AbyssalPerformance/Greymane
Credit and many thanks to Kraken and GoldenCat for their assistance.
Abyssal Performance – Dirges
Sound of Directionless Pandemonium
Cost: 4 motes
Duration: Essence in Hours
Type: Simple
Minimum Performance: 3
Minimum Essence: 2
Prerequisite Charms: Haunting Inflection Trick
Weaving the Essence of the Underworld through a song or instrument in the Pandemonic fashions of the dead, the sound of the Abyssal's performance overwhelms a listener with subtle hallucinations of gray despair and chilling terror. Their song, however sweet, carries a certain sour note of discord within it that is frightfully unreal. For a number of hours equal to his Permanent Essence following the Abyssal's performance, all of those in his audience suffer a -1 penalty to all dice actions. Additionally, they are overcome by a restlessness, mild nausea, and paranoia that prevents them from resting effectively. They cannot regain Willpower nor naturally regain Essence while under the effects of this Charm. This does not prevent the regeneration of motes through the use of a Hearthstone.
Black Lullaby
Cost: 5 motes, 1 Willpower
Duration: Special
Type: Simple
Minimum Performance: 4
Minimum Essence: 2
Prerequisite Charms: Sound of Directionless Pandemonium
Through this Charm, the Abyssal calls not upon the sickliness of the Essence of the Underworld, but instead upon it's bleak and numbing cold. The melodies that issue forth from the Deathknight are chillingly beautiful and precise, caressing across listeners like an icy wind that sucks the strength from their bodies and awareness from their minds. For this Charm to take effect, the performance must last a number of minutes equal to 10 - the Abyssal's Permanent Essence. The Abyssal's player rolls his Performance + Charisma. Any listener with Willpower lower than the number of successes rolled drawn into a deep and wearisome sleep, flecks of frost and rime coating their lips and finger tips. Almost no sound can awaken them and even physical pain is numbed by the cold. Characters so effected will not wake up for a number of hours equal to the Abyssal's Permanent Essence or unless reduced to their first -2 health level by any source of damage. This Charm cannot effect characters of equal or higher Essence than the Abyssal and those characters capable of spending Willpower can resist the effects of this Charm by spending a point of Willpower for every two successes bellow the Abyssal they fell.
Miasmatic Melody
Cost: 7 motes, 1 Willpower
Duration: Special
Type: Simple
Minimum Performance: 5
Minimum Essence: 3
Prerequisite Charms: Withering Dirge, Sound of Directionless Pandemonium
With this Charm, the Abyssal's music becomes not simply disorienting or harmful, but outright poisonous. A black miasma of toxic Essence woven into every note spills from the deathknight's mouth or instrument and slips into a listeners ear. Soaking into their minds, spreads through their body like a burning thread as the memory of the song poisons their soul. The Abyssal's player rolls his Performance + Charisma in an opposed roll to his audience's Stamina + Resistance. Listeners are not immediately effected by the poisonous song, but at least one hour afterwards will hear it play through their minds once more. Then their blood will reverse in their veins. Their eyes will become raven-black orbs and inky tears will spill from their eyes. Those who failed their roll suffer from a dice penalty equal to the Abyssal's Performance and damage equal to the Abyssal's Permanent Essence. Those who succeeded take only 2L in damage. Their veins bloated with the Essence of the Underworld, any Abyssal may regain twice the normal motes by feeding on those poisoned by this song. Once the effects of the poison have begun, they persist for a number of minutes equal to the Abyssal's Permanent Essence score.
Pestilential Abyssal Performance
Cost: 12 motes, 1 Willpower
Duration: Special
Type: Simple
Minimum Performance: 5
Minimum Essence: 3
Prerequisite Charms: Miasmatic Melody
When using this Charm, the music of the Abyssal is impossibly haunting. The Essence woven into song wraps around the minds of everyone who hears it, driving them to emulate it endlessly. They sing, whistle, and hum the tune uncontrollably. Even the tenor of their voice as they speak strives to match the song. Everyone who hears even these pale imitations find themselves unable to shake the tune from their mind nor stop reproducing it once they have begun. And each repetition of the deathknight's song sends the dark Essence stroking deeper into the victims soul.
