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Abyssal Lore Charms

Gifting the Knowledge Lost (reworked Teaching Incomprehensible Truths)

  Cost: 12m, 2wp; Mins: Lore 5, Essence 3; Type: Simple
  Keywords: Touch, Avatar (1)
  Duration: One Week
  Prerequisite Charms: Will-Feasting Onslaught

This charm enables the Abyssal to force a person's past lives upon them, enabling them to quickly absorb the information. Those so gifted and willing to recieve the training find no rest in their dreams, as they are trained over and over. They receive no roll for willpower upon waking, and with physical skills often find inexplicable bruises from their dreamtime escapades. The attributes and abilities that can be improved are as Harmonious Academic Methodology and with a rebuy at Essence 4, Legendary Scholar Curriculum. This is not a true Mirror and does not require any effort other than the expenditure of willpower and commitment of essence. The limit of the abilities or attributes trained are double the user's Abyss Mastery. The Abyssal may target 100 x their Essence beings with any one activation of the charm.

Note: This charm has no effect upon the unwilling target. And at no time can the target learn above their own limits of Essence.

Fulfillment In Emptiness

  Cost: --; Mins: Lore 5, Essence 5; Type: Permanent
  Keywords: None
  Duration: Permanent
  Prerequisite Charms: Gifting the Knowledge Lost x 2

With the power of this charm, Gifting the Knowledge Lost becomes far improved. Mortals may be trained in how to raise their Essence through a series of philosophical teachings on the nature of life and death by their own past selves. They are treated as gaining the Enlightened Essence blight. The ghosts of lives past may teach any magic that the target is capable of learning, even those the past lives knew naught of in life. Also, while they become Creatures of Darkness and Death, they are able to respire normally within and without the Underworld. But these things are almost as much benefit as blight, and there is a final curse laid on them. Once their Essence rises, they become a living nexus around which the energies of death swirl. This makes even difficult Arts of the Dead seem easy, as ghosts gain three dice to their Arcanoi to affect the area (and of course the individual herself) around the new scion of death.

There is one caveat: all mortals who benefit from this charm are capable of mastering the Iron Circle of Necromancy, where it was not possible before for their merely human souls. Those who use Necromancy though soon discover the price for their dark enlightenment. Rather than spending willpower, some of their own lifeforce is torn from them in the form of 1 lethal health level for every willpower that was needed to activate Necromancy.

Questing the Mind's Void

  Cost: 8m, 2wp; Mins: Lore 3, Essence 3; Type: Simple (dramatic action)
  Keywords: Avatar (1) 
  Duration: Indefinite
  Prerequisite Charms: Will-Feasting Onslaught

Abyssals are creatures of death, and as many beings have been buried, far more secrets have been placed alongside the bodies. The Abyssal may go into a forbidden trance, seeking information from the dark source of some of their powers. In effect, they go on a vision quest within themselves. The length of this quest should be related to the nature and power of the secret. While willpower and essence expenditures should be recorded, traits spent in the quest are restored upon awakening.

The vision itself takes the quester through landscapes of both memory and terrible hopes, wishes, and fears. The figures are drawn from both the Abyssal and through their connection to the darker powers. They travel through pasts that never were or should have been, a troubled present, and may end in a future seemingly without any but the bleakest of hopes. By transversing these places in space and time, they come to understand something that lay within, yet always without them, always.

The Abyssal makes an Intelligence + Lore + Abyss Lore + stunt for the quest at a difficulty set by the ST based on the value of the secret. A 0 threshold success gives a mysterious and difficult to understand answer. 1 threshold gives an answer in symbols, but easy to understand given time. 3 success threshold gives you the answer perfectly clear... except the Abyss doesn't understand mortal languages all that well and probably gave it to you in a mix of them. With 5 there were some minor questions to the meaning, but generally, you understand it perfectly.

At Essence 4+, the Abyssal may without cost train within his dreams, allowing him to train, as if under the tutelage of someone, at (Essence/2, rounded up) speeds while doing other things while awake. The learning speed if not already instant still requires 1 day minimum.

Abyssal Charm Cascade Errata (Lore)

  • Essence Draining Touch and Will-Feasting Onslaught count people who are unable to resist appreciably (such as the bound) as unresisting.
  • Breath-Draining Prana is always Obvious to those targets with some form of Essence use ability. For these targets, their Dodge and Parry Defense Values suffer a -2, but they are still able to defend themselves, severing the bond the charm build before it is completed.
  • Dream Slaying Defense creates a shell where those inside are protected from Shaping effects from outside the shell. Note, this does not protect those inside from this kind of attack within the shell, or those outside.
  • Nightmare-Carving Murmur does not grant Dissonance. Similarly, any equivalent sacrifice and successful Prayer to an underworld force or deity will allow the removal of grave goods permanently, with Enduring Dead Dreams.