Artifacts/FlayedSkinoftheDragon
Flayed Skin of the Dragon
Artifact 0000, 10B/11L soak, 7B/9L hardness, -0 mobility penalty, 2* fatigue penalty, Repair 2, attune 6.
This armor takes the form of a thick, blubbery-looking suit that covers the entire body, inluding the head, with a organic-seeming shell forged of moonsilver and sand-sized jadecrystals, as well as a mesh of woven orichalcum threads underneath its artificial skin. It is, in fact, a biomagitech enhanced symbiote, tailored for use as armor. Looking at its inside, where thick layers of striated gray and red muscle cushion the wearer, it is obvious to everyone that it is far different from any other power armor. To don this creature, the user must first disrobe completely and put this on, which takes, despite its low mobility and fatigue penalties, 10 minutes without assistance, half that with, due to the wearer having to wriggle into the sessile creature. Then the user must, still without power, lower the helmet onto his head, which causes the suit to stir. needles pierce the wearer's arteries and veins, intertwining the user's circulatory system to the creature. Although disconcerting, this causes no actual damage.
It is a strange pinnacle of design-bioengineering fused with cybernetic magitech. A primitive animal brain controls the involuntary procedures for the suit-its instinct to protect the wearer from poison, to purify the wearer's blood, to suck in even the most toxic atmosphere and feed the wearer pure air. Magical materials are woven into its muscle, its nerves, and the artificial components that make up its carapace and helmet. Moonsilver and jade crystal hardens into an impenetrable armor shell when impacts threaten its wielder, but remain supple otherwise, allowing both toughness and survivability. It exists in symbiosis with its wearer, which gives it its one unique power: As long as the wearer's mind still may think, the armor can keep her alive. Even if her limbs are mangled and her heart has been torn out from the foulest charms or sorceries, if the brain is still there, the wearer can be kept alive until medical help arrives.
Designed for scouts in the First Age, the armor is such that it is completely self-contained and does not need to be removed for an Exalted wearer. Due to a quirk of its engineering, it can be worn by mortals, but only for short periods-the strain that the additional muscle and flesh adds to the wearer's heart is far too much for a mortal to bear. Every [Stamina] actions in combat, someone not attuned to the armor takes an automatic level of bashing damage which the armor cannot heal. Various magical materials versions were built for Exalts who would need to wear their armor for weeks or months on end, working in groups
The Flayed Skin of the Dragon is Artifact 4, and due to its alloyed construction does not have the standard artifact armor bonuses.
when attuned, its fatigue penalty is 0.
it can be used unattuned, but in combat the user takes 1 level of unsoakable bashing damage for every [stamina] actions he takes. This will not reduce the character past incapacitated--as soon as the character can no longer fight, the armor switches over to survival mode.
every time an attack hits the user, even if it deflects off hardness, the user has a -2 mobility penalty for his next action as the armor hardens to stop the blow.
if forcibly deattuned, the user takes 3 levels of unsoakable lethal damage as the tubules tear out of the user's veins. The armor is affected by deattuning even if the wearer hasn't paid attune cost. Also, the user must make a successful Stamina+Resistance roll, difficulty 5, or bleed to death within a minute, if a mortal. An Exalt merely takes a unsoakable lethal health level from bleeding every minute if this happens, and can still draw her wounds closed reflexively.
When not in use, the armor must be kept in a sustainer cabinet (Artifact 00), which feeds it nutrient solution and lets it regenerate from wounds. Otherwise, the armor dies within a month. Medical charms may, at the storyteller's discretion, be used to stop or reverse this decay.
The armor must be returned to a sustainer cabinet every month, for at a week, to maintain itself normally. Otherwise, it will start sickening and dying day by day (for every day after its repair lose the use of any one feature marked with an asterisk). When all such features are gone, the armor itself will not interface properly with the user and is thus useless. If still worn while inactive, it has the same protection as a nonartifact reinforced buff jacket with the exception that it has a mobility penalty of -4 and a fatigue value of 3. Furthermore instead of using the standard repair roll, the user instead uses the lower of craft(First Age) or medicine for the relevant skill to repair it, as it is both a living organism and a suit of magical armor.
The Flayed Skin of the Dragon comes with these special submodules.
Adaptive Camouflage Subsystems: Light-sensitive, color-changing threads woven in the carapace give the user +2 to stealth dice pool when moving, +3 when stationary.
