Potence
I have the power.
Potence is the power to draw upon the great strength of the supernatural in order to perform feats of literal strength. Those who can draw upon their magical power to augment their physical prowess in this manner find themselves becoming stronger even without drawing directly upon their magical might. A character with Potence gains a +1 bonus to their Strength score. If they have Advanced Potence the bonus increases to +2, and if they have Elder Potence the bonus increases to +3. Potence is an odd case as regards the Masquerade because while it is accompanied by no flaming runes or crawling shadows, demonstrations of incredible strength strain credibility and perhaps worse they draw comments from observers.
Basic Disciplines
- Clinging The character can hold themselves onto vertical surfaces and even ceilings for extended periods of time without special equipment or apparent effort. They can easily move up or down sheer surfaces at the rate of a steady walk, and scuttle across ceilings at the rate of a careful walk without danger or exertion. When such a character attempts to pull Wuxia or Spiderman inspired stunts involving running on walls or brachiating over a crowd they find this much easier, because they can support their weight merely by putting a hand against a wall. For practical purposes, this means that such stunts are much less extreme for them than they appear to outsiders. The thresholds are generally reduced by 2 (a crazy extreme stunt would be merely a professional stunt from their perspective).
- Vigor The character may spend a power point to increase their Strength by 1 for the remainder of the scene. This may be activated more than once, and its effects stack. While using Vigor itself has no visible effects, the use of vastly increased strength may be obviously unnatural to onlookers.
- Devastation The character's Strength can emanate from many places at once along an object being touched, allowing them to lift very large, awkward and even fragile things without issue. It also allows them to have a blow from their hand or foot repeated many times across a wall or floor, causing it to shatter (which is where the power gets its name). This kind of contact telekinesis is best represented in super hero comics – where characters routinely lift cars by the ends without parts falling off or the ground underneath them giving way. The source of force can be directed out across a distance of 2 meters per Potency, and the character can effectively lift or smash something that they could accomplish with 5 identical friends. With Elder Potence, the number of identical friends increases to 9.
When used as an attack, the character can strike multiple enemies in close combat without penalty or attack a single opponent as if they outnumbered them. - Giant Size The character can grow extremely large. By spending a power point, they can expand to a muscular 3.5 meters in height. This is a Protean power. While in Giant Size, the character has an additional 6 points of Strength, they gain a point of armor, and the base damage of any weapon they use increases by 2 (assuming that it is allowed to grow with them). All of the things that a character wants to grow along with them grow along with them while they are being carried by them, and anything they aren't carrying or that they wish to leave normal size stays normal size.
Some creatures have Giant Size permanently on, and they don't have to pay power points for it (but they can't turn it off and objects do not resize in their hands).
- Earth Quake By spending a power point, the character can do something stupidly powerful (and generally destructive) with their Strength. A blow reverberates across the ground like a meteor strike, shaking and crushing things out to up to a hundred meters per Potency from their person. A creature or object struck with the full force of ground zero of this strike is likely obliterated – the melee attack at the center of this is a formidable (even ludicrous) Damage 12. The character can attempt to restrict the power into doing something useful such as boring out a tunnel, stacking logs, or hurling debris out of a collapsed building. This kind of Popeye-like activity uses an Agility + Athletics or Logic + Rigging test to determine its accuracy.
- Force Field The character can project force some distance away from their person. This allows them to stop bullets aimed at compatriots, strangle people from a distance, and even hover by “holding themselves up.” Their Strength can be projected reflexively out to 3 meters from their person, and any attacks that target someone or something within or through that area may get blocked by the force field – meaning that they have to contend with being soaked by the character's Strength before being resolved (yes, this means that the character can effectively use their Strength twice when soaking bullets fired at their own person). Their Strength can be used actively as a normal action on things within line of sight.
And here are the new Werewolves and Prometheans:
The Get of Fenris
The better to eat you with, my dear.
Somewhere in the howling wilderness of Scandinavia a “wolf warrior” of the North became darkly fused with a wolf pelt he was wearing while fighting the Huns – an event which places the creation of the Werewolf at approximately 600 CE. Passed from warrior to enemy warrior and conquered victims, the curse spread throughout the lands of Europe and beyond along the warpaths of the Huns and later the Vikings. In later nights, it spread itself throughout the world on the backs of European conquistadors and imperial marines. By the twelve hundreds it had spread as far as Central Asia, and the Wolf Mother Asena led the covenant of the Bumin Horde of Ergenekon to rule much of Eurasia until her presumed death and the dissolution of the covenant in 1844.
