Attribute separately

Speaker to Crow and Hound (•)
The Exigent has a natural connection to certain animals, particularly those associated with Death. This includes Hounds, Corvidae and some cats.
System: The Exigent can always be understood by the animals and they are usually inclined to fullfill her requests within the limits of their own comprehension.
By spending 1 Essence the Exigent can build an obviously supernatural connection to a single present animal, allowing her to share its memories and thoughts and to give it much more complex instructions for one scene.

Open the Way (••)
The Exigent has an affinity for the opening of otherworldly paths.
System: Spend 1 Essence and roll Perception+Occult (Difficulty local Gaunlet-rating) to open a Way. This can stay open for the rest of the Scene and be passed by entities from both sides.

Rest-Granting Strike (••)
The Exigent can send a creature to permanent rest.
System: When the Exigent slays any being, the player can opt to roll Wits + Occult (difficulty 6). Doing so prevents spirits (below Incarna-level) and ghosts from ever returning or reforming, prevents any ensouled being from becoming a wraith. The Exigent gains 3 Essence on the spot if the annihilated being was in any sense immortal, such as a spirit, ghost or vampire. Furthermore, the Abyssal can reflexively spend 1 Essence to gain the ability to strike and damage intangible beings for the rest of the scene, so long as she can perceive them

Chariot of the Earth (•••)
With a gesture of her hand the Exigent raises the earth to carry her on to her target.
System: Spend 1 Essence to conjure a wave of earth that can carry the Exalted and (Essence +1) passengers at up to 60mph. The earthwave leaves no traces and is in no way limited by its own size, allowing it to be ridden through narrow corridors.
When the Exigent wishes she can use the earthwave as a weapon, striking with Dexterity + Athletics at a target and dealing 5+Essence Dice of Bashing Damage on hit.

Thoughts of Oak Defense (••)
The Exigent solidifies her desire and duty, pushing away any externally-imposed thoughts or feelings.
System: Reflexively spend 1 Essence to utterly reject all thought and emotion-altering magic from a specific character or source for the rest of the scene.

4x Oxen Body (•)
One who draws power from the Grave is not so easily cast into it
System: Add 1 Bruised and 1 Crippled Health level to your Healthtrack.

Hunter's Bolt (••)
The Exigent concentrates her Essence into killing projectile of some kind: perhaps a blast of pale flames, perhaps otherworldly lightning, perhaps a ghostly arrow. System:
Roll Dexterity + Athletics (difficulty 5) to aim the attack. The bolt has a damage rating of 5 (lethal) and a range of 40; reflexively spending 1 Essence makes this attack damage aggravated for the next (Essence rating) turns.

Authority of the Psychopomp (•)
The Exigent is clad in the mantle of Authority over the dead, they respect and fear her instincivly.
System: Whenever the Exigent deals with a restless dead (both ghosts and physical dead such as Black Court Vampires), she permanently reduces the difficulty of all social actions (including the activation roll of powers to suborn the will of such creatures) by two.

Command the Dead (•)
Exerting the combined pressure of Essence and will, the Exigent may order the bodies of the fallen to stand and do her bidding.
System: The player spends 1 Essence and rolls Charisma + Leadership. If attempting to usurp control of a zombie or similar mindless corpse-servant from another necromancer, the difficulty is the controlling character's Willpower. If attempting to exhort a corpse to stand up and serve her, the difficulty is 6. A zombie created or commandeered with this Charm will obey the Exigent's commands to the best of its very limited abilities. Zombies animated by Command the Dead lose their animation after one cycle of the moon unless stationed within a Dragon Nest, whose power may sustain them indefinitely.

Flawless Hunter's Eye (•)
While Exigents Anima allows her to see the immaterial clearly, there are still times when unveiling her full power would be unwise, so she merely sharpens her own eyes.
System: Spend 1 Essence, for the rest of the Scene all Perception rolls are taken at -2 Difficulty and she only needs 1 Success on an Awareness roll to notice the exact location of an immaterial presence, allowing her to use her Anima-power on it.

Righteous Lion Defense (•)
The Exigent feels the call of duty and family in her Essence and will not be swayed from her path.
System: Any attempt to cause or force the Exigent to betray, undermine, or abandon her Intimacies automatically fails

Impervious Skin of Stone Meditation (••)
The Exigent draws the solidity of stone up into her flesh. She must be in contact with stone or soil to use this Charm. Traditionally this is accomplished by standing upon the bare Earth or a stone floor, but the Exigent carry a small rock in their pocket, or wear a precious stone on a ring in order to use this Charm at any time.
System: Reflexively spend 1 Essence to activate this Charm. The Exigent rolls (Stamina x 2) dice to soak damage for the rest of the scene.

Carriage of the Ankou (•)
The Exigent has a marked vehicle that appears at her call. Traditionally this was a black coach, but today it may well be a car or motercycle.
System: Spend 2 Essence marking a vehicle or mount that you own. Afterwards a whistle is enough to call it to your side, where it will appear in three turn's time. The appearance is not very noticable to those not expecting to see supernatural effects, a car might simply be in a parking spot that was previously empty while nobody looked there.
You can only change the marked vehicle once per story.

Companions of the Hunter (••••)
The Exigent may lay her blessing on an Animal she associated with, permanently empowering it as a part of her hunting party.
System: Choose a friendly Animal that falls either under Speaker to Crows and Hounds or that is a horse and spend 5 Essence while spending at least 2 hours paining its fur or feathers with magical symbols in woad.
The Animal gains 30 XP that it can freely spend on attributes and skills (including on greater Intelligence) and (5+Essence) points it can spend on Special Advantages (From Gods and Monsters).
A creature can only benefit from this effect once and the Exigent can only have (Essence*2) Animals blessed like this at the same time.

Warding of Divine Ancestry (•••••)
The Exalted solidifies her Essence to resist hostile magic and the powers of chaos.
System: Whenever the character is the subject of any hostile supernatural power that seeks to transform, infect, taint, transport, or control her body or spirit, the difficulty to do so is raised by 1. If affected anyway, she may spend 2 Essence and roll Stamina + Occult against difficulty 8. Success shatters the magic, protecting the Exigent completely. Since this expenditure isn't reflexive, the Exigent may spend a few moments fluctuating in mid-transformation or teleportation, as her Essence battles with the magic seeking to suborn her.

Akashic Root Methodology (••)
The Exigent walks in the footsteps of dead giants, and the memories of the mortal dead shorten her path to enlightenment.
System: In the presence of appropriate resources, research and scholarly rolls progress ten times faster than normal, and benefit from a -1 DC reduction in difficulty, minimum DC3. Alternatively, spend 1 Essence to roll Intelligence + Academics at DC5; success locates pertinent information instantly.
Requires access to a library, archives or collection of cooperating experts, whether mortal or not, with plausible access to the relevant information. Computers and networked devices also count, as long as the information is not hidden/encrypted/passworded.

The Qiao of the Mo Kung

A sheen like the moon at twilight rising falls over the form of the Exigent hardening like steel as her essence is tempered by will
System: Spend 1 Essence and roll Willpower against DC 8; each success increases your Stamina by one up to a maximum of 8 for one scene

Sorcery

Counterspells are the simpler form of countermagic. Here, the sorcerer just attempts to blunt the incoming effect, sapping its strength and possibly even causing it to fail. A Wits + Occult roll at difficulty 8 cancels successes one-for-one. If the sorcerer scores enough
successes that their opponents effect fails, all costs paid for it are still paid. The sorcerer can spend a Willpower point to aid countermagic, but they must achieve one natural success for it to work at all: simple force of will cannot work unless channeled through a ritual.

Acquired Counterspells:

Spirit: This covers beings wholly of the Spirit world, which may not enter and influence reality save by taking some aspect of it, from elementals to ghosts to demons even onto the Fallen themselves, though rare is the mortal sorcerer who dares contest their will with his own
Human: This covers mortal magic, that is magic that is drawn and shaped by mortal intent, be it the internal powers of the psychic or the channeling of a sorcerer or wizard
Fae: Those beings which can freely pass from the shallowest layer of the spirit world into reality, the fae be they Summer Winter or Wyld are bound by ancient law to answer when they are called to speak no ontruths and to their nature be bound. Thus to break the power of the fey, when it can be done at all is more akin to persuading it that is had been woven ill then simply to cut though the web

Essence Regain:
3 +Essence each Midnight
Regain 2 Essence once per scene when bringing a restless dead to final rest, slaying a Necromancer or giving a dying person the last comfort.

Inventory
Jade Talisman ●●●

Name: Tiffany 'Lash' MacNeil
Age: Aeons/1982/3
Gender: W
Willpower: ●●●●●●●●○○
Faith: 3 (3/3)
Permanent Torment: 3
Temporary Torment: 2/10
Soak: 3
Health Levels: 0//-1//-1//-2//-2//-5//Inc
Attributes

PHYSICAL	SOCIAL	MENTAL
Strength ●●●●●	Charisma ●●●●○	Perception ●●●●○
Dexterity ●●●●●	Manipulation ●●●●○	Intelligence ●●●●●
Stamina ●●●●●	Appearance ●●●●●	Wits ●●●●○

Abilities

TALENTS	SKILLS	KNOWLEDGES
Alertness ○○○○○	Animal Ken ○○○○○	Academics ●○○○○
Athletics ●○○○○	Crafts ○○○○○	Computer ○○○○○
Awareness ●●○○○	Drive ○○○○○	Finance ●○○○○
Brawl ○○○○○	Etiquette ●●○○○	Investigation ●○○○○
Empathy ●●●○○	Firearms ○○○○○	Law ○○○○○
Expression ●○○○○	Larceny ○○○○○	Medicine ●●●●○
Intimidation ●●○○○	Melee ○○○○○	Occult ●●●●●
Leadership ●○○○○	Performance ●○○○○	Politics ●○○○○
Streetwise ○○○○○	Stealth ●○○○○	Science ●●●●○
Subterfuge ●●○○○	Survival ●○○○○	Technology ○○○○○

Demonic Powers
Immunity to Mind Control and Possession
Resistance to Illusion: Demons can always roll Perception+Awareness (Dif 7) if in the presence of any illusions or supernatural concealment. If the roll is successful they see through the artifice.
Resistance to Lethal Damage: The demon can soak lethal damage while in the Apocalyptical Form
Healing: Spend one Faith point to heal either one level of Lethal Damage or all Bashing Damage, this takes a turn of full concentration without other actions
Supernatural Awareness: The demon can always roll Perception+Awareness (Dif 7) to notice the spritual feeling of a place and to notice nearby magical effects, demonic power etc. Weaker than the Sight, but constant
Lores:

• READ EMOTIONS
This evocation allows the Defiler to draw a person's deep-seated emotions to the surface, allowing the demon to gain greater insight into the subject's thoughts and desires by studying her body language and expressions. The victim is completely unaware that she is being "studied" in this way. To her, it is as if the Defiler is reading her mind.
System: This evocation works on only one mortal at a time. Roll Perception + Empathy. Each success is a bonus die added to all Social rolls directed at the mortal for the duration of the scene, or until the demon switches her attention to a new victim.
Torment: Monstrous demons are more adept at drawing out a victim's dark nature and fueling it in the process. The subject comes away from an exchange entertaining thoughts she hadn't dared contemplate before. A resisted Willpower roll is made for mortals targeted by the high-Torment effect of this evocation, with the difficulty equal to the Defiler's Torment score. If the roll fails, the mortal is driven to act on her darkest desires (making her boss pay for all the years of verbal abuse, for example, or entertaining the affair with a co-worker she's resisted for so long). The effects of this evocation last a number of days equal to the Defiler's Faith score.

• • EMPATHETIC RESPONSE
This evocation permits the demon to read a subject's emotions and desires and react to them without thinking, molding her behavior to conform perfectly to the subject's expectations. The subject thinks the demon is everything she expected or dreamed of, banishing any suspicion, hesitation or fear.
System: Roll Manipulation + Empathy. If your total successes equal or exceed a mortal's Wits score, the mortal reacts to your character with complete trust, obeying any reasonable request your character makes. This evocation can be directed at only a single individual at a time. The effects last for the duration of the scene or until your demon turns his attention to a new victim.
Torment: Monstrous demons use this evocation to inspire fear instead of affection. They mold their behavior to speak to a victim's worst fears, becoming the type of person that the mortal dreads most. If your successes equal or exceed the target's Wits, the mortal is completely intimidated by your Defiler. She takes no action against your character, and she leaves the area if at all possible. Any Intimidation rolls directed at the target are resolved with a difficulty of 4.

• LIGHT
This simple evocation allows a demon to fill an area with pale silvery light, akin to moonlight. The light seems to emanate from the area's surroundings, allowing individuals to move and act in the illuminated area without penalty. This evocation also has a more tactical application, permitting the demon to stun or disorient opponents with intense, blinding flashes.
System: Roll Stamina + Science, The evocation illuminates one cubic yard per success rolled, centered on the character. The light persists for a number of turns equal to the demon's Faith score.
When used tactically, the intense flashes of light can be focused in a single direction. Any individuals, friend or foe, who look in that direction at the time of the flash suffer a number of levels of bashing damage equal to the successes rolled. Flashes of light appear for only a turn.
Torment: Monstrous demons fill their surroundings with inky, suffocating darkness, affecting an area as above. They can move unhindered though this darkness. Other individuals within the area of effect are effectively blind.

• • BEND LIGHT
By exerting her will and manipulating the properties of light, the Fiend can bend waves around her body instead of reflecting them, giving her a powerful form of camouflage.
System: Roll Stamina + Science. The number of successes gained increases the difficulties of any Perception rolls or ranged attacks directed at the character for the rest of the scene. Melee attacks are resolved as normal. Other demons and thralls with the capability are able to resist the effects of these illusions thanks to their inherent powers.
Torment: Monstrous demons do not bend light so much as they distort it into crazed, eye-straining patterns. The number of successes rolled increases the difficulties of all attacks directed against the demon, ranged or otherwise, but do not affect others' Perception rolls.

• BODY CONTROL
This evocation allows the Devourer to alter the body chemistry of her host body and others. She can purge poisons (both natural and manmade) and increase or reduce metabolism.
System: Roll Intelligence + Medicine. The difficulty depends on the complexity of the metabolic change. Purging the body of fatigue poisons is difficulty 6. Forcing alcohol out of a person's system is 7 or greater, depending on the level of intoxication. Putting the body into a deathlike coma is difficulty 9 or more. To perform this evocation on another, the demon must be able to make physical contact, and the individual can attempt to counteract the effort with a successful resisted roll using the victim's Willpower ( difficulty 8 ). The effects of this evocation last for the duration of the scene, after which poisons removed or normal metabolism takes effect again, This evocation can alleviate one instance of poisoning altogether if a temporary Willpower point is spent.
Torment: Monstrous demons use a brute-force approach when performing this evocation, putting a terrible strain on a subject. After rolling, total successes are compared to the subject's Stamina. Successes that exceed the target's Stamina are suffered as bashing damage, which may not be soaked.

