Pulling the Strings "Every story has a pattern. I just need to find the threads."

1
The power to learn details about others.
Used by John Deere, Created by Noralius.
(This Effect is not obviously Alien when used. During Effect activation, you are obviously interacting with the target. )

John’s gaze lingers a little too long, as if reading invisible text in the air. His questions land with unsettling precision, peeling back layers of deception like a scene unfolding exactly as expected. There’s no magic, just the creeping feeling that he’s following a script only he can see.


Exert your Mind and spend 2 Actions. Select a Sapient target or a Creature within 20 feet. You must make a Trauma roll when you use this Effect. Its Difficulty cannot be reduced by any means. If you fail or Botch, you receive one Mind Damage and a new Trauma. At the end of your investigation, roll Perception + Alertness at Difficulty 6.

You learn all the following information about your target:

  • Determine if this target is Alien in origin or whether it has any Alien energy or outside influences. You receive information about the type of energy, including the name of the relevant Source pool or equivalent.
  • You learn what the target values most and where to find it, provided they know. This includes any hidden or concealed treasures.

The quality and specificity of information gained depends on your Outcome.

Possession of this Power grants the following Battle Scar: A weird Fellow (Disfigured).

Possession of this Power grants the following Trauma at all times: Scripted Responses You have an overwhelming fear of being controlled by an unseen force. Whenever you are given a direct command, forced into a predetermined course of action, or encounter something that feels too perfectly scripted, you must roll Self-Control to avoid hesitation, paranoia, or a reckless attempt to break free..

You cannot investigate the same target more than once per day.

  • You can target yourself if you qualify as a valid target by the other requirements.
  • Your target must be within line of sight, or within range of another sense if more fitting for the Gift's flavor.

Community Targeted Gifts

Exert your Mind and spend an Action. Select a Living target within arm's reach. Roll Dexterity + Occult at Difficulty 6. Your target may resist by rolling Body at Difficulty 7.

If you succeed, the target is afflicted with a Condition that causes one of the following symptoms:

  • Poisoned: The target gains a Severity-1 Injury which ignores Armor and doesn’t heal naturally. For every hour that passes, they receive a new identical Injury. If this new Injury would kill them, they roll 1d10 at Difficulty 6. Success cures the condition; otherwise, they will die.
Symptoms begin to appear immediately, and will remain and continue to worsen until the affliction is cured. The affliction is not contagious and will not spread to others.

The affliction is not treatable by modern medicine. It may be diagnosed by rolling Intellect + Alertness at Difficulty 6, and can be cured by throwing up.

  • Successfully diagnosing an affliction also includes information about the treatment method.
  • The chosen method of treatment must be something that you could obtain in a small town given an afternoon.
  • Curing an affliction removes the Condition, but does not automatically heal any Injuries, Battle Scars, or Traumas which may have been caused by that condition.
  • You can target yourself if you qualify as a valid target by the other requirements.
  • Your target must be within line of sight, or within range of another sense if more fitting for the Gift's flavor.

Exert your Mind and spend 1 minute to activate. Select a Living target within arm's reach.

You may cure any any diseases or poisons afflicting your target even if you have not diagnosed or fully understood it. You may only cure diseases which can be treated with modern medicine. During treatment, the malady you are treating does not progress or cause additional damage or other effects. Your patient is required to spend 10 hours a week volunteering at a hospital for the next month. If they violate this rule, your treatment is immediately reversed.

  • The patient is aware of the after-care requirement.
  • Without some sort of diagnostic Effect, “fully diagnosing” a disease or poison will always require a roll of some sort, frequently Intellect + Medicine, but the specific roll and difficulty is at GM’s discretion.
  • You can target yourself if you qualify as a valid target by the other requirements.

On places:
Oleander has traveled to many places in his lifetime for his job, yet he still has so much left to learn about the world at large. Now it's bigger than ever. He doesn't know how to feel about that yet.

On yapping:
Being restricted on the grounds of keeping up his reputation has left him deeply unsatisfied whenever he exists in silence. He'll yap to people and plants and even inanimate structures. He'll start talking to himself if he must; it's a good studying habit anyway. Oleander needs all he can to study the cases he's working on. He can't let a single detail escape him in court.

On information:
The internet is a vast place, and he often uses it to go down rabbitholes because of a related subject in a case. He'll always watch timelapses as a way to calm down, and this has inevitably led to more familiarity with how various things age over time.

Exert your Mind and spend a minute. Investigate an area with a radius of up to 100 feet At the end of your investigation, roll Charisma + Investigation at Difficulty 6.

You learn a single specific piece of information, chosen from the following list, about the area:

  • You learn where exactly creatures and people live within the area, and what sorts of creatures they are.
  • You can tell the age of any structure or natural formation in the area. This includes trees and plants growing in the area.
The quality and specificity of information gained depends on your Outcome.

You cannot investigate the same area more than once per day.

  • You can target yourself if you qualify as a valid target by the other requirements.
  • Your target must be within line of sight, or within range of another sense if more fitting for the Gift's flavor.

Exert your Mind and spend an hour. Select a Living target within arm's reach. Select a Battle Scar on your target to treat.

The treated Battle Scar heals as you finish activating this Effect.

  • You can target yourself if you qualify as a valid target by the other requirements.
  • Your target must be within line of sight, or within range of another sense if more fitting for the Gift's flavor.

Eden works hard on finding a way to turn light into solid matter that can disperse damage and other harmful effects. This is his first attempt at it.

Spend an Action. Select a Animate target within 20 feet. Roll Intellect + Science at Difficulty 6.

