Martial Art Style: Iron Serpent Like a coiling constrictor, crush your opponent with unrelenting force

4
You possess superhuman unarmed combat ability.
Used by Jenny Thorndike, Created by donniecesar.

Short, but sharp claws grow from the widow's fingertips. Her martial arts are an original product of the Widow's relentless martial arts training and her fastly mutating body: the Iron Serpent is a physically demanding style focused on grappling, immobilization, and powerful, precise and disabling strikes. Inspired by the movements of constrictor snakes, this style emphasizes controlled, heavy actions that apply constant pressure, overwhelming opponents with both physical dominance and precision attacks to vulnerable areas. Unlike lighter, quicker martial arts, Iron Serpent relies on wearing down the opponent through relentless holds, chokes, and joint locks, while leveraging surprise strikes to blind spots when the enemy is immobilized.

Key Principles:

Constriction and Immobilization: Practitioners of Iron Serpent should excel in grappling techniques that focus on tightly controlling the opponent's body. Chokes, locks, and body-weight pins are designed to restrict the enemy’s movement and breathing, gradually sapping their energy.

Heavy, Controlled Movements: Every movement in Iron Serpent is deliberate, focusing on using body weight and leverage to apply maximum pressure with minimal energy loss. It relies on solid stances and grounded techniques, designed to prevent easy escapes and maintain constant pressure.

Opportunistic Strikes: Aim to exploit opponents that are restrained, controlled or surprised. Practitioners strike with precision and these strikes, whether punches, elbows, or kicks, target weak points such as joints, ribs, neck, or behind the head, using the enemy’s weakness to avoid retaliation and maximize damage.

Endure, Disable, Overpower: The Iron Serpent style requires great endurance, both physical and mental. It focuses on wearing down the opponent over time, applying slow, constant pressure or chiping but disabling strikes until they can no longer fight back. Practitioners must remain patient, waiting for the right moment to strike with overwhelming force.


You gain the following benefits as long as you are engaged in unarmed combat.

+2 dice to rolls for Attacking, Defending, and Clashing without a weapon. Unarmed attacks do +0 Weapon Damage (instead of -1).

Possession of this Power grants the following Battle Scar: Overtrained Left Hand.

You may Defend against melee, projectile, or firearm Attacks from any range and Clash with those in range of your Attacks. Attacking materials like steel or spikes will not Damage you unless it has an Effect that does so.

You also gain the following effects:

  • Brutal Strikes: If your attack inflicts a Battle Scar, you may choose which of the appropriate-severity Battle Scars the target suffers. If it causes a less severe Injury, you may inflict a Minor Battle Scar of your choosing.
  • Disarm: If you successfully Defend or Clash with a melee attack, you may take possession your opponent’s weapon or launch if up to 35 feet away.
  • Finesse: When Attacking a single being, you may limit the Severity of any Injury you inflict or determine a maximum Wound Level, including Incapacitated. You may also choose to make this Injury properly or improperly stabilized, or to keep it unstabilized.
  • Jiu-Jitsu:When you successfully grapple an opponent, you may choose to also deal damage to them equal to the Contested Outcome on the grapple roll.
  • Precision Strikes: You may use Dexterity instead of Brawn to Attack and Defend. If you would successfully incapacitate a target using Finesse, you may opt to knock them out for one hour instead of having them suffer an Injury.

  • The total damage of a ju-jitsu grapple-attack is equal to your Outcome minus their Outcome. Bonus Damage from the Bonus Damage Parameter does not apply to damage dealt through this Enhancement.
  • Unlike the Ability Brawl, this Effect does not affect small weapons such as knives.

Revision purchased with:
Improvement from writing up Blow a Candle, Make a Wish spent on improving power: Martial Art Style: Iron Serpent
Revision purchased with:
Improvement from writing up Empress Ekaterina's Hunger spent on improving power: Hands that Reach
Revision purchased with:
Revision purchased with:
Revision purchased with:

Community Passive Gifts

You gain the following benefits at all times.

You have 3 Armor, which reduces incoming damage from all sources of physical attack except Fire. Armor from multiple sources does not stack. This Armor cannot be circumvented with Called Shots.

You may spend an Action or Reaction and Exert your Mind to double your Armor rating for one Round.

You gain the following benefits as long as you are maintaining Concentration.

Your Stress from Injuries and Mind Damage is divided in half.

