Thou shall not look upon the face of god: Divination and Insight

Divination: 

Divination is a method of using abstract connections between things to reconstruct past events or predict the future. Divination is not perfect, and does not determine things. Any future you divine is a future where you did not receive the divination. 

When using divination, you must hold an item related to what you are asking about. These items are called foci. More magical foci with stronger connections are more likely to succeed, using multiple foci can allow one to see farther into the past, or seek a more difficult truth. 

Once a focus is used, it cannot be used again for divination by anyone until it ceases to be that item. 

The standard forms of divination are: 

Coin divination: Grab your focus, and ask a question, flip a coin to receive a yes or no. 

If it fails, you get a random answer. 

Completely safe, but no way of telling if it was successful by nature.

Pendulum divination:
Pendulum gives a proportional yes/no depending on the speed and direction of rotation, so gives a degree of correctness. It is also very easy to tell if it fails as it will simply not move. 

Can establish a connection to the target you are scrying upon, alerting them and revealing your location. If used more than once on the same target, it has a [times used] in twelve chances of being able to carry a memetic agent over. 

All methods below this point are extremely dangerous, as in addition to establishing a connection, they have enough “resolution” to carry memetic agents. 

Word divination: Put your foci around a page, then write your question. The answer will be [foci]x[foci] words long.  

Mirror divination: Shows an image on a mirror, requires at least 3 foci, or a very powerful one. The mirror is consumed in the process. 

Dream divination: 

-Must be asleep to use, allows you to enter the dreams of other creatures to observe what they are currently looking at. You may attempt to read their mind, but this may alert them. 

-Entities possessing the dream you are invading, lucid dreamers, and oneironauts may trap you inside the dream if they detect your presence, leaving you in purgatory and your body comatose until they release you. You suffer any psychic damage or death either of you do while trapped inside their dream. Detection can generally be avoided so long as you simply observe dreams. 

-When travelling to the dreams of others, you must either have a very strong connection to your target (usually through a focus), or be close enough to walk to them. You may walk and visit the real world while in your dream body, but the world appears indistinct and greyscale and the only information strong enough to show up within the dream realm is general emotions attached to a place. 

-While walking in the dream realm, you must stay close to where a large amount of people are currently dreaming, or you will start to unravel. This effectively means you can only invade the dreams of people within the same city or village. 

Divination success procedure: Roll [foci] d12s, pick the highest. On a 8+, you get a meaningful answer, otherwise, the divination fails, and the foci are still permanently no longer usable for divination. 

Modifiers: 

+[insight] to the result

+[wisdom] (if your system uses it)

+1 If you have been to the land of the dead, underworld or outer space: 

+1 if you have met the subject

+2 if the subject is a person and trusts you

+2 if you are making physical contact

-1 if subject is currently physically distant

-2 if the question is imprecise

-3 if the question pertains to the divine and you yourself wield no amount of divinity

NOTE: IMPORTANT : Failing or succeeding on a divination has no impact on the safety whatsoever. 

Memetic countermeasures: 

Memetic agents: Are life created from pure information. The majority are similar to bacteria, meaning they are not intelligent, but can be very dangerous or useful depending on the species and context. The most powerful agents cannot be stored within simple words, concepts, or ideologies, but instead must infect entire books, or possess existing minds. This makes them far more rare, and provides some measure of control to their extreme danger. 

Connection rider agents: These automatically lock onto focal connections made to information and send a hostile “message” back to the diviner. Since divination can frequently lock onto unintended targets, legally and socially, these messages escalate, sending a lethal attack only if the connection is not quickly severed after the warning (stock divination spells have divination severing off by default). Cults will take no such precaution.   

1 Warning message: this sends a massive octarine+neutrino burst that passes through any walls and reveals your location to any octarine sensors in an area (police stations have them). If you are registered and using a designated location, they will simply note the surge down. 

2 Counter-scan: Makes a 3d scan of the room where the diviner lies, as well as attempts connection to any nearby documents. This automated system then transcribes all the information into binary, and writes it down in a book. The document is then severed from space.

3 Neutralization: There are numerous varieties of lethal agents. Usually, multiple are sent simultaneously to ensure overcoming countermeasures. The most common is “the red nails”, a military one created by mammon and sold on the common market. It prevents one from casting spells or holding magic, causing extreme pain to any entities possessing the target. It can only be used if you have a proper divination connection to your target, and has no written or spoken form. Receiving it leads to taking 1d20 psychic damage and the effects last that many days.

Offensive/scouting use of memetic agents: When using a “high connection” form of divination (such as mirror divination), you may send over your own agents. This is more difficult than sending one back (divination receives much more information than it sends), and as such needs to be stabilized with magic. This is already included in the divination spells, and gives [sum]x[sum] seconds of enhanced connection, 2 thaums allows sending a scan, 4 a neutralization. The enhanced connection also turns a mirror divination into a video. 

