Abyssal Exalted
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As twisted mockeries of the Solar Exalted, Abyssals use most of the same basic rules and traits as their cousins. What follows are the ways in which deathknights deviate from their original templates, including modified and new Backgrounds as well as the Dark Fate that replaces the Great Curse.
Cheating Death and Eternal Life
The Black Exaltation of an Abyssal shields her body from the injury that should have killed her and further heals her body of all damage. Like all Exalted, deathknights surge to full motes, full Willpower points and full Virtue channels in the moment of their Exaltation.
Other Exalted have their lives extended to a greater or lesser degree, but the Chosen of the Neverborn can live forever—if they are not slain. The cold stasis of death forever traps their bodies at the age of Exaltation, making deathknights the only "immortal" type of Exalted. In addition, Abyssals suffer no dice penalties or other negative side effects from non-magical diseases or wound infections, although they can become inadvertent (or deliberate) carriers of pestilence. By design, they are completely immune to the Great Contagion, just in case.
Eternal Death
Slain Abyssals face a fouler fate than other Exalted. A deathknight's Exaltation returns to its Monstrance of Celestial Portion as quickly as possible (a matter of weeks if the Abyssal died in Creation, and mere days from a shadowland or anywhere in the Underworld). The Abyssal's higher soul cannot naturally pass into Lethe and automatically falls into Oblivion unless the character's player succeeds at a reflexive Willpower roll against a difficulty equal to the character's own Essence. Success enables the Abyssal to resist the pull of annihilation and linger as a ghost. (Magic that determines the destination of a character's soul trumps these rules.) Unless magic prevents it from doing so, an Abyssal's lower soul invariably rises as a mindless hungry ghost with an Essence equal to the character's at death.
Damned
As the champions of Oblivion, Abyssals are considered creatures of darkness and vulnerable to Holy effects. Although they are not entirely outside fate (at least without Charms), Abyssals have no place in the Tapestry of Creation. Their damned nature imposes automatic botches on all mortal astrological divinations of their fate using the stars of Creation. (Astrologers whose players roll five or more threshold successes recognize the murky darkness of the Underworld clouding the reading, though.) Readings into the stars of the Underworld provide the usual insight.
Thaumaturgical prognostication using probabilistic modeling or consulting the Design of Autochthon is no more effective at determining an Abyssal's future than reading the stars of Creation, though rolling five or more successes reveals the taint of the Void marring the reading.
Rejected by Creation
The living Essence of Creation pains and sickens the Abyssal Exalted. While in Creation, an Abyssal character suffers a -2 internal penalty to her player's rolls for non-reflexive actions. Deathknights can resist this debilitation if they garb or otherwise surround themselves in the ritual and symbolic trappings of death. Otherwise, an Abyssal can spend five motes to suffuse herself with a protective aura of necrotic Essence that counters the internal penalty for one day.
As said, the -2 internal penalty for being in areas of living Essence applies only to non-reflexive actions. The penalty is a Crippling effect and may be defended against as such. Abyssals suffer in all realms of existence suffused with living Essence, which is to say all places save the realms of the dead, shadowlands, and blight zones of Autochthonia. Areas the Storyteller deems closely associated with death like graveyards provide their own trappings of death to keep the penalty at bay. Committing motes to block the discomfort is a reflexive action.
Recovering Essence
Abyssal Exalted respire the deathly Essence of the Underworld. In the Underworld or a shadowland, a deathknight respires Essence at the same rate a Solar does in Creation, depending on the Abyssal's activity (see Essence in Shadowlands and the Underworld). An Abyssal cannot respire Essence in Creation, Yu-Shan, Malfeas or other realms. The Chosen of the Neverborn can, however, work around this limitation.
Feeding
As a reflexive action, Abyssal Exalted can magically extend any or all of their teeth into sharp fangs with which to rend motes from the flesh and blood of sentient beings. Biting an opponent in combat with these fangs requires winning control of a grapple and inflicting damage, though the modifier is +0L instead of +0B. Characters may inflict less damage than the number of levels rolled but cannot inflict more levels with one bite than their Stamina.
For every level of lethal damage inflicted, the Abyssal regains one mote of Essence. This includes the Dying levels of non-extras, increasing the maximum motes gained by eating a healthy adult human to (7 + Stamina) instead of three for extras. Unintelligent animals and bodies that have been dead more than one minute offer no Essence (without Charms), though the ephemera of gods and elementals and the gossamer tissue of the Fair Folk offer an exotic banquet to Abyssals who can get hold of them.
An Abyssal who feeds in this manner doesn't have to consume large quantities of blood or flesh (though some of them enjoy to do so). The damage can come from nothing more than the metaphysical loss of Essence, with only small punctures showing where the deathknight pierced the victim's skin and soul.
Abyssals can feed on Alchemical Exalted to regain motes, though not past the moment of death (i.e. no minute long postmortem window of opportunity due to immediate physical dissolution). Though no Abyssals yet realize it, Primordial jouten are succulent beyond imagining, yielding five motes per health level consumed.
Demesne, Manse and Hearthstone
Abyssal Exalted can absorb the superabundant Essence from demesnes or manses located outside the Underworld or shadowlands, but they find the experience intensely unpleasant. Each time an Abyssal channels Essence from Creation's manses or demesnes, the character suffers a -2 internal penalty to all actions for the rest of the day. The trappings of the dead or spending five motes for a necrotic suffusion do not prevent this penalty, since the character deliberately imbibed an Essence contrary to her own nature. Deathknights respire Essence in Abyssal manses and demesnes as if they were in the Underworld.
An Abyssal Exalt can also use any sort of hearthstone— even a Solar hearthstone—as long as she mounts it in soulsteel. Otherwise, drawing Essence and exploiting the innate power of a Terrestrial or Celestial hearthstone causes the same penalty as directly channeling power from the demesne and manse that produced the stone.
Castes
- Dusk: The Dusk Caste wields the arts of murder in all their forms and leads the armies of the Deathlords, spreading carnage across Creation.
- Caste Abilities: Archery, Martial Arts, Melee, Thrown, and War
- Anima Powers: May use their animas to appear dreadful and terrifying for a scene.
- Midnight: As priests of Oblivion, the Midnight Caste spreads the Whispers of the Neverborn to the dead and the worship of the ancestor cults to the living.
- Caste Abilities: Integrity, Performance, Presence, Resistance, and Survival
- Anima Powers: May use their animas to slay mortals or to animate corpses.
- Daybreak: As the savants of the Underworld, Daybreak Caste deathknights wield the powers of necromancy and the secrets of the dead to further either the aims of their masters or their own ambitions.
- Caste Abilities: Craft, Investigation, Lore, Medicine, and Occult
- Anima Powers: May use their animas as shields.
- Day: As the unseen spies of the Deathlords, Day Caste deathknights mingle with the living, destroying their enemies' resolve with assassination and treachery.
- Moonshadow: As the emissaries of the dead, Moonshadow Caste deathknights wield the powers of ghosts and Exalted alike, traveling from nation to nation to forge dark contracts at the behest of the Deathlords.
- Caste Abilities: Bureaucracy, Linguistics, Ride, Sail, and Socialize
- Anima Powers: May use their animas to bind oaths and contracts.
Charms
Mortals, Living and Dead
In case it's not clear, soulsteel weapons (when used by an Abyssal) and all Abyssal Charms that mentally or socially affect living mortals also affect ghosts. Charms that affect animals also affect animal ghosts and the plasmic entities of the Underworld that exhibit animal behavior. Deathknight need special, dedicated Charms only to deal with the walking dead, hungry ghosts and other deathly creatures who lack true minds. Maybe this point should be obvious, but many Abyssal Charms mirror Solar Charms that are defined as affecting mortals. For Abyssals, the term "mortal" includes the deceased.
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