• • MANIPULATE NERVES
Like Body Control, this evocation allows the demon to manipulate a subject's nervous system. Strength and reflexes can be enhanced, senses can be dulled or sharpened, or the person can be subjected to waves of intense pleasure or pain.
System: Roll Intelligence + Medicine. The difficulty is determined by the complexity of the intended effect. Reducing the effects of pain is difficulty 6, while increasing the speed of a person's reflexes (increasing his Dexterity) is 7 or 8. Sharpening a person's senses (or dulling them) might require a difficulty of 9 or more.
Each success increases or decreases a relevant physical trait or wound penalty by one, as appropriate for the effort. The effects of this evocation last for the duration of the scene. To perform this evocation on another individual, the demon must be able to make physical contact, and a resisted Willpower ( difficulty 8 ) can be made to counteract your character's effort.
Torment: A monstrous demon risks inflicting severe physical damage to a subject by crudely manipulating the victim's nervous system. After rolling, the total successes are compared to the subject's Stamina. Successes that exceed the target's Stamina are suffered as lethal damage.

• • • MANIPULATE FLESH
This evocation allows the demon to manipulate a subject's physical form (be it her own or another's), adding muscle mass, increasing bone density or expanding mental faculties.
System: Roll Intelligence + Medicine. Each success is a point that can be added to any of the subject's Physical or Mental Attributes, There is a risk, however. Compare the total number of successes to the subject's Stamina. Any excess successes are suffered as bashing damage due to system shock. This damage cannot be soaked. To perform this evocation on another individual , the demon must be able to make physical contact, and the individual can attempt to counteract its effects — the Storyteller makes a Willpower roll ( difficulty 8 ).
Torment: Monstrous demons alter flesh and bone without regard for their subjects' frailty. If performed on another, a Willpower roll is made for the subject, with a difficulty equal to the demon's Torment. If the roll fails, the subject suffers a temporary derangement that makes him uncontrollably paranoid and prone to violence. If the roll is botched, the derangement is permanent.

• • • • RESTORE FLESH
The demon is capable of restoring an animal or person's body to its original form, no matter how torn or mutilated it has become.
System: Spend one Faith point and roll Perception + Medicine. Each success heals one level of lethal damage or all levels of bashing damage that the subject has suffered. Lost limbs or organs are restored completely, and any illness or poisons are purged from the body. Aggravated damage cannot be healed with this evocation, nor can the power resurrect someone who is already dead. The Devourer must be able to touch the subject to perform this evocation.
Torment: Monstrous demons are capable of performing this evocation as well, but their ministrations are invariably tainted by hatred and pain. The Storyteller makes a resisted Willpower roll (difficulty 7) for the subject. If successful, the subject gains a temporary derangement. If the roll fails, the derangement is permanent.
If the roll botches, the subject becomes a mindless, psychotic killing machine.

• • • • • SHAPE FLESH
The demon is capable of transforming human flesh into any shape desired. Mortals or fallen can become monstrous creatures straight out of legend.
System: Spend one Faith point and roll Dexterity + Medicine in a resisted roll against the target's Willpower (difficulty 7). The player decides the form she wishes to create, along with its relevant physical capabilities, and the Storyteller determines the number of successes necessary to make the form a reality.
These successes can be generated as part of an extended roll over a period of days (one roll per day) as the demon "tinkers" with her creation. As a rule of thumb, assume that each success confers or removes one Physical Attribute point or physical feature. The effects of this evocation last for a number of days equal to the character's Faith score, or they can be made permanent by expending one temporary Willpower point. Devourers can use this evocation on themselves or others, as long as they can touch a subject.
Torment: Monstrous demons' alterations are invariably warped by their Torment, creating grotesque deformities that transform victims into walking nightmares.
Such a hideous metamorphosis causes the victim to gain a temporary derangement and to suffer a level of lethal damage each day as a result of the intolerable strain placed on his body. Mortals who witness these creatures suffer the effects of Revelation.

• FIND THE FAITHFUL
This evocation allows a Scourge to locate specific individuals, mortal or demon, by homing in on their store of Faith.
System: Roll Perception + Awareness. The difficulty depends on how much information your character has concerning the subject. If she has the subject's mundane name, the difficulty is 8, If the subject is a demon and the character knows the subject's Celestial Name, the difficulty is 7. If she knows the demon's True Name the difficulty is 6. The Scourge can detect and home in on an individual up to a number of miles away equal to her permanent Faith score. Demons being actively sought in this manner can use their supernatural awareness to detect the search as a reflexive action (see the section on inherent powers for details). If a demon detects the search, he may avoid detection with a Willpower roll ( difficulty 8 ). If he gets more successes than the Scourge, he evades the search.
Torment: Monstrous demons can detect only sources of spiritual decay or corruption. They may use this evocation to seek out individuals whose Faith or Willpower has been reduced to zero.

• • CLEANSE
Scourges use this evocation to purify a living being, be it plant, animal or human. By focusing their Faith on a target, any poisons, infections or diseased tissue are literally expelled from the body, emerging as a black, viscous fluid.
System: Roll Stamina + Medicine. The difficulty of the roll depends on the virulence and scope of the disease or poison. Cleansing a body of the effects of alcohol is difficulty 6, while a virulent disease such as tuberculosis or cancer is difficulty 8 or higher. The process is all or nothing. The evocation overcomes the illness or it doesn't, and only one attempt may be made by a single demon on a single subject for a specific instance of an ailment or poison, A Scourge must be able to touch her target in order to perform this evocation.
Torment: Monstrous Scourges use this evocation to spread sickness and corruption. Each success generated by a Faith roll inflicts one level of bashing damage to a living victim. What's more, the victim suffers an additional level of bashing damage and loses one temporary Willpower point each day thereafter as the corruption spreads through the victim's system. The sickness cannot be cured with medical attention. It continues to affect the victim for a number of days equal to the Scourge's Faith score.

• • • HEAL
This evocation allows the Scourge to heal even the worst injuries of demon and mortal alike.
System: Roll Stamina + Medicine. The Scourge can heal all of a target's bashing damage or one health level of lethal or aggravated damage per success. The character must be able to touch her target to perform this evocation.
Torment: Monstrous Scourges use this evocation to poison a victim's body. Each success lowers a target's Stamina temporarily. If the target loses all of her Stamina, she falls into a coma and suffers one health level of aggravated damage (or lethal damage if a victim is not subject to aggravated damage) per hour per success remaining unless she receives medical attention immediately. Stamina is lost for a number of days equal to the demon's Faith score.

• TRANSLATE
The demon can understand (and be understood by) mortals, regardless of what language they speak.
System: Roll Manipulation + Empathy. The evocation affects a number of people equal to the successes rolled. The demon can understand the speech of each affected individual and he understood in turn, even if all of the individuals involved speak completely different languages.
The effects of this evocation last for the duration of the scene. People who speak different languages do not understand each other when this power is used on them.
Torment: Monstrous demons must overcome the obstacle of their own Torment, or the words they hear are filtered through their own anger and obsessions. After the evocation is used successfully, a Willpower roll is made with a difficulty equal to your character's Torment. If successful, your character understands the words of those around her as they are intended. If the roll fails, your demon's understanding of what is said is skewed by her own hatred and despair. A greeting is misunderstood as a threat, or an honest answer sounds evasive or outright deceptive. The Storyteller is encouraged to make this Willpower roll on behalf of the character and keep the results secret, tailoring the information the player hears accordingly.

Apocalyptic Form:

Imposibily tall out of all human proportion even as the eyes tell one she has not grown the hem of her robes is smoke and shadow, her flesh is stone carved without flaw, her hair of gold like a crown on marble brow hallowed in that same white light that pierced the eye and demanded the eye take keep. As they move her wings clink like crystal set against the darkness behind her for the light illuminated her and only her.

Enhanced Social Traits: Lash's grace, poise and beauty is now more than merely human. +2 Charisma, +1 Manipulation, +2 Appearance
Marble Flesh: Lash gains 4 soak-dice against any type of damage
Wings: Lash's Wings allow her to fly at up to three times her land-speed
Improved Dexterity: +2 Dexterity

High-Torment-Shape:
If Lash's Torment every grows beyond half her permanent willpower, she will take on a high-torment form. In this shape her marble flesh is cut through with black veins, her wings turn to purple mist and her her face gains a sharpness to its beauty that serves to intimidate rather than inspire. The purple mist can cover her form, hiding her from hostile eyes and weapons.
She can choose to add any of the following features to her Apocalyptic Form upon transforming into it, at the price of one temporary Torment, alternativly for each point of Torment above 6 one feature is automatically added to the Form:

Claws: Deal Str +2 Aggravated damage
Mist-Wreathed: +2 Difficulty on ranged attacks against Lash, +1 on melee attacks
Relentless: Lash is unaffected by fatigue or hunger in this form and can move forward inexhaustibly
Enhanced Perception: +2 Perception

Backgrounds:
Enemy (Denarians) ●●●●
Pact ●●
Paragon (Lore of Flesh) ●●●
Ally ●●● (Gentleman Johnny Marcone)

Merits
Angelic Aura: Reduce the difficulty of all Charisma and Appearance Rolls for social interactions by 1
Angelic Gaze: Reduce the difficulty of all Leadership, Empathy and Indimidation Rolls by 1

Equipment:
N/A

Faith Regeneration: 2/Day (Pact ●●)

Numbing: The fomor's body becomes completely numb, feeling no pain. During this time, she feels no sensations. She can't talk properly (as though her tongue is anesthetized), and she can cut herself without feeling anything. Some fomor become addicted to this release
from suffering. For some poor bastards, feeling nothing is better than feeling pain, emotional or otherwise.

System: The fomor spends one Willpower point and rolls Stamina + Medicine (difficulty 6). The effects last for one scene. The fomor suffers no wound penalties and has three extra Health Levels. However, when this power wears off, the extra Health Levels disappear; if the fomor is below Incapacitated, she dies and melts into a dissolving pile of muscle and bone. Fortunately, she doesn't feel a thing.

Soak Aggravated Damage (5 pts.)
Thanks to a hardy frame, thick skin, great size, elemental materials, or some other physiological gift, you can soak lethal damage as if it were bashing damage instead. As with Soak Lethal Damage, above, you can soak both lethal and aggravated damage.

Regrowth (6 pts.)
The blood of the hydra flows in your veins… or at least, it seems that way sometimes. To an extent, you can regrow severed body parts. It'll hurt, and it takes time. Given enough opportunity, however, your body can restore itself. The extent to which you can pull a Deadpool depends upon the points invested in this Advantage.
For two points, you can regrow fingers, horns, claws, a tail, or some other secondary appendage. For four points, you can regrow gouged eyes, severed limbs, a ripped-out tongue, and a secondary organ or two if their absence won't cause immediate death.
At six points, you must be burnt to ashes, dissolved in acid, poisoned to death by sickness or toxins, or otherwise consumed entirely before the restoration process ends for good.

Again, this is a painful process. The Advantage does not in any way alleviate the agony of losing body parts, and the damage heals at a steady pace unless it's being enhanced by other magical means. A severed finger or missing eye takes roughly a day to grow back; damaged limbs or non-essential organs take three days or so before they're functional again, and essential organs, your head, your spine, and other complex, essential body parts demand a week or so. Missing limbs will start out small and then grow back gradually (again, as per Deadpool), and organs will function poorly until they've been restored to health. Penalties for things like missing legs or blinded eyes are yours to endure, and you must spend a point of Willpower in order to regrow vital organs, your heart, your head, and so forth. Still, given enough points in this Advantage and plenty of time to heal, you can survive almost anything…

Except fire or acid. If such caustic or cauterizing substances are applied to the injured area, you're not growing that part back again without some serious favors owned to high-powered magical healers

Sorcery

Counterspells are the simpler form of countermagic. Here, the sorcerer just attempts to blunt the incoming effect, sapping its strength and possibly even causing it to fail. A Wits + Occult roll at difficulty 8 cancels successes one-for-one. If the sorcerer scores enough
successes that their opponents effect fails, all costs paid for it are still paid. The sorcerer can spend a Willpower point to aid countermagic, but they must achieve one natural success for it to work at all: simple force of will cannot work unless channeled through a ritual.

Acquired Counterspells:

Spirit: This covers beings wholly of the Spirit world, which may not enter and influence reality save by taking some aspect of it, from elementals to ghosts to demons even onto the Fallen themselves, though rare is the mortal sorcerer who dares contest their will with his own
Human: This covers mortal magic, that is magic that is drawn and shaped by mortal intent, be it the internal powers of the psychic or the channeling of a sorcerer or wizard

Name: Olivia Deol
Age: 19
Gender: W
Willpower: ●●●●●●●●●●
Demon Chi: 3 (4/3)
Mana: 5
Soak: 2
Health Levels: 0//-1//-1//-2//-2//-5//Inc

Attributes

PHYSICAL

SOCIAL

MENTAL

Strength ●●●●●

Charisma ●●●○○

Perception ●●●●●

Dexterity ●●●●●

Manipulation ●●○○○

Intelligence ●●●●○

Stamina ●●●●●

Appearance ●●●●○

Wits ●●●●●

Abilities

TALENTS

SKILLS

KNOWLEDGES

Alertness ●●●●○

Animal Ken ○○○○○

Academics ●○○○○

Athletics ●●○○○

Crafts ○○○○○

Computer ○○○○○

Awareness ●●●○○

Drive ●○○○○

Finance ○○○○○

Brawl ○○○○○

Etiquette ○○○○○

Investigation ○○○○○

Empathy ●●○○○

Firearms ●●●●○

Law ○○○○○

Expression ●○○○○

Larceny ●○○○○

Medicine ○○○○○

Intimidation ○○○○○

Melee ○○○○○

Occult ●●●○○

Leadership ○○○○○

Performance ●●●●●

Politics ○○○○○

Streetwise ○○○○○

Stealth ●●●●●

Science ○○○○○

Subterfuge ●○○○○

Survival ○○○○○

Technology ○○○○○

Demon Arts

Known colloquially as Hellweaving, these abilities represent gifts of power to select Kuei-jin from the Yama Kings and other demonic entities. Typically these powers involve terror, corruption, infusing the Kuei-jin's body with powerful Yomi energy, and the like. However, they come with a price: Each one requires a sacrifice by the Kuei-jin whenever it is used to whichever Yomi entity granted him the power. These sacrifices range from simple gold or incense to the Kuei-jin's personal Chi or the performance of some service. The burden that the akuma bear for their powers is, thankfully, not a light one.
● This power allows the akuma to infuse a victim's mind with images of the Yomi World and what occurs within it. It is a brave soul indeed that can withstand such an assault without running screaming into the night.
System: The akuma must make eye contact with his victim, while the player spends a point of Demon Chi and rolls Perception + Occult (difficulty 6). Success means the victim is tormented with visions of the Yomi World. The victim must make a Willpower roll (difficulty 7) and achieve more successes than the akuma did, to avoid the effects of the power. Failure means he will flee in terror from the akuma; weaker victims (mortals with a Stamina of 1 or 2) may die of heart failure.
Sacrifice: Gold (at least one coin's worth).
●● The akuma opens up a temporary window into the Yomi World, releasing a tiny blast of the lacerating winds that howl through the Thousand Hells.
System: The player spends one point of Demon Chi and rolls Intelligence + Occult (difficulty 6). Success releases the Razor Winds to shred the target's flesh and soul. The player rolls Dexterity + Firearms or Archery (difficulty 6) to hit his target. Success indicates that the target suffers the akuma's Stamina + 2 dice of lethal damage; this can be soaked. The Razor Winds will do +1 health level of damage for every additional point of Yin Chi or Demon Chi the akuma spends.
Sacrifice: A point of Yin Chi or Demon Chi (in addition to the points spent to activate the power).
●●● To their more powerful servants the Yama Kings and their greater vassals grant this power: a warping of joss to bring good fortune to those who work the Kings' evil will.
System: The player spends a point of Demon Chi. For the rest of the scene (or longer, at the Storyteller's discretion), all rolls he makes in direct furtherance of his and the Yama Kings' evil purposes are at up to -2 difficulty. Of course, it is up to the Storyteller to determine what tasks are involved in "the will of the Yama King."
Sacrifice: A point of Demon Chi (in addition to the point of Demon Chi spent to activate the power).