Insight and corruption: 

Insight is gained by: 

Miscasting: Rolling a triple on an MD will cause a point of insight.
Hostile agents: Certain entities attack by inflicting insight upon you. Mostly memetic creatures and demons

Seeing what ought not to be seen: Certain creatures give insight even by perceiving them, this applies to maggots, gods, angels and the things from deep deep beneath the earth. These give varying levels, but connecting directly to a true god gives you effectively infinite insight and is not survivable. Do not divine around things related to true gods.  

The true names of gods, pages from corrupted tomes, and the DNA sequences of the pale things are used as defense mechanisms that wish to conceal their documents and presence. These are concealed inside boxes, or inside pages glued shut, such that someone using divination and omniception will encounter them, but not someone physically interacting with the book (this is part of why it's nice to be able to turn off omniception). 

Insight: 

-Insight is also referred to as corruption. 

-You must add insight to increase the result of one of the MD/Thaums you use, this changes the roll of the dice itself, and so cannot bring it over the dice value, and makes it more likely to be expended. 

-You add insight to divination rolls

-Once you reach 6+ insight, you become unstable, and will become an npc monster if brought to 0hp or hit with spiritual damage. If using this for LOTM then the amount is [level]+[level]+2. 

-Turning into a fiend is unrecoverable. Even if your being is annihilated, and a clone of you is made with your memories before turning into a fiend, it will turn into a fiend instantly. The fiendhood is memetically fused with every mental part of your being. Your body and soul is corrupted too, but can be used as raw materials if every aspect of your being is burned away by a refinement engine for 50 years. 

-Those without a covenant or sequence have a ⅚ chance of turning into a wraith instead of a fiend when maxing out insight.

Insight is reduced by:

Nine rivers: You may lose 3 insight by getting yourself a lobotomy (requires lethe oil and a mind or soul surgeon). The operation costs around 1000s, permanently reduces your amount of mind slots* by 1, and deletes a random spell. 

Lotm: Each time you act in accordance with the current title of your most recently acquired sequence, you clear a point of insight. You also clear insight at a rate of 1/year. 

Both: A god or angel may alleviate any insight caused by an existence weaker than themselves by making contact with the afflicted person. 

Note: Lethe oil: Deals 6 psychic and 1 soul damage, deletes the contents of 1 random mind slot, neurosurgeons may target a specific slot or memory. Depending on the level of control, higher doses can be used to wipe the mind of the patient clean to be filled with indoctrination, or to render them a drooling, bawling imbecile with the mental capacity of a cnidarian. This is not reversible, demons could reconstruct the brain, but this would effectively be a new person, 360s.

Fiends: 

Abigail Jill Harding

Fiends and wraiths are of a kind, with two key differences determining which ones are created when a sentient creature is exposed to corruption and damage. 

First, wraiths can only be formed from souled creatures. 

Second, fiends require the corruption to take on its own intelligence, and usually stem from massive surges of magic or resonance causing damage and corruption. This is an active process, contrasting wraiths, which usually emerge from those whose minds, bodies and souls have been obliterated, and forced to reconstruct themselves in corrupted locations. 

A non-souled creature possessed by a demon will eventually become a fiend, it is only a matter of time. This process is greatly sped up once the demon leaves.
Purification to avoid this fate is possible, but the process causes permanent severance from magic, and must be done within a few minutes of ceased possession. If the process is somehow reversed, then the conversion into the fiend will be instant. 

As such, vermin and star child demon hosts are often also called “fiends”, despite not having yet fallen to corruption. Before the arrival of humanity in this place. 

Note: In LOTM even animals are souled, so this is of no concern. In addition, non sentient creatures who become beyonders will become some degree of sentient. 

Running a fiend: Most have the objective is to either escape, or subdue the party and turn them into fiends as well. 

Should an npc turn into a fiend, it is preferred that the dm loses control over it. Find someone who is not playing, or someone who can reliably, and follow instructions as stated above. Ignore this for the sake of practicality. 

Fiend statblocks: 

This list is not exhaustive. Fiends all have 6 actions, the homogenous, souled and fiend keywords, and [insight]+[base creature] HD. They have all spells from all schools they had at least one spell from, can cast up to three spells a round (provided they have the actions) and have 6+[previous caster MD] MD. 

Keywords mentioned: 

-Homogenous: Immune to critical damage. 

-Amorphous: Can change their shape and fit in gaps large enough to fit their smallest solid organ or piece of equipment. 

-Bleeding: Damage over time necrotic. 

-Multiattack: Can attack with this weapon as many times as they want by spending actions. 

-Acc x: Short for accuracy x, equivalent to +x to hit. 

-Delayed 1: Effect takes place at the start of your next turn. 

Chaos fiend: This is a generic fiend, which occurs if the corruption has no clear logical fiend phenotype due to excessive mixing of corruption types or specificity. 

| AC: Unarmored | 

Keywords: Amorphous, homogenous.  

Mobility: Swim (air/water) 12m/40ft. 

Resistances/weaknesses: Soul/psychic/radiant x2, physical x0.5. 

-Blast: 30m/100ft, acc6, 1d8 piercing, multiattack. 

-Devour(2 actions): acc6, 1d12 of any damage type or 3 insight, steals 1MD. 

