The kid walks down the dark street illuminated by street lamps, bunching himself up to stay warm. He hears a piercing screech from afar and quickens his pace out of fear. The air feels colder and heavier. A man walks down the road in front of him, he's big, muscly as hell but the cold keeps the kid in place he can't seem to bring himself to cross the street to avoid him and with every step the air feels colder and colder and colder until it hugs him in a climax, the man smirking passes the kid, a new weight bearing on his shoulders. Days later the child sits over a corpse eating, greedily stuffing chunks into his mouth.
Exert your Mind and spend an Action. Select a Living target within arm’s reach. Make a Trauma roll when you activate this Effect. Roll Brawn + Influence 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:
The affliction is not treatable by modern medicine. It may be diagnosed by rolling Intellect + Occult at Difficulty 6, and can be cured by _Ingestion of copious amounts of animal fat and oils_.
This Effect is not obvious, and the only sign you are using an Effect is A cold wind leaves Gullivers slightly open mouth and wraps around your body. If someone suspects that an Effect was used, they must roll Perception + Alertness, Difficulty 8 to pick up on your Tell.
"Oh shit, a guitar!" A man runs up and grasps the pearl-white Ibanez Iceman lovingly. Covetously.
"Oh shit, a vessel!" he hears in his mind along with a chuckle.
Exert your Mind and spend an Action. Roll a single D10 as a critical failure check. If you roll a 1, the Effect fails, and you spawned minion attacks guitar.
Summon a single Groupie 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 melee range attacks with 4 dice to attack. 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 3 dice.
Ellis can withdraw a bonded bomb and cause it to detonate in a specific way, assaulting the minds of anyone in the radius and driving them to repent for their sins.
Exert your Mind and spend an Action to activate. Choose a location within 300 feet. All Sapient targets within 300 feet within 20 feet of it are affected. You must use up an explosive which has undergone the Ritual of Bomb Bonding in order to activate this Effect. Affected targets may resist by rolling Mind at Difficulty 8. If they are incapacitated or unconscious, they fail automatically.
If they fail, affected targets will take 1 point of Mind damage and gain a Compulsion to punish themselves for sinful behavior as a Trauma. This trauma cannot be removed by spending Experience and undergoing mundane therapy. Affected targets are aware that they are being attacked and can generally tell who did it.
Ted Westwood, survivor of over a dozen Contracts, has experienced horrors most mortal men would never dare face, and been traumatised over and over by the things that lurk in the dark. At this point, he's starting to get pretty numb, all things considered, and the things in the dark, that try to worm their tendrils into his mind, are liable to get burned by the things previous invaders left behind.
You gain the following benefits at all times.
You get +2 dice to any Mind resistance rolls you make. You also gain the following effects:
Mikey is especially adept with wielding handguns. He is able to draw them with blistering speed and precision. His quick thinking is able to aim for weak points in his targets defenses. Handguns he fires will only make a noise if he allows them to.
You gain the following benefits as long as engaged in combat with Handguns.
Your attacks with Handguns deal +3 Bonus Damage. Armor is reduced to 1/2, rounded up against this damage.
You also gain the following effects:
Liam hoists the wounded person on his shoulders in a classic Fireman's Carry - a combination of adrenaline, duty, & guilt propel him past any obstacles at startling speed. This movement appears to be improbable luck to the casual observer, with pratfalls, fortuitous stumbling, & similar. If seen from the side of the eye or under certain conditions (as determined by the GM), the truth is revealed: the ghosts that haunt the medic are helping to rescue the patient.
Exert your Mind and spend an Action.
You may move easily and without a roll in any of the following situations. Lasts 2 hours.
As long as this Effect is active and you are traversing a terrain it covers, your movement speed is doubled.
The mobster presents a reasoned, logical case to the target: there's a lot of dangerous folks out there, and only they can offer safety... for a price.
If they agree, they will pay the mobster a monthly fee for protection. If they stop making their payments... well, let's just say, the mobster can't be held responsible for any unsavory types that might pay them a visit.
This Effect cannot be used unless you are making a deal to exchange money for protection.
You may make an oath with a physically-present, Sapient target. Communicate the oath's terms to the target, including the requirements and penalties for each participant. If all agree to the terms, you must Exert your Mind and all participants must shake hands to seal the deal.
Record the oath as a Condition. If a party breaks the oath, the Condition ends and they suffer the oath's penalty.
When crafting your oath, you may incorporate any of the following penalties:
The target cannot be compelled to agree via a direct threat of violence, another Effect, or another oath. If you would like to use clever wording to mislead the target, you must succeed a contested Intellect + (Culture or Influence) roll.
The Necromancer stands over a corpse and makes a series of grandiose lifting gestures. The corpse rises from the ground as though suspended by invisible strings, barks a pained groan, and lands on its feet, now a full-fledged member of the living dead.
Take a Severity-1 Injury and spend an Action. You must use up a corpse in order to activate this Effect.
Summon a single zombie 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.
The Vampire is able to turn one of their victims into a lesser vampire, a pale shadow of a full creature of the night but useful nonetheless. Having drained and killed their target, the Vampire performs a brief ritualistic bloodletting, wherein they spill their own blood into the target's mouth, forcing them to drink, and bonding them together as child and sire.
Shortly afterwards, the fledgling vampire will rise from death, hungry for blood and eager to serve.
Take a Severity-1 Injury and spend one minute. Select a Dead target within arm's reach that has died within the last hour. This Effect cannot be used unless you drained the target's blood while they were still alive.
Your target rises as an Animate being. The raised creature is totally mindless, with no memory of its past life or hint of its old personality. They cannot communicate. They will follow any command you speak.
The creature lasts until it dies again. It is revived at full health. Any Injuries it had in life are not accounted for when determining its penalties or progression towards re-death, though they may affect its ability to perform certain actions at GM's discretion. The raised creature must consume flesh every day or it will die again.
Raised creatures have their Abilities set to the same that they were in life. Their Charisma and Intellect are set to 1, but their Dexterity, Brawn and Perception are the same as they had in life. A raised creature cannot use any Effects.
Your revived targets deal 2 Weapon Damage with their unarmed attacks.
The influencer is 100% tuned-in to any sort of chatter about themselves. Any time someone nearby so much as whispers about them, they know who they were and what they said.
This Effect activates whenever someone talks about you. It does not require an Action or Exertion. Select a target Location within 75 feet.
You may perceive things through hearing as if you were standing at that Location for the next 30 minutes. You must maintain Concentration to keep up the effect. You cannot perceive anything at your physical location while the effect is active.
The aristocrat knows a ritual that allows them to rent the best version of any item. They set $10,000 worth of cash on fire and place the item to be upgraded in the fire as well. While in the flame, the item morphs into a high-end version of itself. After a while, it reverts.
Exert your Mind and spend a minute. Select a non-Alien Device within arm's reach. You must use up $10,000 cash (or equivalent) in order to activate this Effect. Cannot be used to improve Armor.
Lasts the next two hours. Your target receives 3 extra dice to all actions taken for its intended use. Attacking with an upgraded weapon grants +3 Weapon Damage instead of additional dice.