Related Themes: Occultism, Transformation, Dragon

Signature Resource Suggestions: Blood, Souls

 

 

Combat

Dead Nerves

[ Undeath, Combat, Defense, Passive ]

Painful conditions which would otherwise impair a normal person don’t affect you. You can ignore distracting, painful conditions which would make a normal character take disadvantage. You’ll still take damage from DoT effects, but they won’t impair you otherwise.

When you first receive a painful condition in a combat, you’re bolstered to surprise your opponents with your tenacity.

Describe: Ignoring a fatal wound, unnatural resilience, undead anatomy, your rotten organs.

Ignore: Your guts spilling out, carry around your decapitated head, ignore a sword through your heart.

Related Traits: Command.Shake It Off, Alchemy.Panacea, Faith.Lay on Hands

Death Throes

[ Undeath, Combat, Minion, Sacrifice ]

Collaborate on something powerful that happens when you die.

Describe: Your soul exploding, uttering a final curse, completing your most powerful spell, finding vengeance.

What Happens: Explode in necrotic energy, take your attacker with you, return as a ghost, curse someone.

Tip: Consider this trait for your minions, or in conjunction with reanimate.

Related Traits: Faith.My work here is not yet done, Undeath.Reanimate

Death Watch

[ Undeath, Combat, Stabilize ]

You’re acutely aware of death’s looming grasp.

As a neutral tale, you may ask the GM whether a visible creature is dying or close to death. They will answer you honestly.

Whenever you or one of your closest allies would die, they instead hold onto life for several hours. You may spend a good tale to extend this duration to several weeks.

During this time, they can be healed as normal to potentially avoid death.

Describe: Hiding them from Death, altering their anatomy, extending their life with necromancy.

Related Traits: Command.Shake if Off, Faith.Unfinished Work

Drain Soul

[ Undeath, Combat, Buff, Absorb Power ]

Give yourself a new resource: captured souls [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]

Mark one box when you take a dying or recently dead creature’s soul. Spend a good tale to remove one mark to crush the soul forever and gain some of its power temporarily.

Souls in your possession are inaccessible to others without your consent or defeat. As such, They can’t be resurrected or communicated with.

Collaborate: What does the power actually do for you? How long does it last? What happens when it runs out?

Describe: Soul strands rising to your clenched fist, capturing its spirit in a gem, devouring its essence.

Power: Increase one of your attributes, bolster to do what it did well, gain a temporary trait, summon its spirit.

Plaguebearer

[ Undeath, Combat, Immunity, Aura ]

Collaborate on a disease that you carry, and how it spreads. You’re immune to it.

Describe: Pallid skin, sunken eyes, pus-filled boils on your skin, black blood, skin covered in a sheen of sweat. Plague: Virus, bacteria, worm parasites, fungal mushroom spores, dark curse, the seed of a corrupted plant.

Symptoms: Vomit and nausea, painful boils, extreme fever, necrosis, coughing, weakness, eventual death.

Transmitted by: Skin-to-skin contact, damaging someone, bodily fluids, drawing a rune on their skin.

Related Traits: Transformation.The Curse, Alchemy.Inoculated

Reanimate

[ Undeath, Combat, Resurrect ]

Collaborate on a death condition and how quickly you reanimate. If you die and your death condition isn’t met, you return to life.

Death Condition: Staked in the heart, decapitated, killed when your phylactery is destroyed, poisoned.

Describe: Crawling out of a shallow grave, coalescing from death, pulling yourself out of the spirit realm.

Exploration

Bloodseeker

[ Undeath, Exploration, Perception ]

You can hear far heartbeats with perfect accuracy. While focusing on someone, you can sense and understand every part of their physiology as if you’d dissected them and carefully studied every body part.

Describe: Hearing blood course through their veins, noticing subtle changes in their physiology.

Sense: Smell disease, hear a nervous heartbeat, feel the warmth of arousal, see pregnancy, taste their fear.

