Fortress of Light "My mind is a castle."

2
You possess resistance to mental attacks.
Used by Minerva McAlaster, Created by Polymorph.
( You must actively and obviously be using silver fox pendant.)

As long as Minerva wears her pendant, her thoughts are ordered. And with order comes safety.

Following Minerva's traumatization by a fellow contractor, the next month the young girl spent a good bit of the next month in her room. She stopped practicing everything else, just focusing on herself, and that feeling of helplessness that had come with it.

And one night, she dreamed. She remembered battling the nightmare monster, of the defenses she had forged. And she forged them again. Ordering her thoughts, marshaling them, she assembled her mind into a castle. A Castle of Light, a bright beacon in the darkness.

The castle is built to withstand a siege from the darkness. Even taking the field is a monumental task, requiring great effort by an assailant, more than most can bring to bare - and after an enemy has been cast out once, such a tactic won't work again.

Each step into the castle is a slog, a constant exhausting battle to take a wall, only to find another wall behind it that the defenders have retreated to and fortified themselves again.

From the highest point of the castle a bright light glows, and she can rain down light and hope upon invaders from it.

The castle stands at all times, a fortress for her mind and her dreams.

Of course, the walls of her castle are manned, and it is an effort for her to open the gates to anyone. It's safer that way. With time, she learned to open them again.

You gain the following benefits at all times. You must actively and obviously be using silver fox pendant to gain the benefits of this Effect.

You get +1 dice to any Mind resistance rolls you make. You also gain the following effects:

  • Been There, Done That: If you succeed a Mind resistance roll, subsequent attempts to use that same Gift or supernatural ability on you for the next day will fail.
  • Compartmentalizing: You can take a maximum of 1 Mind Damage per Round.
  • Naturally Resistant: Any time you make a Mind resistance roll, the individual who you are resisting must Exert their Mind, or your resistance succeeds automatically.

  • These bonuses apply only to Mind rolls made to resist Effects and other supernatural phenomena. They do not apply to Trauma rolls or self-control rolls.
Revision purchased with:
Improvement from writing up Polite Disagreements spent on improving power: Fortress of Light    (since refunded)
Revision purchased with:
Improvement from writing up Polite Disagreements spent on improving power: Fortress of Light    (since refunded)
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Community Passive Gifts

You gain the following benefits as long as you are engaged in unarmed combat. You must actively and obviously be using hand wraps to gain the benefits of this Effect.

+2 dice to rolls for Attacking, Defending, and Clashing without a weapon. Unarmed attacks do +2 Weapon Damage (instead of -1).

You may Defend against melee, projectile, or firearm Attacks from any range and Clash with those in range of your Attacks. Attacking materials like steel or spikes will not Damage you unless it has an Effect that does so.

You also gain the following effects:

  • Assassin: If your attack Injures your target, they cannot make a sound, even incidentally, for a single Round. Even the sound of their body and equipment dropping to the ground is silenced.
  • Finesse: You may limit the Severity of any Injury you inflict or determine a maximum Wound Level to inflict on the target, including Incapacitated. You may also choose to make this Injury properly or improperly stabilized, or to keep it unstabilized.
  • Ghost Wrangler: You may grapple incorporeal, liquid, or gaseous entities.
  • Precision Strikes: You may use Dexterity instead of Brawn to Attack and Defend. If you would successfully incapacitate a target using Finesse, you may opt to knock them out for one hour instead of having them suffer an Injury.

  • Unlike the Ability Brawl, this Effect does not affect small weapons such as knives.

Emrick sees violence as nothing to look forward to, but respectably inevitable. As a crow, eating spiders, snails, frogs, and the young of other birds among other things was never given much of a thought, as it was a process of life. He appreciated being able to eat carrion when needed. That’s what got him sick as a human most recently… so a change in diet and a more indirect approach towards hunting is needed.

Emrick’s favorite weapon is a slingshot. They’re easy to use and gather ammo for, lightweight, and require patience and respect to make. It’s his dedication for the craft that imbued the process.

You gain the following benefits as long as engaged in combat with slingshots. You must actively and obviously be using a slingshot that Emrick has made himself to gain the benefits of this Effect.

Your attacks with slingshots have their base Difficulty set to 6, are no longer limited by your Brawn, and deal +3 Bonus Damage. Armor is fully effective against this damage. Reloading is considered a Free Action.

You also gain the following effects:

  • Bullseye: If you are not making an attack, any projectile you fire will be considered a complete success without needing to make a roll.
  • Hail Storm: You may Exert your Mind to make an attack with slingshots against all targets within a 120 degree arc in front of you. Your full attack Outcome applies to each of them, but they may attempt to Dodge or Defend if they are aware of the attack.
  • Pin Down: If your attack hits a target near a wall or a floor, the projectile pierces through them, pinning them to the wall or floor. Unpinning oneself quickly will increase the relevant Injury’s Severity by 1.