Allowing the rage of the P'o to channel itself through her body, the Kuei-jin becomes inhumanly swift — a typhoon of
destruction. Essentially, Black Wind is a focused — or not so focused—frenzy. While in the Black Wind state, the character gains powers similar to prolonged use of Demon Chi, but because the character is in a continuous demonic fury, she gains demonic energy as fast as she uses it. This Discipline is common one among more warlike Kuei-jin, who use it to
become whirling blurs of carnage.
System: This power costs the Kuei-jin one point of Demon' Chi per turn of use. For each dot in the power, the vampire may take an extra action (as with Celerity), arithmetically increase running speed or add one automatic success to a Brawl or Melee damage Dice Pool. Each turn, the vampire may reassign dots. So, a vampire with Black Wind 4 may choose to take two extra actions, run at double speed, and add one success to all Brawl damage Dice Pools. The next turn, he may choose to take four extra actions and add no dice to damage. Extra actions gained by Black Wind occur after all other characters have taken their actions for the turn.
While using Black Wind, the vampire may not use any other Discipline except Demon Shintai, although he may maintain previously activated powers. Moreover, each turn the power is used, the vampire must roll P'o (difficulty 8); if he fails this roll, he enters fire soul, A frenzied vampire suffers no wound penalties, but may not use firearms or any other missile weapons; he instead prefers to shred foes face to face — of course, such is the intent of most who use Black Wind. The problem lies in the fact that a vampire using this power just as readily attacks allies as enemies.
Black Wind, like all Demon Arts, is a violent Discipline. While accessing Black Wind, a character must use it to perform deeds suitable to the P'o's dominance. Thus, a character coulcl use Black Wind to attack or move with superhuman swiftness, but not to play a guitar at superhuman speed.

The Demon is strong indeed. With its strength, the Demon sometimes imparts resilience. By calling upon their inner
Demons, Kuei-jin who know the arts of the Iron Mountain can withstand hideous amounts of damage. The Demon revels in pain, even its own; by drawing from its strength and rage, Kuei-jin practitioners of this Discipline ignore or resist injury, even from magic, fire and sunlight. Their ability to take damage and keep attacking is truly terrifying, even to other Kuei-jin.
System: The use of Iron Mountain improves a Kuei-jin's ability to withstand damage. The Demon absorbs injury and translates pain into fury. Each dot of Iron Mountain lowers the Kuei-jin's difficulty on soak rolls by one; when the difficulty drops to 2, further levels translate into automatically soaked damage. Thus, a Kuei-jin with Iron Mountain at Level Six lowers difficulty of soak rolls by 6; for a soak roll with a difficulty of 6, the difficulty drops to 2 and the Kuei-jin automatically soaks two levels of damage.
The Iron Mountain Discipline also permits a Kuei-jin to soak aggravated damage, although doing so is difficult at best. Each dot of Iron Mountain allows the Kuei-jin to use one Stamina-based soak die normally against aggravated damage, but without the concomitant decrease in soak difficulty. Therefore, with Iron Mountain Level Six, a Kuei-jin could claim up to six dice of soak against aggravated damage, if he possessed enough Stamina; if the Kuei-jin only had four dots of Stamina, he could soak four dice of aggravated damage (with Stamina) at a -2 difficulty (for the remaining levels of Iron Mountain).

Paths:

While some mages take advantage of Arcane to walk unnoticed through society, psychics can make use of this Phenomenon. A sort of mass hypnosis, it projects "don't notice me" into the minds of everyone nearby. It isn't true invisibility: the psychic still shows up on cameras
and electronic surveillance equipment in general, animals are unaffected because their minds are so different, etc. Even some people might shrug it off because they can tell something is wrong indirectly. Those looking for something amiss can roll Perception + Stealth against the psychic's roll, and if they have more successes, they can see the psychic with no difficulty.
The number of successes on the roll determines how thoroughly hidden the character is: one success makes the characters still noticeable but people will tend to avert their eyes, whereas with three or more successes almost no one will noticed them. Mind Shields, of any sort, do protect against this. The levels of this power dictate how the psychic can behave and still remain hidden, and at the higher levels, they can interact with select others and even disappear from memories.
Cost: One Willpower.
Roll: Wits + Stealth
Duration: As long as the psychic actively maintains the effect (this counts as an action).
Cost of Failure: On a botch, the psychic instead sends out a "look at me!" signal to everyone in the vicinity.
Effects
• Hide: The character must remain completely still to remain unnoticed. If they move, speak or do anything else, the effect ends.
•• Slow Movement: Now the psychic can move while maintaining their invisibility. However, they can only move slowly, and cannot do anything that would draw attention to them while maintaining the effect.
••• Invisibility: Now the psychic can walk and behave normally, so long as they are not attempting to disappear while being directly observed.
•••• Selective Invisibility: At this level of control, the psychic can be invisible to some people but not to others. This requires a Wits + Empathy roll (difficulty 7) and each success allows another person to see them while everyone else is fooled by the Psychic Invisibility.
••••• Forget You Ever Saw Me: At the peak of power, the invisible psychic is able to make a group of people forget seeing them. The group's highest Perception + Alertness pool is rolled (at difficulty 7) against the psychic's roll. If the psychic gets a single success more than the observers, they simply vanish from view. If they get at least three successes more, they not only vanish but the observers forget the psychic was there, losing memories one turn back for every two successes.

Rituals
[Psychic Invisibility] •••• Anchor Veil: Allows the Sorcerer to anchor an effect of similar strength to her Invisibility power to an area that hides a specific class of object: Innanimate object (1 Success); Non-Sentient living things (2 Successes); Sentient Beings (3 Successes); Sophonts (4 Successes). The size of the veil is 50 ft +50 ft/extra success

Psychics, spies and magicians have all desired the ability to see things that are far away from them as they happen. This power allows psychics to cast their senses out and observe places far away from them. Though sight is the easiest, as they advance in this power, they can use their other senses as well, though even their sense of touch will let them feel sensations without affecting the place they are observing. Despite sensing whatever is happening at the place being viewed, the psychic is not actually present in any sense. For that, Astral Projection is necessary.
Once they pick a location to view, they can move their vision around the area. However, they cannot leave the area with their senses, and to even go to the next room, or the forest around the clearing they are viewing, they must make another Clairvoyance roll.
Cost: One Willpower
Roll: Perception + Awareness
Modifiers: -2 to +2 difficulty modifier based on how familiar the psychic is with the location.
Duration: Concentration
Cost of Failure: On a botch, the psychic has sent their senses away but gains nothing from it, they are rendered blind (and otherwise insensate depending on the level) for one turn per success.

Effects
• The character can see things, though the images are hazy and dreamlike. The character can extend his senses into just the immediate area, approximately a mile from his body.
•• The character can see clearly through remote sight and can faintly hear. The range of perception is now anywhere in the immediate five to 10 miles, depending on the number
of successes (1 success = 5 miles, 2 successes = 6 miles, etc.).
••• The character can see and hear clearly at a distance. He can also "touch" things at the remote site, though his sense of touch is vague, as if he were wearing heavy gloves. (He cannot move things, naturally.) The character's range expands to 10 miles per success rolled.

This power allows a psychic to travel from one place to another without visiting the intervening space. They simply disappear from one place an then reappear in another. How this works is mysterious, but most of the psychics who do it don't particularly care, they only care that they can get where they're going very, very quickly. When the psychic teleports, they can carry a reason- able load of personal possessions with them. No psychic has ever been recorded successfully transporting more than about 100 pounds of materials, however. Whenever this is attempted, a feedback loop of some sort occurs causing the psychic to take 6 levels of bashing damage.
Cost: One Willpower point
Roll: Perception + Alertness
Time: Instantaneous
Cost of Failure: One a botch, the psychic ends up inside a solid object, taking 8 dice of Aggravated damage and the same to the object teleported into. Alternatively, the psychic ends up somewhere wildly different than their intended location, often leaving behind valuable equipment and even their clothing.

Effects
• Short Hop: The teleporter can appear 12 + Intelligence meters from where they started. Through some means, they must be able to perceive their destination.
•• Simple Jump: Exactly like Short Hop, but with range 20 + (3 x Intelligence) meters.
••• Long Jump: Similar to Simple Jump, though the distance is now 40 + (6 x Intelligence) meters and it can be doubled by spending a full turn in concentration to prepare.

Some sorcerers have a natural ability to work with mana (represented by the Technê background), but others study it and train to use it. This Path focuses on more complex uses of mana, and some powers that will allow
its use even without Technê. Through the powers of this Path, a sorcerer learns to detect and manipulate the flow of mana in a variety of ways.
This Path rarely goes by the name "Mana Manipulation." It is usually processed more fully through the lens of their Practice. Often it goes by names like Geomancy, Feng Shui, Channeling Ley Lines, etc. The Path, more than any other, is shaped by the views of the sorcerer and the tools that they use to perform it.
Cost: 1 Willpower
Roll: Manipulation + Ability
Modifiers: -1 difficulty near a Node
Time: One turn per level
Duration: Varies
Cost of Failure: While on failure, nothing happens, a botch results in burns, a number of levels of bashing damage (unsoakable) equal to the rank of the spell.

Effects
• The sorcerer can detect concentrations of Mana. With a brief meditation or invocation, they can find anything and anywhere that it (or similar substances) have gathered. This includes Mana, but also Quintessence, Vitae, Essence, Nodes, etc. If they score at least three
successes, then they also get hints of the resonance.
•• Now the sorcerer can see magical energy directly. They can determine if someone is using magic (broadly construed) near them, and even determine how potent a concentration of magical energy is. Furthermore, they can detect disrupted magic, including blocked chi, curses, and other negative effects.
••• While before they could detect when something is disrupted, now the sorcerer can alter and obstruct mana flows themselves. They can block flows, causing Nodes to go dormant (for one turn per success), they can push it around, causing it to flow in a different direction or along a different path, and they can even store a single point of Mana in an object, albeit briefly.

Rituals
Infusion (••)
The sorcerer takes an otherwise normal potion or other consumable object and places some of his own Mana into it for later use. The successes scored determine how much Mana can go into the item. Energy usually "leaks" during this process; every two points of Mana spent by the sorcerer channel one point into the storage receptacle.

Shape Mana (•••)
Whether by special mirrors, diagrams, carvings or the like, the sorcerer turns the flow of Mana in an area so that it changes direction and intent. The sorcerer could cause "bad" energies to become wholesome, alter a spell effect or turn a ley line so that it runs through his residence.
The level of success guides the feat: With one success, the sorcerer could dissipate some unlucky energies so that a place does not attract evil spirits or ill fortune with three successes, the sorcerer can channel joss so that a location has good fortune (lowering by one the difficulty of all commerce or practices of the area — a store would facilitate business, a hospital would encourage healing, and so on) with five successes, the sorcerer can reshape a magic effect already in the area to the limits of his own knowledge (turning, say, a ward so that it wards against a different creature type) or even cause a Node or other source of power to channel its energy to a location of his choosing.
Mana reshaped in this form typically lasts until some force "snaps" it back to normal, though some places may require specific maintenance (yearly for simple effects like good luck, perhaps daily rituals for bending ley lines).

Many psychic Phenomena and sorcerous Paths allow the invasion of other minds. Telepaths can read your thoughts, Psychic Vampires can feed on you, Alchemy can brew truth serums and Oneiromancy can invade dreams. And of course, there are far, far worse things in the world than psychics and sorcerers. Vampires have Dominate, mages have the full and unbridled power of the Mind sphere, and that's before worrying about what wraiths and changelings can do to an unguarded mind. So some psychics either naturally have or train themselves to have mental defenses. Their minds are arranged in some way that makes them harder to attack. Depending on the psychic, though, this can take the form of being disciplined to the point of being able to force the invader out, thoughts that are too chaotic to make sense of, or even just a projection of a blank state where nothing, useful or useless, can be read. This only affects mental attacks. A Mind Shield is useless against Pyrokinesis for instance: no hope that an exceptionally ordered mind can just ignore a fireball! So any psychic power that stays outside of the mind works as normal. For those occasions when the psychic wants to allow access, they can lower their shields, but this leaves them vulnerable to others and to betrayal. At level three, however, the psychic can tell when an intrusion is friendly or hostile, and can selectively allow the friendlies in while maintaining their defenses.
When the psychic with a Mind Shield is mentally attacked, they make their roll and successes are subtracted from the successes on the attack's roll, which fails if the difference is less than the number of successes required by the action. If the defender would normally get some kind of defense, such as a Willpower roll, the Mind Shield dice are added to that defense.
Roll: Against arbitrary mental attacks, the psychic rolls their Mind Shields rating at difficulty 6. Against
other psychics, they roll twice as many dice.
Time: Instantaneous
Duration: Instantaneous
Associated Spheres: Mind

Fortuna, both Buona and Mala, flows from the hands of the sorcerer who studies this path. By his will, probabilities alter, events realign themselves, and his target's future is changed. The superstitious ascribed this power to all witches (untrue), and call it the Evil Eye, scientists speak of altering probabilities and chaos math, and priests calls it the Hand of God, but in every case, in the end, the effects are only partly in the hands of the sorcerer. Some mages look on this as being a set of interrelated effects linked closely with a rudimentary understanding of the Entropy Sphere. Sorcerers gifted in the Path just smile, nod and continue on their lucky way.

Supernatural beings can be cursed but get to resist the effect, if they are aware of it, with a Willpower check (difficulty = 4 + the magician's Path rating). Most curses will need only a single success, but very powerful or long-lasting curses can require more in order to be removed completely. Short curses normally won't be discovered unless they are announced ahead of time; a skilled user of Entropy or Prime might detect a curse looming over someone, or someone with Auspex might see it in their aura, however. A character's Arcane rating subtracts from the total successes scored on a one for one ratio (and could well cause the curse to fail utterly).

