**Description:** The "Body of the Ancient Cryptic" passively alters the user’s body, giving them a primal, beast-like appearance combined with ancient, mystical energies. These physical changes not only enhance their combat abilities but also make them appear more formidable and inhuman to those around them.
Visible Changes:
- Beastly Claws: The user's hands and fingers elongate slightly, ending in sharp, retractable claws. These claws appear to be made of a dark, obsidian-like material and can tear through most materials with ease.
- Feral Eyes: Their eyes take on a bestial quality, with slit-like pupils and a glowing, predatory hue—often amber, red, or another unnatural color. These eyes grant heightened vision, especially in darkness.
- Rugged, Enhanced Physique: The user’s muscles are denser, their bones more robust, and their posture slightly hunched, resembling a primal predator. This gives them enhanced strength and agility beyond normal human limits.
- **Roughened Skin:** Their skin takes on a tougher, almost hide-like texture, with patches of scales or hardened ridges in certain areas, providing natural armor.
- Elongated Teeth: The user’s teeth sharpen into fangs, giving them a fearsome grin and enabling them to bite with great force when necessary.
- Beastial Presence: A low growl or snarl might be heard from the user when they are angered or in danger. Their overall demeanor is predatory, making others instinctively sense danger in their presence.
These beastly transformations, combined with ancient, arcane markings and energies, make the user a terrifying force, blending primal strength with cryptic wisdom.
You gain the following benefits at all times.
You are permanently and visibly transformed: perfect bodys. You are considered to be a Sapient, Living Creature when targeted. Your Brawn is increased by 1, your Perception is increased by 1, and your Charisma is increased by 1.
You are immune to damage from cold. If cold is a substantial component of other damage you would take (e.g. falling from a great distance into a vat of liquid nitrogen), that damage is reduced by 2 (in addition to Armor)
Your appendages can reach an additional 30 feet.
Whenever you enter Combat, roll Self-Control. If you fail, you cannot choose which targets to attack and cannot stop fighting until there are no targets remaining.
You cannot speak any coherent verbal language and must resort to other means of communication.
You cannot ignore or decrease the effects of Stress for any Self-Control rolls you make.
The Severity of any Injury caused by Sliver is increased by 2.
The user will place a finger, palm, or any other part of their hand onto any Non-Alien door, container, knot, or lock and it will immediately open or at least unlock. During the use of this gift, The users hand becomes barrage of colors as if they had just finished a color run!
Spend an Action. Select a Non-Alien door, container, knot, or lock within arm's reach.
You may lock, unlock, and/or open your target.
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 User is abnormaly fast to the point where its hard to keep up with.
You gain the following benefits at all times.
Your Dexterity rating is increased by 1. You may Exert your Mind to automatically gain an Outcome of 5 on any roll that uses Dexterity (Cannot be used on combat rolls or Power activations).
You also gain the following effects:
The beast on human legs has blood-red eyes, elongated fangs, and all-too-pale skin.
Lorelei is a bloodfiend, nightwalker, draugr, empousa, undead, ghoul, et cetera et cetera. It's a vampire. A creature of the night who desperately craves the taste of blood above anything else.
You gain the following benefits as long as you have sated your Hunger condition in the last 24 hours.
You are permanently and visibly transformed: you have pale skin and vibrant red eyes, and two pointed fangs. You are considered to be a Sapient, Non-Living being when targeted..
Your Injuries no longer degrade with time. You do not age naturally, and supernatural attempts to age you fail.
You may make a +2 Weapon Damage wicked fangs (knife) attack without additional equipment.
Any Animate being that consumes or is injected with your bodily fluids receives a Severity-1 Injury. Every Round, they must roll Body Difficulty 9. If they fail, the Injury worsens by 1 Severity. If they succeed, the Injury stops worsening.
Possession of this Power grants the following Trauma at all times: Bloodthirst. You are uncannily fixated on the blood of living beings. Any time you're exposed to blood, you must roll Self-Control. If you fail, you must feed, and if you botch, you will make a mess of it. You are unable to regain any Mind from resting unless you have consumed the substance that day.
Clyw begins focusing hard, typing away on their Cyberdeck. Suddenly, sparks fly as the infected machine switches sides, into Clyw's control.
Clyw's nature as a sentient program allows them an intrinsic understanding of computer functions and what they can and can't do. While Clyw is not a malicious program by nature or at heart, they have the capabilities to be one. Any technological blockade will soon be sorted out in the flashiest manner possible.
Spend 2 Actions. Select a Computer within 20 feet. Does not work on Alien technology. You must actively and obviously use A Portable Computer to activate this Effect. Roll Intellect + Technology, with the Difficulty set by the GM depending on the security of the system you are hacking. Sapient targets can resist by rolling Mind at Difficulty 6.
If you succeed, you may issue a single command to the targeted system. This command must have a specific outcome or be a request for specific login credentials. The command you issue must be within the machine's current capabilities. For example, you cannot order a standard security camera to grow legs and walk around.
This Gift's Cost is capped at 2 and cannot be increased further.
The mutant has gained some control over their genetic instability, allowing them to trigger a mutation at will. When the need arises, their flesh warps and twists, and a new mutation manifests that is suited to whatever obstacle the mutant happens to be facing at the time.
Spend 30 minutes. You may only target yourself. 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:
This Gift cannot have more than 3 Drawbacks, and its Gift Cost is capped at 2.
Your alteration "heals" over the course of the next month, after which it is fully cured.
Be amazed as the magician wields a deck of simple playing cards with all the poise and precision of a ninja's shurikens. Fear not, for they will not hit you, unless they want to.
You gain the following benefits as long as you are engaged in combat with playing cards.
+2 dice to all rolls utilizing playing cards.
You also gain the following effects:
The time-twister presses a button on one of their wristwatches, and, in a flash of orange light, disappears. They have skipped 12 seconds forward in time. To them, the travel is instantaneous, but everyone else must wait until they reappear.
Exert your Mind and spend an Action. You must actively and obviously use a clock or watch to activate this Effect.
You phase out of reality for 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 phase out, you may bring up to 1 additional target in arm's reach with you.
The detective has trained their eyes to notice the smallest of details.
You gain the following benefits at all times.
Your senses are enhanced in the following way.
The Thief has a stash in which they can store a few objects. It can be accessed through any burlap sack.
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.