Thanatosis
"Don't worry about the flesh, kid. Secrets rot the soul." --Archon Lithrac
The corpselike bodies of vampires are intimately tied to death, trapped in a state of eternal, arrested decay. Thanatosis draws on that connection, encouraging and feeding on blight and deterioration. These are the powers of atrophy, decrepitude, putrescence, and rot. In some ways, Thanatosis grants control over the curse itself, temporarily suspending a vampire's immortality and causing even her eternal flesh to suffer rot and decay.
Thanatosis is the signature discipline of the Samedi bloodline, and some say that it is a natural evolution of the Cappadocian powers of Mortis Path. Certainly, the two are related and have many similarities but the Samedi, by and large, are more aggressive and less bookish.
Thanatosis Test Pool: The Thanatosis wielder uses her Mental attribute + Medicine versus the target's Mental attribute + Willpower.
Contents
• Hag's Wrinkles
Perpetual rot makes the character's flesh malleable. You can contract or expand your skin, sending it into wrinkled, rippling waves or pulling it taut over your undead flesh. You can even cause folds to form in your flesh, allowing you to store objects within the leathery ripples, like a kangaroo's pouch.
System: The bodies of Thanatosis practitioners become rotted and malleable. By spending a standard action to tug or twist your skin, you can open folds and pouches in your flesh. These pouches are capable of storing items up to the size of a large handgun. Accessing items stored in these pouches requires a simple action.
Additionally, you can slightly alter your appearance by over tightening the skin around your face or by allowing it to hang wrinkled and loose. These changes may be enough to fool uninformed mortals, but they do not alter your appearance enough to fool someone who knows you.
Focus [Wits]: The flaps and folds of your skin can impede weapons, slip-sliding over your musculature or deflecting blows that would otherwise harm you. You receive a +1 bonus to defensive test pools when targeted by Brawl or Melee attacks. Additionally, you receive a +5 bonus when attempting to escape from a Grapple.
•• Putrefaction
With but a touch, you can inflict decay on your target. You cause putrescent, festering decay to spread from your point of contact.
System: Spend 1 point of Blood and use your standard action to rot any organic, inanimate object you touch, to the point of uselessness. A single application of Putrefaction can destroy wood, cloth, plastic, and rubber, but harder items, such as metal, glass, or stone, require two applications of this power to putrefy. Objects larger than a standard door require more than one application of Putrefaction to destroy. This power has no effect on living or undead matter, but can be used to rot true corpses (dead bodies) into unrecognizability.
Focus [Wits]: You may spend 1 Blood and use a standard action to destroy a wooden stake that is currently piercing your heart. This is an exception to the rule that prevents a character from spending Blood or taking actions while staked.
••• Ashes to Ashes
Under extreme circumstances, it is often best to allow an opponent a psychological victory in order to gain the element of surprise. The Samedi are masters of such deceit. With this power, you can collapse into a thick, sticky white powder that resembles a desiccated heap of ash.
System: By spending 1 point of Blood and using your standard action, you transform into a pile of ash. While in this form, you cannot spend Blood, move from your location, take actions, or use supernatural powers, but you are immune to Physical damage, fire, and sunlight. You also retain a limited awareness of everything within five steps.
The form granted by Ashes to Ashes does not confer complete invulnerability. The ashes have a certain resistance to being dispersed, but if you are scattered too widely, you can be killed. While using Ashes to Ashes, you have 10 points of Cohesion. If other individuals or factors of the environment, such as high winds or a blaze of fire, conspire to scatter your ashes, you may lose 1 to 3 points of Cohesion per turn, determined at the Storyteller's discretion. If you reform after losing Cohesion, you lose 1 point of Blood per point of Cohesion you suffered. If you run out of Blood in this manner, you take 1 point of aggravated damage per point of Cohesion lost. This damage cannot be reduced or negated. If your Cohesion reaches zero, you suffer Final Death.