Loot/Equipment: 

One corrupted essence: 

Corrupted essence: Implanting it gives 2 irreducible insight, +1max MD and consumes a body slot. Implantation is a simple injection.  

Blood fiend

Description: | Some say it is the natural endpoint of all blood mages. Others, a result of divine cancer spreading to the humour of blood, causing a catastrophic imbalance. Others yet, believe in a goddess of old blood, whose form is as an ocean. 

The form of bloodfiends is that of a roiling pool of blood, which coats the walls of a room, and retreats when threatened, only their main body (size of a torso) is capable of being affected by non-damage negative effects. 

The body will attempt to keep out of line of sight as it can smell, hear, attack and cast spells through its blood. The blood has no range, but most have an unbroken physical connection. 

The blood takes damage as if it was part of the body, but is immune to physical damage. 

| AC: Unarmored | 

Keywords: Amorphous, homogenous.  

Mobility: Swim (air/water) 12m/40ft. 

Resistances/weaknesses: Soul/necroticx2. 

-Lash: 6m/20ft, acc2, 6 bleeding or 6 necrotic with lifesteal, multiattack. 

-Devour(2 actions): acc6, 1d12 of any damage type or 3 insight, steals 1MD. 

-Detonate (delayed 1): Dies, and rolls the split die with advantage. 6d6 piercing/necrotic in a 12m/40ft radius centered on the body.  

-Split: Upon death, turn into 1d12 blood wraiths, which will attempt to flee. If any of them escape, the blood fiend can reform if one of them drinks enough blood. 

Loot/Equipment: 

1000L of cursed blood (worth 10s/L to an alchemist, 1s if not kept fresh.) 

One corrupted blood essence (unless a wraith escapes), it counts as a minor blood resonance key.

 

Corrupted blood essence: Implanting it gives 2 irreducible insight, +1max MD, consumes a body slot, and makes you immune to bleeding. Implantation is a simple injection.  

Worship of the old blood can lead to. (secret d6 roll by dm) To invoke it, all one must do is say or write one of the lesser true names of the formless. 

1-6: X blood magic spells. And 1 divine blood essence. 

5-10: Nothing

11: The ability to turn one person within sight into a blood fiend. Invoke at any time, once. 

12: Pick another result, the player is told this was the result of the roll, and they gain that ability. In 9 days, the player will turn into a blood fiend. 

Shrike

Born from those who have undergone immense torment, it learns all infernal magic spells. Unlike other fiends it cares little for self preservation and can be domesticated to some extent. It is hyper intelligent and will act in accordance with its own sadism and sense of humour.

 

| AC: Chain | Str: 6+[base creature]

Keywords: Amorphous, homogenous, spider climb.  

Mobility: Jump/Swim (water) 12m/40ft, fly 30m/100ft. 

Resistances/weaknesses: Soul/psychic/radiant x2, physical x0.5. 

-Talons: Transfers damage to the target on a hit. Automatically hit and crits on prone or encumbered targets. 

-Iron feathers (2 actions): Deals [distance dropped before release]d6 piercing damage to all targets in a 40ft cone. 

-Devour(2 actions): acc6, 2d12 of slashing or 3 insight, steals 1MD. 

Loot/Equipment: 

One corrupted essence: 

Corrupted essence: Implanting it gives 2 irreducible insight, +1max MD and consumes a body slot. Implantation is a simple injection.  

A few other fiend types from the nine rivers (I will make a follow up post once I have the time and inspiration for 6 more fiends)

-Blinding abyss: 

-Half wyrm:

-Pure fiend:

-Entropic prophet: 

School of Primordial Creation

It is said that long ago, the wisest of the gods grew weary of life, and decided to split Her wisdom and scatter it across the worlds. In Her last breaths, She spoke to all Her creations, and told them that they must find the deepest truth of this world. Only when they have understood how to bear the burden of knowledge could they be gathered together once more.

On the third day, it was realized that it would not be enough to merely strengthen themselves against such a burden, as the weight of a God's knowledge is infinite.

Spells:

Cantrip: Spark spirit: Imbue intelligence equivalent to a 1d20 year old human to an animal. They understand speech and can learn, but cannot mature as they age.

Cantrip: Savage secretion: Consume a ration to produce a vial of any poison you have ever consumed. It has a shelf life of 10 minutes.

1: Secrets of spontaneous spawning: Touch an egg, in [sum] hours, it hatches a copy of an implant that you, or someone who you touched during that duration has. It randomly selects an implant that takes up a number of body slots based on the size of the creature that laid the egg. Medium: 1, Large: 2, Huge: 3-4 Leviathan: Choose a random implant from the list of divine organs.

Casting the spell takes [body slots] thaums.

1: Secrets of spontaneous spawning (touch): After 1d20 hours, an [dice] HD serpent emerges. It is friendly to you unless you give it a reason to feel otherwise. Dice cannot be greater than the values listed in the base spell.

2: Snap shell: Eat a fresh egg to heal [sum]+[dice].

3: Seal (sight): A statement within sight becomes a promise, if broken, they are stabbed by 1d12 psychic damage each day for 100 days, or until they repent and admit their sin. This can only be taught to followers of the deep church, serpents, or demons, none else can learn it.

4: Sustain (3m): Multiply duration of an effect (including conceptual effects) by [sum]+[dice]. Repeatable, no compound interest.

5: Stimulate Sap: A plant matures by [sum] years or weeks (choose).

6: Scorch: Deal [sum] fire damage in a [dice]m semicircle.

7: Sleep (touch): A [dice]+[dice] HD creature falls asleep.

8: Strangle (sight): Deal 1 exhaustion per turn for [dice] rounds. Spells cast by the target count as being cast with [dice] less thaums.

9: Sweeten (sight): For [dice]x[dice] rounds, invertebrates, parasites, creatures that attack randomly and creatures not friendly to the target automatically target and pursue the target if possible.

10: Sedate (sight): Inflict weaknessx2 to psychic and mental effects for [sum] rounds.

11: Slither: At the end of every round for [sum] rounds, slide [sum] meters in any direction as if you had been shoved.

12: Swallow (touch): A [dice]+[dice]HD creature is pulled into your soul for [sum]x[dice] minutes. For that time, it effectively does not exist. This last rule does not apply for creatures capable of possession.

13: Sway (touch): [Dice] HD target is under your control for [dice] rounds.

14: Seize senses (sight): [dice] of the target's senses are under your control.

15: Scouring wind*: Choose a direction when casting the spell. Every creature and object within a [sum]x[sum] meter cube centered on yourself when the spell was cast takes knock back [dice] and [dice-2] fire damage. Lasts [sum]x[sum] rounds.

16: Spear of resolve: 120m line, anti-material, [sum]+[dice]fire/psychic. Unusable if charmed, depressed or afraid.

17: Shed skin: Change [dice] facial/bodily features and discard [dice] curses, afflictions, wounds or diseases.


Monsters:

Serpent
| HD: 1/2-1 | AC: Unarmored |
Keywords: Small, serpentine.
Mobility: (water) 12m/40ft, walk/climb/swim (air) 6m/20ft.
Action: Bite (1ap): 6 poison, paralyze (d3 rounds), close combat.


Giant serpent

STR: 1-4| HD: 1-6 | AC: scale |

Keywords: Large(2x2), serpentine.
Mobility: Swim(water) 12m/40ft, walk/climb/swim (air) 6m/20ft.
Actions/abilities:
-Advantage on grapples. Inflicts 1 exhaustion at the target's turn. Cannot use grapple actions other than restrain.
-Bite: 6 piercing/toxic, close combat.


Variants:

1: Non venomous: Bite deals only piercing damage, and only 1 damage if small.

2: Blessed: 1 MD and 1 spell from the primordial creation list.

3: Flightless: Serpent loses swim (air) and gains spider climb instead.

4: Bite can deal psychic damage.

5: Auburn: 1 MD and 1 spell from the pyromancy spell list.

6: Winged: 2d3 wings, gain fly 18m/60ft.

7: Invisible

8: Divine: Has two spells of primordial creation, 1 divine essence, and the ability to negate 3 attacks a day.

9: Albino: Deals 1d12 psychic/force when an attack is declared against it.

10: Blank: If you do not look at it, you cannot remember its existence.

11: Sentient, roll again.

12: Colossal: Increase size 1d2 steps, double str and HD each time.


Ingredients:

The liver of a serpent can be brewed into x a potion that grants -x resistance to psychic damage for x hours. X being the HD of the serpent. If this is extracted from a souled creature with a knife that deals soul damage, the effect is permanent, but the max hp of the donor is reduced by 1HP/HD.

Serpent scales are very delicate, with only roughly 100grams/HD being possible to extract. If you get enough to make a full set of armour, you can make a nice set of magic resistant lamellar.

Notes:

-Implants and divine organs can be found Here

-A "*" next to a spell means you need twice the actions to cast it.

The dominion of the sunken City.

The dominion of the sunken city has a two tiered government, half semi meritocratic hereditary oligarchy, half democracy. These are referred to as “the dominion” and “the state” respectively. 

The state is elected on a 5-year cycle, with voting being a non-compulsory (unlike the republic) ranked proportional system. It is in charge of maintaining a monopoly on violence, internal security, the legal and judicial system, fiscal policy, and corruption management and detection. 

The dominion is composed of members of the old monarchy, the Silver Thread, the empire, the Deep Church, and its two primary groups: The corporations and the Vermin Court. 

It is in charge of performing the tasks the state sets through a bidding system. Notably, the system only works because all agreements are reviewed by Mammon in order to get a realistic upfront budget, timeline, and objective. This is combined with Tezcatlipoca aggressively undercutting any insufficiently competitive task as a matter of principle. 

Once the contractor signs the contract and receives the full payment upfront, responsibility for these bids is fully on them. If they go over budget, they take the losses themselves, if they do not fulfill on the possibilities, all their assets are seized by the state, and if not in a strategically important industry, is then sold off at auction to the highest bidder (which almost always the emperor).