System:
Roll Manipulation + Intimidation
Cost One Willpower
Duration:
• One shot. The effect waits for an opportune moment, wreaks its vengeance (or benefits) and then dissipates.
Targets:
• One specific, named, target
Severity:
• A brief inconvenience, or a minor weal; dropping something, saying something utterly stupid (or perfectly brilliant), smashing your shin into the table, catching a bus at just the right moment.
Associated Spheres: Entropy

Counterspells are the simpler form of countermagic. Here, the sorcerer just attempts to blunt the incoming effect, sapping its strength and possibly even causing it to fail. A Wits + Occult roll at difficulty 8 cancels successes one-for-one. If the sorcerer scores enough
successes that their opponents effect fails, all costs paid for it are still paid. The sorcerer can spend a Willpower point to aid countermagic, but they must achieve one natural success for it to work at all: simple force of will cannot work unless channeled through a ritual.

Acquired Counterspells:

Fae: Those beings which can freely pass from the shallowest layer of the spirit world into reality, the fae be they Summer Winter or Wyld are bound by ancient law to answer when they are called to speak no ontruths and to their nature be bound. Thus to break the power of the fey, when it can be done at all is more akin to persuading it that is had been woven ill then simply to cut though the web
Human: This covers mortal magic, that is magic that is drawn and shaped by mortal intent, be it the internal powers of the psychic or the channeling of a sorcerer or wizard
Spirit: This covers beings wholly of the Spirit world, which may not enter and influence reality save by taking some aspect of it, from elementals to ghosts to demons even onto the Fallen themselves, though rare is the mortal sorcerer who dares contest their will with his own
Vampires: ????

Backgrounds:

Sorcerers are unable to shape the raw essence of creation like mages can. They need a slightly more refined energy to aid in their work. This energy, called chi, ki, essence, mana, orgone, prana, ionized electrolytes or any number of other things, can be harnessed to aid the techniques that sorcerers use. The ability to use it is referred to as technê, or practice/the craft. Sorcerers find this energy, most commonly called mana (despite most sorcerers not being Polynesian) difficult to obtain. Those who are particularly skilled can draw it from Nodes with resonance matching theirs, though the
Path of Mana Manipulation gives more options. They can roll Perception + Meditation at difficulty 7, each success restores a point of mana, but each point of mana drawn will drain two points of quintessence from the Node. Mana can be spent to decrease the difficulty of sorcery
rolls, by up to -3, on a one-for-one basis.
••••• May store a pool of/expend five Mana

Merits and Flaws

Your mind is mystically empowered. So much so, that instead of being restricted to use mana only on sorcery, you can use it to reduce the difficulty of any mental task. This has the same restrictions as spending mana to aid sorcery. The specific form this takes depends on the task, perhaps making the sorcerer more insightful, perceptive, or quicker to solve puzzles.

Mostly used by sorcerers with the Martial Arts Practice, this merit indicates a deep understanding of the flow of magical and life energy. A sorcerer with this merit has prowess beyond what mere skill can accomplish, and instead has learned to use their Mana to enhance themselves physically. A sorcerer with this merit can spend Mana to decrease the difficulty on physical actions in addition to sorcerous ones.

Your physical senses are unusually sharp, capturing nuances that few people ever notice. In game terms, your character reduces the difficulty of her Perception-based rolls by -2. At the 3-point level, all five physical senses are equally sharp.

You move with uncanny agility and efficiency. Coordination and balance come naturally to you. Even when you fail to achieve some feat, you avoid embarassing yourself. In game terms, your Difficulty for Dexterity-based actions is one less, while botches, even serious ones, fail to affect the finesse of your movements. You may die trying, buy you will never, ever appear ungainly.

Whether pointing a gun, arrow, or dart, you hit your target with great accuracy. You receive no increased difficulty when targeting any specific location and reduce the difficulty of rolls not involving specific targeting by one.

All changelings have some vision of their path, but you've a special commitment to it. You don't concern yourself with petty matters, because your higher purpose is everything. Though you sometimes behave in ways contrary to the needs of survival, your purpose grants you great personal strength. The difficulty of any roll that has something to do with this higher purpose is reduced by two. Decide what your higher purpose is, and make sure you discuss it with the Storyteller.

The Muses work their will through you, or so it appears. Whenever you employ your artistic talent (as in, the Talent: Art in Mage 20, p. 275), reduce the difficulty of those rolls by -2. As with other Merits of this kind, this Merit does not reduce the difficulty
of magick-casting rolls, but may reduce the difficulty of Attribute + Ability rolls that are involved with magickal acts. (For more details, see
Abilities Enhancing Magick, Mage 20, pp. 533.)

Even by mage standards, you're especially good at tuning out distractions. When you're attempting some sort of feat that demands focus (as most do), this Merit eliminates modifiers that would be caused by distracting circumstances – gunfire, thunderstorms, rampaging critters from beyond the stars, and so forth. Truly distracting situations (trying to hack a computer system during a tornado, for instance) might demand a successful Willpower roll in order to wipe out the potential penalty; the difficulty would depend upon the circumstances. For the most part, though, you get in and get stuff done, whatever else might be going on around you

They've hurt you, and now they'll pay! Someone has committed a crime you cannot and will not forgive, and whenever you get the chance, you'll shower them with red-hot vengeance. This grudge has become your highest priority in life – everything else is merely a distraction. You may put this quest for revenge aside temporarily if you spend a Willpower point in order to do so. Until the guilty parties have been punished, though, vengeance drives you to become that most dangerous of creatures: a mage on a mission that ends only with blood.

Mages still need money in order to function in the human realm. And in your case, you're kinda fucked financially. Student loans, credit-card debts, child-support payments, gambling losses, legal judgments, medical bills, car and /or mortgage payments… the ways in which a modern mage can get in over her head financially are as numerous as the parties who prosper from such debts.
And then there's the possibility of financial manipulation from Awakened sources – mages or Night-Folk who, intentionally or otherwise, are keeping you broke in order to assert their hold over you (see Technocracy: Syndicate, p. 28). Maybe you just suck at the whole paying-your-bills thing. For whatever reason, your income keeps going back out. You might indeed have the Background: Resources, but the money just doesn't stay in your bank account for long.
As a Flaw, these Debts represent a minimum amount of money you owe your creditors. The more you owe, the more this Flaw is worth:
• (3 points) Significant debt (over $50,000). From the three-point level onward, your creditors will expend a fair amount (perhaps a great deal) of effort to collect those funds from you. Certain creditors, like loan sharks, will start far lower than that. Tactics could range from roundthe- clock phone calls and red-envelope letters to lawsuits, repossessions, threats, eviction, and physical violence. For folks with small and /or irregular incomes, the pressure from debt and debt-collection harassment can cause intense emotional and psychological distress… which, in turn, affects one's ability to make money… which deepens the debt… which deepens the stress… in a desperate cycle that can lead to desperate acts

You prefer – maybe even need – to eat weird shit… quite possibly in a literal sense of that expression. Perhaps you've sworn a vow, suffered a curse, been treated (or created) with unhallowed rituals or arcane hyperscience, or initiated into an occult fellowship with… interesting admission demands. In any case, you must consume substances that may be degrading, unpleasant, expensive, or downright illegal.
The more inconvenient the substance, the more this Flawis worth:
• (2 points) Easy to procure, though not as easy to devour
(paper, fresh eggs, poop, etc.).

Inventory:
Demon Jade Talisman ●

Splintered Gale Incarnations

Plan Newborn Scholar (Dancer in Glass Shadows)
Newborn Regent of Sanctuary
Newborn Protector
Newborn Hidden Dragonmage (Song of Perennial Hours Intrinsically Ascending)
Pursuer of Diligent Scholarship
Burden Everlasting of the Dutiful Sovereign
Maker of Immaculate Relics Untarnished

XP Costs
New Ability 3xp
Ancient sorcery spell 10xp
Attribute current rating *4xp
Ability current rating *2xp
Caste Ability current rating *1xp
Caste or Favored Charm Charm rating *3xp
Other Charm Charm rating *4xp
Willpower current rating
Essence current rating *8xp
First dot of a Sorcerer Path 4xp
Follow-up dots in a Sorcerer Path current rating *3xp
Sorcerous Rituals Dot Rating*xp
Merit current rating *4xp

DragonParadox · Jun 25, 2022

Michael Carpenter - Your Father
Age: 50
You have always been a princess in your father's eyes, but it was only slowly as the years went by that you realized he was also a knight out of stories, that beyond just being good and fair he is also a shinning sword of the light against the darkness, the bearer of Amoracchius, the Sword of Love. While you understand why he does what he does these days you always get a shiver down your spine whenever he goes on one of his 'business trips' to fight the Denarians. You know that God is with him, but you also know that is not always enough, that knights die too. Some day you will be with him as well.

When it comes to arguments in the family he was always the one to point out 'the piercings aren't hurting anyone' and 'that's a strange hair color sweetheart, but if it makes you happy' or 'maybe Alicia will be happier with another instrument'. That said he expects you and all your siblings to do well in school finish your fair share of chores and not get into fights. Disappointing dad is always unpleasant in spite of the fact or maybe even because he does not raise his voice.

Charity Carpenter - Your Mother
Age: 41
Growing up you always knew where you stood with your mother. You knew she loved you and that she would always be there to defend you whether it was against some girls bullying you in primary school or a teacher being unfair and singling you out. The rules, and there were a lot of rules more and more as you grew older, were only there to keep you from getting hurt like that time you thought you could totally climb to the top of that tree and got a broken arm, were only there to protect you.

The trouble is... the more you grew up the less you believed that. Oh you believe she thinks it is what is best for you, but you do not think you need to be protected against 'those terrible songs' or being seen with the wrong kinds of people or as in the case of one of your more memorable fights being seen as 'that kind of girl'. Your Dad might dress in armor and use a sword, but sometimes you feel like your mom thinks this is the Middle Ages.

Daniel Carpenter - Your Brother
Age: 16
The two of you are about as close in age as two siblings who are not twins can be and it shows. In those halcyon days before one truly realized there were differences between how boys and girls 'aught' to act you ran around by the creek and got muddy, climbed trees, got first rights on the tree house in the backyard, played really elaborate games of pretend, left enough legos scattered about the house to be a safety hazard and even got into rollerblading together.

Alas it is not really 'cool' for a teenage boy to be hanging out with his sister all the time so you have drifted apart a bit over the last two years, though he still covers for you when you need to go out for some not-parental-approved reason and he has even tried to lie for you a few times. He is not very good at it, but he has tried.

Well you found out who his girlfriend is, at least her name, all you had to do was draw your mother's ire away from him when he decided that sleeping in the same house as a girl... on the couch was no trouble. Well OK maybe it wouldn't have been if only he would learn to lie already.

Mathew Carpenter - Your Brother
Age: 13
Your second oldest brother has always been really quiet, probably because he is in the middle of... all the rest of your madness. He has always been more happy going up to his room to play video games or read than be out and about in the wild. He got you into anime last year when it was just the two of you in the house watching some of the jawas.

Of late he is trying to teach himself Japanese because 'none of the good stuff is translated properly'. How he knows that you couldn't say, but more power to him learning a language he wants to learn. You have never gotten beyond generic tourist talk in French no matter how hard you try.

He thinks your powers are cool, especially the parrying bullets and asked you to teach him, revelations about magic powers that summon demons to empower your minions aside you really do not feel up to it. To dad he goes.

Alicia 'Leech' Carpenter - Your Sister
Age: 11
Whoever it was that told all the TV executives that nerds are supposed to be pushovers has clearly never met your sister, she is into programing and robotics and reading Scientific American sometimes with a dictionary on hand, but she has also gotten into more fights at school than you and Daniel put together had by her age.

So mom being mom she decided that Leech needed some other interests to put all that energy towards and she tried to get her to learn a musical instrument which went up about as well as a lead balloon though she did get into softball a few months ago. Matthew jokes that it is because she is allowed to hit the ball as hard as she wants. Regardless her dream of going to computer camp next year seems rather far away.

Leech as a lot of ideas about how you aught to use your powers, they mostly involve getting rich and she makes a fair point about money buying power. If you go for it you'll be sure to buy her something nice for her birthday

Amanda Carpenter - Your Sister
Age: 8
She is a sweet kid, but way too fond of tattling to mom whenever one of the big kids does something 'wrong'. She is also just at that age when you start to get that dad does something dangerous but before mom and day can really sit her down at tell her everything so she has taken to being really clingy around him when he has to go out and do stuff. You worry about how she is going to take your... changes.

Hope 'Hobbit' Carpenter - Your Sister
Age: 6
Hope is going through a Disney phase, great big Simba plushy that is almost bigger than she is, princess dresses, enough plastic tiaras for all the crowned heads of Europe, the works. Now that would not be a problem if she did not also like to recruit as many of her siblings as she can beg or browbeat into playing out Disney inspired stories with her. There are only so many times you can play Maleficent.

In accordance to ancient hobbit tradition steals food off other people's plates when hungry.

Harry 'Hank' Carpenter - Your Brother
Age: 4
He's practically a baby, he runs around and does baby things, sometimes funny, sometimes endearing and sometimes annoying. You have seen this play out a few times already

Recently he told you that you had grown 'less cweepy' which is good to know.

Harry Dresden
Age: Just a Number
Really unspeakably cool, maybe literally he is a wizard after all and they are careful with their Names. He's also a detective a hero and according to the admittedly sketchy source of the shadow of a Fallen Angel in his head he might be into the whole hero thing a bit too much. Given the way trouble seems to follow him around and the fact that he doesn't have angels to tip the scales of normal life to good fortune... you think she might have a point. Regardless he was there for Dad when the Denarians rolled into town, he was there for you when you ended up in Arctis Tor and he put his reputation on the line with the White Council again in the aftermath of you becoming what you are now, you owe him, you owe him bigtime. If that means you have to spend more time around him... well that is just a bonus.

Mouse
Age: What takes precedence Dog Years or Spirit Years?
Harry's 'Dogosaurus Rex' really a great big floof of a spirit-blood dog. He did not take your appearance after Arctis Tor well, but he was just trying to protect Harry so you can't blame him for it. Once you came to an understanding he was nice and helpful as only a one with the blood of foo guardians can be. Don't let his doogy charm fool you, he's as smart as a person and wiser than most.

Brother Divsimar
Age: Late 50ish you think
The eldest of the monks come from Nepal to recover bones that had been stolen by magic Nazis, he is wise and clever too as well as having his own unearthly tricks to use on any who would make an enemy of him and his students. It is the Power of Chi, the Bridges of those who guard the realms of men, powerful but perilous to use... for most people at least. Something tells you your own life-force burns more brightly than the norm and that is not an idle thought. Brother Divsimar offered to teach you his arts, though he did not deny that he is also sticking around to make sure you are not a danger to the world.

Thomas Rraith
Age: Late 20s
One of the people who came to save you in Arctis Tor Thomas Ratih is a vampire of the White Court, one of those who gave rise to the legend of the Incubus, but he does not let that get in the way of being one of the good guys. Apart from the whole 'mission into the heart of Faerie to save you' he has been Harry's backup on many occasions, some of them including your dad. Faster and stronger than a mortal man especially when he lets his demon loose Thomas is also very skilled with a sword.

Lydia
Age:15
There's something odd about Lydia and it is not just that she is into your dork of a younger brother. The story of her life rang true in your ear, and yet is also rang strangely. The girl who speaks four languages, maybe five one of them Latin, who spends time in the library of her reclusive father and in her own words 'hardly knows what a video game is'. Going off from place to place, ever the stranger in a new land... just what kind of deal is her father closing? Is he a wizard of the White Council on some secret errand? One of the Sidhe who do not die, but grow ever in power and wisdom? Why did he used to be protective and is no more? As the daughter of one very protective mother you know too well that does not flip like a light switch.
A riddle for sure, but one you would not mind unraveling in her company, she's clever and fun to be around and apparently the feeling is mutual.