The Abyssal rolls his Performance + Charisma and the listeners must succeed in a Stamina + Resistance roll with a difficulty equal to the number of successes in the Abyssal's roll. Those who fail become infected by the song, reproducing it endlessly and uncontrollably. The repetition of this song acts as a prayer to the Abyssal, granting him a temporary dot of Cult for every hundred people infected by it. Additionally, the urge to sing it is so overpowering and distracting that those infected become incapable of any meaningful verbal communication and suffer from a penalty to all dice actions equal to half of the Abyssal's Permanent Essence.
Everyone who spends more than two minutes around someone infected by this song must make a Stamina + Resistance roll with a difficulty equal to the Abyssal's Essence or else become infected by it themselves. Every morning at sunrise, infected characters make an unmodified Willpower roll with a difficulty equal to (the Abyssal's Performance - 1 for each day of infection) in an attempt to shake free from the grasp of the song. This Charm cannot effect characters of equal or higher Essence than the Abyssal Someone who has successfully fought off the song's infection once cannot be infected by the same song again. Multiple uses of this Charm are not accumulative.
Plague of Shadows Psalm
Cost: 6 motes, 1 Willpower + 2 motes per turn
Duration: Instant
Type: Simple
Minimum Performance: 5
Minimum Essence: 3
Prerequisite Charms: Haunting Inflection Trick, Morbid Fascination Style
The deathknight opens his mouth to sing or plays at his instrument, yet no sound issues forth that can be heard by mortal ears. There are those who do hear it though and come forth to answer it's call. Hordes of bats, ravens, spiders, centipedes, rats or other vermin spill out of the shadows or sweep the sky in clouds to blot out the sun, swarming about the Abyssal in a single grotesque mass.
So long Abyssal continues to pay the upkeep for this Charm and perform the silent song, the mass of vermin are his to control. These creatures can only obey simple commands and individually are little more than pests, but the mass of them together is deadly. They are almost always poisonous or disease carrying and will throw themselves unthinkingly to their deaths if so commanded. The swarm attacks with the Abyssal's Charisma + Performance and deals damage equal to his Performance + his Permanent Essence. The damage ignores half of a targets armor soak, as the tiny vermin have little trouble slipping through chinks in armor.
When the swarm is first summoned, the Abyssal must decide if he desires it to be primarily poison or disease carrying vermin. Each attack dealt by a poison vermin swarm which deals at least a single health level of damage inflicts the target with poison equal in strength to Poison Snake Venom (see Exalted Core page 243), while those dealt by a disease carrying vermin swarm will infect victims with Malaria. Targets of these attacks get a Stamina + Resistance roll as normal.
Dead Shall Dance
Dirge of the Dancing Dead
Cost: 8 motes, 1 Willpower
Duration: One Scene
Type: Simple
Minimum Performance: 4
Minimum Essence: 2
Prerequisite Charms: Skeleton Summoning Gesture, Elegy for the Fallen
Vast as they can be in numbers, the teeming ranks of the walking dead are cursed by their own unloving nature to be slow and ungainly. With this Charm however, a deathknight may transform an entire army of these clumsy slaves into nimble and deadly combatants. Drawing out the cold thoughts of the Neverborn who he champions, the Abyssal plays the broken and fractured music of their memories from times when they were yet living Primordials.
As he performs these wretched songs or dances to them, the zombies and skeletons gathered around him begin to move, rotted minds half-awakened to their own memories of life. Their awkward gaits and stiff limbs grow limber and loose, sometimes simply breaking to match the pace set by the music.
Using this Charm, all undead servants under the Abyssal's direct control add a number of dice equal to the deathknight's Performance Ability score to their Brawl, Dodge, and Melee rolls. This includes any additional dots of Performance gained from other effects such as Charms or Artifacts, though not bonus dice.
Elegant Charnel-House Ball
Cost: None
Duration: Permanent
Type: Special
Minimum Performance: 5
Minimum Essence: 3
Prerequisite Charms: Dirge of the Dancing Dead
This Charm is an enhancement of Dirge of the Dancing Dead. Once mastered, the Abyssal transforms his rotting dancers from individuals lost upon the flows of the music to partners in a grand ballet. They move as one, stepping and spinning in perfect unison. Choreographed to the will of the Abyssal and sad dreams of the Neverborn, the steps of their dance become a graceful and ever shifting pattern full of false leads and openings that trick the unwary into attacks that cannot but fail. Undead under the effects of Dirge of the Dancing Dead add on half of their Abyssal masters Essence (rounded down) to their difficulty to be struck in combat.
