MartialArts/HouseOfEndingsStyle
Contents
House of Endings Style
The Astrologers of the House of Endings developed this Style to reflect their portion of the sky in spirit and appearance. Its lesser Charms rotate around the Form, which participates in the power of the Crow. Adepts of this Style often take upon themselves the epithets associated with the Chosen of Saturn, particularly the title Reckoner. They dress in robes of translucent black gauze, and their weapons are never polished; they are dull mirrors reflecting only desolation.
This is a Celestial Martial Art. The House of Endings Style's form weapon (which it treats as an unarmed attack) is the wind-fire wheel, representing the Sword's wreath of withered flowers.
With thanks to NatalieD, Ben-San, BogMod, and others!
Charms
Students' Charms
Remembered Death
- Cost: 1 mote per die
- Type: Reflexive
- Duration: Instant
- Min. Ability: 2
- Min. Essence: 1
- Prereqs: None
Observing the violet weave of Destiny around him, the Sidereal remembers the moment of his demise and can act to change it. While he cannot escape inevitability, he is able to postpone his death until its properly appointed time. Drawing his attention away from a future attack, he defends himself with prescient facility. For each mote spent on this Charm, he adds 1 die to a Martial Arts parry attempt, up to a maximum of his Dexterity + Martial Arts. This Charm can create a parry from a nonexistent pool, or supplement an existing parry.
The martial artist' next attack suffers a dice penalty equal to one-half the number of motes spent on this Charm, rounding up. Furthermore, he can weave this defence with the Essence of the future; the Charm can be used even if he has already used a Charm this turn, but it counts as the next turn's single Charm use instead. This precludes the possibility of using a Combo next turn, however.
Optionally, instead of precluding Combo use, the Combos that include Remembered Death can be activated "preemptively", using its ability to be activated in the turn before its actually counting as a Charm use. In this case, the remainder of the Combo takes place in the next turn.
Corpse-Candle Antagonism
- Cost: 3 motes
- Type: Reflexive
- Duration: Instant
- Min. Ability: 3
- Min. Essence: 1
- Prereqs: Remembered Death
The Reckoner who knows this Charm can fly about on the guttering flames of dying lives; as they smoulder and fade, he gains speed and skill. This Charm can be activated when the Exalt makes a successful attack, but before damage is rolled. He multiplies his remaining movement for the turn by the number of HLs inflicted by the attack. In addition, if his next dice action is an unarmed Martial Arts attack, he adds his prior target's Essence in dice to his pool, provided that the two targets are different. This bonus counts toward the maximum dice bonus from Charms, and dissipates if it is not used in one turn. This Charm is incompatible with armour.
Senescence Offensive
- Cost: 2 motes/turn
- Type: Supplemental
- Duration: Instant
- Min. Ability: 3
- Min. Essence: 2
- Prereqs: Remembered Death
The threads of destiny stretch in every direction, even into the past and future. With this attack, the martial artist draws his target's Essence closer to old age, crippling him with the infirmities of a declining body and decaying mind. If the attack this Charm is associated with deals at least 1 HL of damage, the victim's movement speed is halved and the incremental increase of her multiple-action penalties is increased to the martial artist's Essence. These detriments persist for 1 turn per 2 motes invested in the Charm, to a maximum of the Gardener's Martial Arts.
The increment of a multiple-action penalty is ordinarily 1: a sequence of three actions is done at a penalty sequence of -3, -4, -5. Under the effects of an Essence 2 Senescence Offensive, the sequence of penalties would be -3, -5, -7.
Meridian-Rectifying Cut
- Cost: 5 motes
- Type: Simple
- Duration: Instant
- Min. Ability: 4
- Min. Essence: 2
- Prereqs: Corpse-Candle Antagonism, Senescence Offensive
With a wound across the victim's Essence nodes, the martial artist reminds her how good it is to be whole, by unweaving the flows that make her incomplete. One of the non-Instant Charms the victim has active instantly ends if the Tranqillity Knife deals at least 1 HL. If the martial artist is able to percieve Essence flows, through the effects of All-Encompassing Sorcerer's Sight, Telltale Symphony, or a similar Charm, he may choose the effect to sever, but otherwise it is chosen randomly.
Form
House of Endings Form
- Cost: 5 motes
- Type: Simple
- Duration: One Scene
- Min. Ability: 4
- Min. Essence: 3
- Prereqs: Meridian-Rectifying Cut
Enacting this Form, the House of Endings adept takes on the relaxed posture of a professional killer. By allowing the destinies of Endings to guide him, he can hurry people along to their ends, gaining a damage bonus to his attacks equal to the target's current wound penalty, ignoring any wound-penalty reducing effects, such as Insensible Corpse Technique.
The Sidereal's attitude of professionalism gains him the favor of the College of the Crow. Under its auspices, his attacks gain an air of fated certainty, and only those adept at escaping the strictures of Fate can avoid them. The maximum number of successes on a parry or dodge against the martial artist's unarmed Martial Arts attacks is equal to the defender's relevant Ability, plus her permanent Essence for defenders whose Essence is awakened. This favor is incompatible with effects that forcibly give the adept automatic successes on his attacks, such as the Five Jade Fury; for any given attack, the martial artist much choose which effect she benefits from.
Finally, Sidereal masters of the Colleges of Endings (those who have at least five dots in a particular College) are able to use unusual weapons with the House of Endings Style; deep initiation into the study of destiny allows them to manipulate these items in ways that reinforce the sorrowful edges of their fates. All of these unusual weapons are treated as wind-fire wheels.
- Corpse: Textbooks.
- Crow: Feathered cloaks.
- Haywain: Sleeves of a tattered robe.
