Consumption, The Charcoal March Of
Spiders
The Student’s Sutra of
Consumption: Once, there was a small maiden…
Unnatural Many-Step Stride
Cost: 6 motes, 1 Willpower
Duration: One scene
Type: Simple
Minimum Martial Arts: 5
Minimum Essence: 4
Prerequisite Charms: None
…whose skill was great enough
to climb a whirlwind over water.
The character scuttles on the
threads of fate like a pattern spider. He can run through or stand upon the air
as easily as on the ground. He can reflexively spend a mote of Essence to
dematerialize from the beginning of his initiative to the beginning of his next
initiative, allowing him to become as invisible and intangible as those who
weave fate. This does not count against his actions for the turn. When he is
under this Charm’s influence, the Sidereal’s gait both disturbs and horrifies
those who see it. Except for the Sidereal’s allies, the player of a witness who
does not have this Charm must succeed at a difficulty 1 Valor roll each turn,
or her character loses her action.
Dance Of The Hungry Spider
Cost: 8 motes
Duration: Five turns
Type: Reflexive
Minimum Martial Arts: 5
Minimum Essence: 4
Prerequisite Charms: Unnatural
Many-Step Stride
Arrows feel upon her, forcing
her to descend.
This Charm emulates a spider’s
motion, balanced on six legs and striking with two, never lacking the leverage
― regardless of what might tangle its blows ― for a lightning
retreat or advance. The character beings a shuffling,
sliding, shifting kata, her feet constantly in motion and nearly impossible for
mortal eyes to track. Only the third of three separate, successful
attempts can sweep her, knock her down, or hold her or make a targeted attack
against her lower body.
When the character uses this
kata, she can shift herself almost instantaneously out of the path of a blow.
Becoming aware of a physical attack allows her to glide away, moving up to
twice her Dexterity in yards. If the attack can hit her at this range ―
as with archery or the Lightning Strike Style ― this Charm increases any
associated range penalties. Attacks that must hit her before she moves away
(such as hand-to-hand attacks if she puts more than three yards between herself
and her attacker) suffer a dice pool penalty equal to half the character’s
initiative for that turn, rounded up. After the first attack, the attacker must
move into range again to hit her at all. Similarly, the character can glide
forward up to twice her Dexterity in yards to make any of her unarmed Martial
Arts attacks. Attempts to parry her attack suffer a dice pool penalty equal to
half her initiative for the turn, rounded up. Dodging her requires less
awareness of her angle of approach; dodge attempts only suffer a penalty equal
to her permanent Essence.
When a character uses this Charm
to dart quickly through her enemies, splitting her Martial Arts action to
maximize the extra movement derived from this Charm, it is sometimes called the
Dance of the Pouncing Spider. When she uses it to skate away from a barrage of
arrows, quickly exceeding their maximum range, it is the Dance of the Spider in
the Rain.
Maw Of Dripping Venom
Cost: 5 motes
Duration: Instant
Type: Supplemental
Minimum Martial Arts: 5
Minimum Essence: 4
Prerequisite Charms: None
But the
Essence burning within her set the arrows afire.
The character’s fingers rain
across her opponent like a thousand poisoned fangs, tainting the target’s
Essence so that his soul begins to dissolve from the inside. The character
makes a normal unarmed Dexterity + Martial Arts attack, which does normal
damage. In addition, the target begins to hemorrhage Essence. He loses 5 motes
every turn, exactly as if he had spent them. This effect lasts one turn for
each damage die rolled. Multiple applications of this effect are cumulative.
When the target runs out of motes, he collapses, comatose, for a number of days
equal to the character’s Martial Arts. Storyteller characters may die outright.
Given three turns of physical contact with a comatose target, a character with
this Charm can suck out and devour the target’s soul. This restores the
devourer’s temporary Essence to its normal maximum. The target does not move on
to the afterlife. If the character consumes a Celestial Exalt, she will grow
sick sometime within the next three days and spit out the indigestible
Celestial Essence, suffering six dice of lethal damage in the process, which
ignores armor and soak.