Notably, while the state is neutral and has good relations with the Last Revelation, the dominion (at least the members within the hidden) favours the empire.

Slavery is legal within the dominion, and all that that entails.

East: The regions east of the burning river are extremely densely forested, the largest species often standing at over five hundred meters tall. These woods are felled only selectively, are nearly immune to fire, and would take centuries to clear even with a concerted effort. The ancestors of the vermin form an immense network of hyphae underneath the woods, which allows gentle but wide reaching control over all beings within. 

Despite this, the forest is far from safe, cancerous invasions from underground are frequent, the growth conditions for them are excellent (despite the best efforts of vermin selective chemical weapons) and the wild 

Stand still, stay silent. 

Andreas Rocha. 

Jean Pierre Ugarter. It should not be forgotten that the graveyard of stars remains a megastructure, and in some places the sediment is cleared by flooding or deliberate action, such that the world be reminded of this. 

Andreas Rocha

West: The regions west of the burning river are referred to as the needle grass plains, and compose two thirds of nominal sunken city territory. Until 2 months ago, these were under the control of the True Dragon Sorkhaghtani. Her reign was brought to an end with a joint imperial, dominion and republican military operation. Which featured the largest fleet of airships ever flown together, many of which were purpose built for this task. Now freed from this task, the disparate parts of this fleet rove south to bring the colonies of the expanse to heel once more.  

Andreas Rocha yet again, if you know any good fictional landscape artists who don't feel the need to add excessive ornamentation or misplaced surrealism, then please send me their names in the comment section or on discord. 

North: It is here where the mountains marking the start of the graveyard of stars lie. These are extensively glaciated, providing enough water to feed several smaller rivers which ebb and flow along with the seasons. Pockets of extremely dense industry work to facilitate trade between the red dukes and the dominion, but save for this the natives population of the northern regions remains blessedly intact. 

Andreas Rocha. Castles are ubiquitous within the nine rivers. Given the density of castles in Wales and the such, one can image the result of 

South: All regions along the southern coast are densely populated, with over 85% of the population living either within 10km of the coast or the sunken city. Due to this, the southeastern regions are extremely heavily polluted, and show no relation to the pre-existing environment. The western regions were mostly  spared this fate through poverty and war. 

Source

Florian de Gesincourt. 

A brief word on heraldry: The primary and accent colours signal your allegiance. Pick carefully. 

Base colours: 

The colour of the dominion and empire is black, and shows up many times. Tezcatlipoka is the king in yellow and black, and is associated with Blackstone, Obsidian, and Darkness. 

The colour of the state is grey.

The colour of the Last Revelation is white. 

Accent colours: 

The colour of the sunken city is yellow. 

The colour of Quetzalcoatl, The Emperor and of mages is blue.

The northwest sometimes uses green. Mostly around Barakah. 

Gold is most popular in the central regions near the lake of mold. As well as the first legion. 

Both teeth breaker and storm cradle use white as their accents. This is due to rarely contacting the church. 

Red is used by anarchists, nobles, and revolutionaries. 

Brown is used by ascetics, saints and workers.  

This only applies within the western regions, the republic has non-composite heraldry, and does not care about western colours. Each constituent state uses their own heraldry, and it gets quite complicated. Red and orange and blue are most common. It is also much more colourful, due to lessened ability of firearms to function. 

Wearing heraldry will sometimes provide a bonus or penalty to reaction rolls, ranging from +2 to -2 depending on the feelings the person you are talking to has with the organization you are representing. If you are unsure, assume no bonus or penalty. If you are discovered faking heraldry, get -3 from the person who discovered you doing this, and a point of infamy. You may wear three grey and 6 blue stripes in an overlapping pattern in order to signal your non allegiance, this supplants all existing reaction rolls with +1 to liberals and centrists. This prevents you from gaining any positive reaction roll bonuses with radicals.

 

Cornelius de man

Paths of the sunken city:

Note: You can find the Nine rivers playest rules here. 

Note: The sunken city itself at-least deserves its own post, or perhaps a series similar to tenebris. As such, it was outside the scope of this post. 

Ψ Mammon: 

Stance: Glass floor: You gain +x temp hp while in this stance. It resets every sunset. X is equal to each 1000s coins you have, doubling each time (+1 hp for 1000, +2 for 3000, +3 for 7000…)

Technique: Coin shot (1ap): Flip 20 coins, on a tail they are consumed, on a head they deal 1 piercing damage to a target within 30m. 

Technique: Valuate: Determine the monetary value of an item, this is a form of divination and works through non-magical obfuscation.

Technique: Moonshot (3ap) (1 exhaustion): Consumes 30 coins, 3km range, acc6, 2d20 piercing/fire with exploding dice. +1 dice for gold coins. 

Lesson: You may make lamellar out of 1000 coins. It gains +1 ac and DR for steel or copper coins, +2 for gold and +3 for silver. Only those with this path may gain these benefits. 

Ψ Hidden Crown:

You gain the language: Hidden. This language has Antimemetic properties for everyone who was not initiated into the order by an agreement of 3 different members or one or the heads. The same member cannot initiate more than one person into the order. 

Stance: Observation: You can see the hp, ac and movement of everyone. You can also see the description of abilities that have been used while in this stance and what statuses creatures have been inflicted with. 

Technique: Carpe jugulum: After an enemy rolls a 1, activate this technique. One of your allies can immediately make an attack or grapple. In addition, they can burn actions from their next turn to give themselves advantage or movement. Critical damage on that action is doubled. *

Technique: Do better: After an ally fails a roll, give their next action 2 stacks of advantage. 

Technique: Fog of war: Cloak a 30m sphere in fog. Everyone not in the observation stance can only see clearly 6m in front of them.

Soul anchor: Faceless: Granted to members at any time, should they wish for it. Grants the ability to very slowly (12 hours for a complete transformation) change their facial features and body. Obeys conservation of mass and proportion of tissue types. 

Ψ Griazi: 

Stance: Sunken: You may simultaneously wield a bandelier of grenades or rope, a sword, hammer, mace or pickaxe, and a firearm or live gun.

Technique: Schliemann: Reduce the damage of an explosion by 20 or by half.  

Lesson: You always know your depth and can never get lost underground, in addition, you no longer suffer exhaustion from healing yourself. 

Lesson: You may bind to a firearm to reroll its blessing at advantage. Doing so makes it useless unless wielded by you or one of your relatives. 

Soul anchor: Primordial : Bury yourself in mud, intermingled with a dead beast which has eaten part of your flesh. This is one of the oldest soul anchors. 

You may hold your breath for up to 10 minutes, and gain tremorsense. In addition, you may choose an ability from the beast you were buried with. 

Ψ Mikhail: 

Stance: Triangulation: You can fire at targets you cannot see without penalty and through materials weaker than stone if an ally of yours can see them. 

In addition, for each ally in this stance that can see an enemy, you gain +1 acc when firing at them. 

Technique (3ap): Through and through: One great arrow attack, becomes as line 120m, not stopped by medium or smaller creatures, or standard cover.

Technique (x+ap): Volley: shoot x+1 regular arrows as if through a regular bow, must target the same target, attack ignores x damage resistance. 

Technique: Breath and release (4+ ap): (exhaustion x/2): Arrow deals +xd6 piercing, with +x acc, and range(sight). The maximum value of x is [strength]. 

Ψ Romanov: Does not require a mount, but all techniques may be targeted as if used by your mount. 

Stance: Reiter: Move 10ft/3m as a free action right before you take an attack action. 

Technique: Dragoon: Make a free attack with a live gun as part of a melee or movement action. This doubles the reload time of the livegun. 

Technique: Gulyay gorod (1ap): Shape a 6 cubic meter section of wood into a wooden bunker or wall. While standing within 6m, the structure may passively move at a rate of 3m/turn, which will be done in a whichever way that minimizes damage to surrounding structures. 

Lesson: Streltsy: You may wield a polearm and rifle simultaneously. In addition, while guarding or performing a military downtime action, you may simultaneously perform another downtime action. If your parent has this lesson and you learnt this path, you get this lesson in addition to your starting technique or lesson. 

Lesson: Ryadovoi: You automatically gain the equivalent skills of 6 months of additional basic military training. Since players by base already start with generally assumed military competency, this trains up +2 basic military skills. These occupy the same mind slot as the lesson.

Ψ Rurikid: Black Blood. 

Stance: Darvaza: Burning damage you apply takes 10 times as much effort to extinguish, in addition, you may burn non flammable materials. 

Melee piercing strike: Wellbore (2ap): Deal 3d6 burning damage with lifesteal. 

Strike: Red gate (2ap):  Clear all DOT on the target and to deal it twice instantly. Mundane target armor is shattered and loses all resistance. 

Technique: War dead revenant: 

This technique may only be used if you have the associated soul anchor. 

Bury any number of creatures in a mass grave, then pour a mix of gasoline (this is where Dousing powder is usually added) and the blood of a souled creature slain in battle onto the sand. This creates a revenant loyal to you, which cannot leave more than 9m away from you. It has your stats if you where naked, but with [grave HD]hp. It cannot heal, but you can simply reforge it by repeating the ritual. 

The revenant has a common pool of actions, MD and mind slots with you. You may only have 1 revenant active. 

Soul anchor: Black blood: Replace every drop of blood in your body with gasoline, then be injected with 4 thaums so as to forcefully heal you. 

You gain immunity to physiological damage, lose the ability to eat normal food, and count 1l of gasoline as 10 rations. You may consume 10 rations to heal a point of exhaustion. You also gain weakness to fire. 

Ψ Brass baptism: Requires a firearm:

Long has it been wondered why the god of war sits upon a throne of brass, you are the answer. 

Technique: Center shot: Forgo critical damage in order to automatically hit a larger creature. 

Technique: Boiler (2ap): Double the radius/dimensions of a piece of ordinance within [sight], the explosion is delayed by 1 round, 

Strike: Burning vitriol(1ap): Convert a gunshot to bleed, burn or poison. 

