Harry Johnson channels the mystical prowess of Volga Svyatoslavich, the legendary bogatyr known for his cunning and subtle use of power. In the heat of battle, when his fists meet flesh, Harry can invoke the ancient magic of Volga, sending his opponent into a deep, dreamless slumber with a single, precise blow.
To the untrained eye, it might seem like a simple knockout—a powerful punch that drops an adversary. But those who know of the old tales might recognize the truth: this is no ordinary strike. As Harry’s fist connects, he unleashes a subtle yet potent force, drawing upon Volga’s ancient knowledge to lull his enemy into an inescapable sleep. The opponent’s eyes glaze over, their body succumbing to a paralysis that leaves them conscious yet utterly immobilized, as if bewitched by an ancient spell.
Spend an Action. Select a Living target within arm's reach. Roll Brawn + Brawl at Difficulty 6. Affected targets may resist by rolling Mind at Difficulty 6.
If you succeed, your target becomes drowsy for the next 30 seconds, during which time they suffer an additional -2 dice Penalty to all Actions. At the end of their drowsiness, they fall asleep for Contested Outcome x 3 rounds.
Sleeping targets will not prematurely wake up on their own, but may still be woken up by sudden loud noises, being jarred or splashed with water, taking Damage, or similar rousing events. They will also awaken before dying of hunger, thirst, or suffocation. Drowsy targets always fall asleep, regardless of what happens while they are drowsy.
When activating this Effect you may attempt a knockout. If you do and your Contested Outcome exceeds 4, the target falls asleep immediately. Otherwise, they suffer the drowsy penalty for 2 Rounds.
This Gift's Cost is capped at 2 and cannot be increased further.
Benny is able to turn what would have been a wasted pile of meat into a useful minion. After feeding, he may perform a bloodletting ritual on one of his victims in which he opens the vein on his wrist and forces the victim to drink his own blood as well, bonding them together and raising them back to "life" as a new member of his soon-to-be vast criminal empire.
When they arise, they are filled with an all-consuming hunger for blood, which can only be sated by draining a human, or by feeding off of Benny if he has blood to spare.
Take a Severity-1 Injury and spend one minute to activate. Select a Dead target within arm's reach that has died within the last hour. This Effect cannot be used unless you drained the target's blood while they were still alive.
Your target rises as a Living being. They remember their past life and retain their same personality. They can communicate as they would have been able to in life. They may roll Mind, Difficulty 8, to resist any commands you give them.
The creature lasts until it dies again. It is revived at full health. Any Injuries it had in life are not accounted for when determining its penalties or progression towards re-death, though they may affect its ability to perform certain actions at GM's discretion. The raised creature must consume a gallon of human blood every day or it will die again.
Raised creatures have their Abilities set to the same that they were in life. Their Attributes are all the same as they were in life. A raised creature cannot use any Effects.
Anyone who witnesses you during this Effect's activation will almost certainly be disturbed to see Benny drain the blood from their victim's neck, and then force the victim to in turn drink his own blood.
Roland focuses, and Liquid Metal pools in the air in front of him. He then casts it out in front of him, and the metal takes on its new shape and solidifies.
When possible, Roland will pull this metal from the area around him, but even in an area with no metal, Roland’s natural Attunement with the element is so strong he can pull some from within his own spirit.
Roland is a natural born elementalist, a potential ferromancer. He has always had a connection to metal since birth. He discovered this ability at age 11, when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. Roland’s elemental Attunement awakened, and he used its pull combined with his naturally good swimming to create rungs on the wall to climb his way out of his rapidly flooding house.
Exert your Mind and spend an Action. Select a Location within arm's reach.
Select one of the following alterations to create out of Metal originating at the target:
The alteration begins to form when you activate this Effect and finishes forming on your initiative in the next Round. Until it finishes forming, it is not guaranteed to function.
This alteration lasts three hours but may be prematurely destroyed or altered. Your alterations may be broken through with appropriate tools. Anyone attempting to break through must roll Brawn + a relevant Ability. A cumulative Outcome of 3 across all attempts breaks a hole large enough to move through. See the extended system text for GM guidance on various tools.