Pauline Moskowitz
Age: Mid Thirties
Known online as Rose of Autumn Pauline has a knack for spirits which she uses surepitiously in her day job as a retail agent and openly as a member of the Order of the Cauldron. A run in with someone twisted by the Pathfinders as a child has left her with a fear of them and a cynical outlook on the White Council after their failure to interfere. She was the one to welcome you into

Anna Ash
Age: Early Thirties
More stand-offish than most of her peers Anna is the leader of the Ordo Lebensis, a is a skilled enchanter and object reader she has a long family history with witchcraft, though one only recently rediscovered. She had warmed up to you once it became clear that you are just creepy by virtue of your power rather than having any ill intent

Helen Beckitt
Age: Late thirties-early forties
Between working for Marcone and being almost impossible to shock so matter how weird and creepy your power gets its easy to get a sense that Helen just... isn't a very emotional person to put it mildly, but to your eyes it looks like she is guarding something of herself, like she's guarded it for so long that she has forgotten that part of herself exists

Abby Douglas
Age: Late twenties
For those not put off by her tendencies to answer questions before they are asked Abby is a sweetheart, friendly and helpful without being noisy which makes it all the weirder that she is a math teacher. Apparently she got that way from studying statistics. You hope her students know what a goo thing they have going for them there

Watchful Bane upon the Thirty Sixth Threshold
Age: Just born
Bane is a spirit.. a god your power whispers, a sort of genius loci created by your interference in a warding ritual, given the power of misfortune as well as the far less esoteric ability to pop out of the walls and maul intruders its mere existence raises question you are in no hurry to answer. Oh who are you kidding of course you want to know the answers

Olivia Deol
Age: 19
A fan of Power Rangers and aspiring dancer Olivia struggles with her tendency to vanish to the background when not on scene, literally, hers is a subtle and often troublesome power

Maria Casselli
Age:: 22
Proud owner of Spritz and Sparkle Car Wash Maria is happily engaged, though she struggles with integrating her talent for weather work in her everyday life. You counseled her to speak to her fiancee about her magic

Isabela
Age: 16-18
A vampire whose Hunger is bent towards despair Isabela had no compunction about feeding it upon those who are 'enemies of the Court' though she seems to hold genuine fondness to her 'Uncle' Leinth. She is obviously excited to be involved in grown up nightlife, including swearing a vow to serve you wich has arrested her Hunger

Lenith
Age: Unknown
Far less handsome than most of his kin Lenith makes up for it with startling control of his vampiric powers, even going so far as to be able to restore life to mortals which have been drained. He does not seem too fond of Madrigal Raith in spite, or perhaps because he had to do him a favor.

Rosanna Marcella
Age: 18
Your best friend, your closest confidant, your worst mistake, though she does not know it yet. You and Rosie have been close since Middle school, having a common opinion of Saint Vincent's that got both of you out of there by high school. But where you have been able to more or less balance the craziness in your life Rosie had it worse... a lot worse. Between her dad dying, her mom remarrying within the year to some rich bastard, the constant fights, her mother not believing her when she was assaulted Rosie got in a bad way, the drugs made it worse as did the miscarriage those caused and then you went and messed with her head with black magic to keep her from using and getting another miscarriage. That would have destroyed her, you hope your way of helping hasn't just destroyed her another way

She is currently in Mercy Hospital recovering from a broker collarbone and what you know to be psychic shock, though the doctors do not. The marks go deeper than pain. She saw you on the tree in Arctis Tor, she Dreamed True. You told her some of the truth, but not all of it yet, not what you had done.

Detective Karin Murphy
Age: 32-35
You met the woman when she was shooting dark fey in the heart of their power with Cold Iron. Even Usum says that is either impressive or insane for a mortal, though he adds that the two are not necessarily exclusive. She was apparently doing it as a favor to Harry... and she kept doing favors to Hary even when you asked her to. Unless you miss your guess there is something more than platonic going on there... or there could be something but isn't for some reason.

Agent Sarah Greene
Age: 44
Mixed up with the White Court somehow Sarah Greene turned on them after the death of her husband Harold which she suspects to have been facilited by vampires, the same vampires which are not trying to make her into a weapon against Harry Dresden and Thomas Raith. You both saved her life and wiped her files on the activities of the White Court, neither of which she knows about.

Officer Jones
Age: Mid 20s
You never did catch her first name, probably because the officer does not share her name with kids regularly, even ones she seems to have taken a bit of a shine to. Still you appreciated her no nonsense approach and her advice at the end about 'someone' scaring those bullies straight.

Father Anthony Forthil
Age: 57
A friend of the family since you came to Chicago and you later learn a contact of your father in his official quality Father Forthil is a man of many unexpected depths even so. You would not have guessed he it a lawyer before hearing him make the case for 'innocent until proven guilty' in matters of the supernatural and never in a million years would you have picked him out for a member of the Inquisition, for all the Ordo Maellus of his accounts seems to have learned something from the excesses of the past.

Working Dogs
Attributes: Strength 3, Dexterity 4, Stamina 2, Perception 3, Intelligence 4, Wits 3
Abilities: Alertness 4, Athletics 2, Awareness 4, Brawl 3, Empathy 2, Intimidation 4, Stealth 3, Survival (Tracking) 4; Occult (Ghosts) 3 Investigation 2' Medicine 1
Willpower: 7
Gnosis: 6
Rage 4 [Usable Only in Spirit Form without Ferocity]
Mana Pool: 24 (Gnosis*4)
Health Levels: OK, -1, -1, -2, -2, -5, Incapacitated
Armor Rating: 0 (two soak dice, total)
Attack: Bite for five dice (lethal); claw for three dice (bashing)/Aggravating Special

Alacrity: Damn, you're fast! Capable of bursts of inhuman speed, you can strike before most people can think. This allows you to spend a Willpower point and take one extra action within a single turn. That six-point Advantage, for instance, would let you act four times in a single turn for the cost of one Willpower point. Subsequent Willpower points spent that turn do not add up, however; six points let you act four times in one turn no matter how many Willpower points you spent that turn. This bonus lasts only one turn per point of Willpower spent that turn; if you need to burn Willpower in order to move like the wind, however, you can do so for as long as your Willpower lasts.

Aww!: Cuteness excuses a multitude of sins. In your case, you're so adorable that people tend to give you more slack than your activities deserve. Add one die to the Social rolls you make based upon endearing yourself to someone through your sheer cuteness.

Blending: This creature has the ability to alter their appearance to match the dominant attributes of their surroundings, much like a chameleon. Creatures with this power can either slowly acclimate to their surroundings, requiring at least a scene, or they may quickly acclimate through a successful Wits + Survival roll, difficulty 8. Creatures with mana can spent 2 points to immediately blend into their environment. Successfully Blending causes a +2 difficulty to perceive the creature with any natural sense.

Deathless Beast Fetter: Each time the sun crosses the horizon, hound may choose to walk in flesh or spirit, living being or a ghostly spy.

Death Sense: With a successful Perception+Awareness roll you may sense spirits across the veil and well as the presence of impending death

Deflect Harm: With an invisible wave of power, the spirit deflects incoming attacks made against the spirit or — if the spirit "lends" this Charm
to a mortal host — the host imbued with the spirit's blessings. Each point of Mana spent by the entity blocks one health level of damage from an incoming attack that turn.
This Charm deflects bashing, lethal, and aggravated damage equally well, and protects against damage caused by magickal assaults as well as it protects against physical ones.
A spirit may employ this Charm for as long as that character's Mana Trait holds out. A mortal host blessed with this Charm by a spirit helper, however, may deflect up to five health levels of damage per turn; additional damage slides past the deflection effect and affects the host normally.

Earthbound: A bond with your surroundings helps you perceive trouble and respond to possible threats. Rules-wise, this Advantage reduces the difficulty of your perception rolls by -2 if you're trying to spot potential trouble. Maybe your keen senses help you hear, smell, feel, or otherwise perceive trespassers; perhaps you've got passive sonar or high-tech scanning devices. Maybe the wind speaks to you. Whatever the reason, you're seldom surprised by anything that's not teleported to your location, stepping in from the Umbra, or otherwise using unusual methods to surprise you.

Graveyard Bite: All attacks to Aggravated Damage to the unquiet dead

Gift of Tongues: Once attuned to a Land may speak any tongue spoken by the living or the dead in that land

Spirit Vision: You freely see across the veil when in material form, though using this power increases the DC to perceive material happenings by 1 as you are distracted by the Otherworld

War Dogs
Attributes: Strength 3, Dexterity 4, Stamina 2, Perception 3, Intelligence 4, Wits 3
Abilities: Alertness 3, Athletics 3, Awareness 3, Brawl 4, Empathy 2, Intimidation 4, Stealth 2, Survival (Tracking) 4; Occult (Ghosts) 3, Streetwise 1
Willpower: 6
Gnosis: 6
Rage 4 [Usable Only in Spirit Form without Ferocity]
Mana Pool: 24 (Gnosis*4)
Health Levels: OK, -1, -1, -2, -2, -5, Incapacitated
Armor Rating: 0 (two soak dice, total)
Attack: Bite for five dice (lethal); claw for three dice (bashing)/Aggravating Special

Gift of Tongues: Once attuned to a Land may speak any tongue spoken by the living or the dead in that land

Graveyard Bite: All attacks to Aggravated Damage to the unquiet dead

Deathless Beast Fetter: Each time the sun crosses the horizon, hound may choose to walk in flesh or spirit, living being or a ghostly spy.

Death Sense: With a successful Perception+Awareness roll you may sense spirits across the veil and well as the presence of impending death

Deflect Harm: With an invisible wave of power, the spirit deflects incoming attacks made against the spirit or — if the spirit "lends" this Charm to a mortal host — the host imbued with the spirit's blessings. Each point of Mana spent by the entity blocks one health level of damage from an incoming attack that turn.
This Charm deflects bashing, lethal, and aggravated damage equally well, and protects against damage caused by magickal assaults as well as it protects against physical ones. A spirit may employ this Charm for as long as that character's Mana Trait holds out. A mortal host blessed with this Charm by a spirit helper, however, may deflect up to five health levels of damage per turn; additional damage slides past the deflection effect and affects the host normally.

Tides of Fortune Invoking the fickle currents of fortune, you can employ a combination of the spirit powers Bad Luck Charm and Good Luck Charm.

Service Dogs
Attributes: Strength 3, Dexterity 4, Stamina 2, Perception 3, Intelligence 4, Wits 3
Abilities: Alertness 3, Athletics 2, Awareness 3, Brawl 3, Empathy 3, Intimidation 4, Stealth 2, Survival (Tracking) 4; Occult (Ghosts) 3 Investigation 1, Medicine 2
Willpower: 6
Gnosis: 6
Rage 4 [Usable Only in Spirit Form without Ferocity]
Mana Pool: 24 (Gnosis*4)
Health Levels: OK, -1, -1, -2, -2, -5, Incapacitated
Armor Rating: 0 (two soak dice, total)
Attack: Bite for five dice (lethal); claw for three dice (bashing)/Aggravating Special

Gift of Tongues: Once attuned to a Land may speak any tongue spoken by the living or the dead in that land

Graveyard Bite: All attacks to Aggravated Damage to the unquiet dead

Deathless Beast Fetter: Each time the sun crosses the horizon, hound may choose to walk in flesh or spirit, living being or a ghostly spy.

Death Sense: With a successful Perception+Awareness roll you may sense spirits across the veil and well as the presence of impending death

Deflect Harm: With an invisible wave of power, the spirit deflects incoming attacks made against the spirit or — if the spirit "lends" this Charm to a mortal host — the host imbued with the spirit's blessings. Each point of Mana spent by the entity blocks one health level of damage from an incoming attack that turn.
This Charm deflects bashing, lethal, and aggravated damage equally well, and protects against damage caused by magickal assaults as well as it protects against physical ones. A spirit may employ this Charm for as long as that character's Mana Trait holds out. A mortal host blessed with this Charm by a spirit helper, however, may deflect up to five health levels of damage per turn; additional damage slides past the deflection effect and affects the host normally.

Mana Gift: You may freely share Mana with a mortal practitioner, though the rate of exchange depends on how much the mortal is aligned to your nature. Worshiper denotes a mortal who actively venerates you as a god (however minor); resonant is a mortal practitioner whose power aligns with your nature, for instance a medium for a hound of death. Unaligned is everyone else.
Alignment Exchange
Worshiper 1 to 1
Resonant 2 to 1
Unaligned 3 to 1

Healing Lick: In legend and in fact, animals can lick wounds in order to soothe the pain. Certain beasts, however, can do more than that: Their licking actually heals cuts, burns, and so forth. With this Advantage, you can repair a certain amount of external damage — gashes, slashes, and the like, as opposed to venom or broken bones. You can heal one health level of bashing or lethal per 2 Mana Spent. The healing also eases the pain of injuries, spreading a sense of calm along with the obvious relief from torn tissues and flowing blood.

Unchanged Hounds
Attributes: Strength 3, Dexterity 4, Stamina 2, Perception 3, Intelligence 4, Wits 3
Abilities: Alertness 3, Athletics 2, Awareness 3, Brawl 3, Empathy 2, Intimidation 4, Stealth 2, Survival (Tracking) 4; Occult (Ghosts) 3
Willpower: 6
Gnosis: 6
Rage 4 [Usable Only in Spirit Form without Ferocity]
Mana Pool: 24 (Gnosis*4)
Health Levels: OK, -1, -1, -2, -2, -5, Incapacitated
Armor Rating: 0 (two soak dice, total)
Attack: Bite for five dice (lethal); claw for three dice (bashing)/Aggravating Special

Gift of Tongues: Once attuned to a Land may speak any tongue spoken by the living or the dead in that land

Graveyard Bite: All attacks to Aggravated Damage to the unquiet dead

Deathless Beast Fetter: Each time the sun crosses the horizon, hound may choose to walk in flesh or spirit, living being or a ghostly spy.

Death Sense: With a successful Perception+Awareness roll you may sense spirits across the veil and well as the presence of impending death

Deflect Harm: With an invisible wave of power, the spirit deflects incoming attacks made against the spirit or — if the spirit "lends" this Charm to a mortal host — the host imbued with the spirit's blessings. Each point of Mana spent by the entity blocks one health level of damage from an incoming attack that turn.
This Charm deflects bashing, lethal, and aggravated damage equally well, and protects against damage caused by magickal assaults as well as it protects against physical ones. A spirit may employ this Charm for as long as that character's Mana Trait holds out. A mortal host blessed with this Charm by a spirit helper, however, may deflect up to five health levels of damage per turn; additional damage slides past the deflection effect and affects the host normally.

