The wind up key I need some friendly helpers

1
This Artifact grants you the power to summon a minion which can fight and act on your behalf.
Used by Vel, Created by RNGrant.
(When activating this Effect, it is obvious that you are creating a minion in some way. You must use this Artifact obviously when activating this Effect.)

You place the windup key to the back of a toy, or similarly human representing golem. Twist for a minute until your hand begins to hurt. The toy will animate and grow in size to a friendly helper of the one holding the windup key.

This artifact relies on the cultural idea of toys, and the cultural idea of wind up toys, especially in the minds of children. The basic idea of these wind up toys is that you wind them up, then let them go and they move around doing toy things, seeming almost alive. This artifact takes that idea, and merges it with a few other ideas of ways to create useful servants to make an artifact capable of making useful friendly minions.

The ritual to create this artifact relies on a ritual involving
- A variety of children's toys which are popular in the shared imagination
- A collection of stories and myths about the Hebrew golumn
- Mary Shelly's frankenstein
- Carefully shaping the pattern of a wind up key while reading various relevant parts of these stories


Expend a point of Battery and spend one minute.

Summon a single enlarged animated toy at your location. They will last for two hours, or until they are destroyed. They are controlled by the GM but will follow any commands you give. This Artifact may have at most 1 minion active at a time.

  • Attacking: Minions can make melee range attacks with 4 dice to attack.
  • Body: Minions have 6 Body.
  • Movement: Minions can move 45 feet per Round as Free Movement, and double that when performing an all-out Sprint.
  • Intelligence: Minions have dog-level intelligence, and cannot communicate back to you. They cannot actively use Equipment.
  • Actions: Minions cannot dodge or Defend. Any Perception checks they make are rolled with 3 dice.

After you finish activating this Effect, you cannot move quicker than a walk (max 15 feet per Round) for one minute and suffer a -1 dice penalty for an hour. Exhaustion’s penalty and duration stacks with multiple activations.

You may only use this Effect once per day.

  • Exhaustion penalties and duration stack. If you activate this Effect or another Effect with Exhaustion, your penalty will worsen, and the duration is increased by one hour.

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Community Activated Gifts

Exert your Mind and spend an Action. You must actively and obviously use Korvus' Metallic Mask to activate this Effect.

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

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 is capable of bending and squishing in normally-impossible ways. It may fit through any gap that is not water-tight and retain its functionality.

Your extra appendage can stretch to reach an additional 30 feet.

You may turn this Effect on and off at will during its duration.

  • You may stretch or retract your limbs once per Round on your Initiative.
  • You may only switch this Effect on or off once per Round on your initiative as a Free Action.

Exert your Mind and spend an Action.

You automatically detect all ghosts and creatures with unstabilized wounds within 300 feet of you for the next hour. This includes any who come within range during the duration. You have a sense of how many valid targets are nearby, as well as their distance and direction.

If no ghosts or creatures with unstabilized wounds targets are within 300 feet of you, and then one enters range, you automatically detect it, even if this Effect is not active.

All ghosts and creatures with unstabilized wounds who you can sense are equally able to sense you.

  • This Effect does not satisfy the line of sight targeting requirement for other Effects.

Soren found this cat when she was just a kitten at one of his stake-outs into a suspected supernatural old money family in Bavaria, but decided to keep it. As she grew up, she began to develop human speech at a very fast pace, this was quite clearly a supernatural cat, Soren knew he couldn't just hand her over to the feds. As a result, he raised her as his own; she had acquired human-level intelligence astoundingly quickly and began to develop her own personality. She also has very nimble and dexterious paws, allowing her manual dexterity.

As Nina grew older she informed Soren of her abilities, allowing him to be able to summon her at will, forming a supernatural pact with him. He now takes her with him on his missions, using her innate stealth and observation abilities to assist him.

Nina has a witty and observant personality, often displaying a dry sense of humour that catches Soren off guard. She is fiercely independent and prefers to watch the world from a distance, but when Soren is in danger, she becomes fiercely protective, ready to lend her unique abilities to assist him in any way she can.

Exert your Mind and spend two Actions performing the following ritual: You reach into your pockets and pull out a cat. You must actively and obviously use Coat Pockets to activate this Effect. You must maintain Concentration while activating this Effect, and it fails if you are interrupted.

Summon the one and only Sapient Siberian Cat at your location. They last for two hours or until they are destroyed. They are controlled by you. They will attack any Nonliving, Animate targets they encounter immediately and will ignore your commands to do otherwise. You may have at most one minion active at a time.

  • Initiative: Minions act directly after you in Combat starting the Round after they are summoned.
  • Combat: Minions roll 5 dice to dodge, Grapple, or make CLAWS! Attacks. Their unarmed Attacks are melee range and deal +0 Damage.
  • Body/Mind: Minions have 1 Body. They are between the size of a rat and a cat and do not suffer falling damage. Your minions roll 7 Mind resistance dice.
  • Armor: Minions have 2 Armor.
  • Movement: Minions can move 30 feet per Round as Free Movement and double that when performing an all-out Sprint.
  • Intelligence: Minions have human-level intelligence and can speak your language. They lack manual dexterity and cannot use equipment, Artifacts, or Consumables designed for humans.
  • Actions: Any Perception checks they make are rolled with 5 dice. Your minion is able to Athletics, Alertness, and Stealth with a 9 dice pool. Any other roll is made with 5 dice. They can lift and haul as though they have 0 Brawn.
  • Powers: Your companion can Exert their Mind using your Mind and spend your Source.
  • Unusual: Minions are not obviously Alien.

