You turn on and turn up the volume of your wireless headphones and they surge with thick black shadows before dying down when the cast ends. For the next ten minutes your shadow will whisper translations from any sapient target around you as well as taking control of the motor control of your mouth when you speak, allowing you to speak flawlessly in whatever language your target speaks.
When concerning other facets of communication, your shadow will interpret anything you see to you in real time.
Exert your Mind and spend one minute.
You may understand and communicate to humans and Sapient beings as if you are fluent in a relevant language for the next hour.
This also includes understanding any recorded communications from the relevant targets, including writings, scent trails, etc.
After this Effect ends, you cannot move quicker than a walk (15 feet per Round) for one minute and suffer a -1 dice penalty for an hour.
Leonard surges forward, as his back jerks upwards. In a flurry of mana particles and bloody red, crystalline shards begin to tear themselves free. Soon after, following the emergence of its extensions, the Guardian raises its primary body, in a gruesome display of warping its physical form outside of its host. Almost as if his spine were the entity itself, the Guardian would fully tear itself out his back, arching out its enormous crystalline 'limbs', as it stretches out several meters, taking careful guard behind its host.
The guardian is a mana symbiote long forgotten by history, almost all knowledge having been lost to the careful work of the Sabisians. The rare few scholars that still hold existing records of these beings believe them to long be extinct, lost to mana wars passed long since and the Sabisian incursion.
While in its docile state, the Guardian appears as a crystalline growth connected directly to its hosts nervous system through the spinal cord, easily being visible to the naked eye underneath the skin, alongside visible patches of mana-crystalline material left in patches above the skin containing it. While in its docile form, the guardian remains in a sort of dormant state, co-existing with its host and feeding off of its body.
During its active phase, the Guardian appears to burst out of body of its host. Despite this appearance, this process is all but a trick of the eyes, in reality being no more than an energy transference as the Guardian takes form, leaving behind no actual wounds on the host's body. The crystalline being seen during its active phase is not in reality the entity's true form, that being the crystaline growth located inside the host. Henceforth, destroying the active entity does little but return it back into its primary shell, where it can recover.
In appearance, during the active phase, the Guardian is a large, several meters tall crystalline biomechanical creature. It is composed of a long lanky crystalline 'spine' flanked by long sharpened shards that it uses to strike at the enemy or otherwise carry out its commands. When out of range, it uses a head-like appendage, which it can seemingly use to see, to fire a directed burst of energy.
The Guardian forms a bond with its host during the symbiotic period, carrying out their commands on its own free will, in exchange, the host provides it safety and nutrition.
Exert your Mind and spend an Action to activate.
Summon a single Guardian at your location. They will last until they are destroyed. They are controlled by the GM but will follow any commands you give. You may have at most 1 minion active at a time.
Minions have 6 Body and can make ranged attacks at targets up to 30 feet away with 5 dice to attack and +1 Damage. Your minions can move 20 feet per Round as Free Movement, and double that when performing an all-out Sprint. They cannot dodge or Defend. They have dog-level intelligence, and cannot communicate back to you. Any Perception checks they make are rolled with 8 dice.
Anyone who witnesses you during this Effect's activation or for its duration will almost certainly be disturbed to see The guardian 'tears' itself out of the hosts back.
Possession of this Artifact causes the following Battle Scar to manifest over the course of a day: Crystalline-mineral growth around the spine. If you lose possession of this Artifact, the Battle Scar heals over the course of the next month.
Midnight, at Queens, New York. Bodies lay tattered over the streets as the sound of machine gunfire thunders throughout the once sleeping hours. In a restaraunt, five men unleashed the wrath of their guns, shredding and rupture any unfortunate souls to have been caught in the crossfire. In the restaraunts kitchen a lone contractor hunkers down and pray, waiting for the moment the gunfire is silenced as he cuts his leg brandishing the glock against the wound and when the hammers finally fall onto nothing and silence remains the contractor rose up drawing the handgun in his palms only for it to breakaway, strecthing wires of metal to its disembodied parts, filling the void with alloy giving form to a gattling gun. Taking it's first breath in with a hail of lead and sonorous screams.
This Artifact can be used as a handgun. It is roughly the same size as a handgun and just as difficult to conceal.
Attack by rolling Dexterity + Firearms, Difficulty 6. Successful attacks deal Contested Outcome +4 Weapon Damage.
Possession of this Artifact causes the following Battle Scar to manifest over the course of a day: Scar patterns will painfully form on the upper body of the wielder, telling their story and character to all who see. If they lose possession of this Artifact, the Battle Scar heals over the course of the next day.
You also gain the following effects:
The user presses a small rectangle of metal to the lock. For mechanical locks, the device extends metal prongs that will feel out the lock and unlock it. For electronic locks, the device will flash a few colors, then match the require electronic signal.
A mix of Owl's hacking, and thievery experience automated into a device that doesn't fail.
Exert your Mind and spend an Action. Select a Non-Alien door, container, knot, or lock within arm's reach.
You may lock, unlock, and/or open your target.
When Selma activates Doctor’s Orders, she closes the distance with an eerie calm. As she speaks, her golden glasses catch the light unnaturally, gleaming with a brilliance that no earthly material should possess.
The air between her and the target seems to ripple faintly, as though reality itself is bending to listen.
For just a heartbeat, the target sees their own reflection in the lenses — warped by emotion, intensified into something impossible to ignore.
Observers will instantly know something unnatural is happening, even if they can’t quite explain what.
Doctor’s Orders is not simply persuasion.
It is the clinical weaponization of human emotion — the perfect merging of Selma’s medical mastery and her supernatural Gifts.
The glasses she wears are relics of another reality, tuned to the human soul rather than the human mind. Through whispered words and flashes of hypnotic gold, she can peel back the careful rationalizations people build around themselves, leaving only raw, unfiltered emotion.
Most never realize they've been tampered with. They just act — as if the choices were their own all along.
The legend of Doctor Whispers is whispered in fear and awe because of this: not that she controls minds, but that she convinces you to destroy yourself — gladly.
Exert your Mind and spend one minute. Select a number of Living or Animate targets equal to your Charisma within arm's reach as well as a specific emotion. Roll Charisma + Medicine at Difficulty 6. Affected targets can resist by rolling Mind at Difficulty 6 -3 dice.
If you succeed, for the next hour, affected targets will do things they otherwise wouldn’t have done, inspired by the chosen emotion. They will not necessarily display their emotions in an obvious way.
Actions they take will be in keeping with their character and the way they tend to deal with strong emotions. They will be unlikely to change their mind about any actions taken or decisions made until after the Effect ends.
If you choose to use Chain of Screaming, your target interacts with any valid target, they must roll Self-Control or be swept up in the same emotion. New targets pass it on as well, and so on, with the remaining duration decreasing by half until the chain stops.
If any affected target takes or deals Damage, this Effect ends.
This device is a piece of chrome the size and shape of the back of a spoon. When placed against the skin, small hypodermic needles sprout from the device and attach it to the user's bloodstream. There, it filters and releases lifesaving drugs into the bloodstream, granting complete immunity from contracting new diseases and added resiliency in all other cases.
WARNING: The immunizing drugs have been shown to reduce inhibitions in test subjects.
You gain the following benefits as long as you are wearing this Artifact.
You get +2 dice to any Body resistance rolls you make. You also gain the following effects:
The mad scientist can craft steel helmets that protect their wearers from mental influence and attack.
You gain the following benefits as long as you are wearing this Artifact.
You get +0 dice to any Mind resistance rolls you make. You also gain the following effects: