ArtifactRelay/Flexibility
The third theme is flexibility.
Twisting Ferret Ring (Quendalon)
Artifact • Moonsilver ring Commitment: 1 (moonsilver)
A slim band of braided moonsilver threads, this ring aids its wearer in matters of escape. It provides three additional dice to all rolls to slip free from a grapple or from any sort of bonds.
Everywhere Chrysanthemum (willows)
Artifact •• Starmetal and Green Jade Reaper Daiklave Spd+9 | Acc +4 | Dam +4/6L | Def +1 | Rate 4 | Commitment 5 (starmetal)
This weapon is a narrow, lavender ceramic strip shaped like a flower petal, with sharpened starmetal edges. It fades to rosy yellow at the base. Its handle is green jade worked to look like a stem. Everywhere Chrysanthemum senses its owner's movements and creates hazy duplicates of itself in each place it could possibly be. This has little benefit for an unskilled user, but a talented warrior understands how to fight with slightly less than flawless precision, so that the sword has the flexibility of interpretation to assume the most advantageous variety of positions. Before he makes an attack roll, the wielder may raise the difficulty of that attack; for each 1 difficulty increase, he increases the minimum post-soak damage of the attack by 1. He may not add more to the attack's minimum damage than his permanent Essence.
Osseous Shroud (Telgar)
Artifact ••• Soulsteel Light Armor
Named for its effects, not its appearance, the Osseous Shroud is in fact a simple ovoid of Soulsteel, about the size of a man's eye, that can be worn on any part of the user's body. When activated for a cost of 10 motes, the oval causes a painful transformation that liquifies the user's bones and causes them to flow to the exterior of the user's body, where they re-solidify into a dense but supple exoskeleton providing excellent protection and far-increased mobility to the user. While the Shroud is activated, the motes used to transform the user are committed, and the user enjoys the benefits of armor-based soak equal to twice his Stamina for both bashing and lethal. This armor has no fatigue or mobility penalty and, in addition to the soak, gives a bonus to Dexterity equal to one half the user's Stamina. It should be noted that this armor is quite fearsome in appearance and removes two dice from all attempts at peaceful and friendly interaction with those not used to such things. Tattooed Lunar Exalted are unable to use this Artifact, as it is a form of external shapeshifting.
Third Eye Egg (Quendalon)
Artifact •••• Living orb Commitment: none
This peculiar product of First Age biological sorcery appears as a translucent white sphere the size of a robin's egg. It has no effect until swallowed, at which point it sprouts a thousand tiny tendrils, burrows up through the soft palate and enters the skull. This inflicts a single level of aggravated damage, which heals normally. The tendrils weave themselves into the brain, rearranging the flows of the mind's Essence to enhance mental and emotional flexibility. This increases the user's Wits by three dots, and increases her Intelligence and Perception by one dot each. In addition, she may spend a point of Willpower to rearrange her emotions and temperament for a short time; this changes her Nature to another of her choice, and/or allows her to rearrange her Virtues at will. The effects of this change last for one scene. The egg cannot reduce a Virtue below one dot or raise it past five dots; neither can it reduce the Virtue associated with an Exalt's Limit Break below three dots or interfere with a Limit Break in progress.
The egg can only be removed through the death of the user or by her deliberate instruction. In the latter case, the egg withdraws its tendrils and burrows back out through the soft palate, again inflicting a single level of aggravated damage.
Most Obscene Armor of the Clockwork Necrosurgeon (David.)
Artifact ••••• Soulsteel Power Armor
Most of the time, this unholy armor appears to be a suit of superheavy plate fitted over a very, very bulky human, though the head of the wearer is almost invariably skeletal or decaying. However, when the manifold plates of black iron and soulsteel swing open or fold away, it becomes very clear why few save the Abyssal Exalted can wear this vile defense. The suit is operated by a complex arrangement of whirling gears, chains, weights, pulleys, pistons, cogs, and wheels that must be housed within the chest cavity of the wearer. This bulky contraption would displace the heart and lungs of any living thing, but does replace them with mechanical equivalents. These clockwork replacements, however, are less effective, which means that the Abyssal loses one dot of Stamina while the mechanism replaces his organs. The armor is powered by a Hearthstone set into a clockwork setting that occupies the normal location of the intestines (requiring the Abyssal to know the Blood-Feasting Technique Charm, as the contraption does make allowances for that method of sustenance, but no other). Fitted at various points on the wearer's body are soulsteel knobs, each marked with a very orderly series of notches, and connected to the central mechanisms by a trio of cables and hoses. These knobs serve as mounting points for untold varieties of malicious hardware. The armor is extraordinarily adaptable, though, ironically, it requires the wearer to permanently adapt himself to the armor.
