He speaks! She chants! Their whispers confound.
Exert your Mind and spend an Action to activate.
You may understand and communicate to humans and Sapient beings as if you are fluent in a relevant language for the next hour.
Whenever you encounter a Language you could commune in with this Effect, you immediately understand which language it is, the dialect, region, and other details about it.
Anyone who witnesses you during this Effect's activation or for its duration will almost certainly be disturbed to see Haïta’s eyes turn black.
While this Effect is active, you are at -2 dice to all Actions and cannot Concentrate.
Sparks of electricity from Lev's eyes and blurred streaks of lightning trail behind him when he moves faster than normal.
Fascinated by speedsters and lightning gods since he was a child, Lev decided to take their speed for himself.
Exert your Mind and spend an Action.
Lasts 1 minute. Whenever you use your Movement, after all other calculations, the distance you may travel is doubled.
While using this Effect, you may carry one other being without affecting your Encumbrance, so long as you maintain contact with them for the duration and they consent or are grappled.
Apex Cryptid: The Primordial Shift
The moment you activate this power, a deep, guttural resonance hums through the air—like a chorus of ancient, forgotten beasts calling from the dark corners of the earth. Your body twists and stretches, bones popping and muscles coiling into unfamiliar shapes. Your skin ripples with patterns that seem to mimic the natural camouflage of apex predators long thought extinct. Scales, fur, or chitinous plates may shimmer across your form, shifting with every step as though the essence of cryptids from across the globe surges through your veins.
Your human instincts dull as primal instincts take hold. Words become foreign; the structure of language replaced by a heightened awareness of your surroundings. The scent of fear hangs like a thick mist, every sound sharpened into a potential threat or prey. Your hands become crude tools—talons, claws, or massive, rugged fingers that can grasp but never delicately control.
Stress dissolves as the primal mindset overtakes you. The noise of human worries is replaced with the singular clarity of survival and dominance. In this form, you are an echo of the unknown, the whispered terror of campfire stories given flesh.
Apex Cryptid → Amalgamation of Cryptids: The Unveiling
If the battle turns against you—if pain strikes deep and the cryptid essence within senses true danger—a terrifying metamorphosis unfolds.
Your body convulses, and the injuries that should cripple you instead fuel a grotesque evolution. Limbs elongate and twist, growing jagged with predatory adaptations stolen from creatures lost to time. Gills flare along your neck. Serrated fangs emerge where human teeth once sat. The eyes of countless predators open across your body, each gazing with predatory instinct.
For one breathless minute, you become the embodiment of earth’s cryptid lore—a walking nightmare of mismatched power. Movement becomes instinctive, effortless. Every step feels like a hunt, and every breath crackles with the potential of the predator’s pounce. The air itself seems to recoil, bending to your unnerving presence
Exert your Mind and spend an Action.
You transform into Apex Cryptid for 30 minutes. You have access to all of your Powers while you are Apex Cryptid, and you can use your equipment. The Injuries and Battle Scars of your Alternate Form and your true form are tracked separately.
While transformed, your Attributes are the same. Your Stress is reduced by 2.
If you take Injuries totaling 4 Severity or higher while transformed, you recover all Injuries and change into Amaglamation Of Crytids Across the earth. All dice rolls are at -1 Difficulty for the next minute or until this Effect ends. Cooldown 1 day.
Your alternate form renders you unable to speak any human language and incapable of fine object manipulation. You can only hold or grasp objects in a crude, clumsy way.
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.
Jackie focuses on the problem area, and forms a connection with the surroundings. Feeling out the nerve endings, the damage, what needs to be replaced and what can simply be grown on top of. Then she puts her hand on the area, and as she slowly draws it away a seed is planted. That seed slowly takes root, makes the connections it needs to, and grows out a fungal support structure to help its host perform the task.
Exert your Mind and spend a minute. Select a Living target within arm's reach. Select up to four Battle Scars on your target to treat.
The treated Battle Scars heals as you finish activating this Effect. If used on a Battle Scar caused by an Unstabilized Injury, that Injury is Stabilized.
Anyone who witnesses you during this Effect's activation will almost certainly be disturbed to see painful and slow growth of fungi that takes over whatever function was supposed to be done by the injured area. They do what their host wishes them to, but the connection isn't a direct one.
Healing a Battle Scar in this way leaves behind fungal growths on the target which cannot be healed.
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Exert your Mind and spend an Action. Select a Living target within arm's reach.
The target's sense of smell and taste becomes suppressed for the next minute. Any roll requiring smell or taste automatically fails, and other relevant rolls suffer up to a -3 dice penalty at the GM's discretion.
Tom after a specifically long ritual had his body improved to sense those around him
You gain the following benefits at all times.
Your senses are enhanced in the following way.
The Vampire may channel their inner beast and take the form of an animal. It is said they may transform into either a wolf or a bat. If used too often, the Vampire risks losing themselves to their beast forever.
Exert your Mind and spend an Action. 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.
You transform into a vampire bat or a wolf until you transform into something else or choose to return to your original form. See the Extended System text for stats.
While transformed, you cannot use any equipment (including Artifacts and Consumables), and you do not have access to any of your Powers. Any equipment you are wearing transforms with you.
Injuries and Wound Level are carried over between forms. However, transforming can never kill you; you merely remain Incapacitated until your Injuries are sufficiently healed.
Possession of this Power grants the following Battle Scar: A disfigured face with bat-like ears.
The mutant's arms swell to an incredible size, forcing them to lope around like a gorilla. This allows them to throw heavy objects great distances, including those unfortunate souls who find themselves in their way.
Unfortunately, they have difficulty with small objects and often destroy the things they touch by accident.
You gain the following benefits at all times.
Your Brawn rating is increased by 1. You may Exert your Mind to automatically gain an Outcome of 5 on any roll that uses Brawn (cannot be used on combat rolls or Effect activations).
Possession of this Power grants the following Battle Scar: You are muscled like a gorilla and have a slight muzzle and animal facial features.
You also gain the following effects:
The detective can learn a lot by watching someone for a minute. Each subtle detail, every unexplained stain, reveals something about where the target has been. Ocassionally, they'll drop a business card, or explain how to contact them. The detective is listening.
Exert your Mind (unless you win a coin flip) and spend a minute. Select a Sapient target within 20 feet. This Effect cannot be used unless the target does not know you're watching them. 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 your target:
The quality and specificity of information gained depends on your Outcome.
You cannot investigate the same target more than once per day.
Most severe injuries occur far from a facility that could treat them, and in the fetid muck of the battlefield even minor wounds may be a death sentence. Luckily the soldier is well-trained in the use of their standard-issue medical kit. They may stabilize even the most severe injuries with a little gauze and some no-anesthetic stitching. Furthermore, the treated wounds of their comrades never get infected.
You gain the following benefits at all times. You must actively and obviously be using a standard issue military medical kit to gain the benefits of this Effect.
All Stabilizations you attempt are considered Proper Stabilizations.
You also gain the following effects:
The magician reaches into their hat and focuses. Inside, light wells and flows like a viscous liquid. Then, they withdraws the item of their choosing.
Exert your Mind and spend 1 minute. You must actively and obviously use a top hat to activate this Effect.
Choose an Object which could fit inside a regular backpack (up to 27 liters). It must be Non-Alien and generic. You cannot create explosives. You may create firearms.
Roll Perception + Occult to fabricate your chosen Object. The Difficulty is assigned by the GM and depends on the specificity of your chosen Object. The created item lasts 2 hours.