You may move at your normal speed and still maintain Concentration. Taking an Injury less than Severity 6 no longer interrupts Concentration.

You gain the following benefits as long as you are engaged in combat with melee weapons.

+2 dice to all rolls with melee weapons. You may Defend against firearm attacks from any range using melee weapons.

You also gain the following effects:

  • Quick Draw: You may draw and equip yourself with any melee weapon on your person or within arm’s reach as a Free Action, as long as it is not being wielded by someone else.

You gain the following benefits at all times.

Your Brawn rating is increased by 1. You may Exert your Mind to automatically gain an Outcome of 5 on any roll that uses Brawn (cannot be used on combat rolls or Effect activations).

You also gain the following effects:

  • Tough: You gain Armor equal to half your Brawn rating. This Armor cannot be penetrated and protects against falling Damage.

  • Armor from multiple sources does not stack. Instead, the highest is used.
  • Attribute bonuses from multiple sources do not stack. Instead the highest bonus is used.

You gain the following benefits as long as you are wearing this Artifact.

Whenever you use your Movement, after all other calculations, the distance you may travel is increased by 25 feet.

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).

  • The time reduction on non-Movement Actions applies only to the parts of actions when your personal speed is a factor,: pouring water or smoking a steak are not affected, but constructing a shelter or picking a lock would be. The GM will determine how much the total time is reduced based on how relevant personal speed is to the task.
  • 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 Passive Gifts

You gain the following benefits at all times.

Your Charisma rating is increased by 1. You may Exert your Mind to automatically gain an Outcome of 5 on any roll that uses Charisma (Cannot be used on combat rolls or Power activations).

You also gain the following effects:

  • Party Animal: You are welcome at, and will be granted entrance to, any social gathering or party, at least as an observer.
  • The Price Of Fame: Any sightings or recordings of your activity can easily be traced back to you. Even when disguised or using an alias, people always get a Perception check to recognize you.

  • A "social gathering" might include a birthday party, after-work drinks, a ski trip, or yoga in the park, among other things. It likely would not include a cult gathering to summon a demon, Congressional negotiations over a contentious bill, etc.
  • Attribute bonuses from multiple sources do not stack. Instead the highest bonus is used.

You gain the following benefits at all times.

You are permanently and visibly transformed: you have blue, bioluminescent blood and a hunched posture adapted to running on all fours. You are considered to be a Sapient, Living Creature when targeted. Your Dexterity is increased by 1.

Your body is adapted to sprinting. You receive +3 dice on non-attack rolls related to sprinting.

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.

You cannot be mistaken for a normal human. You cannot always use standard human clothes, equipment, vehicles, and facilities, and when you can, you suffer an increased Difficulty.

You cannot ignore or decrease the effects of Stress for any Self-Control rolls you make.

  • Even though you're targetable as a Creature, you still are also targetable as a Sapient being.
  • Attribute bonuses from multiple sources do not stack. Instead the highest bonus is used.

You gain the following benefits at all times.

You may go five times longer than a normal human without food, water, sleep, and air. Any roll to resist an Effect dependent on any affected requirement is made at -1 Difficulty.

You gain the following benefits at all times.

Your senses are enhanced in the following way.

  • Hearing: You are capable of perceiving physical shapes via sound. You must produce a cricket chirp to “ping” with your echolocation each Round you wish to use it.

You gain the following benefits as long as you are in werewolf form, and you are engaged in unarmed combat.

+2 dice to rolls for Attacking, Defending, and Clashing without a weapon. Unarmed attacks do +0 Weapon Damage (instead of -1).

You may Defend against melee, projectile, or firearm Attacks from any range and Clash with those in range of your Attacks. Attacking materials like steel or spikes will not Damage you unless it has an Effect that does so.

You also gain the following effects:

  • Brutal Strikes: If your attack inflicts a Battle Scar, you may choose which of the appropriate-severity Battle Scars the target suffers. If it causes a less severe Injury, you may inflict a Minor Battle Scar of your choosing.
  • Jiu-Jitsu:When you successfully grapple an opponent, you may choose to also deal damage to them equal to the Contested Outcome on the grapple roll.

  • The total damage of a ju-jitsu grapple-attack is equal to your Outcome minus their Outcome. Bonus Damage from the Bonus Damage Parameter does not apply to damage dealt through this Enhancement.
  • Unlike the Ability Brawl, this Effect does not affect small weapons such as knives.