This power makes you appear as though you are a normal pile of ash, but does not alter your aura. Someone looking at a character in Ashes to Ashes with Aura Perception will be able to tell that the pile of ash has a vampiric aura. Ashes to Ashes is a transformative power and cannot be combined with other transformative powers.
Focus [Wits]: While in the form of Ashes to Ashes, you can spend 1 point of Blood to draw in nearby ash that has been scattered, gaining 1 point of Cohesion per turn. Additionally, you can spend 1 point of Blood per turn and move up to one step. This is an exception to the rule preventing you from spending Blood or moving while in ash form.
•••• Withering
By clutching a victim¡¦s limb and activating this hideous power, you shrivel the limb and render it useless by infecting it with decay. A target suffering under the effects of this power finds herself in horrible pain, her limbs shrinking and bones snapping within your grasp.
System: Use a standard action to Grapple a target. If you are successful, spend 1 Blood to inflict Withering on the victim, as well as inflicting all standard effects of a Grapple. Thereafter, the target suffers a -1 penalty to her Physical attribute. This effect is not considered damage, and is not affected by powers or abilities that negate or lessen damage. To use Withering on a target, you must first be successful using a Grapple combat maneuver against that target. If your target is already grappled, you can activate this power by spending 1 Blood and using your standard action. Withering can be used during Celerity rounds, so long as you pay the full cost for each use.
Penalties from repeated use of Withering on a single target accumulate, whether those penalties were applied by one practitioner of Thanatosis or multiple practitioners. If this penalty reaches -5, one of the victim's limbs (chosen by the attacker) becomes useless. If the penalty reaches -10, the target must choose a second limb that becomes useless, and so on, until all of the target's limbs are unusable. If one or both of a character's legs have been withered, she can only move one step per action by limping or crawling. If either of a character's arms have been withered, she suffers a -5 penalty to Brawl and Melee attacks, unless the character is ambidextrous, in which case, she only suffers a -3 penalty. A character with a withered arm cannot use two-handed weapons. A character with two withered arms cannot make Physical attacks unless she is capable of biting without grappling, or if she has more than two other useable limbs, such as those granted by Black Metamorphosis or limbs created with Vicissitude.
Physical attribute penalties from Withering subside after 10 minutes, but a withered limb is not so easily restored. A mortal whose limb has been withered is permanently crippled. A supernatural creature's withered limbs will recover after two games or one month, whichever is longer.
Focus [Intelligence]: Your target's limb withers when the penalties from Withering reach -3, instead of the standard threshold of -5. A second limb becomes useless when the penalties reach -6, and so forth. This effect functions even if some of the penalties were applied by other characters using Withering. For example, if another character inflicted -2 in penalties, and you inflict a third -1, you wither one of the target's limbs.
••••• Necrosis
A horrific and potent power, Necrosis allows you to rot away your opponent's muscle and bone, rendering her into putrid fat and tissue. The hideous decomposition induced by this power disgusts and revolts even the hardiest constitution as it accelerates the forces of decay and exposes internal organs in a terrifying spectacle of pain.
System: Spend 1 Blood and use your simple action to activate Necrosis. For the next hour, anytime you successfully Grapple a target or maintain an existing Grapple on a target, you may choose to inflict necrotic rot on your victim. You can only inflict Necrosis once per turn, but you can do so during either everyman or Celerity rounds.
The first time you use Necrosis on a target, you must succeed in using the Grapple combat maneuver against that target. On subsequent rounds, if you are still grappling the target, you may activate Necrosis by using your standard action. Your target take 3 points of aggravated damage as her flesh rots and sloughs away.
The damage normally dealt by a Grapple does not convert to aggravated damage by this power. The damage dealt by Necrosis is not reduced by the effect of the Grapple combat maneuver.
Necrosis cannot be used with other powers that require you to touch or grapple your target.
Focus [Intelligence]: Necrosis deals 4 points of aggravated damage, rather than the standard 3.