A visible bond is shared between user and target as intelligence is pulled by the target, from the user to restore health. This is a clearly visible pulsating stream of light between the 2 and bystanders are drawn to it's calming light.
Many and varied are the healing touches of the world. But none like Wisdom's Embrace. Sometimes, knowing a thing is all that you need to do a thing and healing is no different. Wisdom's Embrace utilizes the user's knowledge as pure energy to perform a sequence of actions that would quickly lead to the result. "Healing" someone is merely circumstance as it is more along the lines of "Repairing what is broken".
Exert your Mind and spend 1 minute. Select a Living or Animate target within arm's reach. You cannot target yourself. Your target must also Exert their Mind to activate this Effect. Choose a specific Injury on your target that has not yet been treated with this Effect and roll Intellect + Medicine 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.
I'm here to clean house, and nobody's going to stand in my way. My aura reeks of confidence, a controlling smile on my face. This radiant Ruby sits atop a golden veneer, placed on my tooth to utilize it's power. There is no point to testing your luck, you don't have the winning cards. You should leave now before you lose everything to me.
As I flash my winning grin, you can see the glint of a golden veneer on my tooth. Perched atop it is a radiant Ruby, the gem of my Pot-Winning Bluff. With the curl of my smile, the room seems to shimmer with anticipation. The Ruby sparkles, emitting a red hue across the table. A psychic repulsion field emanates from me, extending out in every direction for 45 feet. It's like a force field of confidence, daring anyone to challenge my hand.
Any fool who can't see past my bluff knows that they're going to bust. They're trapped in their own defeat, pushed back to the edge of the radius like the pill of a spinning roulette wheel. They realize they've already lost before the first card is even dealt.
Exert your Mind and spend an Action or Reaction. Roll Charisma + Influence at Difficulty 6. Any Animate targets may resist by rolling Mind at Difficulty 7.
Create a repulsion field which extends out 45 feet from you in every direction, and lasts for the next 5 Rounds. Any Animate targets within the field that failed to resist cannot move any closer towards you. If they were within 45 feet from you when you activated the effect, they are immediately pushed back to the edge of the repulsion field.
You must maintain Concentration during this Effect.
When you activate this effect, you may designate any number of specific individuals to exclude from the Effect. Anyone designated in this way is unaffected by the repulsion field, and can approach you as normal.
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.
Kel takes out some sand from a pouch and gently blows it in the direction of her target. The sand glows golden and gently wafts into the targets mouth, nose, ears, and skin. When people look into the flowing sand they see their worst nightmares. She takes close inspiration from her dream-friend.
"Test subject number... one-dash-seven-dash-three. Sleep experiment, day 10, K____ D_______, researcher. Subject shows heightened posterior parietal cortex and prefrontal cortex activity during allocated resting times. Subject has been mentioned or sketched in several of the other *creatures* dream logs, even if subject had no previous interaction with them. Subject seems unaware of her influence on others at the present moment. Will continue to monitor, though with a request for further testing.” The tape cuts and another, less professional tape automatically plays.
“Post script to today’s log on one seven three, I believe I may have been affected by its mental influence. The details are fuzzy but I remember seeing the subject saying something to me before waking in a cold sweat just before this. This job is waring me down…”
Exert your Mind and spend an Action. Select a Living target within 30 feet. You must use up a paw full of sand in order to activate this Effect. Roll Dexterity + Athletics at Difficulty 6. Affected targets may resist by rolling Mind at Difficulty 6.
If you succeed, your target becomes drowsy for the next 3 Rounds, during which time they suffer an additional -2 dice Penalty to all Actions. At the end of their drowsiness, they fall asleep for Contested Outcome x 3 minutes.
Sleeping targets will not prematurely wake up on their own, and can only be awoken by taking Damage or nearing death from hunger, thirst, or suffocation. Drowsy targets always fall asleep, regardless of what happens while they are drowsy.
You may determine the content of an affected target's dreams while they are asleep, but they must involve you in some way, and will reveal you as the source of their sleep as well as reveal secret information about yourself to them. By maintaining Concentration, you may enter their dreams and converse with them directly.
When activating this Effect you may attempt a knockout. If you do and your Contested Outcome exceeds 4, the target falls asleep immediately. Otherwise, they suffer the drowsy penalty for 2 Rounds.