Lesson: Brass blade: Requires a knife, mace, axe, whip or executioner sword. You may coat it with brass to give it the ability to make the first melee attack against a target you have shot at in the past with advantage and +[round number] accuracy. You may selectively count attacks with this weapon to count as gunshots. Half the cost to turn this weapon into a hybrid. 

Soul anchor: Child of overpressure: Be obliterated utterly in an explosion. 

Gain resistance x0.5 to force and immunity to deafness. In addition, you automatically succeed on all saves against aoe attacks and gain blast plating if you did not already. 

Ψ Hound: Kill someone you sincerely believe did not deserve such a fate. This must be at least an approximation of true death, bet it by silver blade or by lethe oil and you must receive payment for it.

Amongst the vermin, it is said that the principle difference between the experience of being a dog and a wolf, is that the former is focused on slaying internal enemies. 

Stance: Bloodhound: Your sense of smell is increased tenfold. Every time you kill a souled target with blood and at least 1HD with a melee attack, regain 1hp. Your unarmed attacks deal +2 damage. 

Technique: Return: Redirect a throwable that passes within 3m(10ft) of you. You may either deflect it behind you or use an ap to throw it forwards.  

Technique: Hand that feeds: Make a bite attack as a free unarmed action. 

Technique: Flinch: When a sentient creature makes an attack against you, you may make an attack back as a free action. The attack deals 1 additional soul damage, and the pain from it never leaves. Any souled enemy you fight knows you have this ability. 

Ψ Medved: 

Defeat a bear in melee combat. 

Restricted to people who embody and create an ideal in accordance with local standards of masculinity. They do not necessarily need to be male. 

Stance: Klyk : Your teeth and fingers become as dagger and crowbars. 

Technique (1ap): Misha : After winning an opposed strength check while grappling a target, remove an arm and deal 4 bleeding damage (in addition to your normal grapple effect). 

Strike: Kogot(2ap) : Deal 2d6+[strenght] additional damage of a strike with an axe or spear. 

Unarmed strike: Udar-Razyashyi-Konya : Take [strenght] bleeding damage, deal [strenght]d6 knockback, which is converted to bleeding if the target is larger. 

Ψ Noblesse oblige: Requires a one-handed blade. 

The nobles of the dominion have suffered a quick and swift death, saving them from the slow, choking end in the more eastern states. This has given time for them to focus on more important things. 

Stance: Squall: You no longer deal critical damage, all your attacks are made at +[movements made willingly this turn] to accuracy. You gain advantage on attacks made outside your turn. 

Technique: All in good fun: After defeating a human enemy, reroll the reaction roll. Unmannerly fighting will still modify the roll negatively. 

Strike: Carpal: Disable a hand. 

Strike: Slip: Switch position with your target. The target cannot enter close combat with you for 1 round if you do not wish them to. 

Soul anchor: Weather vane: Gain +1 accuracy if one-handing a weapon and not using a shield. You may switch stances as a free action any number of times.

Ψ Smoke-drinker:  Requires something which can be described as a pistol.
Practiced by wandering travellers and nobles. In its original form, opium was the preferred reagent. 

Stance: Quickdraw : If you or your side is attacked first, you go first instead and attack at advantage. In addition, you may choose to interrupt the dm at any time by saying “I SHOOT THEM”, your attack is then instantly resolved. Obviously this backfires against fellow gunslingers. 

You gain +2acc. 

Technique (3ap): Piece the horizon : A single shot you make has range [sight]. 

Technique: Abraham: While striking a target first, you gain a stack of advantage and a point of soul damage for each order or magnitude more wealth they have then you (in total assets). 

Lesson: Ain't no excuse: You may turn any potion into a version that can be smoked or released as an aerosol given ten minutes, a sufficient amount of plant fiber, and a pinch of coal. 

Soul anchor: Smokedrinker : Kill someone in a duel while both of you are in some way intoxicated. Then smoke tobacco or opium soaked in their blood. 

Your lungs are now mostly indestructible. In addition, you gain twice as much benefit from any drugs or medication you take through inhalation. You also suffer one tenth the drawbacks. 

While intoxicated with a relaxant, you gain resistance -1 to necrotic and +1acc with ranged attacks. While intoxicated with a stimulant, you gain +1 to grappling, acrobatics, and melee strikes with improvised or close combat weapons. 

Ψ Severance: You must be holding a knife to use these techniques. 

Considered a democratic style, popular amongst criminals, marines, tunnel fighters and hunters the world over. 

Stance: Bladehand: You may instantly retrieve a knife from your person to your hand if it is empty. Gain +1 ac against melee attacks for each hand holding a knife. Make a knife attack as a free action once per turn. 

Technique: Knuckle grip (1ap): Throw 3 knives at up to 3 different targets. 

Technique: Intrusion of death: Automatically crit against an opponent unaware that they are in danger. 

Technique: Eviscerate: Convert damage from an attack you hit into to bleed damage. 

Soul anchor: Black wire soul: Take half damage from piercing and slashing. Requires self-exsanguination in a bath of iron shavings, not emerging until you have completely healed. Repeat every night for seven days. You can also earn this by eating the heart of a black wire devil. 

