HELLFIRE BALLET STYLE
As the layers of the demon city come crashing together, gouts of vitriol and toxic fire erupt over the landscape. There is much screaming and gnashing of teeth. And in the epicenter of this daily armageddon, there stands the master of Hellfire Ballet Style. Green flames leap from her weapons and hate and wrath sparkles in her eyes. Hers is not a righteous crusade, but a crusade of bloody vengeance that shall scorch Creation.
Weapons and Armor:
Hellwands, hell-tongue repeaters, and their Creation-based counterparts (firewands and plasma tongue repeaters) are form weapons for this style. It may not be practiced in armor.
Complementary Abilities:
Learning this style requires, at least, Archery •••. As an added benefit, martial artists who know the Form Charm of this style may, combo any Charm that can validly enhance an Archery-based attack with the Charms of this style.
Ravenous Fiend Preparedness
Cost: 2m; Mins: Martial Arts 2, Essence 2; Type: Supplemental
Keywords: Combo-OK, Obvious
Duration: Instant
Prerequisite Charms: None
Martial artists find this style not out of enlightenment, nor for the benefit of others, but out of sheer hatred and wrath. They do not seek wisdom, the seek power and bloody vengeance. They are like Malfeas, who cries out against his own imprisonment with boundless fury, ever seeking conflict. For them violence is not a response, or a tool, but an end unto itself. This Charm supplements a Join Battle action, adding the hellfire dancer's (Martial Arts) dice to the roll, so long as it was she who initiated the conflict.
Green Sun Scourge
Cost: 3m; Mins: Martial Arts 2, Essence 2; Type: Simple
Keywords: Combo-OK, Obvious
Duration: Instant
Prerequisite Charms: Ravenous Fiend Preparedness
With the wrathful fury of Malfeas himself, the hellfire dancer squeezes the trigger of her weapon and lets fly with a deluge of baleful green flame. As the algarel ammunition detonates in a gout of green fire, this blasphemous conflagration is augmented by the reservoirs of the dancer's own hatred and wrath. Stoked into veritable verdant bonfire, the flame that erupts from the barrel is far more potent and bright than it ought to be. This Charm supplements an attack with one of the style's form weapons, doubling its raw damage, and allowing the dancer to count tens twice on the damage roll.
Insidious Emerald Consumption
Cost: 4m; Mins: Martial Arts 3, Essence 2; Type: Supplemental
Keywords: Combo-OK
Duration: Instant
Prerequisite Charms: Green Sun Scourge
No barrier can slow vitriol. It seethes through the toughest barrier and dissolves to feed it's never-ending hunger. An unarmed Martial Arts attack supplemented by this Charm gains the piercing tag. Furthermore, if this attack is made against a target that is a subject of one of the hellfire dancer's negative Intimacies, it ignores armor altogether.
Hellfire Ballet Form
Cost: 5m; Mins: Martial Arts 4, Essence 2; Type: Simple
Keywords: Form-type, Obvious
Duration: One scene
Prerequisite Charms: Green Sun Scourge, Insidious Emerald Consumption
The beauty of the hellfire ballet is marred only by the mortal peril it presents to even distant spectators. Green tongues of vitriolic fire dance and flicker from the barrels of the hellfire dancer's guns while this Form is active. A miasma of Malfean fumes, green and noxious, ooze out of the weapon and hang heavy in the air about the dancer, her eyes glinting with the reflected menace of Ligier. The dancer moves in jerking, abrupt, angular gestures, pivoting sharply, aiming almost without a thought, and firing at odd angles. her accuracy does not suffer from this wild, yet tightly restrained, fury. She is a terrible whirlwind, a fiend from the depths of hell, the fury of the Titans given flesh and form.
While this form Charm is active, the hellfire dancer may use her hellwands to make hand-to-hand attacks (wielding the butt of the gun as a club or cudgel); mechanically, the gun-butt uses the traits of a tonfa. The dancer may allocate a number of bonus dots equal to her (Martial Arts) among the weapon's Rate, Accuracy, Damage or Defense. Additionally, Speed can be reduced, but doing so costs two dots and cannot lower the Speed bellow 3. No trait can be raised or lowered by more than two points. These boosts to the weapon's melee stats do not benefit the weapon's use as a ranged weapon. As a final benefit of this Charm, the hellfire dancer may add half her (Martial Arts), round up, to her DDV pool against ranged attacks.
Vengeful Titan's Prowess
Cost: —(1m); Mins: Martial Arts 4, Essence 2; Type: Permanent
Keywords: None
Duration: Permanent
Prerequisite Charms: Hellfire Ballet Form
The hellfire dancer may spend 1m ready her hellwands (or other form weapons of this style) instantly, provided they are on her person, without necessitating the normal miscellaneous action. Furthermore, if she has the Hellfire Ballet Form active, she may reload such a weapon reflexively, at a cost of 1m. She must have the appropriate ammunition for the weapon, however.
Champion of the Baleful Sun
Cost: 8m, 1wp; Mins: Martial Arts 5, Essence 3; Type: Simple (Speed 5)
Keywords: Obvious
Duration: (Martial Arts) actions
Prerequisite Charms: Vengeful Titan's Prowess
The movements of the hellfire dancer are unnaturally swift and precise. Her body blurs as he takes on the speed of the rays of the Demon City's green sun. She trails faint green essence behind her as she becomes so quick she is almost impossible to see. This Charm enables the hellfire dancer to, once per action, make a free miscellaneous action without needing a flurry. She cannot use this action to activate a Charm. However, she could reflexively attack once with his weapon while leaping across the yawning chasm between two Chiaroscuran skyscrapers.