  • Reminder: Bonus Damage stacks with Weapon Damage, but does not stack with any other Bonus Damage. Instead, the highest Bonus Damage is used.

You gain the following benefits as long as you are wearing this Artifact.

You have 4 Armor, which reduces incoming Damage. Armor from multiple sources does not stack. Called Shots may circumvent your Armor, depending on its coverage.

You may spend an Action or Reaction and Exert your Mind to double your Armor rating for one Round.

When you take Damage from a source which is within 5 feet, deal back as much Damage as your Armor prevented.

You may activate or deactivate your armor as a Free Action on your Initiative. As long as your armor is active, your movement speed is halved and you suffer -2 dice to all Dexterity and Perception rolls. While deactivated, it offers no Armor.

You gain the following benefits as long as you are engaged in combat with swords.

+2 dice to all rolls with swords. You may Defend against firearm attacks from any range using swords.

Possession of this Power grants the following Battle Scar: Cloaked In Shadow: You are visually supernatural, possessing the appearance of a dark, shadowy figure. Stealth rolls in social situations are made at +2 Difficulty.

You also gain the following effects:

  • Point Control: Called Shots that you attempt only require a Contested Outcome of 2 for small targets and 4 for tiny targets.
  • Quick Draw: You may draw and equip yourself with any melee weapon on your person or within arm’s reach as a Free Action, as long as it is not being wielded by someone else.
  • Two Swords are better than One: If you are wielding more than one melee weapon, you may Attack with all using the highest Weapon Damage, plus 1 for each additional weapon. If you reserve a weapon, any Clash or Defend roll you make is -1 Difficulty, and mob penalties are ingored.

You gain the following benefits at all times.

All Stabilizations you attempt are considered Proper Stabilizations.

You also gain the following effects:

  • Gifted: You get +3 dice on any rolls related to medical care as long as you are doing something horrific.
  • Perfect Dosage: When dosing a creature, you can intuitively control the dose based on desired effect. Dosages do not have to be carefully measured and prepared ahead of time. The full dose (syringe, pill, etc) is still used up.
  • Sterile: Sanitary conditions no longer matter during medical care. Your patients will never suffer an infection or toxic shock during treatment, even if you are performing surgery in a sewer. You may preserve harvested body parts indefinitely.
  • Surgeon Extraordinaire: You may perform any mundane surgery without inflicting or worsening an Injury, and recovery time is reduced to an hour.

  • Pursuant to the drug rules, all drugs take a minimum time to take effect, depending on the method of dosing.
  • All stabilizations being proper stabilizations applies to stabilizations from other Effects such as Heal Wound.

Stock Passive Gifts

You gain the following benefits as long as you are engaged in combat with playing cards.

+2 dice to all rolls utilizing playing cards.

You also gain the following effects:

  • Point Control: Called Shots that you attempt only require a Contested Outcome of 2 for small targets and 4 for tiny targets.
  • Ricochet: You can make a thrown attack against a target behind cover so long as there is at least one exposed pathway to them.

You gain the following benefits at all times.

You are permanently and visibly transformed: you are an android, with pale skin and yellow eyes. You are considered to be a Sapient, Non-Living Computer when targeted..

You are immune to damage from cold. If cold is a substantial component of other damage you would take (e.g. falling from a great distance into a vat of liquid nitrogen), that damage is reduced by 2 (in addition to Armor)

You no longer age naturally, and supernatural attempts to age you fail.

Your Injuries no longer degrade with time.

The Severity of any Injury caused by electricity is increased by 2.

  • The increase in Injury Severity stacks with any similar effects, such as the Silver Bullets drawback on Regeneration.
  • Attribute bonuses from multiple sources do not stack. Instead the highest bonus is used.

You gain the following benefits at all times.

You gain an additional limb that functions as a standard human arm and hand.

Each additional limb you posses can take one Quick Action per Round without incurring a -2 dice penalty to your main Action. Any Battle Scars that affect or remove your additional limb will heal in a single week.

Your appendage has a grip that is hard to shake. While grappling a target, when contesting their physical actions, you may roll your full dice pool, but it only counts as a Quick Action.

Your Extra Appendage is incapable of fine object manipulation.

This Artifact cannot be broken.

This Artifact's creator is always aware of the direction and distance to this Artifact.

  • "Cannot be broken" means that damage cannot render the Artifact's Effects unusable, nor can it cease to be used for its primary mundane purpose, if it has one.

You gain the following benefits at all times.

Your senses are enhanced in the following way.

  • Sight: You can see things that are normally invisible to the naked eye, such as fingerprints and bacteria.

  • Your microscopic vision requires a close look at a very small, specific area to use. It does not grant increased distance vision, it simply provides a higher resolution, allowing you to see finer and finer detail.