Presence
“Her smile brought me a fiendish joy. Her silence drove me to angelic despair. Can you understand what it is to love that deeply?”
The beauty and elegance of vampires has inspired generations of mortals to write poetry, songs, and stories, each struggling to relate the magnificence of these seductive undead. A vampire’s natural aura of command, intimidation, or sensuality draws the attention like nothing else, and practitioners of the Presence discipline have mastered this ability. Such creatures can inspire or terrify, seduce or bring about tremendous despair as they withdraw their attention from an unfortunate paramour.
Through the use of Presence, vampires practice subtle manipulation. Where Dominate is a hammer, Presence is an iron hand in a velvet glove. This discipline sways the emotions and may not even be noticed, if the effects are applied cunningly enough. Presence doesn’t alter thought processes or change a subject’s personality; it simply enflames the target’s affections and sentiments, compelling her with newborn emotions.
Presence targets don’t lose their sanity, nor are they prone to believe ridiculous things simply because the vampire said they are true. Still, inspiration, eloquence, or gifts of wealth or power, when used in combination with this discipline, can earn permanent conversions to the vampire’s cause.
Presence Test Pool: A Presence wielder uses her Social attribute + Leadership versus the target’s Social attribute + Willpower.
• Awe
You get noticed, even in the busiest room. Your beauty and charisma draw the attention of others like moths to a flame. Even those who do not agree with your cause or your purposes will stop and listen, willing for a moment to give you the benefit of the doubt.
System: To activate Awe, spend 1 Blood point and expend a standard action. For the remainder of the scene, you seem larger than life, more impressive than usual, and everyone within conversational distance will pay attention to you and will feel a strong desire to be near you. Characters affected by Awe are not compelled to like, trust, or stop attacking you, but they must pay attention to you. A target affected by Awe is automatically considered to be focused on you, as per the Gaze and Focus rule.
Characters may ignore all uses of Awe for one hour, even if they come from multiple individuals, by spending a point of Willpower.
Focus [Appearance]: Characters who wish to overcome your Awe must spend 2 Willpower, rather than 1, to ignore your Awe for the next hour. No matter how many characters in the area have this focus, expending 2 Willpower will ignore all focused uses of Awe.
•• Dread Gaze
A vampire’s Beast is a terrifying thing, feral and predatory. Using Dread Gaze allows the Beast to surface, focusing its rage on another individual. A vampire’s bloodthirsty nature is apparent in her features as the Beast hisses or roars in dark, primal wrath. Those targeted by this fearsome power often quail before it, fleeing in terror from the fury of the Beast.
System: Expend a standard action as your character bares her fangs and hisses or roars at her target, and then make an opposed challenge against your target. If you are successful, she is overcome by fear. She will not willingly come within five steps of you for the next five minutes, and actively seeks to avoid your presence and your anger.
A character who has been affected by your Dread Gaze will not attack you unless she has no other option. If forced into a confined place with you, the victim may fight you in order to escape, but will move away and stop fighting at the earliest opportunity.
Exceptional Success: For the rest of the evening, if you make any aggressive movement towards the individual who has been subjected to your successful Dread Gaze, this power will re-exert itself, and your victim will be forced to back away, suffering the effect of Dread Gaze for another five minutes.
Focus [Manipulation]: You can expose the fury of your Beast without revealing your vampiric nature. Instead of bearing your fangs and hissing, you glare at your target. Your eyes seem bright and piercing, brows knitted and features writ in anger; your motions are predatory — but your visage is not a breach of the Masquerade. Observers will notice that you appear aggressive toward your opponent, but they will have no reason to think you are a vampire.
••• Entrancement
A gentle smile can sway the hardest heart. You are the highlight of the gathering, a star in a cloudy sky, the sole recipient of attention. Few others can match your beauty and poise, and those who are lucky enough to gain your attention will do anything to keep it.
System: To activate Entrancement, spend 1 Blood, expend a standard action and make an opposed challenge against your target. If successful, you bend your target’s emotions and capture her heart. She becomes immediately receptive to you, rationalizing any disdain or negative feelings she had for you before you used this power. While the target is not your slave and will not blindly obey your commands, the subject admires you greatly and is willing to work toward your goals, within reason.
Both during the effects and after this power fades, the subject will rationalize the effect of Entrancement. Those who already felt positively toward you will simply remember that you were particularly alluring; those who moderately disliked you will begrudgingly blame the brief change of heart on your incredible persuasive skills. Only an individual who actively reviled you and wished you harm will clearly see that her actions were manipulated. Others, watching the Entranced individual, may see more clearly that she is under the sway of your emotional control — but it will be difficult to convince the Entranced individual that such is true.
Entranced characters cannot bring themselves to harm you, physically or politically, and will generally be as nice to you as reasonably possible. Entrancement is not mind control, and characters you’ve Entranced are not obligated to follow your instructions to the letter. They will generally try to make you happy, and they will take your side in arguments or conflicts, so long as they are not put in danger by doing so.