Ψ Hermes: 

Merg, the river of mercury forms the eastern border between the dominion and the empire. Despite the seeming absence of its river spirit, the environment around it remains remarkably intact. Implying either some form of long distance connection or lingering enchantment. 

Stance: Quicksilver: You may choose to be moved three times as far with forced movement, in addition, you may transfer 

Technique: Flash step: Cover 12/40ft of distance in a single breath. 

Technique: All that glitters: Pour a 100 ml of mercury into your hand, and add a drop of your blood. After that, every piece of lead, tin, silver, and gold within 100m will feel a slight (enough to roll sideways, but not to hover or cause hard) tug towards the mercury and start to glow. 

Strike: Is not gold (1ap): Convert an impaling attack from a lead or golden projectile into poison damage. Gold causes a secondary instance of radiant damage

Soul anchor: Blood is thicker: Replace every drop of blood in your body with mercury, then be injected with 4 thaums. 

Gain resistance x0.5 to piercing damage, immunity to bleeding and mercury poisoning, and weakness x2 to toxic damage. 

Ψ Foundry soul: Defeat a mech in melee combat. 

Style of western mercenaries, night hunters who take upon the unenviable task of hunting mechs and corrupted tar revenants, cancerous monstrosities who wear the twisted remnants of foundries, oil rigs, and primordial machinery as skeletons.  

Life is fundamentally fire, and by this it is your right and duty to devour death and iron. 

Stance: Steel Cries Out: Your attacks become anti-material, and deal [ap spent on attack] extra damage.
Technique: Metal Can Burn (3ap): Crush a 1L vial of balefire with your bare hand, this deals 3 damage and disables it. 6m/20ft, 3d12 force/fire/acid, acc 6, damage resistance is converted to vulnerability. 

Technique: Try Your Luck: Flip a coin when hit, a head is a critical success, a tail is a 1. This supersedes everything save for fate used by opponents. 

This technique also recharges when an attack that would have killed you misses, or when you expend a point of fate. 

Strike(2ap): Mother To Sparks: 3d6 slashing/burn ignoring all resistance, 1 unmodifiable exhaustion. 

Ψ Steel parts flesh: Can only be learned by those whose flesh is of metal. Such as mech pilots, paladins, crucible knights and the bound. 

Steel is the union of the land of iron and the blood of the living. 

Stance: Sharpness through pressure: Your melee attacks cleave and deal critical damage calculating from the target’s ac, instead of from 10. 

You take half damage from forced movement, and may count any source of bludgeoning or force damage you deal as slashing. 

Technique: Crash through: Forcibly move yourself 10+[strenght]m, ignoring dosage for distance moved. Structures you move into count as being half as strong as they would otherwise be. 

Technique: Swat (1ap) : Deal [strength]d6 damage to a smaller target you are grappling. 

Unarmed strike: Calcio : Deal [strength] knockback, and the target is knocked prone if they half half or less of your strength. 

Soul anchor: While you wear bloodforged iron or black steel. You have +1 strength and your melee attacks have anti material. 

Ψ Tower knight: Iron keep: Must be large or greater. 

A Warrior ought to be a pillar within the community and an island within solitude.

A vigil when the night is darkest, and an unbreakable anchor when battle is fiercest. 

Stance: Anvil strikes: Convert critical damage into knockback. In addition, you are immune to being knocked prone. In addition, so long as you stay perfectly still, you may sleep upright with all your senses perfectly aware. 

Technique: Pillar: Convert forced movement you take into damage for a target within 1m (the floor is a valid target.)

Technique: Titan's soul: Take a point of exhaustion to count yourself as one size larger (without physically occupying more space) for 1 minute

Technique: Uproot (2ap) (delayed 1): Deals 3d6 force damage in a [strength] meter hemisphere. Hyphae, nerves and roots take double damage. In addition, the affected ground becomes difficult terrain 3.

Soul anchor: Go a month without lying down: Gain +1 str and HD when encumbered. 

Ψ Broken Link: Be freed by another of your kin.  

You have worked tirelessly and carelessly to give me this hatred. A hatred of the self and of my kin. Hatred is a toxin, fit only to purge the self of cancer and to harm those which you must never grow too close to. 

Why then, are you surprised by what I have done? You yourself crafted perfect hatred and imposed it upon me. You did not care enough to take it unto yourself, and so find yourself as naked and frail as a newborn babe. 

Stance: Worldmover: While pulling or dragging, triple your strength. 

Technique: Disappear (2ap): If used on yourself, allows [strength] meters of forced movement in a straight line, if used for the first time, it becomes teleportation instead, and the distance is multiplied by 10. 

If used on another, allows you to release a member of the binding cog by replacing their oath with one of equivalent strength. 

Technique: Leave all behind: Remove all restraints and slowing, you may clear [fights since last rest] exhaustion and heal that much hp. 

Technique: Move forward: Add [round number]+[strenght] to a movement action in a straight line.   

Jakub Rozalki