A Deal You Might Regret

1
This Artifact allows you to craft binding oaths.
Used by Jeorge Timmary, Created by HeartKnee.
On Legendary Artifact Arbiter's Sword.
(The target must understand that you are presenting the terms of an agreement and that they are agreeing to those terms. Witnesses understand the same. You must use this Artifact obviously when activating this Effect.)

Jeorge produces a piece of paper from a back pocket and places it down with a flourish. Tapping his pen to it manifests the terms on it and an appropriate amount of dotted lines for each participant to sign on. Once signed the paper glows and vanishes, to be reproduced at a moments notice whenever needed.


You may make an oath with any number of physically-present, Sapient targets. Communicate the oath's terms to the targets, including the requirements and penalties for each participant. If all agree to the terms, you must Exert your Mind (unless you win a coin flip) and all participants must sign on the dotted line 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:

  • A Battle Scar up to Severe (deaf, missing limb)
  • The oath-breaker is physically marked as an oath-breaker, and any investigative effect will reveal the terms of the oath they broke.
  • A particular Trauma and a single Mind Damage
  • The oath-breaker goes unconscious for up to 24 hours
  • An Injury up to Severity-6 (cannot be reduced by any means)

The targets 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 targets, you must succeed a contested Intellect + (Culture or Influence) roll.

Whenever a participant breaks the oath, you are immediately made aware and may even witness the act as if standing nearby.

The same terms and penalties must apply to every party in each deal.

  • All Oaths must have at least two participants.
  • The target must be physically present to enter the oath.
  • The terms and penalties of the oath do not need to be equitable and do not need to affect all parties equally.
  • A single action cannot break multiple oaths. You cannot 'stack' oath penalties by having a target sign multiple identical oaths, or similar.
  • Your target must be within line of sight, or within range of another sense if more fitting for the Gift's flavor.

Community Targeted Gifts

Exert your Mind and spend two Actions performing the following ritual: Link hands with the target and share blood from an incision made in the palm. Select a Animate target within arm's reach. You must use up 1 Liter of Blood in order to activate this Effect. You must maintain Concentration while activating this Effect, and it fails if you are interrupted. The target may Resist.

Your target is marked with blood blister just underneath the skin.. The mark can only be discovered with a deep medical inspection or Effect. Removal inflicts a Severity 1 Injury on the target.

You are aware of the marked target's vital status, injuries, direction and distance from you. This lasts for the next month, or until either the mark is removed, or you choose to end the Effect. You can have up to 8 marks active.

You receive +2 dice to any rolls made against a marked target.

Marked targets leave a trail wherever they go that is visible only to you and those you teach to see it. This trail shows how long ago the target was there and is followable even when they are in a vehicle.

Your Marked targets are all similarly aware of your direction and distance from them while the Mark is active.

  • Marked individuals satisfy the line of sight requirement for targeted Effects.
  • You can target yourself if you qualify as a valid target by the other requirements.
  • Your target must be within line of sight, or within range of another sense if more fitting for the Gift's flavor.

Exert your Mind and spend an Action. Select a Human target within 20 feet. Roll Intellect + Occult Difficulty 6. Affected targets may resist by rolling Mind at Difficulty 7. If they are incapacitated or unconscious, they fail automatically.

If your Contested Outcome is positive, your target takes 1 point of Mind Damage and gains a new Trauma of your choice. The Trauma should be general and not specifically mention you. You should not have to be involved to trigger the 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.

  • You can target yourself if you qualify as a valid target by the other requirements.
  • Your target must be within line of sight, or within range of another sense if more fitting for the Gift's flavor.

Spend eight hours. Select a Living target within arm's reach. The target can easily Resist.

You may add one augmentation to your target. Each augmentation counts as a Battle Scar and can have exactly one of the following Effects:

  • Specialized: You receive +3 dice to a particular non-combat Action.
  • Environmental Adaptation: You do not suffer harm from heat, cold, pressure, or lack of oxygen in a particular environment, provided that challenge normally exists in that environment.
  • Implanted Tool: You have access to the functionality of some common Device at all times. The selected Device can be no larger than a backpack.
  • Armor: You have 3 Armor at all times. As always, Armor from multiple sources does not stack.
  • Pouch: Part of your body functions as a hidden pocket. It can hold no more than a backpack.
  • Zippy: Your Free Movement is increased by 15 feet.
  • Maws and Claws: Your unarmed attacks do +3 Weapon Damage instead of -1.

