Monday, August 4, 2014

Demon: Lore of Death

Death comes to us all ... might as well make use of it.  (Skyrim Picture)
Read Fate
You can read the cause of death from a victim's remains as well as gather a series of vague sensory impressions (one per success) that reveal pivotal clues of their last hour of life.  If one were to do this to the remains of a malicious hit and run they might gather clues such as the precise sound of the engine, image of part of the bonnet showing colour and giving hints to make and model, a few letters from the license plate and a close up of a bee tattoo on the webbing between thumb and forefinger of the driver's hand.
Action: Instant.
Cost: None.
Dice Pool: Wits + Investigation + Death.
High Torment: You can tamper with the remains with a touch to change its appearance to match a different style of murder or to lay certain physiological clues that might implicate another person (i.e. change the pattern of congealed blood within the flesh to indicate that the body might have been moved).

Vision of Mortality
You can touch a victim to leave them shaken with a vision of their oncoming death.  This vision isn't the truth of their likely death -- it merely shows them one likely possibility (i.e. it reveals a car accident if they are near a busy intersection).  The victim takes a -2 penalty to all Composure rolls for the rest of the day.  They must roll Resolve + Composure or spend a willpower point per round to remain within the same area as the potential cause of their death.
Action: Instant.
Cost: None.
Dice Pool: Resolve + Intimidation + Death - Defence.
High Torment: The demon may choose the vision and pick a specific person, creature, place or object that could conceivably cause the character's death.  Use some sense when making your selection.  While this could be used to make a person terrified of a bed (for fear someone will smother them on it), it won't make them fear random pillows.

Decay
You can decay an object or creature with a touch which causes lethal damage per success.  Since this can be activated with the touch you can simply lay a comforting hand on their shoulder in conversation before activating it or use it while shaking hands.  This power ignores mundane armour and durability.
Action: Instant.
Cost: None.
Dice Pool: Resolve + Occult + Death - Defence.
High Torment: Everything around you decays in a radius equal to your Faith in yards - whether friend or foe.  You may select either objects (dealing bashing to creatures) or creatures (dealing half damage to objects) and it is presumed to either work on a horizontal basis (not affecting the ground) or a vertical basis (only affecting the ground and air above you).

Extinguish Life
You can grant a person a peaceful and instantaneous death that appears to be of natural causes through reaching out with your inner compassion to brush them with your oldest calling.  You can set this to occur at any time within hours equal to Faith.  This power has no effect on the undead or the possessed (i.e. Fallen or Sin Eaters).  You must touch the victim to activate this power.  You may only have one instance of this power running at a time.
Action: Instant.
Cost: 1 Faith.
Dice Pool: Composure + Empathy + Death versus Stamina + Power Stat.

High Torment: You may affect targets equal to Faith who are within a radius equal to Faith from yourself.  Undead or possessed targets will instead suffer the effects of a low torment version of Vision of Mortality.

Unlife
You may touch the dead remains of a creature no larger than Size 5 + your permanent Faith to animate it.  If the remains are fresh (deceased within hours equal to Faith) and intact you may choose to open the corpse to permanent possession by the nearest entity (normally a ghost or a demon) even if that entity couldn't normally possess a corpse.  If possessed by a demon it becomes a normal Fallen in a newly living body.  As a ghost or spirit possession it lacks the essential spark of Azoth to live (use of Awakening 5 brings them to life). 

Alternatively you may raise the entity as an undead creature under your control who follows your telepathic control (telepathy extends to 10 yards per Faith dot though if it has no current commands it will follow the last order given).  Either way the creature may only take bashing damage from any sources of injury and may heal if you give them Faith at a rate of one for every three bashing damage.  You may maintain control over as many undead creatures as you have permanent Faith at any one time.
Action: Instant.
Cost: None.
Dice Pool: Composure + Expression + Death.
High Torment: You can touch the remains of a corpse to raise violent undead who will attack everyone else in sight and whose bite infects others with your mystical contamination, raising them as well should they die within hours equal to your Faith after being bitten.  This power lasts for days equal to Faith.  Unfortunately as you have no power to control them, it's recommended that you destroy them yourself once they've done what you have needed them to do.  Such undead creations cannot enter holy ground, approach Faith 5 individuals and take aggravated damage from holy water (which may only be crafted by Faith 5 individuals with a particular custom merit - True Faith).

No comments:

Post a Comment