Rain Of Unseen Threads
Cost: 8 motes
Duration: Instant
Type: Extra action
Minimum Martial Arts: 5
Minimum Essence: 4
Prerequisite Charms: None
She answered the arrows’ flight
with a storm of her own.
The character casts forth a
number of hair-fine threads equal to her permanent Essence. Each can attempt
one of the following maneuvers, at a range of (the Sidereal’s Essence x 10)
yards:
Make reflexive Perception +
Awareness or Perception + Martial Arts checks at difficulty 4 for other
characters to see the threads. Otherwise, except for attacks with a visible
weapon, targets are unaware of the attack and can only use defenses that
specifically state they work on attacks the character is not aware of. The
threads are tangible and slightly reflective, and opponents can use stunts to
make them easier to spot or predict.
Nest Of Living Strands
Cost: 15 motes, 1 Willpower
Duration: One scene
Type: Simple
Minimum Martial Arts: 5
Minimum Essence: 4
Prerequisite Charms: Rain of
Unseen Threads
And the small maiden began
Hundreds of near-invisible
filaments spun from the character’s Essence launch from her hands, whipping
around physical and spiritual leverage points and weaving amongst themselves to
snarl and tangle all opponents within (the Sidereal’s Essence x 10) yards. Each
turn, the Sidereal’s player reflexively rolls Dexterity + Martial Arts. Enemies
inside the Charm’s area of effect, or who enter that area before the
character’s next turn, suffer a cumulative penalty to their dice pools for all
physical actions equal to half the number of successes. They receive the same
penalty to their natural movement rate in yards. This penalty fades by one die
and one yard per turn that the victim spends outside the radius, as the threads
reluctantly disentangle themselves.
The weave of threads moves with
the character, easily catching new opponents brought into the radius and
twitching out of the way of those she wishes to give unhampered passage. If the
character does not keep moving, the threads thicken toward the point of
visibility, first as glints of reflected light in the air, then a faint visual
impression like cobweb and ultimately (after five minutes of stillness) an
opaque forest of webbing around the character, as impassible ― for those
she does not offer passage to ― as stone.
Charcoal March Of Spiders Form
Cost: 12 motes
Duration: One scene
Type: Simple
Minimum Martial Arts: 5
Minimum Essence: 5
Prerequisite Charms: One
complete martial art (all Charms), Dance of the Hungry Spider, Maw of Dripping
Venom, Nest of Living Strands
To climb
the waterspout again.
The character moves in the
fashion of an arachnid sifu, her hands weaving lazily through three sets of
interwoven kata. Such is her grace and coordination, in Essence as in body,
that she may take three fully independent physical actions in each turn. For
example, she might invoke a full dodge when attacked, then invoke Flight of
Mercury while making an ordinary Martial Arts attack and, finally, split her
dice pool to use Maw of Dripping Venom against two nearby opponents.
Full independent actions follow
exactly the same rules as taking single actions on multiple successive turns,
except that:
In addition, if the character
chooses to use this ability in a given turn, she cannot take any non-reflexive
dice actions depending on Social or Mental Attributes. (This final limit is not
intrinsic to fully independent actions, but a feature of this Form.) The
character does not have to use this ability in a given turn if she would prefer
to use an extra action Charm, use a Combo or take a Social or Mental action.
Characters using the Charcoal
March of Spiders Form automatically receive the benefits of the Unnatural
Many-Step Stride and Dance of the Hungry Spider in every turn.
Characters cannot use more than
one Martial Arts Form-type Charm at a time.