If you succeed, you create a barrier around your target, which absorbs the next Outcome +2 Damage. The Damage reduction from the barrier is applied before Armor. This Artifact may only have 1 active barrier at a time.

The barrier will fall after two hours, or if it absorbs the full amount of Damage. When a barrier falls, you cannot use this Effect again for a minimum of 2 Rounds.

This Gift cannot have more than 3 Drawbacks, and its Gift Cost is capped at 1.

  • Effects which circumvent Armor completely also circumvent your barrier.
  • You can target yourself if you qualify as a valid target by the other requirements.
  • Your target must be within line of sight, or within range of another sense if more fitting for the Gift's flavor.

Stock Targeted Gifts

Exert your Mind and spend at least one Action. Select a Sapient target within 20 feet. Your target cannot be engaged in Combat. Communicate a command to your target. Roll Charisma + Influence at Difficulty 6. The target may resist by rolling Mind at Difficulty 7.

If the contested Outcome is positive, your target will be compelled to follow your command to their best understanding of the letter and spirit of the command until they have completed it or for your Contested Outcome in minutes. You cannot issue another suggestion to the target until 10 minutes after they have completed the first command or 10 minutes after a failure.

The target is unaware that they are under supernatural influence and feel they are acting of their own free will. If you fail, they realize that you were attempting to influence them supernaturally with your command.

Your command can be an order to take an immediate Action. You cannot order a target to "do nothing," and they are free to take other Actions as they fulfill your request. Your command cannot be obviously self-destructive. The Effect ends if following your command would cause a target to cross one of their Limits in a way that would necessitate a Trauma roll.

  • The target must be able to understand you and must receive your communication for the suggestion to work.
  • Allowed Commands
    • Direct Order: The target must take an immediate action (e.g. “Sit down,” "run away," or "tell me your password.")
  • In the case of a failed activation, GMs should consider how bystanders would realistically react to a potentially-outlandish accusation of mind-reading.
  • You can target yourself if you qualify as a valid target by the other requirements.
  • Your target must be within line of sight, or within range of another sense if more fitting for the Gift's flavor.

Exert your Mind and spend an Action. Select a Living target within arm's reach. Roll Dexterity + Brawl Difficulty 6. The target may contest by rolling Body, Difficulty 6.

If the Contested Outcome is positive, the target takes that much Damage plus 2. The target's Armor is completely ignored.

When you activate this Effect, instead of occurring immediately, you may choose to delay its effects until the target takes a particular Action. For example: "when they fire a gun" or "when they swim in deep water."

Instead of dealing Damage all at once, the Injury caused by this Power starts at Severity 1 and worsens at the rate of one level per Round until it reaches the Severity it would have otherwise been.

  • A given target can have a maximum of one Suspended Effect on them at a time. The selected triggering Action cannot be used to reveal information about the target (e.g. no "activate when they are a vampire"). It must be an Action they take, not a thought or something that happens to them.
  • You can target yourself if you qualify as a valid target by the other requirements.
  • Your target must be within line of Effect. There must be no substantial obstructions between you and your target.

Spend one minute. Select a Sapient target or a Creature within arm's reach. You must actively converse with the individual in question for one minute in order to gather any information. At the end of your investigation, roll Perception + Medicine at Difficulty 6. The target may Resist.

You learn all the following information about your target:

  • You determine any medical or physiological issues they have, as well as their species and a general overview of their biology.
  • You learn a full medical history, including past injuries and illnesses as well as the healing process involved.

The quality and specificity of information gained depends on your Outcome.

This Gift cannot have more than 3 Drawbacks, and its Gift Cost is capped at 2.

You cannot investigate the same target more than once per day.

  • You can target yourself if you qualify as a valid target by the other requirements.
  • Your target must be within line of sight, or within range of another sense if more fitting for the Gift's flavor.

Spend an Action and use up this paper with mysterious calligraphy. Select a Animate target up to 100 feet away.

Targets are pushed back until they are 100 feet away.

This Effect cannot move anything heavier than 500 pounds.

Affected targets may use a Reaction and roll Dexterity or Brawn + Athletics to hold on to a nearby anchor, if available. A complete success increases their effective weight by whatever they hold onto.

Pushing a target straight upward requires you to be directly beneath them and halves the range. GM’s may ask for a Dexterity + Athletics roll when repositioning yourself around a target to get a desired angle. They may React to reposition or anchor themselves as normal.

You may maintain Concentration after the initial activation of this Effect to continue the push on the target. Lasts up to one minute.

  • This consumable is destroyed when used and cannot be used again.
  • You can target yourself if you qualify as a valid target by the other requirements.
  • Your target must be within line of sight, or within range of another sense if more fitting for the Gift's flavor.

Exert your Mind and spend 1 minute. Select a Living target within arm's reach. You must make a Trauma roll when you use this Effect. Its Difficulty cannot be reduced by any means. If you fail or Botch, you receive one Mind Damage and a new Trauma. Your target must make a Trauma roll to reap the benefits of this Effect. They may choose to Resist the Effect and not make the roll. Choose a specific Injury on your target that has not yet been treated with this Effect and roll Charisma + Medicine at Difficulty 6.

If you succeed, the Injury is reduced in Severity by your Outcome. If you reduce its Severity to 0, the Injury is fully healed. Otherwise, it is partially healed and will heal the rest of the way at its natural rate.

This counts as a successful Makeshift Stabilization if the Injury was not already Stabilized; any Battle Scars caused by the Injury will remain.

  • Unstabilized wounds do not degenerate during treatment.
  • You can target yourself if you qualify as a valid target by the other requirements.
  • Your target must be within line of sight, or within range of another sense if more fitting for the Gift's flavor.