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Dragon-Blooded Resistance Charms by Everyl

Burdensome Stone Armor Prana

Cost: 5 motes, 1 Willpower (Maybe more?)

 Duration: Instant
 Type: Supplemental
 Minimum Resistance: 5
 Minimum Essence: 4
 Prerequisite Charms: Impervious Skin of Stone Meditation

Earth has always been known for two things: being solid, and being heavy. This Charm draws upong both of these aspects to simultaneously protect and hinder someone. The Exalt must strike an opponent with a held stone (this can be done using Melee, Martial Arts, or Brawl, depending on the size and shape of the stone and the Exalt's creativity). Upon doing so and paying the activation cost, the stone sticks to the victim, quickly growing into a suit of unwieldy stone armor. Roll the Exalt's Stamina + Resistance, adding his permanent Essence as automatic successes; the result is the armor's rating in both bashing and lethal soak, as well as its mobility penalty and its Fatigue rating. This is not natural soak, and the armor counts as armor for the purposes of Martial Arts Charms that are affected by such.

The armor is extremely heavy and cumbersome, and makes it impossible to swim. It is very difficult to get out of, as it literally grows around the victim, but it is somewhat brittle. The victim may struggle to break pieces off, making a Strength + Athletics roll at a difficulty equal to the permanent Essence of the Exalt who activated Burdensome Stone Armor Prana; every extra success reduces the armor's soak ratings, mobility penalty, and fatigue rating by 1. Over a long enough period of time, the armor will chip and flake off, losing 1 from all of its ratings every time the user's permanent Essence in hours passes.

This Charm may explicitly be used in Combos with Charms of other Abilities.

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An old story from the First Age tells of the Earth Aspect Martial Artist who originally developed this Charm. Upon learning of it, his Solar master laughed at him, questioning why he would develop a method of strengthening his enemies' defenses. The Terrestrial responded by calmly challenging his Eclipse ruler to a martial arts duel. The Solar readily agreed, never doubting for a moment his inherent combat superiority to a mere Terrestrial. When the duel began, the Dragon-Blood struck the Solar with this Charm while the Solar was still entering his stance (Form Charm), and the resulting burden completely disrupted his ability to perform Martial Arts Charms. By the time his master had broken enough of the armor off to fight back effectively, the Terrestrial had already done too much damage, and he ultimately won the duel. Humbled, the Eclipse-caste Solar begged his servant to teach him the Charm.

Centuries later, long after that particular Terrestrial died of old age, that same Solar escaped the first brutal attacks of the Usurpation. Being wise enough not to forget about the Sidereals in spite of Arcane Fate, he put two and two together and struck back against the masterminds of the Usurpation. He was directly responsible for at least half a dozen deaths among Sidereal Martial Arts masters (as well as innumerable activations of Avoidance Kata) in the decade or so before he was caught and killed by the Dragon-Blooded.

Comments

I'm still not sure if I should make this a Craft Charm... or maybe require both Craft and Resistance, adding Stone-Carving Fingers Form as another prereq? I know that there is at least one canonical multi-Ability Charm out there, but I saw it in one of the Solar Castebooks, so I can't help but question the overall validity of the principle... maybe I should just come up with some more appropriate Resistance Charms to come before it? Comments?

Also, I suspect that there may be a better way to calculate the armor's stats, but this is the first thing that came to mind.

I'm not linking this to the Charms page until it's a little more refined, if at all; it's not entirely serious to begin with. Bonus points to anyone who figures out what inspired this. :-p -Everyl

By any chance, is this inspired by Garaa from Naruto? This feels like something the Sand Demon would do... Ariamaki the not-yet-registered

No, it's a little closer to home than that. I think I'll actually go add this to the DB Resistance page and hope that attracts a little more commentary to this page; I'd rather not explain where I got if from if I can get someone else to catch it, first.  :-) -Everyl

It vaguely puts me in mind of Stone Boy (or was it Lad?) from the Legion of Substitute Heroes, but that doesn't work, because he turns himself to stone. ^_~ Anyway, it's an interesting thing to do. -Okensha

Personally, I couldn't help being reminded of this quote from RSB on the QuotesofGoodness page:

"Incidentally: The best way to defeat a Sidereal martial artist, if an NPC, is to use sneaky Larceny-style tricks to slip your armor onto them when they're not looking. --RSB"

--FlowsLikeBits, who was way to amused by the whole idea

You got it! I read that quote and found it to be hilarious, so I started brainstorming for Charms that would actually do that. My first thought was the Solar armor-creting Charm, but I thought it looked cooler as an Earth-Aspect Charm. -Everyl

Woohoo. Actually this inspired me to finish my version Whirlwind Armor-Lending Prana, which was sufficiently different from this for me to post anyway. This I think is more creative though. - FlowsLikeBits