Cannibalistic Heritage Technique
Cost: 20 motes, 1 Willpower
Duration: Instant
Type: Reflexive
Minimum Martial Arts: 6
Minimum Essence: 6
Prerequisite Charms: Charcoal
March of Spiders Form
The Elder Sutra of
Consumption: The maiden became a mother…
Just as the widow spider devours
her mate to feed a thousand children, the character consumes the force of one
blow to give rise to a wind of vengeance. She may use this Charm immediately
after someone successfully attacks her. The swirling pattern of her hands forms
a raw vortex to draw in and disrupt the Essence and physical substance of the
attack. She immediately inflicts her Dexterity + Martial Arts in dice of
unblockable, undodgeable lethal damage against an unarmed attacker or shatters
any mortal weapon used against her. If this kills an unarmed attacker or
destroys an armed attacker’s weapon, she takes no damage from the attack. Her
opponent can use a perfect block or a perfect dodge to avoid the vortex damage
― however, this requires aborting the original attack, and again, the
Sidereal takes no damage. Either way, from the heart of the vortex, the Exalt
may issue a number of unarmed counterattacks equal to her Martial Arts score,
doubling their raw damage. She can use this Charm in response to a counterattack
Charm such as Crimson Palm Counterattack but does not receive counterattacks
against any counterattack Charm.
Thumbnail Spider March
Cost: 12 motes, 1 Willpower
Duration: Instant
Type: Extra action
Minimum Martial Arts: 6
Minimum Essence: 6
Prerequisite Charms:
Cannibalistic Heritage Technique
And to one child she said, “I
have many things to show you.”
In the jungles of the East, one
sometimes finds nests of thumbnail spiders: thousands or millions of tiny
spiders sharing a funnel-shaped web. They normally wait for prey to fall into
their home but are more than happy to swarm over anyone or anything that
arouses their ire. When something destroys their web, such spiders migrate for
miles, devouring everything they pass, until they decide upon a new home. A
character using this Charm is every bit as destructive. He moves up to (his
Essence x 10) yards and makes three Martial Arts attacks at his full dice pool.
Every opponent within five yards of his path suffers the effects of each
attack. Each dodges or blocks individually. If the targets have defensive
effects that hurt attackers ― such as
counterattacks, spines or an angry invocation of the Shield of Mars ― the
character is immune to the effect. The blur of his passing fist or foot fades
away into nothingness as the counterattack triggers, for the death of a single
spider does not hurt the swarm. The Exalt’s attacks affect both material and
spiritual targets with equal facility, and the character can launch these
attacks while dematerialized.
Characters using Thumbnail
Spider March do not receive offensive benefits from reflexive movement Charms
such as the Dance of the Hungry Spider, although they can still receive
defensive benefits.
Jumping Spider Strike
Cost: 20 motes, 1 Willpower
Duration: Instant
Type: Supplemental
Minimum Martial Arts: 6
Minimum Essence: 6
Prerequisite Charms:
Cannibalistic Heritage Technique
And to another, she said,
“You may rest within my home, and eat; no need to fly.”
In the South, surrounded by the
sands, there stands the great idol Ma-Un-Enle, and
there are spiders that come before it. Sometimes, a spider hears Ma-Un-Enle speak a name, and it bows with all its legs, and it
walks out into the wind. It buries itself under the sands, growing ever larger
with age, for hundreds or thousands of years. Then, when the person whose name
it has heard comes within 10 miles, it strikes in one smooth bound. A character
using this Charm can spring at any visible target, issuing an unarmed attack at
the completion of that leap.
Against a person, this attack
does normal damage, adding the character’s Essence in automatic successes to
the damage roll. In addition, the target’s player must make a reflexive opposed
roll of Stamina + Resistance against a difficulty equal to the Sidereal’s Essence;
on failure, the force of the attack reduces the point of impact (such as the
target’s head or chest) to a cloud of blood and dust. The target has one turn
left to live, or rather, one turn before her Essence realizes that she should
be dead. No mortal medicine can help. The application of a
magical effect that heals one or more health levels makes her Incapacitated but
stable, but with one less dot of permanent Stamina.
Treat attacks against inanimate
objects as feats of strength used to break them; the character’s total on the
Feats of Strength table is (her Essence x 5). This does mean a minimum total of
30 ― the character automatically shatter cliff faces, but a powerful
Manse might only lose its gate.