Related Traits: Elements.Tremors

Despoiler

[ Undeath, Exploration, Utility, Decay ]

Spend a good tale to cause far plants and objects to wither and decay.

Describe: Withering plants to dry husks, rusting metal, spoiling food and water, warping wood, cracking stone.

Eternal Hunger

[ Undeath, Exploration, Healing ]

You no longer need to eat or drink. Collaborate on 1 new need that you must fulfill.

Collaborate: What happens if the need goes unfulfilled?

Describe: Cold skin, no pulse, you don’t bleed when you’re cut, obsessive desire, growling stomach.

New Needs: Drink blood, eat nightmares, consume souls, feast on fear, absorb magic, devour nightmares.

Haunt

[ Undeath, Exploration, Minion ]

You can awaken the terrain. It becomes a sentient minion with XP equal to half of your total. Collaborate on its personality and its contract.

Describe: Spilling your blood into the earth, binding a spirit to the land, corrupting the area, enchanting it.

Terrain Actions: Open and close doors, attract or repel creatures, alter its geography, a ship sails itself.

Pierce the Veil

[ Undeath, Exploration, Perception, Resource ]

As a neutral tale, spend 1 point of your signature resource to see the spirit world and interact with its denizens. Their disposition toward you will be ambivalent unless there are extraneous circumstances.

Collaborate: What is this spirit world? Who are its denizens? What do they want?

Describe: Looking through ghost eyes, shifting your soul, your eyes going black, seeing dead people.

Unlife and Unlimb

[ Undeath, Exploration, Regeneration, Summon ]

Whenever you become separated from your body parts, by any means, they continue functioning independently. You control your detached body parts and sense the world through them.

Spend a point of your signature resource to reattach them (and heal whatever condition their absence may have caused you).

Describe: Cutting off a limb, plucking out an eyeball, watching through an eyeball, crawling with a hand, pulling your guts back inside yourself.

Related Traits: Transformation.Regenerate, Gestalt, Artifice.Prosthesis

Interaction

Aura of Death

[ Undeath, Interaction, Combat, Fear ]

You can spend a good tale/resource to give all far creatures a strong desire to leave the area.

If you use this in combat, enemies will have to measure their desire to leave against their desire to deal you harm. Spend subsequent good tales to make that choice easier for them and force them to leave.

Describe: Whispering dark words, creating a sudden chill, giving people an unsettling feeling in their gut.

Banshee’s Wail

[ Undeath, Interaction, Combat, Debuff, Deafen ]

Spend a good tale to emit an incredibly loud sound. The sound shatters glass and shakes structures. Far creatures gain the condition “Deaf” until the ringing stops several minutes later.

Describe: Screaming the cries of the dead, wailing in agony, speaking with death’s otherworldly voice.

Medium

[ Undeath, Interaction, Gather Intel, Speak with Dead ]

If you have access to a dead creature’s body or favorite possessions, spend a point of your signature resource to speak with them. You automatically have leverage over them.

Collaborate: What type of leverage?

Describe: Opening a door to the afterlife, tugging at a soul strand, sending your voice into the grave world, eating it’s brains, holding it hostage.

Related Traits: Undeath.Pierce the Veil, Nature.Fey Curse

Possess and Puppeteer

[ Undeath, Interaction, Combat, Control, Possess ]

You may attempt to take control of a nearby creature.

As a neutral tale, spend a point of your signature resource to enter the body of any corpse. Your own body vanishes when you possess dead creatures.

Possessing a live creature requires a signature resource and a good tale. Mooks require a good tale from a normal roll, Lieutenants require a good tale from a difficult/decreased roll. Your own body collapses in place when you possess live creatures.

A live host can attempt to rebel against your possession.

Collaborate: Do you retain your own traits and attributes, or do you take on those of your target?

Describe: Overpowering its soul, becoming a spirit and moving inside of it, infecting its thoughts.

Backfire: Your target now possesses, occupies or controls your body.