An Entranced character will not blood bind herself to you or risk her life to defend you, but she will lend assistance as long as the situation isn’t dangerous.
If you attack someone you’ve Entranced, this power’s effect ends immediately.
Exceptional Success: If you achieve an exceptional success, the target of your Entrancement suffers a -3 penalty to resist or overcome your other Presence powers for the duration of this effect. This benefit applies to all powers of Presence, including elder powers and Presence-based techniques.
Focus [Appearance]: When you use Entrancement successfully, the effects last for three hours instead of one.
•••• Summon
Your powers of persuasion are so strong that you can mystically compel others to come when you beckon, even if they are miles away. The mere memory of your beauty and inspiring personality haunts them, and they feel the soft, insistent call of your spirit summoning them to your side.
System: To Summon another individual, spend 1 point of Blood and expend a standard action. Make an opposed challenge against a familiar target.
Once you have begun a Summons, you cannot leave the area where you initiated the power, or the Summons will immediately end. If you succeed, the target of your Summons automatically realizes she has been affected by the use of a power, as well as the identity of the individual performing the Summons, and the location where she is to meet with you. If your target doesn’t trust you, she can spend a brief period of time, up to 10 minutes, taking precautions before answering your Summons.
A summoned target will come as quickly and directly as possible, but she also retains her survival instincts. The target will not walk off a cliff or enter a situation that she realizes may be an ambush.
If it is not possible for a character to present herself to you physically without entering a dangerous situation, the target must come as close as possible and contact you in some other way, such as via a phone call, forcing a human to deliver a note, or sending an animal messenger. If the target is not aware of an overt risk to her safety, she will respond to your Summon in person, even if you have sinister plans.
Summoned mortals will continue following your call across any distance, no matter how much time it takes to reach your side, so long as you remain on the premises where you initiated the Summon. They will eventually present themselves to you, even if they have to travel for days. Supernatural creatures travel as far as possible until they reach you or until the next sunrise, whichever comes first.
Exceptional Success: The target of your Summons doesn’t know the power has been used, and, therefore, also cannot sense the identity of the individual summoning her. She will move to present herself at your location without realizing why — or where she’s headed. Your Summon still ends if the target can’t approach you without walking into an obviously dangerous situation.
Focus [Manipulation]: You can Summon your Retainers, ghouls, and individuals who are blood bound to you without expending Blood or a standard action. You can use this aspect of Summon even when you are staked or in torpor. This is an exception to the rule that prevents powers from being used while staked or in torpor.
••••• Majesty
You have mastered the ability to channel your vampiric Beast’s emotions, focusing its rage into a dark, regal bearing that seems almost palpable. The force of your personality causes meeker hearts to quail, and fearful individuals to bow or grovel before you as you demand their respect. Hearts break and even the most stalwart tremble as you pass, overwhelmed by the authority and sovereignty of your countenance. You take on the aspect and mien of ancient rulers, expressed however is appropriate — be it through intimidation and command, worshipful subservience, sexual magnetism, or purity and grace.
System: Spend 1 Blood and expend a standard action to activate Majesty. For the next hour, you appear to be the apotheosis of your character’s best nature – astonishingly beautiful, terrifyingly evil, regal beyond reproach, or otherwise – as reflects your character’s personality. The feeling of a character’s Majesty can vary, depending upon the user’s personality and current mood. Majesty manifests as a domineering emotional presence, amplifying your character’s nature. While this power is active, others cannot show you disrespect, and while they may disagree with you, they must do so with utmost courtesy.
Anyone who wishes to attack or be rude to your character must make an opposed challenge, using her Social attribute + Willpower versus your Social attribute + Leadership. If the aggressor fails this challenge, she cannot make another attempt against your Majesty for at least 10 minutes. She becomes trapped in the effects of your Majesty and will continue to treat you with respect and courtesy even if she leaves your locale. After 10 minutes have passed, the aggressor may again attempt to break your Majesty. This effect also applies to powers that don’t directly target the Majesty user, but instead target the area encompassing the Majesty user. If a character wishes to engulf a room in fire and one of the characters in the radius has Majesty active, the aggressor must test against that Majesty to do so.
If you attack an individual affected by your Majesty, or if you use a power on such an individual, your Majesty immediately breaks for that person. She is rendered immune to your Majesty for the next hour and can treat you as she would normally, even attacking you, as she sees fit. This breaking of Majesty only affects the specific individual; others in the area who are affected by your Majesty are not freed simply by witnessing your aggression toward their friend.
During a mass combat scene, if you use the assist defender tactic to force someone to attack you instead of their intended victim, your Majesty automatically breaks for that attacker, as you have acted aggressively towards her. If you attack a character who is aided by the assist defender tactic, your Majesty is broken for both the new target and the original target, unless you choose to forgo your attack when the other players declare their use of the assist defender tactic.
Focus [Appearance]: While your Majesty is active, you ignore the Majesty of other characters.