This Gift's Cost is capped at 2 and cannot be increased further.

  • Remember: A Contractor’s Body rating is reduced by 1 for each Battle Scar after their fourth.
  • You may not augment targets with pouches or implanted devices that are larger than they are.
  • Targets without Body ratings may have a maximum of 4 augmentations.
  • You can target yourself if you qualify as a valid target by the other requirements.
  • Your target must be within line of sight, or within range of another sense if more fitting for the Gift's flavor.

Madame Ianthe, in her quest for freedom, has made a host of friends with metaphysical beings. It is from them her strength comes as she speaks her dreams into reality.

Spend an Action. Select a Animate target within arm's reach. Roll Charisma + Occult at Difficulty 6.

If you succeed, you create a barrier around your target, which absorbs the next Outcome +4 Damage. The Damage reduction from the barrier is applied before Armor. This Artifact may only have 1 active barrier at a time.

The barrier will fall after two hours, or if it absorbs the full amount of Damage. When a barrier falls, you cannot use this Effect again for a minimum of 2 Rounds.

This Gift cannot have more than 3 Drawbacks, and its Gift Cost is capped at 1.

  • Effects which circumvent Armor completely also circumvent your barrier.
  • You can target yourself if you qualify as a valid target by the other requirements.
  • Your target must be within line of sight, or within range of another sense if more fitting for the Gift's flavor.

Exert your Mind and spend a minute. Select a Sapient target within arm's reach. You must actively and obviously use a stethoscope to activate this Effect. At the end of your investigation, roll Intellect + Medicine at Difficulty 6.

You learn all the following information about your target:

  • Determine if this target is Alien in origin or whether it has any Alien energy or outside influences. You receive information about the type of energy, including the name of the relevant Source pool or equivalent. You determine the effect of any active Alien energy detected, and you get an idea as to the sorts of ways that latent Alien energy may be channeled by the target.
  • You determine any medical or physiological issues they have, as well as their species and a general overview of their biology.
  • You determine how many living beings the target has killed, what sorts of creatures they were, and how long it has been since they last killed.
  • You learn the target’s Traumas, Limits, and whether or not their thoughts, emotions, or memories are being influenced by any Alien forces.

The quality and specificity of information gained depends on your Outcome.

You cannot investigate the same target more than once per day.

  • You can target yourself if you qualify as a valid target by the other requirements.
  • Your target must be within line of sight, or within range of another sense if more fitting for the Gift's flavor.

Stock Targeted Gifts

Exert your Mind (unless you win a coin flip) and spend two Actions performing the following ritual: perform a fire-breathing trick. Select a target within 20 feet which has both fuel and oxygen available (if you are starting a new fire). Roll a single D10 as a critical failure check. If you roll a 1, the Effect fails, and you take a Severity-4 Injury as the fire burns your throat. You must maintain Concentration while activating this Effect, and it fails if you are interrupted.

You may start or extinguish a fire as large as a firepit's fire at your target. Extinguishing a fire does not cost Exertion. You may create or extinguish fires the size of a lighter or candle flame without Exerting your Mind. Your fires require fuel and oxygen in order to continue burning.

Lighting a target on fire deals 4 Damage each Round on your turn, starting in the Round after the one in which they caught fire. This Damage is reduced by Armor, but the target’s Armor rating will be shredded by any Damage dealt, destroying material Armor once it reaches 0.

You may extinguish flames as a Reaction. This does not extend to explosives.

  • Your fires may be extinguished with appropriate Actions and materials. Stop, drop, and rolling to extinguish requires spending an Action and making a Dexterity + Athletics roll, with an Outcome of 4 putting out the flames.
  • If the target is larger than your flame size, the Armor destruction creates a weak point instead of applying to the entire target.
  • You can target yourself if you qualify as a valid target by the other requirements.
  • Your target must be within line of sight, or within range of another sense if more fitting for the Gift's flavor.

Exert your Mind and spend eight hours. Select a Living or Animate target within arm's reach. Roll a single D10 as a critical failure check. If you roll a 1, the Effect fails, and you cause a major Battle Scar instead of an augmentation. Your target must make a Trauma roll to reap the benefits of this Effect. They may choose to Resist the Effect and not make the roll. The target can easily Resist.

