DBSInfernalExalted/Resistance

Resistance Charms

Gilded Cage Method

• Cost: 3 motes
• Duration: One turn
• Type: Simple
• Minimum Resistance: 3
• Minimum Essence: 2
• Prerequisite Charms: None

To a songbird’s owners, its captivity is no ugly thing. With the activation of this Charm, the Infernal’s armour folds into itself further and further, until only a symbolic fragment of their constraint remains – a collar, chain, anklet or handcuff. In this form the armour is not recognisable as such, but neither is it effective. The Essence spent on this Charm remains committed as long as this Charm is maintained. Deactivating the Charm causes the armour to unfurl once more, perfectly in place by the end of the turn. A character cannot transform more than one suit of armour in this fashion at a time, and must open up the first before a second is collapsed.

Iron Master’s Brand

• Cost: 3 motes to banish or summon
• Duration: Instant
• Type: Simple
• Minimum Resistance: 4
• Minimum Essence: 3
• Prerequisite Charms: Gilded Cage Method

Many would regard a dog as a free animal, but just because chains aren’t present doesn’t mean it isn’t enslaved. The Infernal hones her conceptualisation of her armour, and upon activation of this Charm its lines are illuminated in baleful light, animating and coalescing as its physical substance unravels into Elsewhere. The lines remain as a vivid green tattoo about her throat, wrist, ankle or chest. Upon re-activation of the Charm the process is reversed in an eyeblink and the armour is once more there. A suit of armour must be fully donned in order to banish it, and no more than one suit of armour may be stored Elsewere.

Steely Repression Prana

• Cost: 10 motes, 1 Willpower
• Duration: Instant
• Type: Simple
• Minimum Resistance: 4
• Minimum Essence: 3
• Prerequisite Charms: Iron Master’s Brand

We consider ourselves as free, but impose a thousand restrictions upon ourselves. With use of this Charm the Infernal unfurls her Caste Mark into a throbbing sigil, channeling all of her restraint and insecurity outward through her anima, creating a viscous, iridescent suit of armour around her. Within its glassy depths, witnesses can see half-glimpsed reflections of hurtful memories and dark fantasies unique to its creator.

Armour formed of this Charm has 10 lethal and bashing soak, with only a -1 penalty to manoeuvres requiring dexterity and grace. For an additional 3 motes, an Infernal using this charm can form a reflective veneer across the armour’s surface that mirrors attackers’ own repressed thoughts, imposing a -2 penalty. Blindfolding or closing one’s eyes removes this penalty, but usually has drawbacks of its own.

Pleasure’s Mirror

• Cost: None
• Duration: Permanent
• Type: Special
• Minimum Resistance: 3
• Minimum Essence: 2
• Prerequisite Charms: None

Infernals live lives filled with love and loathing, pleasure and pain. Many learn to appreciate all emotion and feeling in its own regard, aspiring toward some hedonistic ideal. An Infernal knowing this Charm can try to subvert pain to euphoria – after taking damage from an attack, she may roll Stamina + Resistance against a difficulty equal to her wound penalty. Success allows her to ignore all wound penalties until struck once more, when she must make another check. Should she fail, she has overstepped her boundaries and may not attempt the roll again for the rest of the scene, regardless of how often she is struck.

This does not allow a character to function after being reduced to Incapacitated or lower. The wound penalty still exists for the purposes of Charms such as Ever Finer Blades; it merely does not apply to the Exalt’s actions.

Beckoning Delirium

• Cost: None
• Duration: Permanent
• Type: Special
• Minimum Resistance: 4
• Minimum Essence: 2
• Prerequisite Charms: Pleasure’s Mirror

An Infernal knowing this Charm embraces the hallucinations, delirium and convulsions that accompany poisons and diseases, incorporating them into her normal actions without comment or apparent difficulty. She may roll her Stamina + Resistance against the penalties applied by diseases and toxins to ignore them in the same manner that she does against physical injury through use of Pleasure’s Mirror. This does not ease recovery from diseases or mitigate health levels taken from poisons.

