Powers: Level 4

Necrotic Plague

• Hecata Trained

Kindred scholars claim Oblivion pollutes everything it touches, with this power as a prime example. Through touch alone, a vampire might poison a mortal victim’s blood, imbuing them with a disease that wracks and ravages their body. Most dangerously of all, this disease runs the risk of being contagious, and might inflict the same harm to other mortals.

Necromancers schooled in medicine have enough talent to make this power appear in the form of specific illnesses, sometimes including those that died out in decades or centuries past. Regardless of how it manifests, the symptoms will eventually disappear even without medical treatment, whether or not the victim survives.

• Cost: One Rouse Check, Two Stains
• Dice Pools: Intelligence + Oblivion vs. Stamina + Medicine or Fortitude
• System: The user makes a Rouse Check and then rolls Intelligence + Oblivion while touching their victim. If the victim is weak (a baby, elderly, unwell, recovering from an illness, dying, or with 3 unmarked Health boxes or less), they are automatically infected. If the victim is healthy, they roll Stamina + Medicine (those with Fortitude may use it in place of Medicine), resisting the disease if they roll more successes than the vampire. This power cannot be used on vampires. Storytellers may decide spreading such a horrific disease warrants Stains.
  
  Victims of the disease take one Aggravated Health damage at the start of every scene following their infection. The victim suffers from the disease for a number of scenes equal to the user’s Oblivion rating. The sickness cannot be medically treated, as it is supernatural in origin, but it is healed through drinking vitae.
  
  If the player rolls a critical win when activating this power, they can choose to make the disease communicable via touch, with subsequent recipients suffering the disease for one scene fewer than the victim by whom they were infected. If the player rolls a total failure, the vampire’s own vitae convulses as if poisoned. They suffer three Aggravated Health damage as the infected blood pours out of them and must make a Rouse Check.
• Duration: One turn to activate, variable length of condition

Stygian Shroud

• Lasombra Trained

Darkness spews out of a nearby shadow as the vampire blankets the area around them in gloom equivalent to a moonless night, while sounds are muffled and indistinct. Anyone viewing the effect from without see it as a shadow expanding over every surface, including the bodies of any victims, in the area. Those apart from the invoker caught in the effects find themselves struggling to see and hear their surroundings, and mortals are drained of their very life by the suffocating power.

• Cost: One Rouse Check.
• System: The user makes a Rouse Check and spends a turn concentrating, spreading the shadow over the desired surfaces. The effect covers a circular area with a radius equal to twice the user’s Oblivion rating in yards/ meters. The area is centered on the user or a spot in their line of sight.
  
  Anyone caught in the Stygian Shroud receives a three-dice penalty to all rolls, unless they possess the ability to see through supernatural darkness. Any mortals caught in the Stygian Shroud suffer one level of Superficial damage for every turn they remain within it, due to the power’s suffocating effects.
• Duration: One scene

Umbrous Clutch

• Lasombra Trained

The user creates a temporary gate out of the victim’s own shadow, causing them to fall through Oblivion and into the waiting arms of the user. The victim will appear to fall into their own shadow, only to reappear falling out of the one cast by the user. The brief journey through the end of everything is usually enough to traumatize the victim into submission, though one must be prepared if the quarry responds violently in fear.

• Cost: One Rouse Check, Gain one Stain
• Dice Pool: Wits + Oblivion vs. Dexterity + Wits
• System: In order to use this power, the vampire needs clear sight of both the victim and their shadow. The vampire’s player or Storyteller then rolls Wits + Oblivion vs. Dexterity + Wits to maneuver the victim’s shadow beneath them, creating a supernatural rift into which they appear to fall. At the Storyteller’s discretion, a stationary victim not paying attention can be automatically caught.
  
  A victim caught by this power will then reappear, falling out of the shadow cast by the user. (As with similar powers, the power does not work if the caster is without a shadow.) An unprepared mortal victim will be terrified and likely catatonic, while a vampire must test for fury or fear frenzy, Storyteller’s choice, at Difficulty 4.
• Duration: Instant