The Northern Star
Role Play of the Seas
Tribal Gifts:
Pearl Weepers:
Basic:
Calm
Initial Cost: One Gnosis
Challenge: Social vs. target
Retest: Empathy
Followup Cost: 0-5 Mental Traits
Effect: You soothe another's anger. If they are in a Frenzy provoked by anything except Rage-healing, they immediately regain control, leaving Frenzy. Otherwise, they lose Rage instead -- one Rage plus one for each Mental Trait you spent, up to a limit of half their current Rage (round in the target's favor). You have to choose the Mental Traits you spend without necessarily knowing how many Rage your target will lose; extra Mental Traits you spent have no effect.
Jam Weapon
Cost: One Gnosis
Challenge: Social vs. target
Retest: Repair
Effect: You mystically peace-bind every mundane, man-made weapon that your target carries; they all simply stop having any ability to deal damage. This has no effect on Fetish weapons.
Duration: One Scene or Hour
Water Scent:
Activation Time: At will
Effect: Your scent is washed away from the world as if you had just stepped through pure water. All challenges trying to track you by scent suffer two-Trait penalty.
Under Current:
Required: You must remain still, make no noise, and don't interacting with your environment.
Effect: You can render yourself invisible to all senses, technology, and even spirits. You are undetectable as long as you are perfectly still and quiet.
Duration: Until you move, make noise, or interact with your environment.
Tranquil Waters:
Challenge: Social vs. target
Retest: Empathy
Effect: You lure a target into a sense of peace, a quiet and calmed state. Some Pearl Weepers use this gift to guide their target away from harm, but with it you may also do the opposite. The target is at a -3 social traits to resist your advances or suggestions, most will follow you with ease. Howver if either to caster or the target are injured the effects are lost. This gift cannot force someone to be self-destructive or defy their Nature. The target is also at a +5 to resist Frenzy in this state.
Duration: Five minutes, or until a loud noise or attack jolts the target out of the effect or if harm comes to the Caster.
Lungs of the Sea
Cost: One Willpower
Challenge: Willpower Vs. Target Willpower
Effect: Pearl Weepers use this Gift to force someone who naturally breathes air to grow gills, forcing the individual to “breathe” water as if she were a fish. A Pearl Weeper may use this Gift to enable a friendly human to breathe underwater when visiting the Sea. However as much as this gift may be used for the positive and the sharing of worlds with the airbreathers, it may also be used to lure those the Pearl Weepers are seeking vengence on, taking away the effects to allow their targets to drown or manouver them into the depths where others may be waiting with readied deathly intentions.
Duration: One Scene or Hour, or until the Pearl Weeper wishes to remove the effects.
Healing Tears:
Cost: One Gnosis
Effect: You can bring yourself to cry at will, allowing your eyes to weep pearlescent tears that you may catch into a vial or perhaps cry directly onto the wounded. This gift will not work on your own wounds but it may help another. Or perhaps a vial of Healing Tears may even be used as a barginning chip with another being. Your normal tears will not have the same properties and one expendature of Gnosis is equal to a single health level of healing. Your tears do not have an expiration date however. This gift heals all forms of damage up to and including AGG.
Fish Hooks
Cost: One Rage
Effect: On your next successful claw attack you bury your claws into your victim, where they stay stuck after they rip from your fingertips. Until the victim takes the time to pull them out (which takes a full turn), they will suffer a 2-Trait penalty to all their challenges. Your claws take a full turn to regenerate and can't be used in that time.
Duration: The claws remain ready until your next successful claw attack or until the end of the scene, whichever comes first. The trait penalty lasts until the victim pulls the claws out with a full-turn action.
Spirit Speech
Activation Time: Always on
Effect: You understand spirit languages used around you, and you can communicate back in kind. Because relatively few spirits can communicate in the languages of the sea (let alone human speech), this gift is absolutely invaluable for navigating the spirit worlds.
Breach
Activation Time: Activate instead of taking your regular movement
Challenge: Physical vs. Storyteller-set difficulty
Retest: Athletics
Effect: Regardless of their tribe, Merfolk can use this Gift to propel themselves toward the surface, leaping great distances out of the water. Helpful in scouting out the “big picture” above water, this Gift is also useful in boarding ships. Though Sea-born Merfolk seldom use it, the Gift functions on land as well as in the water.
Intermediate:
Glimmer:
Frequency: Once per target per scene
Challenge: Social vs. target
Retest: Empathy
Effect: You flood a target's mind with visions of Gaia's wonders; you fill their heart with love of all Her works. They sit down and quietly contemplate these glorious revelations for the duration. The effect ends if they are attacked.
Duration: One Scene, or until attacked
Serenity:
Cost: One Gnosis
Challenge: Mental vs. target
Retest: Empathy
Followup Cost: 0-5 Mental Traits
Effect: You inspire a deep sense of peace in your target that blocks their ability to spend Rage.
Duration: One turn, plus one per Mental Trait spent
Pearls:
Cost: One Gnosis
Challenge: Mental Vs Storyteller
Effect: As per their name the Pearl Weepers may cry their milky tears and use their Gnosis to bring their weeping into a solid single pearl, that can be used for currency when they desperately need it. This has bought more than one Pearl Weeper's life before now. The pearls are near flawless every time and can fetch a very good price, however it is not advised to do so a lot as the caster will begin to feel like they are giving away a part of themselves and can mentally suffer for it.
Jagged Harpoon:
Cost: One Rage
Effect: With this gift, you need never be unarmed. You shapeshift your arm itself into a jagged Spear like weapon. Your attacks with this blade enjoy a 3-Trait bonus, deal two Aggravated damage, and rely on the Melee Ability for retests. Gifts that enhance your claws may enhance your harpoon as well. You automatically suffer one level of Lethal damage if you attempt any blade-to-blade maneuvers like parries, and more than three such levels of damage renders your arm broken and unusable.
Duration: Until you choose to end the effect
Usha's Rush:
Initial Cost: One Rage
Effect: You swim or even run at ten times your normal speed, you can swim or run for great distances without exhaustion.
Duration: Eight hours or until you do something other that run, whichever comes first.
Advanced:
Forms of the Sea:
Initial Cost: Two Gnosis
Effect:A Pearl Weeper may transform her body into liquid so that she can slide through narrow openings such as pipes, or through cracks or under doors. The Rokea may also maintain cohesion in this form and “walk” in the appearance of a watery human shape. By forcing herself down a target’s throat with a Physical test, the Pearl Weeper may drown an enemy. She may remain in this form for one hour for each permanent Gnosis Trait she possesses. Her body neither evaporates nor freezes naturally, and she receives a Gnosis test to resist supernatural manipulation that would force it to do otherwise. If someone or
something splits the body, the character cannot reform until her parts are brought together again. She cannot use attacks that depend on a solid physical form, such as bites or claws, but she can drown an opponent by making a successful Physical test and holding the opponent until he drowns.
Mirage:
Cost: One Gnosis
Effect: Merfolk are creatures of two worlds and of neither; this Gift makes that metaphor literal. Parts of your body can escape attacks by flickering into other realities. You never need to devote an action to dodging (so you can always dodge as passive resistance in combat), and you gain a free retest on all Dodge-related Challenges.
Duration: Scene or Hour
Help me
Required: A mundane human target
Frequency: Once per session
Effect: You invite the assistance of an ordinary human, and they give their aid enthusiastically and freely. They will help within their normal nature and means: a banker might lend a large sum of money, a hit man might offer to kill someone, or a grandmother might bake you cookies -- but grandma won't offer to kill anyone (unless she's also a hit man).
Duration: The rest of the session