While this Charm is active the hellfire dancer also increases her movement speed by her (Essence) yards.
Laughter and Torment Counter
Cost: 5m (+1wp); Mins: Martial Arts 4, Essence 2; Type: Reflexive (Step 9)
Keywords: Combo-OK, Counterattack
Duration: Instant or one action
Prerequisite Charms: Vengeful Titan's Prowess
The virtuosos of the Hellfire Ballet are fearsome combatants. Just as none can assail the green sun of the Demon City and escape unscathed, so too do these dancers punish those hubristic enough to provoke their ire.
The hellfire dancer may reflexively activate this Charm to make a counterattack against any opponent who attacks her unsuccessfully. This attack must be a ranged attack made with a form weapon of this style. If the Form is active, the Martial artist may instead make a melee attack using the butt of his firearm. The attack is made at the dancer's full dicepool. This attack is a savage blow which automatically forces the subject to check against knockdown.
By paying an additional Willpower, the hellfire dancer can extend this effect's duration until her next action, allowing her to freely make counterattacks against anyone who tries and fails to strike her, once per failed attack.
Gift of the Wrathful God
Cost: 4m; Mins: Martial Arts 4, Essence 3; Type: Simple
Keywords: Combo-OK, Crippling
Duration: Instant
Prerequisite Charms: Laughter and Torment Counter
A gruesome expression of the burning wrath of Malfeas, focused into a single beam of brilliant emerald light, erupts from the hellfire dancer's weapon and burns through her foe.
This Charm is a called shot attack with the hellfire dancer's form weapon. However, instead of a gout of green flame and noxious, vitriolic fumes, the energy is focused into a relatively narrow shaft of brilliant green light, as bright and as fierce as the light of Ligier. This beam causes terrible, searing damage as it passes clean through the targeted body part, leaving naught but charred flesh, sinew and gristle in its wake.
The hellfire dancer rolls a normal (Dexterity+Martial Arts) attack, which suffers a -4 external penalty for being a called shot. This attack targets a specific part of the body. Should the attack hit and do one or more levels of damage, that damage instead becomes one level of aggravated damage. The affected character also suffers an amputation effect (Exalted, p. 152) due to severe damage to the limb or body part pierced by the lance of infernal fire. This is not an amputation, merely rendering the limb useless, so an Exalt can heal the Crippling effect normally as soon as the aggravated damage heals.
In Damnation's Clutches
Cost: 7m, 1wp; Mins: Martial Arts 5, Essence 3; Type: Supplemental
Keywords: Combo-OK
Duration: Indefinite
Prerequisite Charms: Champion of the Baleful Sun, Gift of the Wrathful God.
This Charm supplements a clinch attack. Once the clinch succeeds, the hellfire dancer can shift her hold to a highly effective, one handed grip. This allows her to maintain control of her victim and keeps one had free to wield her firearm. As long as she holds the victim and keeps this Charm active, the dancer may use the victim as a human shield. The victim provides a +2 cover bonus to her DVs. Attacks that miss the dancer instead hit the clinched victim, who may not defend since they are held in a clinch. Attacks that bypass the hellfire dancer's defenses still strike her, not the restrained victim. As a final benefit, since she need only hold her hostage tight against her to avoid being struck, a feat which is hardly taxing, the hellfire dancer's mininum PDV pool may not be lowered below her (Essence + 2) instead of (Essence). (This does not apply to wound penalties and the DV penalties from actions, as normal.)
The hellfire dancer makes rolls to retain control of the clinch reflexively without a need to flurry. Indeed, she may move, jump and act as normal, subject only to a few restrictions. While maintaining the clinch she may only make attacks using a form weapon for this style. Furthermore, she may not take dash actions. Finally, she may crush the victim to inflict damage (without using the next Charm, Judgment of the Maimed King), as she is only using one arm and cannot apply sufficient force. She may throw them as usual, however. Indeed, Hellfire Ballet Masters frequently hurl victims clinched in this manner at their enemies to provide a few moments of distraction.
Judgement of the Maimed King
Cost: 4m, 1wp; Mins: Martial Arts 5, Essence 4; Type: Supplemental
Keywords: Combo-Basic, Obvious
Duration: Instant
Prerequisite Charms: In Damnation's Clutches
The hellfire dancer presses her blasphemous weapon against a vital area of her hostage's anatomy, her eyes gleaming with malevolent glee and the reflected flames of the Hell-Sun Ligier. She smiles, laughs, or otherwise lays bare the monstrousness of her nature and the depth of her hatred and wrath, and then executes her victim. This Charm supplements a crush attack on a victim the hellfire dancer has clinched with In Damnation's Clutches. Instead of a normal crush, she makes an unarmed Martial Arts attack with the form weapon of this style against her clinched victim. The attack hits automatically, for she is firing from point blank and there is no possibility of a miss, doing aggravated damage, and the dancer adds (her Essence) successes to the damage roll. At this range the mundane metals are turned to molten slag and even the magical materials are momentarily superheated by the vitriolic flames. They offer no protection to their wearer, the damage ignoring armor.
Deaths caused by this Charm are always gruesome: a head cut from the body by a torrent of fire, a hole the size of a melon bored into the chest cavity, or something of that nature. No one who sees the corpse, with its charred flesh and exposed viscera, will be able to ignore the infernal nature of the character's demise.