Werewolves are instilled with a love of combat and destruction even in their human forms. In their monstrous forms they take the shape of awkwardly toothy man-wolves. Glistening with drool and usually fast covered with speckles of blood, the claws and fangs of a monstrous formed werewolf are a terror. Every Werewolf can transform into a “regular” canine as well as a huge canid beast. Not all Werewolves transform into an actual wolf when they become a mundane animal. For whatever reason, some become dogs, coyotes, foxes, or even hyenas.
Though they gain no magical power or sustenance from it, Werewolves are quite drawn to eating human flesh, and will often succumb to this temptation while in a frenzy. The curse of Lycanthropy comes with unusual and often unwanted hair growth on various parts of the body for Werewolves. In the era of waxing and depilatories, a member of the Get of Fenris can keep this under control, but changing into the War Form causes hair to come back no matter what has been done. On the plus side: baldness is totally curable through infection with Lycanthropy.
Werewolves have an Astral power source and a Lunar power schedule.
- Werewolf Starting Disciplines
- Core Discipline: Animalism - - Feral Whispers (Basic Animalism)
- Beast Form (Basic Animalism)
- Basic Disciplines - - Revive the Flesh (Basic Fortitude)
- Vigor (Basic Potence)
- Quickness (Basic Celerity)
- Dread Gaze (Basic Presence)
-Advanced Disciplines - - War Form (Celerity / Potence Devotion)
- The Beckoning (Advanced Animalism)
Prometheans: Last of their Kind
Once upon a time, there was ... 'A king!' my little readers will say right away. No, children, you are wrong. Once upon a time there was a piece of wood....
Prometheans are different from the other types of supernaturals because they are not born as a human only to later achieve supernatural powers, but are instead created fully formed and fully grown with their powers already intrinsic to them. A Promethean awakens for the first time already an outcast, already both more and less than a human. Prometheans are almost always rejected by humanity because regardless of how much they try, they are not humans. Every Promethean is not only the first of its kind, it is also the last of its kind, every Promethean creation event is unique and Prometheans tragically find that even other created life is intrinsically distinct from them, different from humanity in ways which likewise reveal a difference that is just as unbridgeable.
Prometheans are capable of being Extras and Luminaries just as normal humans are. In general, a mad scientist's masterwork is a Luminary Promethean (the kind that might be a player character), and a batch of killer robots is probably a bunch of Promethean Spawn. Which means that yes, those Prometheans who actually have peers don't even care because they are just background characters and mooks in their own story.
All Prometheans use a Ritual Power Schedule. Their false life leaves them vulnerable to things that were once alive. Though they never were born and never died, they still suffer aggravated damage from wooden weapons as if they were undead. In most cases, Prometheans are dominated by Master Passion: Loneliness, a condition not unrelated to the fact that each Promethean is literally without peers. They have more difficulty making emotional connections then virtually any other creature, and pine for the loss.
- Special Note on Terminology: It is important to note that Frankenstein is the name of the creator, and not the the name of the creature. The creature's name was Adam. Similarly, in technical Greek an Android refers only to a male human analog, while a female human analog would be called a Gynoid (seriously). However it is also important to note that most of the people you talk to about this issue don't know this and don't care. Like Jello, Frankenstein is a brand name of such overwhelming market dominance that the stitched corpse creations of other mad scientists are called Frankensteins (rather than calling them gelatin desserts or reanimated homunculi or whatever). Similarly, if you use the word Gynoid in every day conversation people will assume you are talking about some sort of sexually transmitted condition. Honestly, it is better that common terminology is used rather than historically correct terminology in this instance.
“My heart was fashioned to be susceptible of love and sympathy, and when wrenched by misery to vice and hatred, it did not endure the violence of the change without torture such as you cannot even imagine.”
Frankensteins are crafted to be literally new living things. They are essentially people, albeit designed rather than evolved. Unfortunately, the creators of these new creatures almost never take to their assumed role as parent, because the Frankenstein is never truly a baby and never truly a human. Propelled into existence with a grown human's size and facilities, they nonetheless suffer from having missed the opportunities to be juvenile. Like a man who has been inducted as a child soldier or a woman married at first blood, a Frankenstein's life will always have deeply painful emotional issues. They will always be childlike in some aspects of their existence, even if they live to be hundreds of years old.
Each Frankenstein is created out of human flesh in some way. Sometimes it is as simple as cobbling together body parts and then harnessing lightning or mystic power to bring it to life. Sometimes they are grown in tanks like the Hank and Dean. And in yet other methods of creation they are crafted in some other medium such as wood or stone and then transformed into human flesh. Regardless of the creation methodology, a Frankenstein is close enough to human in appearance to pass for one.