- Rising Smoke: Good luck prayer strips.
- Sword: Wreaths of withered flowers.
This is a Martial Arts Form-type Charm and is incompatible with other Charms of like type; should the martial artist activate another Form, this one immediately ends. This Charm is incompatible with armour.
Masters' Charms
Dragonfly-and-Nymph Defence
- Cost: 3 motes, 1 Willpower
- Type: Simple
- Duration: One Scene
- Min. Ability: 4
- Min. Essence: 3
- Prereqs: House of Endings Form
The College of the Corpse governs the end of lives and metamorphic creatures. With his understanding of this College, the Reckoner can transform one defence into another, escaping his end in the process - he can apply any effect that specifies a Martial Arts parry to a dodge as well, and vice versa.
Nameless Salt, Distant Iron
- Cost: 5 motes, 1 Willpower
- Type: Simple
- Duration: One Scene
- Min. Ability: 5
- Min. Essence: 3
- Prereqs: Dragonfly-and-Nymph Defence
Settling his anima in the constellation of the Haywain, the Exalt makes his boundaries indistinct. His weapons become misty rings in his hands, and his outline shifts and blurs. To parry these half-unseen strikes, the defender must succeed at a Perception + Awareness roll at a difficulty of the martial artist's Essence; failure indicates that she miscalculated the attack's position and her parry fails.
In addition, while this Charm is in effect, the adept's own demise is blurred, and he may continue on fighting after he is reduced to the Incapacitated Health Level, though at a -4 penalty to his dice pools, for as many turns as his Essence. This Charm is incompatible with armour.
Weeping Surgeon Chant
- Cost: 3 motes
- Type: Supplemental
- Duration: Instant
- Min. Ability: 4
- Min. Essence: 3
- Prereqs: House of Endings Form
Softly singing the 53 Names of the Sword helps the adept to craft attacks so savage that they cause the heart to quail and wives to burst into tears upon seeing their wounds. An unarmed Martial Arts attack supported by this Charm inflicts wounds that cannot be healed naturally, and when healing is assisted by magic, they are healed as wounds of the next higher level of severity, with regard both to the penalty the wound assesses and its damage type (bashing, lethal, or aggravated).
Measure-of-Impediment Palm
- Cost: 7 motes
- Type: Supplemental
- Duration: Instant
- Min. Ability: 5
- Min. Essence: 3
- Prereqs: Weeping Surgeon Chant
With an opened hand and the mudra of the Rising Smoke, the Exalt pushes his opponent backward along his path toward a goal, causing his progress to break down and ruining any momentum he had collected. He makes an unarmed Martial Arts attack and determines his damage pool as normal; he may, instead of dealing damage, give an injury to the target's future. He may exchange any number of dice out of his damage pool after soak, for each die exchanged, one roll the target makes toward accomplishing a particular goal has its difficulty increased to the martial artist's Essence. This goal may be as simple as "Survive attack" or as complex and far-reaching as "Find and restore the Manse of my ancestors." This impediment manifests indiscriminately, at every available opportunity.
Ultimate Technique
Crow Fist
- Cost: 10 motes, 1 Willpower
- Type: Simple
- Duration: Instant
- Min. Ability: 5
- Min. Essence: 3
- Prereqs: Nameless Salt, Distant Iron and Measure-of-Impediment Palm
Making the Superior Sign of the Crow, the master of the House of Endings shatters the illusions and dreams of his opponents. This is an unarmed Martial Arts attack that can destroy any object that exists mainly in the mind: love, ambition, a career, an organizational structure, a problematic personality trait, and so forth. It can be used against this object itself--this is useful when dealing with relationships and organizations--or it can be used on a physical target whose mind contains the thing to be destroyed.
In the first case, the martial artist rolls his Martial Arts, adding successes equal to his Essence, at a difficulty of the highest Essence of beings that are a part of the object in question. Success indicates that the object is destroyed, though its collapse may not be immediate, especially in the case of those with high-Essence participants and particularly large structures like Dynastic succession wars or Guild influences on local economies. In general, the effects of such a collapse are felt within a radius of the martial artist's permanent Essence in miles, though collapsing a central entity supernaturally can naturally cause the collapse of things dependent on it.
In the second, the martial artist makes an unarmed Martial Arts attack; if he deals at least 1 HL, the object in his target's mind is destroyed, and he also loses an appropriate Virtue dot. This can't reduce Virtues of an Exalt below the values required by the Great Curse. For mortals, this loss is permanent; for targets with awakened Essence, the lost Virtue dots return at a rate of one per day. In addition, any target that loses a Virtue dot is incapable of channelling his Virtues normally for the remainder of the scene. This does not interfere with supernatural effects such as the nature of certain Sidereal Charms.
Finally, this attack is particularly sensitive to any declines of well-being in its target. If the House of Endings Form is active when this Charm is used against a living target, other dice penalties derived from the target's general state of ill health can contribute to the damage bonus that the Form creates, including impediments arising from maimings, poisons, and diseases, or from perturbed emotional states.
Comments
A very nice Style with nifty imagery. A couple of questions, though:
- What effect, if any, does Weeping Surgeon Chant have on at attack that already inflicts Aggravated damage?
- How does Tranquility Knife interact with Power Combat, which makes this Charm much more effective?
- Moxiane
Thanks!
- It makes it impossible to heal naturally, which means that it can't be healed at all unless the poor victim has some ability to downgrade damage from aggravated to lethal.
- You think so? I wouldn't modify it either way. The higher chance of damaging somebody is a feature of all high-Essence beings in powercombat, so although it does make damage-dependent effects rather more reliable, I don't know whether this is a problem.
- willows
Why does the Form have no cost? - Voidstate