Air scrubbers: Black jade filters clean even the foulest air. As long as there is air to breathe, the wearer does not need to worry himself about all but the foulest airborne toxins. (storyteller's discretion of what will overwhelm the filters). They also allow breathing underwater without problem. In the event that there is no air or the air is too tainted, though, the Flayed Skin comes with its own storage and recycles the wearer's exhalations, allowing up to one hour of normal function before checking for aspyhxiation. Regenerating this supply fully takes one hour in a clean area. The wearer can reflexively choose between breathing outside air or breathing from the suit's tanks for no cost.
Vision Systems: A cluster of cameras with various jade lenses and magical material foci are situated around the helmet, eliminating the penalties for anything up to pitch darkness. Also, at the cost of 2 motes or 1 willpower, the wearer can reflexively activate thermal imaging (same as the thermal imaging submodule of the Autochthonian ocular enhancement charm).
Blood filtration systems*: The wearer's blood is drawn through artificially engineered kidneys, built specifically to handle poisons that would kill a normal man. All poisons and drugs deal half damage and inflict half penalty, rounded down. +3 to resistance when attempting to resist any type of disease or poison. If the wearer is a mortal, he now resists disease as one of the Exalted.
Biological waste recycler*: The user's waste is recycled perfectly via a system of jade filters and technomagical baffles. The user never has to remove the armor to relieve herself, and does not need to eat as long as the armor is kept on, although it is still possible to do so.
Adamant Body*: The Flayed Skin of the Dragon is part of the wearer while worn, adding its own impressive bodily constitution to the wearer's own. It adds +2 to stamina, which counts as natural stamina for the purposes of charms.
Orichalcum Srength*: The Skin's large amount of artificial muscle increases the wearer's strength by 2, which again counts as natural for all purposes.
Tenacity of Jade*: The armor adds 3 -0 health levels to the wearer. These health levels heal normally when the armor is worn, or regenerate at the rate of 1 ever 20 minutes when attached to a sustainer cabinet, no matter if the damage is bashing, lethal, or aggravated if the armor is stored. As another side benefit, as long as the armor is worn all wound penalties are reduced by 1.
Accelerated healing*: Drug reservoirs inject a variety of powerful healing concoctions into the user's body, and powerful enchantments keep the wearer on his feet. The wearer heals 1 bashing health level every tick and 1 lethal health level every hour. If the wearer is a mortal, he heals as one of the Exalted.
Combat Drugs*: As a reflexive action, the user may inject himself with a single dose of highly dangerous combat drugs, turning himself into a killing machine. This increases all his physical attributes by 1 dot (even above the normal maximum), completely restores temporary willpower, and eliminates any wound penalties for a hour. In fact, bashing damage does not inflict wound penalties on the wearer and will not incapacitate him, although it still is tracked normally and still flows over into lethal damage. However, it decreases all mental and social attributes except perception by 1 dot, and reduces compassion to 1 for that hour. After that, though, the drug not only reduces temporary willpower to 1, it also must be resisted as arrow frog venom (not counting the suit's additional stat boosts and toxin filters), as the toxic byproducts of this metabolic boost build up in the wearer's bloodstream. Also, every time the drugs are used, make a Stamina + Resistance roll, difficulty 1. On a failure, the user temporarily loses a dot of a physical attribute of your choice for a day. On a botch, the user permanently loses a dot of a physical attribute. The suit comes with three doses of combat drug, and regenerates them at the rate of 1 per day. Needless to say, this is extremely risky and few will use this feature unless absolutely necessary.
Pheonix Module*: The most unique power of this armor is to keep the wearer alive. As long as the armor is not forcibly deattuned, and as long as the wearer does not take double her health levels in aggravated damage, or triple her health levels in lethal damage, the wearer does not die, instead being held at the brink of death's door no matter how mangled her body, as long as her brain is intact. Although technically at a 'Dying' health level, she does not degrade in condition by 1 Dying HL per action, and can be patched when combat is over. This also gives a difficulty level reduction of 1 for any medical roll to stabilize the wearer, as the suit will, barring major catastrophe, keep the brain alive. The suit drains 1 mote from the user per hour, even if the user cannot normally access her essence pool--the armor can. If the wearer is incapable of accessing her essence, this also ages her by one month per hour.
However, the difficulty of bringing someone back from the brink is such that sometimes although the wearer is preserved, her allies cannot find a way to safely stabilize her condition. Hence, if the suit is keeping a dying character alive, it can be plugged into the sustainer to do so indefinitely. Rumors of First Age Exalts, still plugged in in forgotten tombs, waiting for resurrection exist, but nobody has found any truth to these rumors yet.