Like all Prometheans, Frankensteins need power. For most Frankensteins, this is electrical power, though there are examples that recharged by standing under waterfalls or exposing themselves to tidal forces. The days of making Pinocchios that have to be tossed into the sea or Osirians who need to camp in rivers to recharge are largely over, and almost all Frankensteins made in the last hundred and fifty years operate on the more exciting and portable system of electricity.
A Frankenstein has an Orphic power source and a Ritual power schedule.
- Frankenstein Starting Disciplines
- Core Discipline: Celerity - - Nimble Feet (Basic Celerity)
- Quickness (Basic Celerity)
- Basic Disciplines - - Vigor (Basic Potence)
- Dread Gaze (Basic Presence)
- Patience of the Mountains (Basic Fortitude)
- Supernatural Senses (Basic Auspex)
-Advanced Disciplines - - Devastation (Advanced Potence)
- Quicken Sight (Advanced Celerity)
Golems: The Servitor
“Did I request thee, Maker from my clay
To mould Me man? Did I solicit thee
From darkness to promote me?”
Created strong of body and unending in endurance, the Golem is made to do tasks that humans don't want to. Often these jobs are demeaning or dangerous, and it is no surprise that Golems rarely want to do the things that are asked of them. Golems appear crude and ogrish, having been initially created for physical functionality rather than social niceties. Generally a Golem is as capable of making human emotional connections and decisions as anyone, but their distinctly non-human, even non-living appearance makes that difficult.
Crafted as a servile, almost machine-like creature, Golems fade into the background as much as the most discrete of servants. No one notices a tool that is not in use or a man far beneath them in social status, and a Golem is both. Each Golem is empowered by mystic words and dreams, and it is these that the Golem “is.” The body one sees (if one sees it at all) is truly inanimate and irrelevant material that is given life by the mystic runes that represent the Golem. While a Golem may grow accustomed to its shell, the fact is that they can be transferred to a new body of clay or wood without particular harm.
The Golem is powered by the meaning of the words, and they recharge themselves by repeating and emphasizing them over and over again like Tibetan monks. It is not unusual to find a Golem recharging itself by writing and rewriting phrases on a chalk board like Bart Simpson or intoning a mystic song again and again.
A Golem has an Astral power source and a Ritual power schedule.
- Golem Starting Disciplines
- Core Discipline: Obfuscation - - Hide From Notice (Basic Obfuscation)
- Mask of a Thousand Faces (Basic Obfuscation)
- Basic Disciplines - - Fire Walking (Basic Walk of Flame)
- Vigor (Basic Potence)
- Patience of the Mountains (Basic Fortitude)
- Summon Spirit (Basic Necromancy)
-Advanced Disciplines - - Devastation (Advanced Potence)
- Touch of Shadow (Advanced Obfuscation)
Androids: The Lover
“How fully functional are you?”
Androids are made of hard and constructed material rather than the softness of flesh and they are coldly perfect to behold. Whether man or woman, an android is beautiful beyond what normal humans are capable of. Unfortunately, the metallic perfection of their exterior belies a digital corsity that makes interpersonal relationships unsatisfactory. The emotions of an Android, though strongly felt, are simply too extreme and simple for others to relate to. The love of an Android is as off-putting as the hatred to a normal, nuanced individual. Androids do not, on initial inspection look anything other than human. However there is something distinctly “not right” about them which will creep out any normal human who interacts with them socially for long. They are beyond autistic, their emotions are simply ones and zeros.
Androids can be made of circuitry, gears, or simply polished marble. The key is that at the end of the procedure they are crafted to look more human than a human could possibly be. The insides of an Android actually matter a fair amount for purposes of what they do to recharge themselves. An Android filled with gears needs to patiently wind themselves up (conservation of energy be damned), while an Android made of circuits and wires needs to plug themselves into a wall. Whichever it is, an Android recharging breaks the illusion of a perfect human, as the act of opening themselves to work on their clearly inorganic insides pushes them into the uncanny valley until they close themselves up again.
An Android has an Infernal power source and a Ritual power schedule.
- Android Starting Disciplines
- Core Discipline: Potence - - Vigor (Basic Potence)
- Clinging (Basic Potence)
- Basic Disciplines - - Light of Ennui (Basic Descent of Entropy)
- Awe (Basic Presence)
- Patience of the Mountains (Basic Fortitude)
- Howling Winds (Basic Chasing the Storm)
-Advanced Disciplines - - Devastation (Advanced Potence)
- Contradiction (Advanced Descent of Entropy)
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