ANIMAL
This Purview expresses the totemic power to which a Champion’s ichor grants him access. Its Blessings work on only one type of animal, chosen by the player when he purchases the character’s first Blessing. That animal needn’t be the same one associated with his divine parent.
Innate Power: All animals natural to creation are friendly with the champion unless she does something aggressive to them.
Beast Communion Method
Cost: 2m
Mins: Essence 1
Type: Reflexive
Keywords: Combo-Ok
Duration: 1 minute per essence
Prerequisite Charm: None
The Champion can understand and make himself understood by an animal as he speaks his native language and the animal responds with its own postures, scents and/or vocalizations. This Gift doesn’t make animals smart, calm or loyal, but most are curious enough about having a person address them that they’ll hear a Champion out before defaulting to aggression, panic or other appropriate responses.
Commanding Alpha Approach
Mins: Essence 2
Type: Simple
Keywords: Combo-Ok, Compulsion
Duration: Special
Prerequisite Charm: Beast Communion Method
The Champion spends 4 motes and names one task that the animal must perform. The task cannot seem suicidal or impossible to the animal, but the animal cannot balk at an order that doesn’t immediately seem so. “Hey rabbit, go rip that lion’s throat open,” would seem impossible to the rabbit so commanded. “Run to that grass across this street,” would be a fine order for that same rabbit, though, even if wagons were zipping by. The order can describe a single immediate action (“Bite that guy!”) or one with a single condition (“Come find me when a blue car stops here.”).
Creature Internalization Process
Cost: 6m, 1wp
Mins: Essence 3
Type: Simple
Keywords: Combo-Ok, Shaping
Duration: Scene
Prerequisite Charm: Commanding Alpha Approach
By meditating for one action (Speed 3) on a token representing his animal, the Champion takes on a metaphorical characteristic associated with it, creating a dice bonus for rolls involving the Attribute most closely associated with that characteristic. The player rolls their characters essence. Each success grants two bonus dice to the affected attribute. A Champion might take on a snake’s sinuous grace (Dexterity), a peacock’s beauty (Appearance), an elephant’s proverbial memory (via Intelligence) or any other justifiable characteristic.
Lesser Being Displacement
Cost: 8m, 1wp
Mins: Essence 4
Type: Simple
Keywords: Servitude
Duration: Scene
Prerequisite Charm: Creature Internalization Process
The Champion stares into the eyes of her chosen animal and overwhelms its mind with his own. If the Champion succeeds in her possession attempt, she can “ride” around inside her animal’s body for one scene (or less if she chooses to end the effect early). She exerts all of her own mundane traits, except for Appearance, through the effectively empty husk, losing all sense of the situation around her own body.
If the body she’s riding suffers damage as a result of her actions, she feels the pain and suffers the wound penalties, but it’s only a phantom psychosomatic pain. Her own body suffers no damage. Once the animal’s body suffers enough damage to render it Incapacitated or to kill it (based on the host’s own traits, not the Champion’s), the Champion loses her connection with it and returns to her own body. If the Champion’s real body suffers damage as a result of something going on around it, the Champion remains unaware of it until her spirit returns home. If someone or some event destroys the Champion’s body while her spirit is away, her spirit simply winks out of existence and goes to lithe. A familiar creature can allow the Champion to take over its body at will, but all other animals impose a difficulty on the activation roll equal to their Intelligence.
Bestial Aspect Adoption
Cost: 10m, 1wp
Mins: Essence 5
Type: Simple
Keywords: Shaping, Obvious
Duration: Scene
Prerequisite Charm: Lesser Being Displacement
The Champion can change a portion of his anatomy to a shape matching the analogous portion of his chosen animal’s anatomy for one scene. If his chosen animal is an armadillo, he can cover himself in a flexible armor.
If his animal is a monkey, he can grow a long prehensile tail that is as dexterous as a hand with no thumb. If his animal is a spider or gecko, he can change the surfaces of his hands and feet to enable himself to climb on walls. If his animal is a bird or bat or airborne insect, he can transform his arms into wings that allow him to fly at a rate equal to his Move rate. The exact effect of the change is up to the player, dependent upon Storyteller approval. As a general guideline, though, if the change boosts some trait or grants bonus dice on a special attack, the total bonus value granted cannot be greater than the character’s Essence.
The character can take on one feature from his chosen animal per five successes on the activation roll. He can take on as many separate animal features from the same animal as his successes on a single activation roll allow. If the player has purchased this Blessing multiple times to represent several different animals, the character can take on features from all those different types of animals simultaneously, but he must make the activation roll separately for each type of animal. The total trait bonuses he can receive from all those features still cannot exceed his Essence.
Reverting to normal, either at will or at the end of the scene, is instantaneous
