Mytherceria
"Wisdom is a razor's edge. It slices through the center of existence, cutting the world in two. All things fall on either side: to know not, or to know." -- Beatrice L'Angou, Kiasyd, Guardian of Melbourne
Mytherceria is a discipline of twisted perceptions. These powers blur the line between reality and dream, drawing both on the vitae of its user and on the fae vitality present in the natural world. Mytherceria is a discipline of riddles and puzzles, enigmas and conundrums, and many of its powers provide effects that befuddle a target's mind. Mytherceria also encompasses a heightened talent for acquiring obscure knowledge, and for creating and solving riddles.
Mytherceria Test Pool: The Mytherceria wielder uses her Mental attribute + Academics versus the target's Mental attribute + Willpower.
Contents
• Fae Sight
Mytherceria opens your mind to another world: a world of dream and imagining. Your ability to view reality with the eyes of the fae shifts your perceptions, providing information that cannot be gained through normal observation and inspection.
System: This power is always active. You can read an object's purpose and age at a glance, tell forgeries from originals, and correctly identify the materials used in an item's creation. You can also perceive information about an item's creator, including how many dots of the Craft skill she used, her basic creature type, and how long ago the item was fashioned. Lastly, you can discern any obscure meaning, symbology, historical or political references, and encoded information worked into the item's artistry.
Further, you recognize creatures, individuals, powers, and enchantments of fae origin. While you cannot learn their capacity or extent, your Fae Sight allows you to discern that such effects are present.
Focus [Perception]: If an object has hidden latches or compartments, you discover them. You can discern the code or pattern necessary to unlock and open a door or compartment by spending three full turns studying the lock. If the lock requires a key, and you expend three turns in study, you will thereafter recognize on sight whether or not a particular key will fit that lock.
•• Darkling Trickery
Like the faerie stories of old, you can plague a victim with minor adversity and fae pranks, making her life more difficult for a short period of time. While under the effects of this power, the target may misplace small items, become confused about direction, discover her shoes are tied together, or other small misfortunes courtesy of the fae.
System: Spend 1 Blood, expend a standard action, and engage your target in an opposed challenge using the Mytherceria test pool. If you are successful, you cause your target to be plagued by annoyances and setbacks for the next hour, as the fae play pranks on her, causing no end of trouble. Out of combat, the victim's car keys may disappear, her cell phone may run out of power, or she may stand up and find her shoe strings tied together. In combat, any time your victim spends a point of Willpower to use a combat maneuver, her attack will automatically fail. This power has no effect on attacks augmented by combat maneuvers that were enacted without spending Willpower.
Exceptional Success: This use of Darkling Trickery lasts for the rest of the night, rather than for an hour.
Focus [Perception]: All of the target's attacks that are augmented by combat maneuvers automatically fail, even if the maneuver was enacted without spending Willpower.
••• Ay Befriend
In medieval times, it was common practice to declare peaceful intentions toward a visitor or newly met comrade by claiming she was someone "I shall befriend". The faeries keep this custom and are well-disposed to those who remember the proper way to greet them, declaring forthrightly your friendship in the ancient way: Prithee, piskies, Ay Befriend!
Changelings and fae folk have their own interests and society, but they are willing to lend a hand if properly compensated for such efforts. By using this power, you call upon the smallest of these creatures, promising a reasonable reward if they will aid you for a short while.
System: Spend 1 Blood and use your standard action to summon a small troupe of piskies, a type of fae. Piskies are humanoid, but of small size and varied appearance, dressed in simple clothing made of leaves and other natural flora. These creatures are invisible to anyone except individuals with Fae Sight. Normally, the piskies will arrive over the course of the next five minutes, so long as they are capable of reaching your location. Piskies can fly, but have no magical ability to move through walls or solid objects.
So long as you pay the piskies up front with a measure of gold, gems, or other precious small objects, they will be relatively loyal, though mischievous. You can ask these piskies to perform 1 downtime action during the course of a game session, or in addition to your own downtime actions between game sessions. If requested to perform a downtime action, such as bringing you an item, carrying a message, cleaning up an area, or discovering some useful information, during a game session the piskies will perform the task with lightning speed and complete it within the hour. If you utilize Ay Befriend between games, you gain a single untraceable, unwatchable downtime action. In either case, the piskies will not risk themselves or engage in combat.
You cannot utilize Ay Befriend more than once per calendar week, whether during or between game sessions.
Focus [Intelligence]: You may use Ay Befriend once at game and also once as a downtime during the course of a calendar week. You cannot use this advantage to gain 2 actions at game, or 2 actions during a calendar week.