The Most Obscene Armor of the Clockwork Necromancer does not require attunement on its own. However, devices and armor fitted to it do. The armor has 10 "points" of implements that may be installed. Some examples of these attachments are:
• Armor plating, equivalent to a soulsteel breastplate (1pt), reinforced breastplate (2pts), articulated plate (3pts), superheavy plate (4pts), or juggernaut plate (5pts, stats below). These require Essence commitment equal to twice their point value.
• Extra limbs (2pts per pair). Each pair of extra limbs requires 3 motes of Essence to function, and reduces multiple-action penalties by -1, to a maximum reduction of -3. Often, these limbs are built for very fine manipulation, to aid in detailed necrosurgery (+3 dice to necrosurgery rolls).
• Strength-enhancing units (2pts, 4 motes each). Each strength-enhancing device adds 3 to the wearer's Strength for the purposes of leaping, breaking things, and doing damage in close combat.
• Fighting chains (3pts, 5 motes each). These are equivalent to soulsteel lightning chains (CB:Dawn), often mounted on the armor's chest, tucked behind armored hatches. They do not require the wearer to occupy his hands with these weapons, but wielding them is otherwise identical to wielding a normal lightning chain. They may be wielded with the Melee Ability only.
• Movement-enhancing devices (2pts, 4 motes each). These double the wearer's leaping and running distances, and may be taken up to twice. Remember, stacking doubling effects triples the original stat, rather than quadrupling it.
• Barb-launchers (2pts, 2 motes per shot). These are most often mounted on the shoulders or in clockwork gauntlets, and are aimed with the Archery Ability. Each barb-launcher mounts three black iron darts, which may be fired one at a time as a normal Archery attack, modifiable by most Charms. They have no attunement cost, only a mote cost to fire them.
Accuracy +2, Damage 9L (piercing), Range 20, Rate 3
• Mounted weaponry (1pt, attunement by weapon). In place of hands on the wearer's natural limbs or on the extra limbs granted by another attachment, hand-to-hand weapons may be mounted. Nearly any hand-to-hand weapon can be duplicated, mundane weapons in black iron are the most common, but artifact weapons can be mounted as well, and these must be attuned individually. The wearer is practically impossible to disarm, though it is concievable that a very strong foe may simply break the end of the limb off, removing the weapon.
(These are by no means the only attachments available, but merely examples.)
Juggernaut Plate Soak 20L/20B (includes the soulsteel 5MM bonus), Hardness 6, Mobility -3, Fatigue 3
The Most Obscene Armor of the Clockwork Necrosurgeon requires a level 3 hearthstone for power, which denies the wearer access to the hearthstone's usual benefits. Hearthstones that do not function in the area where the armor is are not valid power sources. The clockwork mechanisms of the armor must be maintained, which requires Lore, Occult, and Craft •••. Generally, every eight hours of use or five turns of combat requires one hour of maintenance.
Assume that the armor comes with 8 points worth of attachments. Artifact weapons must be purchased separarately, and additional attachments can be had at a cost of 2 points of the Artifact background for 3 points worth of attachments.
Comments
It is perfectly okay to have more than one entry for each level. _Ikselam
- I'd feel kind of bad going back to ignorance now, though. Plus the mechanical effects I intended kind of slipped my mind ... oh well. Thanks for the encourangement, though, I'll keep it in mind for future rounds. :)
~ Shataina
Er, Willows? Can you clarify that last sentence on the Everywhere Chrysanthemum? I don't think it makes sense. :) ~ Grandmasta
- I thought it was perfectly clear. I reworded it to be more verbose. - willows
- Awesome, I get it now. Nothing like verbiage to get through my thick skull. ~ Grandmasta
Did we skip the level 4 artifact? And the Clockwork Necrosurgeon Armor kind of resembles a minature version of a Warstrider. It does a lot of shit. Supposing I had an Abyssal character who wanted to buy it, would I have to pay extra points for all those attachments? What artifact rating are those? -LiOfOrchid
- I suppose level 4 is skipped for the moment, but it wouldn't be hard at all to add one. I suppose I should have put in artifact ratings for attachments, I'll add that now, thanks for pointing it out, Li. - David.
We did apparently skip the level 4 Artifact. And this thing isnt *armor*, its a complete package of a zombie warrior in mecha-armor. So it's basically an automated war machine of doom. I've suggested David change it into one and stat it. - Telgar
- Except that it's much closer to being armor than to being an automaton. As haren put it, "it's hard points for attaching equipment" (which is, by the by, a better summary than I came up with). It places some heavy demands on the wearer, but so does a Gunzosha armor. - David.
- back to CrunchRelay.
