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
Exert your Mind and spend one minute.
Summon a single enlarged animated toy at your location. They will last 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.
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.
Your ribcage and head bisect, revealing endless rows of teeth before stretching unnaturally and devouring your target in a single bite.
Exert your Mind and spend an Action.
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 any targets in your stash, each no larger than something which could fit inside an SUV (4,000 liters), and you may store up to 3 things at a time.
Animate targets may Resist being stashed. You must Exert your Mind to stash Sapient targets.
Anyone who witnesses you during this Effect's activation will almost certainly be disturbed to see your ribcage and head open like a demonic mouth before devouring the target.
Possession of this Power grants the following Trauma at all times: Nightmares.
Body temporarily takes on the appearance/texture of melting flesh, sludge, jello, and wax. As the casting completes, you look like someone else now.
Exert your Mind and spend a minute.
You become disguised in a manner of your choosing. The disguise lasts for two hours, or you may end it early at will.
The new appearance may have a different sex, age, and race to your own, and you may alter height by up to a foot and your weight by 50%. Your disguise cannot directly mimic an existing person. You cannot alter your clothes. A disguise cannot affect your Attributes or other stats.
You may roll Charisma + Crafts to attempt to make your disguise Beautiful. If your Outcome is 6 or higher, non-Effect Charisma rolls where your good looks could help are rolled at -2 Difficulty. If you fail or botch, you are ugly instead, and non-Effect Charisma rolls are made at +2 Difficulty.
Anyone who witnesses you during this Effect's activation will almost certainly be disturbed to see "The Thing"-like shapeshifting.
Two crows with red eyes. Sometimes accompanied by a third, with eyes darker than night. All three leave trail of dissipating darkness.
The centres dims down (or grows brighter) when ravens are released.
Exert your Mind and spend an Action.
Summon up to 3 Sapient Crows at your location. They last until they are destroyed They are controlled by the GM but will follow any commands you give. This Artifact may have at most 3 minions active at a time.
You may end this Effect prematurely as a Free Action.
Anyone who touches this Artifact will notice it warping their mind and may drop it. If they choose to hold or use it, they immediately receive the following Trauma: Huginn, Muninn and Ginnungagap: Three crows tell you all they know. You cannot concentrate as long as there is more than one of them. If they lose possession of this Artifact, the Trauma heals over the course of the next day.
User grasps their hands focusing on another player or self giving healing to the targeted player in their party. User says ("Name" Live).
Exert your Mind (unless you win a coin flip) and spend 15 minutes to activate. Choose a specific Injury on yourself that has not yet been treated with this Effect and roll Charisma + Influence 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.
You may only use this Effect once per day.
Momma Ettu calls out for Edna, a stern, mildly frustrated voice and an ethereal, transparent image of an older woman, about Ettu's age with long white hair but with sunken eyes and very clearly dead, appears in a ghostly wheelchair a few feet away. The exact wording varies, but tends to be Ettu demanding her chair, Edna refusing, then Ettu attempting to throw Edna out of her chair. If she succeeds then Ettu gets in the chair, and Edna plummets down through the ground and disappears.
Edna will take her chair back when the effect ends, with a banter like they're old friends or perhaps siblings.
Edna is a lovely woman that Ettu met during her hospital stay after her heart attack.
She ended up having to stay quite a while for rehab, and got to know a patient on her floor who turned out to be terminal.
Children at heart, they tended to prank each other with harmless tricks and gentle bullying.
Having kept her financial abundance secret, Ettu anonymously ensured her funeral was lavish, and covered the airfare for her relatives to attend. She was able to actually attend as well without being recognized, since it seemed to be in a parallel dimension of some sort.
Exert your Mind and spend two Actions performing the following ritual: Summons the ghost of someone she's met before, complete with their ghostly wheelchair. She pulls them out of the chair, and they fall through the floor, disappearing from sight and Momma Ettu takes the now vacant ghost wheelchair.. You must maintain Concentration while activating this Effect, and it fails if you are interrupted. Roll a single d10, Difficulty 4. If you fail or botch, the Effect fails and you cannot activate it again for an hour.
Lasts 1 hour. Whenever you use your Movement, after all other calculations, the distance you may travel is tripled.
If your last Action was used for an all-out sprint or you are already accelerated, you may spend an Action to accelerate without a roll, adding 100 feet/Round (not affected by your speed bonus) to your sprint speed, to a max of an extra 300 feet/Round. As long as you stay at these speeds, you may use this distance per Round as your Free Movement.
Any terrain you traverse while accelerated must be passable by a standard vehicle at similar speeds. Stopping, turning sharply, or decelerating more than 100 feet/Round must be performed as an Action. Failing to decelerate with an Action (whether because of an obstacle, sudden unfavorable terrain, an Injury, or other event) counts as a tumble or catastrophic vehicle collision as per the vehicle rules.
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.
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 aquamancer dissolves into a flowing pool of semi-solid water. Anything they were carrying is left behind in a damp pile. While transformed, they may squeeze through tiny gaps, and are extremely resilient against most standard attacks.
Sometimes in the process, a little water will get lost, and the aquamancer may be a little hurt by the transformation.
Exert your Mind and spend an Action.
You transform into a flowing pool of water for the next minute. You may end the effect early and return to your normal form at will. Your structure must remain relatively contiguous. Observers will view you as an unusual entity moving with a singular purpose.
While in this form, you can squeeze through any gap that is not water-tight.
Injuries from standard attacks are reduced to Severity 1, but Damage from AOE effects is increased by 1.
You cannot communicate or use equipment while transformed. Your equipment does not transform with you beyond basic body coverings. You cannot carry any items while transformed.
You have access to your Powers while transformed.
When you activate this Effect, roll a single D10. if the result is 5 or lower, you receive a Severity-1 Injury and a Minor Battle Scar.
The Ninja is a master at blending in to any crowd or organization. If they can find complete privacy, they may channel their ninjutsu to temporarily create the illusion of any outfit or uniform they desire. The new clothes shimmer into existence over their existing garb over the course of a minute of meditation.
Exert your Mind and spend a minute.
You become disguised in a manner of your choosing. The disguise lasts for two hours, or you may end it early at will.
The new appearance must have a similar sex, age, and race to your own. You cannot significantly change your height and weight. Your disguise cannot directly mimic an existing person. You may change the appearance of your outfit. A disguise cannot affect your Attributes or other stats.
You cannot alter the appearance of your flesh and blood.
The detective squints, drawing on years of police experience to find any hidden drugs, weapons, or other illegal objects, no matter how well-hidden.
Exert your Mind and spend an Action.
You automatically detect all illegal materials within 50 feet of you for the next hour. You have a clear sense of both the distance and direction towards any detected items. You do not learn any details about the detected items.
The time-traveler spins the second hand on one of their watches and speeds up until they are a blur.
Exert your Mind and spend an Action. You must actively and obviously use a watch to activate this Effect.
Whenever you use your Movement, after all other calculations, the distance you may travel is doubled.
Outside of Combat, any non-Gift, non-movement Actions you attempt take drastically less time to complete, as long as your personal speed is a factor in the Action. Total time reduction is determined by the GM and capped at 90% (executing the Action takes no less than 1/10th the normal time).