•••• Changeling Ward
The language of the fae is a tangled web, capable of snaring thoughts like a spider does a fly. Viewing such written wards disorients most minds, causing confusion and mild stupor at best: utter amnesia if the mind is particularly weak.
System: To inscribe a Changeling Ward, spend 1 Blood and expend three full turns tracing letters and symbols on a target object; you must have something to write with. You can draw these sigils onto a movable object, a door, or the floor of a room, but the area to be inscribed must be larger than six inches in diameter. Once drawn, the Changeling Ward is invisible to anyone who does not possess Fae Sight; to those who can see it, the ward appears as a softly glowing symbol written in silvery moonlight.
Mortals who touch the object or cross over a stationary ward automatically become confused for the next five minutes and will wander away from the area in the general direction from which they entered. Supernatural creatures must make a static Mental attribute + Willpower challenge against a difficulty equal to your Mytherceria test pool or suffer a similar effect. Further, individuals with Derangements gain 1 Derangement trait. If this causes the individual to experience a psychotic break, that break will not occur until after the effects of your Changeling Ward end.
After a mortal emerges from the fugue of a Changeling Ward, she has no recollection of the time that has passed, nor any memory about why she came to this location (or touched the object) in the first place. She will justify her actions without any real need for logic. Within one day, she will have forgotten that she was ever there (or saw the object) at all. After a supernatural creature emerges from her confused state, she has a faint understanding that time has passed, but no real comprehension of how long she was under the effect of the ward. She remembers her activities just before encountering the Changeling Ward, but such actions seem dream-like and distant. The target remembers nothing that occurred while she was under the effects of this power. If an individual is attacked, put in danger, or targeted by an offensive power, the effects of Changeling Ward immediately end.
Once inscribed, a Changeling Ward will persist for a year and a day, or until the Mytherceria user removes it, or until the object is damaged by at least 1 point of damage. If a supernatural creature resists the effect of a Changeling Ward, she is immune to the effects of all other Changeling Wards created by the same character for the next hour.
A character is immune to the effects of her own Changeling Wards.
Focus [Perception]: Supernatural creatures suffer the same after-effects as mortals and partially supernatural creatures. Further, if a creature emerges from the effects of your Changeling Ward before the normal duration ends, she becomes confused and suffers a -3 penalty to all non-defensive actions for the next three turns.
••••• Riddle Phantastique
You have opened your mind to the dream and become enlightened. Your altered impressions may be disconcerting to those who do not share your knowledge, but you know well there is a difference between madness and the dream. When you wish, you may share your insights, tearing away the veil from a listener's thoughts and opening her to the twisting truths of reality. Through penetrating philosophical questions, mathematical formulai, Zen koan, or other such paradoxical quandaries, you unravel your target's mind.
System: To inflict the Riddle Phantastique, spend 1 Blood and expend your standard action speaking a riddle to your target. If you are successful in an opposed challenge using your Mytherceria test pool, the subject is enthralled as the complexities of your twisted logic ensnare her mind. She cannot take actions other than attempting to solve the riddle. Other uses of Mytherceria cannot affect the target while she is in this state.
For five minutes, the victim behaves as if affected by Changeling Ward. At the end of that time, she must make a static Mental + Academics challenge against a difficulty equal to your Mytherceria test pool. Because this is a static challenge, the target is not testing against the Mytherceria user, and, therefore, the user cannot retest, although the target can. If the target succeeds, she answers your riddle correctly and emerges from her enthralled state with no additional effect. If unsuccessful, she fails to answer the question, and takes 3 points of aggravated damage that cannot be reduced or negated, as she emerges from her enthralled state.
If someone who is enthralled by Riddle Phantastique is attacked, put in danger, or targeted by an offensive power, the target may choose one of two actions:
- Escape from the effects of this power temporarily: The character can defend herself normally, but cannot take any offensive or utilitarian actions, nor converse meaningfully with anyone. Her sole intent to flee the area. Once the character is no longer in danger, she will return to her fugue-like state and continue her attempts to answer the riddle as per the normal use of this power.
- Admit defeat, give up on the riddle, and end Riddle Phantastique early: If a character does this, she immediately suffers 3 points of aggravated damage, which cannot be reduced or negated, as per the effect of failing to answer this riddle after its elapsed time.
Exceptional Success: If the target fails or admits defeat, she suffers 4 points of aggravated damage.
Focus [Intelligence]: The target suffers a -3 penalty when attempting the challenge to solve your riddle.