Anyone who witnesses you during this Effect's activation will almost certainly be disturbed to see people see their worst nightmares writhing in the sand as it flows..
Possession of this Power grants the following Trauma at all times: Hypnagogic hallucinations: whenever you sleep make a self control roll, if you fail when you wake you still believe you are in the dream and lack self preservation for the next hour or until you find sufficient proof that you are awake (GM’s discretion).
The witch knows bad things happen to bad people. By bringing attention to a karmic imbalance, she can hurry it along, causing her target's bad luck to catch up with them. The target finds themselves suffering injuries due to freakishly bad luck until they cleanse themselves or perish.
Exert your Mind and spend one minute. Select a Living target within 25 feet. This Effect cannot be used unless the target deserves it. Roll Charisma + Occult at Difficulty 6. Your target may resist by rolling Body at Difficulty 7.
If you succeed, the target is afflicted with a Condition that causes one of the following symptoms:
The affliction is not treatable by modern medicine. It may be diagnosed by rolling Intellect + Occult at Difficulty 6, and can be cured by bathing fully in clear running water.
This Effect is not obvious, and the only sign you are using an Effect is you staring at the target, speaking calmly. If someone suspects that an Effect was used, they must roll Perception + Alertness, Difficulty 8 to pick up on your Tell.
The Thief examines an object closely for a minute to appraise its value. As their eyes dance across the subject, their pupils split vertically, and their irises fade to gold. If it is a particularly valuable item, the Thief may greedily lick their lips, revealing a forked tongue.
Within a minute, they have determined how materially valuable the object is and why.
Exert your Mind and spend a minute. Select a target Object within arm's reach. At the end of your investigation, roll Charisma + Culture at Difficulty 6.
You learn all the following information about your target:
You cannot investigate the same target more than once per day.
The Witch is a master herbalist and can cure any number of illnesses and diseases with her special potions. She goes into the wilderness to find the proper set of herbs. Once she has what she's looking for, she mixes them together and boils the concoction. Steam rises from the mixture, twisting into recognizable shapes such as animals and spirits. The whole process takes about fifteen minutes, after which the patient must drink the entire mixture. They are immediately cured.
The proper preparation varies from person to person, so a single batch cannot be used to treat multiple people.
Exert your Mind and spend 15 minutes. Select a Living target within arm's reach. This Effect cannot be used unless you can forage for herbs. You must actively and obviously use water, a container, and heat to activate this Effect.
You may cure any Non-Alien diseases, toxins, or poisons afflicting your target even if you have not diagnosed or fully understood it. You may cure diseases or poisons even if they are not treatable through modern medicine. During treatment, the malady you are treating does not progress or cause additional Damage or other effects.
Whenever you cure a disease, poison, or toxin, if it had inflicted any Damage, your target is healed for half that Damage.
Through the use of clever rhetoric, the spy is able to inspire a surge of emotion in a target with whom they are speaking.
Exert your Mind and spend an Action. Select a Living target within 45 feet as well as a specific emotion. This Effect cannot be used unless you are engaged in conversation with the target. Roll Charisma + Influence at Difficulty 6. Affected targets can resist by rolling Mind at Difficulty 6 -3 dice.
If you succeed, for the next minute, your target will do things they otherwise wouldn’t have done, inspired by the chosen emotion. They will not necessarily display their emotions in an obvious way.
Actions they take will be in keeping with their character and the way they tend to deal with strong emotions. They will be unlikely to change their mind about any actions taken or decisions made until after the Effect ends.
The aquamancer channels a nearby source of water into a flexible whip, which can be used to attack or to defend.
Spend an Action. Select a target within arm's reach. You must actively and obviously use at least a gallon of water to activate this Effect. Roll Dexterity + Athletics Difficulty 6. The target may contest by rolling to Dodge or Defend as a Reaction, Difficulty 6.
If the Contested Outcome is positive, the target takes that much Damage plus 4.
You may use this Effect to Defend against any melee, projectile, or firearm Attacks within range or Clash against any Attack targeted at you. Using it to Defend deals no Damage but does not cost Exertion.
This Gift cannot have more than 3 Drawbacks, and its Gift Cost is capped at 2.