DragonParadox · Jun 25, 2022

Rules and Links

Rules

All characters, even non-heroic mortals have intimacies, everyone can be go beyond themselves under the right circumstances
Heroic mortals count 10s as two successes
Stunts, that is means of doing something for the purposes of getting extra dice are chosen automatically from among the most popular with the winning options so as to avoid leaving you guys without that bonus dice If the vote is qualitatively changed in a way that uses up more resources or closes off options in the future then has a higher standard to pass and the whole vote needs a majority. In the event that a stunt specifically does any of the above you will receive a warning that it will be held to the latter standard. Stunts should be marked as [Stunt] which option will always be given for any vote on an action that would involve an immediate roll.
The Crown of Eyes doesn't answer "How do I..." questions. It can answer who, what, when, where, and even "How did this happen?", but will not tell you what you can or should do. This is not a statement about which literal word you use in your question, it's a description of the types of questions it works on.
The Crown of Eyes looks for secrets and facts about people, it is not a general problem solver. If you want to free a friend from Bob the Fey's captivity, you could ask "What are Bob's secret vices?" and the Crown would tell you that he's got an extreme sweet tooth and will do anything for candy, and you could try using that. But the Crown will not tell you whether offering honeycakes would actually work, nor how many of them you'd need.
The Crown of Eyes cannot predict actions to come from free will. "Which lottery number will win tomorrow?" works, because it's a machine draw, and "What are Mister John Smith's normal habits on a Tuesday?" works because it's an established fact about John Smith. "Where will John Smith be next Tuesday?" does not work, that's not something the Crown can tell you. "What would convince John Smith to...?" also does not work, you have to make your own arguments.
The Shih arts used to boost attributes do not stack with an infernal's shintai form as they were designed for use by mortals not demon princes, making them more useful in a form closer to human
Green Sun Nimbus Flare is presently soakable (by things that can soak Aggravated Damage). At Essence 4 that is no longer the case
Splintered Gale Incarnation clones only die in the sense of being wiped if they are used as vessels for resurrection, otherwise you can restore them. That does not mean you can just say ask a clone to kill herself as a form of instant long range communication or something, dying is still traumatic in a way being reabsorbed in the presence of the Exalt is not and a close which died violently is going to have gaps in their memories for the time preceding their death
Temporary increases to stats, though not excellencies are additive to Charms (Ex. Steel Skin and VLE)
Multiple actions impose a +1 DC penalty stacking +1 DC and -1 Die after that. No more than one action in a round can be an attack.
If you take a DC to 2 you just succeed, I have rolled a Dc 2 roll once, but just to see what would happen, that did not inform the narrative. As a general rule if the roll is for something with a pass/fail state 'do you break down the door' lets say then that door is splinters and we move on. If on the other hand the roll is for something where the number of successes matters the DC will only go down to 3 and be rolled, but for every -1 you would have had past three, you get an extra 2 dice.
Companion XP rounds up at 0.5

Links to Source Books

DragonParadox · Jul 16, 2022

On the Matter of Fomori

The power Molly bears is not in its utmost extreme evil, it does not want her to be selfish, or hateful, it does not specifically require sadism or malice. It is simply power, the power of lordship of domination, of the all seeing eye of the sage who can peer into the infinite darkness and laugh at what they find there. Moreover it seeks to fill the empty throne, it seeks the likeness of something unspeakably ancient and unspeakably powerful. It is the crown of the Demon Emperor, but it does not decide how that One is to rule, for how can a crown have opinions save those of the head it is placed on.

But the rest of the world is sadly lacking in that vision, the sort of spirits that will come when called by you to invest into a mortal are the desperate, the mad, the ambitions and the malcontent. Any Fomori you make will have have flaw, some physical, mental or even spiritual, flaws and derangement basically as the combination of alien essence, dark spirit and mortal host does not precisely lead to sunshine and roses. Now does that mean everyone has to have head tentacles unless you use Baptismal Agony Blessing and specifically say 'no physical changes'? No.

While the process is a chaotic and dangerous it is not malicious unless you choose to make it so you can converse with the demons and tell them that this is meant to be a rite of empowerment, or in the case of making your Hell Realm define how spirit and mortal flesh will merge inside your world soul.

Flaws can be things like say this:

Curiosity (2 pt. Flaw)
You find mysteries of any sort irresistible. Whether it's a closed drawer, a whispered conversation, or a mysterious light just beyond the trees, you have to know what is going on at all times. Anytime you are presented with the unknown, make a Wits roll or else you must go investigate. The difficulty varies with the roll involved: 5 for simple things ("What is in that storage unit?") and up to 9 for intense circumstances ("I wonder what those vampires are planning. I'd better go listen in. What could possibly go wrong?")

Or this

Pack Mentality (2 pt. Flaw)
You are lost without your pack. Their presence not only supports you, it helps define you. When you are with at least one member of your pack, you have –1 difficulty on all rolls involving group activities or strategies; when you are not, your difficulty increases by 2 on any task. You sometimes have trouble making decision without your pack to help you, even if you are the pack leader. In stressful situations, you may need to make a Willpower roll to act on your own.

You could have an entire cadre of Fomori whose task is to be your internal investigators who feel uncomfortable alone and are beset by powerful curiosity and in exchange for that have the power to see in the dark and turn into mist, thus making them rather good investigators.
With Mercy in Servitude you could use your personal essence to correct some of the more chaotic effects of the melding as long as they remain under your command. Of course if you do give them head tentacles with your help they would be able to tame the power and make them appear as hair when not in use.

You do not have to make monsters, though any melding of flesh and spirit you bring about will come out a little alien. But hey that's a small price to pay for superpowers right?

OOC: This has been the rather long winded way of saying not to be scared of making fomori. Normally I prefer to cover things like this when they come up organically in the story but with this I felt I had to do this now or you guys might just not take the charms.

DragonParadox · Jul 21, 2022

Crown of Eyes and You

The basic gist of the crown goeth thusly: While intensely studying an object, situation, or individual that is within her line of sight, the Infernal may spend 1 Essence and ask one question about it, which the Storyteller must answer honestly. The Infernal can only ever use this power a single time on any object, situation, or individual.

You need to actually meaningfully perceive things with your normal senses to ask about them, though some amount of inference is permited. So if you see a picture of someone's hand strangling another person, you can ask about the attacker reasonably inferring that there is someone attached to the hand, but even though you are in the universe you cannot conceive of the whole of of from an outside perspective, the word universe is an abstraction like 'everything' so you cannot ask about it.

So what about things that are related, what about classes of people? How many questions do you get? It depends, specifically it depends on the quality of the secret, this is a mystical tool for ferreting out the darkest secrets of the world, it will give you more leeway when you want to look at the obscure, the occult and the dangerous than it will the safe and the mundane. You get one lottery number and, one horse race winner etc... but you can ask about wizards, vampires and other supernatural beings individually and as a group. The same holds for secrets that are mundane but perilous to know. What is John Marcone's greatest fear? will not close you off from asking about other gangsters, even from asking about his organization because those are secrets kept with blood and murder and your eyes peer most intensely at them.

On the matter of things that might perhaps be too arcane, too dangerous, say the current thoughts of an Outsiders or 'how did the Fall happen?' your crown will prioritize keeping your mind intact over the fidelity of the data. It is not going to feed the raw stuff of mind-bending madness into your head just because you asked the wrong question. That said you can totally find out things that you would rather not know so you should be careful of that.

OOC: I will be adding to this as more questions are asked about the crown. Given how powerful it is I feel like it is inevitable this will happen and best to keep it all in one easily accessible place

DragonParadox · Aug 3, 2022

Magic and the Mundane

As far as you are able to ascertain there is no supernatural force that mandates that the vast majority of humanity should be ignorant of that other world which exists just under the skin of theirs, of the vampires in blood-soaked sheets, of wicked fey sounding the hunting horn or the dead gathering in anticipation of the thinning of the veil. Indeed the degree of separation is not always the same. What is hogwash and superstition to most of the urban sophisticates of Chicago is a lot more reasonable to people living in traditional communities all across the world from the Arctic Russia to equatorial South America.

The age of industry has come, the age of instant communication and travel faster than a speeding bullet, but it does not touch all places equally just as it does not touch all people. What might be considered a dreadful breech in one place may be uncommon but understood in another. Consider what kind of magic you are showing and to whom and how they might react in the context of their beliefs. Even within the same general location like say Chicago a devout Christian, a lapsed Muslim and someone who is interested in New Age spirituality will see the same event in different ways

OK, but the vampires eat people equally, why isn't there a consensus on 'giant bat monster bad' at least? Because the giant bat monsters like it that way and so does everything else that thinks of humanity as a snack or an amusement. Most of the powerful supernatural factions the signatories of the Accords do things that the vast majority of governments and the vast majority of people would find objectionable and so they would rather mankind scoff at tales of vampires and relegate the fey to the realm of Disney Animation. Do note however that a majority of people even in the modern world believe in ghosts. That is because ghosts do not have a voice in those counsels and any clean up after a haunting is far less through than say a vampire killing in a public place.

Looking at it from the other direction what happens when something slips through the net? Say a bunch of burned vampire corpses end up on the table of the local coroner who being really into both the truth and the scientific method calls them for what they are, not human, not animal, nothing known to modern science. Well he almost gets fired from his job as mentally unsound because no one wants to take the chance of being painted with the same brush, of being labeled crazy.

There are people out there trying to bring the weird to the light, the Susan Rodriquez' of the world, but the pay is shit, the hours are long and you get no respect. The people who take those jobs anyway tend to be true believers, though not necessarily with the thoroughness of Waldo Butters, they have their own theories and many if not most of them are nonsense, camouflage for the supernatural that they do not even have to pay for, an early warning system when something is about to blow up. If you read about an actual breach in the Midwestern Arcane you have quite a bit more time to do damage control before any more reputable paper gets into it

So to really break things open you need something big, you need something persistent. It has to stick with the public so hard that the government feels it has to act openly... keeping in mind that most governments know more than they let on . They might know for instance that they would be starting a war with multiple world-spanning conspiracies and what might as well be the Alien Invasion from Tir Nan Og,

So in conclusion it is really really hard to break the masquerade wide open, though you should be careful how hard to poke the veil so as not to get its enforcers on your case.

Artemis1992 · Oct 22, 2022

Final editing run:

Excellence of the Tireless Psychopomp (•)
The Exingent can draw on their divine Essence to fullfill its eternal duties with skill and power beyond any mortal.
System: The first time the character purchases this Charm, it may be applied to any of her Divine Attributes. At any time, the player may reflexively spend 1 Essence to add (Current Willpower) dice to all rolls using a relevant Attribute for (Essence rating + 1) turns in combat, or minutes outside of combat. This Charm can be repurchased to unlock additional Attributes, but Essence must be spent to add dice to each Attribute separately

Speaker to Crow and Hound (•)
The Exigent has a natural connection to certain animals, particularly those associated with Death. This includes Hounds, Corvidae and some cats.
System: The Exigent can always be understood by the animals and they are usually inclined to fullfill her requests within the limits of their own comprehension, though unpleasant tasks my require a Manipulation+Animal Ken roll to convince the animal.
By spending 1 Essence the Exigent can build an obviously supernatural connection to a single present animal, allowing her to share its memories and thoughts and to give it much more complex instructions for one scene.

Authority of the Psychopomp (•)
The Exigent is clad in the mantle of Authority over the dead, they respect and fear her instincivly.
System: Whenever the Exigent deals with a restless dead (both ghosts and physical dead such as Black Court Vampires), she permanently reduces the difficulty of all social actions (including the activation roll of powers to suborn the will of such creatures) by two. She can also communicate with Ghosts regardless of language-barriers.

Oxen Body (•)
The vitality of ancient heroes is echoed in the Exigent.
System: Add 1 Bruised (-0) and 1 Crippled (-5) Health level to your Healthtrack.

Flawless Hunter's Eye (•)
While Exigents Anima allows her to see the immaterial clearly, there are still times when unveiling her full power would be unwise, so she merely sharpens her own eyes.
System: Spend 1 Essence, for the rest of the Scene all Perception rolls are taken at -2 Difficulty and she only needs 1 Success on an Awareness roll to notice the exact location of an immaterial presence, allowing her to use her Anima-power on it.

Righteous Lion Defense (•)
The Exigent feels the call of duty and family in her Essence and will not be swayed from her path.
System: Any attempt to cause or force the Exigent to betray, undermine, or abandon her Intimacies automatically fails

Silent as Death (•)
The Exigent stirs the air to smother all noises she makes.
System: Spend 1 Essence or 1 Willpower. For the rest of the scene, the character's actions make no noise at all unless she wishes them to.

Command the Dead (•)
Exerting the combined pressure of Essence and will, the Exigent may order the bodies of the fallen to stand and do her bidding.
System: The player spends 1 Essence and rolls Charisma + Leadership. If attempting to usurp control of a zombie or similar mindless corpse-servant from another necromancer, the difficulty is the controlling character's Willpower. If attempting to exhort a corpse to stand up and serve her, the difficulty is 6. A zombie created or commandeered with this Charm will obey the Exigent's commands to the best of its very limited abilities. Zombies animated by Command the Dead lose their animation after one cycle of the moon unless stationed within a Dragon Nest, whose power may sustain them indefinitely.

Ghost-Warding Glyph (•)
The Exigent may mark any living person's forehead with a glyph scribed in blood. So long as it remains undisturbed, they are protected from the magic of the dead.
System: Spend 1 Essence. Until the mark is deliberately washed or scrubbed away, all Arcanoi and Disciplines directed against the protected individual raise their difficulty by the Exigent's Essence rating; if there's no roll involved, then they increase their cost in Blood, Pathos, Angst, or Chi by +1. The Exigent can't grant the Ghost-Waring Glyph's mark to herself.
Alternativly the Glyph can be used to enhance the threshold of a house, applying the effect to the entire property and making it much more difficult for incorporeal ghosts to enter. They have to make a Willpower roll (DC 7) and gain more successes than the caster's permanent Essence.

Carriage of the Ankou (•)
The Exigent has a marked vehicle that appears at her call. Traditionally this was a black coach, but today it may well be a car or motercycle.
System: Spend 2 Essence marking a vehicle or mount that you own. Afterwards a whistle is enough to call it to your side, where it will appear in three turn's time. The appearance is not very noticable to those not expecting to see supernatural effects, a car might simply be in a parking spot that was previously empty while nobody looked there.
You can only change the marked vehicle once per story.

Akashic Root Methodology (••)
The Exigent walks in the footsteps of dead giants, and the memories of the mortal dead shorten her path to enlightenment.
System: In the presence of appropriate resources, research and scholarly rolls progress ten times faster than normal, and benefit from a -1 DC reduction in difficulty, minimum DC3. Alternatively, spend 1 Essence to roll Intelligence + Academics at DC5; success locates pertinent information instantly.
Requires access to a library, archives or collection of cooperating experts, whether mortal or not, with plausible access to the relevant information. Computers and networked devices also count, as long as the information is not hidden/encrypted/passworded.

Hunter's Bolt (••)
The Exigent concentrates her Essence into killing projectile of some kind: perhaps a blast of pale flames, perhaps otherworldly lightning, perhaps a ghostly arrow. System:
Roll Dexterity + Athletics (difficulty 5) to aim the attack. The bolt has a damage rating of 5 (lethal) and a range of 40; reflexively spending 1 Essence makes this attack damage aggravated for the next (Essence rating) turns.