You may add one augmentation to your target. Each augmentation counts as a Battle Scar and can have exactly one of the following Effects:

  • Specialized: You receive +2 dice to a particular non-combat, non-Effect Action.
  • Environmental Adaptation: You do not suffer harm from heat, cold, pressure, or lack of oxygen in a particular environment, provided that challenge normally exists in that environment.
  • Implanted Tool: You have access to the functionality of some common Device at all times. The selected Device can be no larger than a motorcycle helmet.
  • Armor: You have 2 Armor at all times. As always, Armor from multiple sources does not stack.
  • Pouch: Part of your body functions as a hidden pocket. It can hold no more than a briefcase (15 liters).
  • Zippy: Your Free Movement is increased by 10 feet.
  • Maws and Claws: Your unarmed attacks do +2 Weapon Damage instead of -1.

The augmentations you provide are not outwardly visible nor obvious.

  • Remember: A Contractor’s Body rating is reduced by 1 for each Battle Scar after their fourth.
  • You may not augment targets with pouches or implanted devices that are larger than they are.
  • Targets without Body ratings may have a maximum of 4 augmentations.
  • Example environments for adaptation: space, all saltwater, all fresh water, all water under 50 feet deep, all water deeper than 50 feet, the jungle, radioactive areas, a specific alien world, etc.
  • You can target yourself if you qualify as a valid target by the other requirements.
  • Your target must be within line of sight, or within range of another sense if more fitting for the Gift's flavor.

Spend an Action and use up this small metallic grenade with pin (unless you succeed on 1d10, Difficulty 7). Make a thrown Attack at a Location within normal Attack range. Roll a single D10 as a critical failure check. If you roll a 1, the Effect fails, and you are hit as it activates immediately at your present location. The target may roll to dodge or Defend, as normal for thrown Attacks. The Attack itself does not deal any Damage beyond the Effect.

If you succeed, all affected targets will be restricted at their location by a physical, tangible binding. They can still move their arms and use Effects, but are reduced to ¼ of their movement speed.

The binding around a target must be destroyed in order for them to break free. Breaking the binding requires a total amount of Damage equal to twice the original Contested Outcome. Damage from multiple attacks is cumulative and stacks linearly.

  • The Attack roll used to activate this Consumable cannot be at a Difficulty lower than 6. You may only use one Consumable per Action.
  • This consumable is destroyed when used and cannot be used again.
  • For entities whose movement could be considered an attack (e.g. a kaiju), the GM may rule that they are merely slowed instead of fully restricted.
  • You can target yourself if you qualify as a valid target by the other requirements.
  • Your target must be within line of sight, or within range of another sense if more fitting for the Gift's flavor.

Exert your Mind (unless you have been recently attacked by your target) and spend an Action. Select a Sapient target within 20 feet. This Effect cannot be used unless the target is undead, demonic, or another evil creature. You must actively and obviously use a gilded cross to activate this Effect. Roll Brawn + Alertness Difficulty 6. Affected targets may resist by rolling Mind at Difficulty 7. If they are incapacitated or unconscious, they fail automatically.

If the Contested Outcome is positive, the target loses that much Source. Once their Source is depleted, excess Outcome is applied as Mind Damage. If you deal at least 3 Mind damage, the target gains a Trauma of the GM's choice.

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.

  • You can target yourself if you qualify as a valid target by the other requirements.
  • Your target must be within line of sight, or within range of another sense if more fitting for the Gift's flavor.

Exert your Mind and spend an Action. Select a Living target within arm's reach. Roll Dexterity + Brawl Difficulty 6. The target may contest by rolling Body, Difficulty 6.

If the Contested Outcome is positive, the target takes that much Damage plus 2. The target's Armor is completely ignored.

When you activate this Effect, instead of occurring immediately, you may choose to delay its effects until the target takes a particular Action. For example: "when they fire a gun" or "when they swim in deep water."

Instead of dealing Damage all at once, the Injury caused by this Power starts at Severity 1 and worsens at the rate of one level per Round until it reaches the Severity it would have otherwise been.

  • A given target can have a maximum of one Suspended Effect on them at a time. The selected triggering Action cannot be used to reveal information about the target (e.g. no "activate when they are a vampire"). It must be an Action they take, not a thought or something that happens to them.
  • You can target yourself if you qualify as a valid target by the other requirements.
  • Your target must be within line of Effect. There must be no substantial obstructions between you and your target.