FrivYeti/SWLIHNCharms
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Mental Activity Charms
Methodolgy of Unwasted Hours</b>
<b>Cost: None, Mins: Essence 3, Type: Permanent Keywords: None Duration: Permanent Prerequisites: Essence-Dissecting Stare, Any She Who Lives In Her Name Excellency
Humans need to sleep, to restructure their minds and to revitalize their bodies. However, as far as She Who Lives In Her Name is concerned, sleep and dreams are merely distractions from the more pressing needs of her servants, and is something that she is happy to do without. By purchasing this Charm, her servants take on a fraction of her nature.
Once this Charm is purchased, the character does not sleep. Instead, when she would sleep, she passes into a fugue state, during which she focuses exclusively on a single task, preferably one that is primarily mental in nature. The character may spend the night researching the habits of a kingdom she wishes to visit, performing thaumaturgical rituals, constructing strange devices or simply cataloging her treasures, but she must do something. The night counts as full time spent performing that one task, with all of the benefits that this gives. She may even activate her Charms or Combos, provided that she does so only to improve or support the task she is undergoing. The character still counts as sleeping, and can recover Willpower upon waking as usual for sleep. Her awareness of her surroundings during this time is strictly limited, focused on the task she has set her mind to, and any attempt to draw her attention will be the same as trying to wake her. She has no conscious control over her actions, and her memories of them when she wakes will be extremely spotty (knowledge gained from research will be there, but she may not even realize it at first, for example).
There are two downsides to this effect. The first is that such devotion does not adapt to change. If the character's task becomes impossible for her to accomplish, due to her materials being removed or her catalogue being completed, she will instantly and instinctively begin a new task, following the same guidelines as above but dedicated to her urge. If this is also impossible, she will promptly wake up as though from sleep, and gain a dot of Limit for shattering her perfect order. Furthermore, the character may not choose to forgo this effect; she must always have something to do before she rests, or else disaster will strike. Infernals who learn this Charm have been known to spend long nights engaged in obsessive-compulsive activities simply because they had nothing more productive onhand, leaving them exposed when morning comes.
A character who knows both this Charm and the Essence 5 upgrade of Running to Forever may choose whether to dash through the night or spend it in study and work in order to count as resting.
World-Shattering Charms
Shattered-Sphere Fury</b>
<b>Cost: 10m, 1w, Mins: Essence 3, Type: Simple Keywords: Combo-Basic, Shaping, Obvious Duration: Instant Prerequisites: Pattern-Reassertion Touch
She Who Lives In Her Name refuses to acknowledge the existence of this Charm, for its nature fundamentally appalls her, and the fact that she developed it speaks volumes about her desires that she prefers not to consider. The fact that Infernals might learn this Charm as well disgusts her, but she cannot withhold it from those who seek it, and a few of her champions have already taken steps along its pathways.
Using this Charm, the character strips away a piece of her own soul in order to strike at the natures of those around her. Upon activation, the character removes up to (Essence) dots from any of the following Traits - Attributes, Abilities, Virtues, Willpower, or Essence. No Trait may be reduced below 1.
The power then lashes out at everyone within (Essence x10) yards, friend or foe. The character rolls her newly-reduced (Essence + Willpower). Any targets with an Essence rating lower than the number of successes rolled lose the same dots that the character lost. This cannot reduce any of their own Traits below 1.
Damage done by this Charm is not permanent; instead, it recovers at a rate of one dot per day, in whatever order the player who activated the Charm wishes. If magic is used to heal this damage, treat each dot of lost Traits as a seperate Shaping effect.
At Essence 5+, the character may choose to spend any number of additional Willpower points when activating this Charm, and choose that many of her Traits. Affected enemies lose one less dot of those Traits, but they may be reduced to 0. At Essence 7+, the character gains the terrifying ability to permanently strip power away. This costs an additional point of Willpower, but all dots lost by both the character and her targets are lost forever. Dots lost in this manner may never be recovered.
Mind's Flame Extinguished</b>
<b>Cost: None, Mins: Essence 4, Type: Permanent Keywords: None Duration: Permanent Prerequisites: Shattered-Sphere Fury
This Charm permanently upgrades Shattered-Sphere Fury. Instead of targeting Traits, the character may target concepts directly within her own and her targets' minds - as usual, this invocation affects both the Infernal and those around her. A single concept targeted in this way counts as four dots worth of Traits.
Characters who lose access to a concept can no longer properly conceptualize it. Any Intimacies and Motivations directly related to the concept are lost. Losing a concept does not prevent a character from interacting with it, but they rationalize any exposure as a seperate thing. For example, a character who loses the concept of "red" would see the color as grey, and attempts to explain that it is a separate color fail. A character who loses the concept of her brother would not recognize him, interacting with him each time she met him as a new person. A character losing the concept of "Essence" could not study effects to increase her Essence pool or to respire Essence faster, but might still recognize that she could use her Charms more quickly after resting in a Manse and would certainly still reflexively spend Essence when activating her Charms.
It is ultimately up to the discretion of the Storyteller what the removal of a given concept from a target's perceptions and thoughts might do, but it should not remove their ability to function (unless a vast swath of concepts are removed). Those few Infernal scholars who know of this Charm speculate that She Who Lives In Her Name may have used this Charm against many lesser Shinma to cause them to forget themselves, removing them from Creation in her devastating final attack.