Spirit-Maiming Essence Attack (••)
The Exigent imbues her strike with Essence which negates the coherence of the otherworldly.
System: Reflexively spend 1 Essence when launching an attack. The attack inflicts aggravated damage to spirits, ghosts, and other beings not clothed in flesh. Additionally, should it strike any undead supernatural being, they lose (Exigent's Essence rating) points of whatever mystical substance fuels their powers – blood points, Gnosis, Quintessence, Glamour, Pathos, Essence, and the like. Creatures with a higher Essence (or equivalent) rating than the Exigent may resist this effect with a contested Essence-roll.

Arms of Iron (••):
The Ankou is a master of Iron and his Exigent may cover her arms and hands in the metal, from making a solid cover to growing spikes of it at will.
System: Spend 1 Essence to activate the Charm for the rest of the Scene. The Exigent's Brawl attacks deal STR+2 Lethal damage, while her clinches inflict Strength + 3 lethal damage. Additionally, anyone who strikes her with his bare hands must soak one level of lethal damage, and anyone who locks her into a clinch must soak two levels of lethal damage per round. Unless she also has the higher-level Charm Tools of Iron this is still more of a magical cover than conceptually pure Iron, it does not deal aggravated damage to Ghosts or Fey.

Ominous Portent Exercise (••)
The Exigent instinctively knows when death draws near, making her impossible to take unaware so long as she hasn't totally exhausted both body and spirit.
System: The Exigent may reflexively spend 1 Essence automatically notice an ambush or other such unexpected attack, allowing her to defend against it as normal.

Traces of Death Unveiled (••)
The Exigent may, with but a moment's touch, feel the chains that bind one of the living to the restless dead.
System: To activate this Charm, the Exigent must touch a living being and spend 1 Essence, then roll Perception + (Awareness, Investigation, or Occult). Her successes determine how much information she learns.
• 1 success: The Exigent learns whether or not the individual has any connection to the restless dead of any sort.
• 2 successes: The Exigent learns the nature of the connection: If the individual is the subject of a ghost's Passion or acts as its Fetter, if they are under the thrall of a vampire, or if their nature places one foot in the afterlife (as in the case of a revenant, dhampir, or dhampyr).
• 3 successes: The Exigent learns the depth of the bond: whether the mortal is the subject of a minor or major Passion or Fetter; whether she belongs heart and soul to a vampire through the Blood Bond or longterm psychic conditioning, or is merely being affected by transitory enchantments of the blood; or the precise nature of a half-dead being's lineage.
• 4 successes+: The Exigent learns the identity of the ghost or vampire the individual is tied to, including the creature's name and appearance

Rest-Granting Strike (••)
(Refluffed and weaker Soul-Eating Strike) The Exigent can send a creature to permanent rest.
System: When the Exigent slays any being, the player can opt to roll Wits + Occult (difficulty 6). Doing so prevents spirits (below Incarna-level) and ghosts from ever returning or reforming, prevents any ensouled being from becoming a wraith. The Exigent gains 3 Essence on the spot if the annihilated being was in any sense immortal, such as a spirit, ghost or vampire. Furthermore, the Exingent can reflexively spend 1 Essence to gain the ability to strike and damage intangible beings for the rest of the scene, so long as she can perceive them.

Open/Close the Way (••)
The Exigent has an affinity for the opening of otherworldly paths.
System: Spend 1 Essence and roll Wits+Occult (Difficulty local Gaunlet-rating) to open a Way. This can stay open for the rest of the Scene and be passed by entities from both sides. She may also attempt to close an open Way, succeding requires more successes than the effect that opened the Way achieved.

Thoughts of Oak Defence (••)
The Exigent solidifies her desire and duty, pushing away any externally-imposed thoughts or feelings.
System: Reflexively spend 1 Essence to utterly reject all thought and emotion-altering magic from a specific character or source for the rest of the scene.

Impervious Skin of Stone Meditation (••)
The Exigent draws the solidity of stone up into her flesh. She must be in contact with stone or soil to use this Charm. Traditionally this is accomplished by standing upon the bare Earth or a stone floor, but the Exigent carry a small rock in their pocket, or wear a precious stone on a ring in order to use this Charm at any time.
System: Reflexively spend 1 Essence to activate this Charm. The Exigent rolls (Stamina x 2) dice to soak damage for the rest of the scene.

Stalker in the Wild (••)
The Exigent is a hunter in forest and sky alike and the world does not hinder her hunt.
System: Reduce the difficulty of survival rolls to feed or protect yourself and others in any kind of wilderness natural or magical by 2. Animals never willingly harm the Exigent except in self-defence, regardless of training
By spending 1 Essence or Willpower the Exigent becomes immune to a single type of environmental hazard for the rest of the scene.

Invitation of Peaceful Respite (•••)
As death is sleep's brother the Exalted can bring either to the subjects of this Charm.
System: Spend 1 Essence to attempt to send a person capable of sleeping into a restful slumber for a full 8 hours, the sleep can only be interrupted through physical contact. A person sleeping the full time restores 2 points of Willpower if they would normally regain 1, or ignore the Nightmare flaw for that night.
A resisting target must make a Willpower Roll with a difficulty of the Exalt's (Manipulation + Empathy) and gain more successes than the Exalt's permanent Essence. People who might expect mental attacks (usually supernatural beings activly fighting the Exalted) can resist at -2 difficulty.

Exquisite Etiquette Style (•••)
Drawing on old instincts , the Exigent gains a nearly universal sense of etiquette and social currents. She rarely commits faux pas or social gaffes when dealing with unfamiliar cultures or social situations.
System: The Exigent lowers the difficulty of all Etiquette and Streetwise rolls by –1, and cannot botch with either Ability. Should she fail at any Etiquette or Streetwise roll against Fey, she may reflexively spend 1 Essence to attempt to re-roll it once.

Quarry Revelation Technique (•••)
The Exigent can read the shape her quarry leaves in the world; it is as though the land, the plants, the air itself conspire to lead her to her prey.
System: Once the character finds some evidence of a trail to follow, her player may spend 1 Essence to perfectly track the target for the next 24 hours. No roll is needed.

Chariot of the Earth (•••)
With a gesture of her hand the Exigent raises the earth to carry her on to her target.
System: Spend 1 Essence to conjure a wave of earth that can carry the Exalted and (Essence +1) passengers at up to 60mph. The earthwave leaves no traces and is in no way limited by its own size, allowing it to be ridden through narrow corridors.
When the Exigent wishes she can use the earthwave as a weapon, striking with Dexterity + Athletics at a target and dealing 5+Essence Dice of Bashing Damage on hit.

Tools of Iron (•••)
Iron is the bane of Fey and Ghosts alike and as the hunter of the Dead the Ankou's Daughter is its master.
System: Spend 1 Essence to create a weapon or ammunition of iron for the rest of the scene. This can't be a firearm, but it can be bullets for one. Aside from that any classical melee weapon and ammunition for any ranged weapon is an option.
The weapon deals aggravated damage to Fey and Ghosts.

Stay the Cold Hand (•••)
It is given to the Exigent to take lifes, but also to preserve those whose time has not yet come. At her touch the spectre of death retreats for a while.
System: Whenever the Exigent attempts an Intelligence+Medicine roll to give first to a still-living she may enhance the results to the following:

0 Successes: As long as the Exalted doesn't botch the first aid suffices to keep the target from dying before the next sunrise or nightfall, often enough time to let other medics do their work
2 Successes: At this point the Exalted ensures that no infection can set in and that the process of healing will be relativly quick and clean within the limits of mortal healing, even lacking further medical care
4+ Successes: The target will heal with the speed of an Exalted and suffer no long-term damage of any kind from the wound

This Charm can only be used for first aid, it neither accelerates the healing of one who has already been treated nor does it improve the healing of any wounds recieved after its use.

Call the Restless (•••)
Not all restless ghosts are filled with the strenght and rage to truly oppose the psychopomp, most are merely lost, confused or upset. These the Exigent can call to her side to bring them rest.
System: Spend 1 Essence or Willpower and take an extended action to roll Charisma+Empathy to call restless ghosts towards yourself. You can make one roll instantly and another every 10 minutes, to a total of (Essence Rating) rolls. The affected area depends on the gathered successes, a botch sends the ghosts fleeing or raging and prevents you from calling out to them for a full day.

1 Success: Room
2 Successes: Building
3 Successess: Street
5 Successess: Neighbourhood
7 Successess: Cty-Quarter
9 Successess: City
11+ Successess: Can affect wide countrysides at once

Unwilling Ghosts can resist this effect relativly easily with a DC 7 Willpower roll.

Unimped Assault of the Deathless (•••)
The Exigent's skin grows pale and she seems insubstantial as she becomes hard to harm by weapons without the weight stories and memories behind them.
System: Reflexively spend 1 Essence to activate this Charm for the rest of the scene. The Liminal halves any bashing damage she suffers (round down) after soak while it is active, and suffers bashing damage from bullets unless they're aimed at her head (a difficulty 8 called shot). This does not apply to magically enhanced weapons or fetishes.

Relentless Hunter's Trance (••••)
With a moment's intense concentration, the Exigent may become as enduring as the Earth itself.
System: Spend 1 Essence and roll Willpower (difficulty 6). For each success, the Exigent and her mount (if she is riding) may enjoy one of the following benefits for the rest of the scene:
• She no longer experiences penalties for fatigue and exhaustion, and indeed needs neither rest nor sleep.
• She no longer experiences penalties for starvation or dehydration, and indeed has no need to eat or drink.
• She no longer needs to breathe.
• Her Wound-Penalties are lowered by 1
As long as she is activly (physically) pursuing a target she may activate the Charm without cost until she catches up or gives up the chase.

Call the Hunt (••••)
With a sharp whistle or a hornblow the Exigent draws on the legend of the Wild Hunt to conjure its hounds to her side.
System: Spend 2 Essence to summon (Essence/2 rounded up) Hunting Hounds to serve the Exigent until the dawn of the next day. Mechanically these resemble Inugami (God and Monsters p119), though in appearance they are closer to large white Irish Wolfhounds in good health.

Companions of the Hunter (••••)
The Exigent may lay her blessing on an Animal she associated with, permanently empowering it as a part of her hunting party.
System: Choose a friendly Animal that falls either under Speaker to Crows and Hounds or that is a horse and spend 5 Essence while spending at least 2 hours paining its fur or feathers with magical symbols in woad.
The Animal gains 30 XP that it can freely spend on attributes and skills (including on greater Intelligence) and (5+Essence) points it can spend on Special Advantages (From Gods and Monsters).
A creature can only benefit from this effect once and the Exigent can only have (Essence*2) Animals blessed like this at the same time.

Cold Vengance Counterstrike (••••)
Accepting the forces turned against her, the Exalt may send them back against her attacker.
System: Reflexively spend 1 Essence when attacked. After the attack finishes resolving, the Exalt may make a Dexterity + Brawl counterattack against her attacker, so long as they're within striking distance. This attack adds a number of automatic successes equal to the levels of damage the Exalt suffered from the attack made against her (if any).

Restless Deathbringer Onslaught (••••)
The Exigent's attacks strike, one after another, like a smith's hammer shaping white-hot steel.
System: Reflexively spend at least 1 Essence. At the end of the turn, after all characters have taken their actions, the character may make two additional attacks at her full dice pool per point of Essence spent. She can make no more extra attacks than the lowest of her Brawl, or Athletics Abilities (to a minimum of 1).

Iron Storm Dance (••••)
As the Exigent calls for more Iron to protect her and aid her the very world around her reacts to her Essence and chips and shards and arrowtips fly around her form.
System: Reflexively spend 1 Essence. For the next (Essence rating) minutes, the Exigent adds two dice to all soak rolls, increases the difficulty of all ranged attacks against her by +1, and anyone within three yards of her must soak two levels of lethal damage per turn. If she also has the Charm Tools of Iron, this Charm deals aggravated damage against ghosts and fey.
Creatures touched by her power, such as animals under Companions of the Hunter or those bearing her Ghost-Warding Glyph are immune to the regular damage.

Shatter the Horns (•••••)
The blast of the hunting horns is terrible beyond description, not just to the hunted.
System: Spend 2 Essence to produce the sound of countless hunting horns, of the baying of hounds and the neighing of horses. This Charm can only be targeted at a restless dead. Roll Charisma + Intimidate (dif 10-Essence), the target can resist with a Willpower roll (Diff 7). If the Exigent wins the opposed roll the Dead is paralysed by fear and can roll willpower once per round until it beats the Exigent's initial roll.
Every mortal in (Essence x20 yards) is stuck by Delirium as if he had seen a Werecreature.

Warding of Divine Ancestry (•••••)
The Exalted solidifies her Essence to resist hostile magic and the powers of chaos.
System: Whenever the character is the subject of any hostile supernatural power that seeks to transform, infect, taint, transport, or control her body or spirit, the difficulty to do so is raised by 1. If affected anyway, she may spend 2 Essence and roll Stamina + Occult against difficulty 8. Success shatters the magic, protecting the Exigent completely. Since this expenditure isn't reflexive, the Exigent may spend a few moments fluctuating in mid-transformation or teleportation, as her Essence battles with the magic seeking to suborn her.

Acceptance of Inevitability Defense (•••••)
Faced with the inevitability of harm, the Exigent learns to trade calamity for lesser suffering, turning translucent and untouchable in exchange for stepping closer to her death.
System: Reflexively spend 1 Essence when struck by an attack which inflicts damage. That damage is negated, and the Exigent instead suffers one automatic level of aggravated damage. This Charm may only be used once per scene.

Ramparts of Obedient Earth (•••••)
With but a gesture and a surge of Essence, the Exigent may cause trenches to appear in the Earth, walls of stone to burst from the ground, or even to force open gaps in stone surfaces.
System: Spend 2 Essence. For the rest of the scene, the Exigent may roll Dexterity + Crafts to manipulate gross quantities of Earth anywhere within 200 yards, forming trenches, pits, walls, or other structures (difficulty 6 to 8, depending on how large or intricate a manifestation she's trying to create).

Lydia's Charmset 1.3
I hope that's acceptable @DragonParadox ?

DragonParadox · Jun 25, 2022

Organizations and Resources

The Jade Dogs
Affiliation: Undertown Gang
Hook: Mercy in Servitude, so long as they serve the will of the infernal their Hunger shall not trouble them.
History: The Red Dogs were formed around a core of three ghouls formerly serving the Red Court in Chicago before the start of the War with the White Council. To the extent then have a leader it is 'Adam' a name he took after fleeing to Undertown. what his name was among his former clan the others either do not know or refuse to speak. 'Bones' and 'Lockjaw' are the other two experienced ghouls in the gang and generally the ones who hold back Adam's temper from 'the children'.