Ever Finer Blades

• Cost: 5 motes
• Duration: One scene
• Type: Simple
• Minimum Resistance: 4
• Minimum Essence: 2
• Prerequisite Charms: Pleasure’s Mirror

Whilst learning this Charm, the Infernal undergoes a long ordeal of self-mutilation. Strands of snakeskin, vipers’ tongues, live worms and silk soaked in serpents’ blood are woven through her skin, along her muscles and bound along her bones. The mazy scars left by this ritual are quite remarkable and are likely to draw attention, but are bizarrely beautiful.

When struck in combat, her flesh may be torn open and limbs may be severed, but they remain tethered to her by these foul strands. More so, through the use of this Charm they are animate, only increasing her flexibility as she distorts broken limbs through odd angles and flails about with amputated limbs. An Exalt using this Charm receives a bonus to her Dexterity equal to her wound penalty; if the wound penalty increases over the course of the scene, so does her Dexterity bonus.

Shell Outlives Tortoise

• Cost: 3 motes
• Duration: One scene
• Type: Simple
• Minimum Resistance: 4
• Minimum Essence: 2
• Prerequisite Charms: Pleasure’s Mirror

As the Infernal learns this Charm, she painstakingly imbeds shards of chitin, hornets’ stings, beetle’s wings and pottery painted black with insects’ blood down through her soft flesh and into her skeleton. The patterned scars and protruding scales left behind are disfiguring but nonetheless possessed of otherworldly artistry.

When struck in combat, the Infernal’s skin and muscle may be torn away but her scaled skeleton remains, perfectly mobile and functional. An Exalt activating this Charm finds herself only more resilient for the purging of her weak flesh, and receives a bonus to her Stamina equal to her wound penalty; if her wound penalty increases, so does the Stamina bonus.

Cornered Rat’s Desperation

• Cost: 3 motes
• Duration: One scene
• Type: Simple
• Minimum Resistance: 4
• Minimum Essence: 2
• Prerequisite Charms: Pleasure’s Mirror

Throughout the process of learning this Charm, the Infernal stitches thousands of slivers of rats’ muscle in winding layers across her skin, pins it into place with weasels’ fangs and siphons rodents’ blood into her veins to fuel it. The veneer of raw flesh that results is as horrific as it is darkly fascinating.

When struck in combat, the Infernal may have her flesh scoured and bones broken, but the darkly glistening matrix remains. An Exalt activating this Charm finds herself only more powerful for the loss of weaker tissue beneath, adding a bonus equal to her wound penalty to her Strength. If her wound penalty increases, so does the Strength bonus.

Entrap The Gracious Guest

• Cost: 6 motes, 1 Willpower
• Duration: Instant
• Type: Supplemental
• Minimum Resistance: 5
• Minimum Essence: 3
• Prerequisite Charms: Ever Finer Blades, Shell Outlives Tortoise, Cornered Rat’s Desperation

A spider lives within its lonely prison, beautiful but hideous. Occasionally, it has guests, who share its lonely existence until their hideous throes meet an end. Her body already defiled and deformed, the Infernal weaves spiderweb across her skin and through her vile additions, pinioning it into place with arachnid’s fangs and welding with corrosive venom. She appears as a monstrosity of immaculate creation.

The Infernal may activate this webwork when touching another, either through simple brushing or through an attack. The spiderweb comes alive, threading into her victim’s flesh and lacing itself into their nerves, sharing the Infernal’s agony. The victim suffers a wound penalty equal to that of the Infernal at the time the Charm was used on them, that does not recede. Only by extracting the webwork (an extended Dexterity + Medicine check at a difficulty equal to the Infernal’s Essence, requiring one hour and a lethal health level per attempt and 5 net successes) can the pain recede. This Charm is explicitly allowed to be a part of a Combo with Charms of other Abilities.

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Feedback

The only thing I have to say about these is that Share Feelings deserves a name as cool as its effect. - willows

Ditto; it was 3.30am when I finished the Charm, so I was a little creatively exhausted. Ideas, anyone? ...DeathBySurfeit

Web of Longing and Defeat? Web of Longing and Deceit? Entrap the Gracious Guest? - Nikink

• Oooh, good idea - inspired 'Blood and Honey Hospitality' but I like Entrap the Gracious Guest too. Decisions, decisions...DeathBySurfeit
• Decisionated! ...DeathBySurfeit