If you die during a Contract and your companion goes on to claim victory, they may permanently sacrifice themselves to bring you back to life and safety. If this happens, you may refund this Gift to a minimum cost of 3.

If killed, you cannot re-summon your minion until after your next Contract.

  • Your companion heals fully during each Downtime, but is not healed fully when you re-summon them.
  • Your companion is affected normally by Artifacts and Energy Transfer.
  • Minions will only attack Nonliving, Animate targets that are larger than a mouse.
  • Your minions may count as additional targeting types based on their flavor. For example: Living, Computer, Creature, etc.

Exert your Mind and spend two Actions performing the following ritual: intense whistling. You must maintain Concentration while activating this Effect, and it fails if you are interrupted.

Summon a single Black Lab 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.

  • Attacking: Minions can make melee range attacks with 5 dice to attack and +1 Damage.
  • Body: Minions have 4 Body.
  • Movement: Minions can move 20 feet per Round as Free Movement, and double that when performing an all-out Sprint.
  • Intelligence: Minions have dog-level intelligence, and cannot communicate back to you. They cannot actively use Equipment.
  • Actions: Minions cannot dodge or Defend. Any Perception checks they make are rolled with 8 dice.

You may only use this Effect once per day.

Exert your Mind and spend an Action to activate.

You can run at three times your normal movement speed for the next minute.

While running, you may climb, jump, and roll without breaking stride, but you are at 1/2 speed while doing so.

If you move faster than your normal move speed, the world around you turns to a blur, and Perception rolls are made at -3 dice.

  • Any Encumbrance penalty to your movement still applies, but you do not suffer from any sort of exhaustion.
  • Damage from a collision depends on your speed at the time, as well as what you hit. GM's discretion, but generally moving faster than a car on the freeway and hitting a dense, solid object like a wall or a tree should be lethal. Mundane armor will not apply, but any supernatural forms of protection will.

Stock Activated Gifts

Exert your Mind and spend an Action. You must use up a container of fine powder in order to activate this Effect.

You automatically detect all object that are designed to detect people, including tripwires, security cameras, detection lasers, heat sensors, etc within 50 feet of you for the next hour. You have a clear sense of both the distance and direction towards any detected items. When you detect objects, instead of learning nothing about them, you may observe each object with all of your senses.

  • This includes any objects that come into range during activation.
  • This Effect does not satisfy the line of sight targeting requirement for other Effects.

Exert your Mind and spend an Action.

You may move easily and without a roll in any of the following situations. Lasts 2 hours.

  • Spider Climber: You are able to climb on and cling to any surface without regard for the ordinary rules of gravity. You climb at your normal movespeed.

Spend a Quick Action. You must actively and obviously use a burlap sack to activate this Effect.

You may withdraw an item from your stash, or add an item that is within arm’s reach to your stash. You may only stash targets which are in your possession, grappled, or otherwise controlled by you.

You may store Objects in your stash, each no larger than something which could fit inside a briefcase (15 liters), and you may store up to 3 things at a time.

You may choose to equip any equipment you withdraw at no additional cost.

  • "Equip" refers to drawing a gun, putting on a piece of armor, etc. You may store or withdraw a maximum of 6 items in a given Round. Reminder: you may perform up to two Quick Actions for -2 dice each or 3 if you use up your Action, unless a different Effect grants you additional Quick Actions.
  • Containers which hold multiple things may count as a single item so long as the things within are generally packaged together. For instance, you may stash a clip full of bullets, a medical kit full of medical supplies, or a box of crackers, but you cannot stash a backpack full of miscellaneous equipment.
  • You may only attempt to store Objects which are free-standing and disconnected from other things. The use of this Effect will not allow you to sever any connections holding an Object in place.
  • The Maximum Object Size parameter is intended to roughly capture the weight / size restriction of items and isn’t intended to restrict shape. GM discretion is advised. A human being is level 4 in the Maximum Object Size parameter.

Exert your Mind and spend an Action.

Your senses are enhanced in the following way. Lasts for three hours.

  • Thermal: You are able to "see" heat signatures within your line of sight.
  • Hearing: You automatically know the origin location of any sound you hear, and you can tell which Action caused the sound.

  • Your thermal vision allows you to judge temperatures of surfaces fairly accurately as long as they are within livable temperatures.

Expend a point of Battery and spend an Action or Reaction.

You phase out of reality for up to 4 Rounds. During this time, you cannot perceive or affect the outside world or take any Actions. You cannot move. Nothing can interact with you in any way.

When you activate this Effect, you may limit its duration to a period of your choosing. If you are able, you may also end it as a Free Action on your initiative.

You leave a golden glow shaped like yourself at your location.

  • If you use this Effect to dodge as a Reaction, it succeeds without the need for a roll. Cannot be used as a Desperate Defense.
  • You may use your Free Movement on the Round you phase back in, but you cannot take an Action.