The latter group includes six younger ghouls with ages ranging from 18 to 25 who were raised in by mortal parents or other caretakers, though it is clear none of them had a happy childhood. Given the overwhelming nature of the hunger on first awakening you are not sure you want to ask them about it. What is clear is that in spite of Adam's volatile and possibly abusive behavior they all see him as their proverbial port in the storm, as one who understands their nature and can help them live with it and with themselves. The elders of the clan have been teaching Sumerian, which is the formal language of the ghoul clans to their fellows as well a impressing upon them some measure of supernatural etiquette, mostly so they can deal with such predators as cannot be frightened away with threats of violence.Of all the ghouls Sarah seems to have retained the most human mannerisms, though that might just be a function of her being the newest addition to the gang

The group was joined by a trio of scavenging White Court vampires who could no longer function in society, either vampire or human and so sought shelter in undertown as well as a handful of mortals who would otherwise be the prey of the various supernatural predators. Though the death of Adam to the incursion of Akuma later left a hole in the that will not be lightly filled the constant improvements to their living conditions well as the addition of Augustus FitzClarance, a skilled and experienced warrior of the White Court have gone a long way to settling spirits. These days the Last Station is one of the safest places in Unndertown and not just doe to your personal patronage. There is a limit to what even the likes of malks and redcaps can do against ceiling-mounted guns

Last of the group, counted among them more for her charm than for her need of shelter in the Station is Isabela Syliga. Having met her while she was in the act of almost killing a federal agent as part of the screwed up vampire initiation you are going to say she is probably not a good influence but she is a friend .

Skills:

Bones and Lockjaw all possess Firearms 3 and Brawl 3 Subterfuge 1
Younger ghouls possess Brawl 2 Melee 2 and from the scraps of their previous lives can be counted as possessing Academics 1
All Ghouls Possess Stealth 4
3 Malvora Vampires (Skilled in fighting in and fleeing though tunnels)
Augustus FitzClarance Twice Bastard Bodyguard-Fixer

Name: Augustus FitzClarance
House: Skavis
Alias: Twice Bastard

Generation: 11

Soak: 4 +4 (Armour) = 8

Physical: Strength 4, Dexterity 4-1 =3, Stamina 4
Social: Charisma 3, Manipulation 2, Appearance 4
Mental: Perception 3, Intelligence 3, Wits 4

Talents: Alertness 3, Athletics 3, Awareness 1, Brawl 2, Empathy 3, Expression 1, Intimidation 2, Leadership 1, Subterfuge 2
Skills: Drive 1, Etiquette 2, Firearms 3, Larceny 1, Melee 4, Performance 2 (Various), Stealth 2
Knowledges: Academics 1, Investigation 1, Law 1, Occult 2, Politics 1

Disciplines: Auspex 1, Presence 1, Celerity 3, Fortitude 3, Potence 2

Combination Discipline:
Leaps and Bounds (Celerity ••, Potence ••)
Through this intersection of strength, speed, and will, the Brujah can leap amazing distances, whether to evade foes or flee a burning building.
System: The Brujah multiplies all vertical and horizontal jumping distances by the lesser of her Celerity or Potence (see the rules for jumping in V20, p. 260). The player does not need to roll anything to make the jump but, at the Storyteller's discretion, may need to roll Dexterity + Athletics (difficulty 4) to land safely depending on the environment. This power costs 12 points to learn

The Rod Raw Rending
Fortitude 1, Potence 1
This power was developed by a Germanic Ventrue posing as a Brujah. Since he wasn't as proficient with Potence as some would expect, he had to fake it with raw tenacity in his strikes. His hands and weapons do not stop when they hit their target; they push through with the weight of his invincible musculature. When he puts his hand through chain armor, nobody questions his Brujah heritage.
System: Activating The Rod Raw Rending costs 1 blood point, and it lasts for the scene. You can ignore 1/1 armor up to your character's Fortitude dots. So with Fortitude •••, you may ignore 3/3 armor. It may only be used with Brawl or Melee attacks. Experience Cost: 8

Backgrounds: Generation 2

Willpower: 6

Blood Pool/Max per Turn: 12/1

Equipment:
High quality electro flux gun: Damage 9 Levels; Range 400; Ammo: 5 (Can be recharged with Mana if the user possesses it) Conceal T (Trenchcoat) Special: Aggravated Damage as if it were flame; +2 Accuracy Bonus from the bound machine spirit
Electro-laser pistol: Damage 6 Levels; Range 50; Ammo: 15 (Can be recharged with Mana if the user possesses it) Conceal J (Jaket) Special: Aggravated Damage as if it were fire; +2 Accuracy Bonus from the bound machine spirit
Silver-Weave Armour: +4 Armour -1 DEX
Surge Kit: High end medical nano-tech from vat grown Waste lifeforms magically realigned to human biology The user rolls Stamina+Medicine with each success healing 1 point of lethal damage or two points of bashing damage, starting with the most severe wounds. A botch causes debilitating pain lasting three to five hours hours (-2 Additional Wound Penalty)
Haywyre Grenades: Destroy non-hardened electronics in 30 yards

Name: Isabela Syliga
House: Skavis
Alias: Definitely Not Izzy
Generation: 11

Physical: Strength 2, Dexterity 3, Stamina 2
Social: Charisma 3, Manipulation 3, Appearance 4
Mental: Perception 3, Intelligence 3, Wits 4
Talents: Alertness 1, Athletics 1, Empathy 3, Intimidation 2, Leadership 1, Subterfuge 2
Skills: Etiquette 2, Firearms 1, Larceny 1, Melee 1, Performance 2 (Dance), Stealth 1
Knowledges: Academics 2, Finance 2, Investigation 2, Law 1, Occult 3, Politics 2, Science 1
Disciplines: Auspex 2, Presence 1, Celerity 1, Dominate 1

Backgrounds: Generation 2, Mentor 3

Willpower: 6

Blood Pool/Max per Turn: 12/1

Chicago Synthetics
Affiliation: Magical Diamond Clearing House
Hook: Mercy in Servitude (Sole Employee)
History: Chicago Synthetics was created for the sole purpose of legitimizing your ability to make high quality artificial diamonds though the power of literally witchcraft so its main function is to show up on paperwork and wire money to you for your own expenses. It does have a headquarters though and is the owner of the undertown entrance in Southworks. Also it's recently branched out into hiring mercenaries. Maybe you should get poor Thomas some help.

Thomas Raith (White Court Prince, Friend of Harry Dresden, Crazy enough to attack Arctis Tor when asked)

Res Star Productions
Affiliation: Indie Horror Studio formerly owned by 'Darby Crane'
Hook: Lara give it to you as a gift/your cut from killing the owner
History: Has made some really cool movies like Cemetery Road, the Devil Knocks Thrice and Seven Black Candles and admitedly a few... less crittically aclaimed projects. Wonder what they are doing these days?

Resources:

Gossamer
The stuff of dreams and nightmares harvested by the Pathfinders as part of a plot to bait and make use of the powers of an ancient god-thing... no, it sounds wrong to use that name. There is another more fitting flitting though the back of your mind Raksha.

Corpse of the Will of Kakuri Greater Akuma
This Yin infused body has the look of a corpse, desiccated, almost fragile seeming, utterly at odds with the river of darkness that flower though it when it was yet animate about the business of its master

Head of Arianna Ortega (6th Generation Equivalent)
This severed head has nothing of the beauty and grace of the flesh mask that once enveloped it, though if one is minded to look at it carefully there is still a kind of ruined majesty to it, perhaps the shadow of a shadow of stolen divinity

Heart's Blood of Iku Turso (Tier 4 Splendor Reagent)
The briefcase landed on the narrow hotel desk with muffled thump, like glass in bubble-wrap. A moment later you punch in the code and open it up blue-green light welling up to fill the room until it eclipses the sun in the window. At first sight the contents seems like a pile of gemstones fit for a pirate's treasure, but when Tiffany tries to pick one of them up the rest rise with it like bubbles in the ocean deep, for what are mere Newtonian physics to the blood of Iku Turso thousand-headed, thousand horned? She drops it in mid-air and as it hangs there turns her head this way and that, contemplating the mingling of light celestial and chthonian.

Favors
That most ethereal and yet most sought out of resources, favors can be anything within the bounds of the initial deal. They range from

Minor favors, which make use of resources that would be trivial for the one holding them

Common favors, involving acts which are commonplace, though directed and holding some cost,
Major favors uncommon and quite costly, notable on the diplomatic front,
Grand favors unbound by anything but the ironclad oaths of the person or faction in questions
Honorbound favors which superseded all save another honorbound favor

2x Grand Winter Court
2x Grand Summer Court
1x Major Favor -Joe Magarac (1 Owed to Tiffany, 1 to Lydia)

DragonParadox · Dec 31, 2022

Shades and Spirits

By Pauline Moskowitz

There is a reason about four in ten Americans believe ghosts exist, why frightful tales told around the fire are called ghost stories and that reason is ghosts... are... everywhere. Even when accounting for all those who pass on or suffer some grave mishap the dead outnumber the living, they swarm like moths before the flame just on the other side of the veil, most little more than sparks on a spectral wind, stray shards of dream, nightmare and emotion set loose by a particularly violent or sorrowful death, but sometimes the soul itself is jarred loose and send out as a mariner upon grey seas. They sail for hatred, for wrath, for vengeance and justice, some wanting to protect their descendants some just out for blood. Yet the city is vast and the living swarm over it garbed in the polyester armor dyed in colors synthetic. Under steady neon glow the shadows flee the dead are in retreat, morgues and funeral homes that would once have been replete with the wrathful dead, not for nothing were the people of the pre-modern age so opposed to the study of anatomists and physicians, are now as sterile in the realms ethereal as they are in the material, as though bleach and alcohol could banish the wandering souls.

Yet wander they must those who cannot find their way forward and so they cling to the places were the certainties of modern life crumble before mysteries enduring or those more steeped in the relics of what had come before. Beneath the feet of Chicago more than ghouls and vampires dwell, as you had found. The Corpsetaker did not bring the dead there, she merely bound them to their torrents. Tormented they are indeed even without the hand of such as she, unable to be seen, unable to be heard, unable to stroke the hand of a loved one in passing or to press cold fingers upon the throat of a hated foe their discontent can only grow and grow, like ripples in the water disturbed from below they impinge upon the world of the living. These are murky waters indeed that most eyes cannot see save perhaps as a shadowy figure out of the corner of the eye, dismissed as a phantasm of tired eyes, the dry whisper of words worn down to nubs nothing more than the wind.

Most of the dead cannot make themselves known to mundane people, assuming there is even something there able to be known, but un places where the veil is particularly disturbed they are certainly felt. Animals become unaccountably skittish or aggressive, people are overcome with migraines, malaise even allergies. If they should go to a doctor they would be diagnosed with stress, anxiety or something suitably vague. Most people do not even see the darkness in their homes or offices, lacking the belief or innate sensitivity to see beyond the Veil into the deathscape beyond. Outright inexplicable incidents, the mark of a poltergeist are rare in such cases of pervasive malice because the departed does not really carry ill will towards a particular person in a particular manner, but rather there mere presence is like the miasma medieval physicians claimed caused illness. The problems persist until they either move out of the haunted space or the knot of dark energies resolves itself with the simple passage of time.

Death is a river, sooner or later all will be carried away.

Those who still have minds, wills and desires tend to seek out places of strong magic both because such places allow them to manifest more easily and because the people to congregate there are more likely to actually converse with a spirit rather than rationalize it away. Go to enough houses and you can recognize both eventually

OOC: Can't sleep, may have drunk too much coffee, here is that ghost info from Pauline's PoV.

DragonParadox · Feb 13, 2023

Jade Court and the Akuma

Risen from the horrific trials of Yomi Wan, from the befouled rites that made the Ten Thousand Immortals all of the Wan Kuei begin their existence as nothing but a ravening corpse risen from its grave to devour the living and the dead alike. Rightly are they named the Demon People, for the Po Soul of these ill fortuned folk takes on the guise of a demon of Yomi Wan, one which can even be harnessed or unleaded. In that sense all of the Hungry Dead appear to be perfect servants of the Yama Kings, forged by the horrors of their domains every bit as much the dark spirits that pay them homage.

However for all their fallen nature the Wan Kuei are heirs of those who were tasked long ago to oppose the Yama Kings and their works, so it is given to them to rise where their predecessors fell. By following the Dharma, the paths of enlightenment the elders of the Jade Court seek to become so restored, to lead others to that same state even. It should be noted that the Ancestors do not do this because they are necessarily virtuous or even repentant. For many it is because in the rotting of their flesh with the rays of the sun, in their aversion to prayer scrolls and True Faith they see the weakness and ultimately their own future enslavement at the hands of the very horrors who enslaved them long ago. If one does not rise, the common wisdom holds, than you shall fall into the grasp of the Yama Kings and become akuma.

As with many societies though philosophical idealism and political practice do not always align. the Yama Kings, some of them former Wan Kuei themselves hold vast stores of secrets and wisdom of earlier ages which can aid one in rising in the politics of the court or even to fulfill one's Dharma for what better test of one's right-understanding of virtue that to outwit an agent of ultimate corruption?

Officially, formally all those who deal with the Yama Kings are akuma to the Jade Court and its Dread Sovereign, but it is filled with the whispers of spirit binders and the midnight counsels of those who seek to use the intrigues of the Yama Kings against each other. In the Fifth Age. these heretics claim. virtue alone cannot win against vice, but cunningly turn one foe against another on the path to Enlightenment. That this is not entirely different from what little is known of the mentality that lead to the fall of the Wan Xian does not escape the more orthodox follower of the Dharmas, nor does the fact that it is a small step between aligning with evil against evil as a tactic to aligning with evil as to be more fit for a world in which it dominates. So there is war and treachery among the court, accusations and deception beneath the veil of tradition and propriety, just as there is war and strife in the soul of each of the Hungry Dead.... or at least most of them

While the Wan Kuei may sell slivers of their souls to the Yama Kings and still strive towards enlightenment they never know the measure of their own soul, for that is only given to those who have reached the Hundred Clouds, the pinnacle of Dharma. So every deal with the masters of Yomi Wan is made with the understanding that this one might be your last that one might have handed them the last piece of yourself and utter control over all that you are. It is a matter of some theological debate among the Jade Court if the Yama Kings can see how much of a petitioner's soul they have yet to claim. Usum can put that to rest, they can as soon as they take the first sliver of soul though they are usually extremely circumspect in using the pieces of a partially claimed soul to directly sway the Wan Kuei, much preferring blackmail, bribery and intimidation because they have learned though the long ages that such is almost an assured means to lose their tools and all the toil and effort that went into cultivating them

The vice of the Po soul is unrestrained passion, the vice of the Han soul is unrestrained pride. to visibly attempt to chain them before the chain is unbreakable is to force them into desperate unity of purpose that will lead to escape far more often than not. So other than those who have passed the last tipping point, the Greater Akuma, most of the servants of the Yama Kings are only bound to their masters by interests, arrogance or philosophical nearness.

To put this in terms more familiar to Molly just as a member of the Order of the Blackened Denarius can cast off their coin so can most of the shikome renounce the gifts of Kakuri and step once more on the long slow path towards enlightenment. Even dead souls bound in accoursed flesh have free will so long as there is even a sliver of them which is still their own.

OOC: Hope this helps you guys in dealing with the Hungry Dead and the Yama Kings

User	Total
Yog	4
DragonParadox	26
Aeondrac	1
Artemis1992	1
Degorium	1

Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

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