Water Spider Bite
Cost: 20 motes, 1 Willpower
Duration: Instant
Type: Supplemental
Minimum Martial Arts: 6
Minimum Essence: 6
Prerequisite Charms:
Cannibalistic Heritage Technique
And to a third, she said,
“How beautiful you are.”
In the oceans
of the West live green hunting spiders, bulbous and hand-sized, scurrying along
the underside of the surface as easily as if it were a web. They kill fish ― sometimes, even great sharks or
whales ― for their meat, paralyzing them with a pinprick bite and
burrowing into their flesh, floating to the surface years later, sated, when
they have eaten it all. A character with this Charm possesses a touch every bit
as deadly. With one swift blow, she can render an enemy helpless and begin to
devour him for his Essence.
To use this Charm, she makes a
normal unarmed attack. If she succeeds and does even one health level of
damage, she also paralyzes the Essence of her opponent. Paralysis means that
the target cannot spend motes, cannot regain Willpower or Essence and receives
the benefits of the Heartless Maiden Trance. He can overcome this effect for
one turn by spending a Willpower point and having his player succeed at a
reflexive Stamina + Occult roll against a difficulty equal to the character’s Essence.
He must do this successfully a number of times equal to the character’s Martial
Arts score to completely free himself from the effects. Meanwhile, until the
victim is completely free, the martial artist can spend his motes of Essence as
if they were her own. This can invoke the target’s anima banner but does not
increase the Sidereal’s.
When a character uses this Charm
on a consenting subject, allowing her to draw on that subject’s Essence, it is
known instead as Seven-Leg Walking.
Pattern Spider Touch
Cost: 20 motes, 1 Willpower
Duration: Instant
Type: Supplemental
Minimum Martial Arts: 6
Minimum Essence: 6
Prerequisite Charms: Thumbnail
Spider March, Jumping Spider Strike, Water Spider Bite
And as each heard her words
and came to the center of her web,
The master of this Charm learns
the eight secret atemi practiced by the firstmade of
the pattern spiders, Asna, who dwells surrounded by her teeming young in a
sanctum web larger than the Realm. With a successful unarmed attack, the
character can change her target, reweaving the structure of the target’s
existence from the Essence outward. This causes one of the following effects:
This replaces the normal damage
of the attack.
The reapplication of this Charm,
extremely potent benedictions such as the Endowment spirit Charm and specific
transformative agents such as Wondrous Lunar Transformation can return
transformed targets to normalcy. Gathering the pieces of elementally transformed
targets before returning them to normalcy is advisable. Normally, these methods
provide an immediate restoration. However, target transformed into other people
and back may have difficulty relinquishing their new memories and recovering
the old ones. Nothing can remake the unmade.
This Charm does not affect
tattooed Lunar Exalted, whose bodies reject external transformation. This
applies even to the final version of the Charm.
Grandmother Spider Mastery
Cost: 20 motes, 1 Willpower
Duration: One turn
Type: Simple
Minimum Martial Arts: 6
Minimum Essence: 7
Prerequisite Charms: Pattern
Spider Touch
She ate them.
To master this style is to
approach the grandeur of Asna Firstborn herself. When the character strikes,
she does not seem to move so much as to divide into many warriors at once. She
may cast forth endless invisible filaments of web, as with Rain of Unseen
Threads, or simply strike so quickly as to occupy many locations
simultaneously. In either case, fighting her does not resemble opposing the master
herself so much as challenging an army of her young: The attacks rain down from
every side, skittering inward in the unsettling many-stepped strides of the
form to surround and bewilder her foes.
The character applies each
unarmed Martial Arts attack she makes this turn against all visible opponents,
twice each, regardless of distance. Grandmother Spider Mastery, as a simply
Charm that cannot be in a Combo, gives no benefit to characters without access
to fully independent actions. (That is, characters not using Charcoal March of
Spiders Form.)