The Northern Star
Role Play of the Seas
Tribal Gifts:
Triton:
Basic:
Barnacle Hide
Required: Any form apart from Homid
Cost: One Gnosis
Effect: Barnacles and other sea life have attached themselves to your body over the years of your life under the ocean, as such you may envoke their strength in your defense. Making yourself a vicious carapice that will serve as a good shield for you in a fight. Anyone you grapple, pin or tackle suffers a level of Aggravated damage. Anyone who strikes you with bare flesh suffers the same one level of damage. The attacker may avoid this drawback by bidding two additional traits to avoid the barnacles when striking. (The extra bid is not itself a called shot.)
Duration: One Scene or Hour (may be dismissed at will)
Spit Teeth:
Challenge: Physical Vs Target Physical
Retest: Athletics
Effect: With this Gift, a Triton can spit teeth at an opponent at adistance. Though used most often on land, this Gift also works in the water. The Triton may use this Gift in any form, up to a range equal to his normal throwing distance. The tooth inflicts one Health Levelof aggravated damage.
Fathom Sight:
Cost: One Gnosis
Challenge: Mental Vs Storyteller
Retest: Alertness
Effect: The Triton can extend all her senses over a great distance through the use of this Gift, including sight, sound, taste, smell and touch. All directions are covered by this Gift, including up and down, so the Triton can even tell what’s going on above the surface of the water or across a town square on the land. While a Triton may hear a conversation aboard a boat, he cannot understand what is being said unless he speaks the language. This gift may used to zone into a single event, person or instance.. however it may also be used in a general setting, letting your senses spread over a vast area, though this is only under the sea. Success enables the Triton to sense everything that occurs within one mile underwater and 100 feet on land.
Duration: One Scene
The Mark:
Required: Physical contact with your target.
Cost: One Gnosis
Effect: The Triton can mark a target with a single touch, this also may be done in combat, passively. If that mark is placed then a Triton can sense his mark for up to a mile away, never a good position for anyone who angers these bestial Merfolk. The Target is knowledgable of being marked.
Ragged Bite:
Required: Nereid or Hybrid Form.
Cost: One Rage
Effect: The Triton's warforms are terrifying to say the least, but with this gift they have been able to utilize their terrible jaws for a devastating bite. Her next successful bite attack does one additional levels of aggravated damage.
Shattered Claws:
Cost: One Rage
Effect: This painful Gift causes the Triton’s claws to splinter as they pierce flesh. Tiny bits of claw imbed themselves deep in the victim’s body, thus causing tremendous irritation. Healing such a wound without first removing the splinters is both painful and stupid. Unfortunately, the Gift’s user loses his claws until he spends a round regenerating new ones. After a successful attack that causes at least one Health Level of damage, the Triton may spend a Rage point to activate the Gift. Any damage that the target does not soak cannot be healed until he removes the bits of claw. As with all other Triton claw attacks, the wounds are aggravated.
Resist Pain:
Activation Time: At will (Reflexively)
Cost: One Willpower
Effect: You push on through the pain of injury with superhuman resilience. You stop suffering wound penalties for the duration of this Gift.
Duration: One Scene or Hour
Sense Threat:
Required: One minute of full concentration.
Challenge: Mental Vs Storyteller
Retest: Primal Urge
Effect: This Gift enables a Triton to perceive the possibility of imminent danger. The Gift does not supply him with the nature of the threat or the motivation behind it, it simply alerts him to whether or not a threat exists. For instance, a raging Merfolk and a harpoon-armed human hunter both register as “dangers” to this Gift. Obviously, a Narrator is usually employed to assess the danger value of a particular individual or situation.
Gulp:
Cost: One Gnosis
Effect: This Gift enables the Triton to use her mouth to swallow anything she can fit in her jaws, hold it intact, and regurgitate it at a later time. The most common use for this is the transportation of clothing when preparing to go ashore. This Gift does not keep living creatures from harm. The Triton spends a Gnosis Trait (no Test required) to activate this Gift. A character can store items indefinitely in her gullet, since they effectively become part of her body as if they were dedicated items. A Triton must
be in a form large enough to swallow the desired items, and must take the same form to spit out the items when needed. Living creatures suffer normal damage from being digested (not to mention suffocated) inside the Triton’s gut, although they may struggle in whatever manner they can before being entirely consumed.
Intermediate:
Ferocious Intention:
Cost: One Rage
Effect: Your vicious nature is felt through all that around you, the hatred and fury in your heart has become a weapon to summon upon. Increase the damage type of your handmade weaponry by one step along the line from nothing to bashing to lethal to aggravated.: e.g., thrown clam shells do bashing damage, clubs of coral do lethal, knives and swords do aggravated. Anything that already does aggravated damage will do one additional level of it. You still must make an ordinary physical challenge to hit your target. This does not work on Fetish weaponry.
Predator's Gaze:
Required: You can see your target group.
Challenge: Mental Vs Storyteller
Retest: Primal Urge
Effect: Predators can sense which animal from a herd or school is sick or weak and therefore the easiest prey. Tritons can do so normally when confronted with a school of fish, but more complex creatures like predators or pseudo-predators (like humans) make this difficult. This Gift allows the Triton to pick out the weakest member of a group at a glance. It does not reveal why the target is the weak link in a herd, only that she is, but that alone is often enough to give the Triton an edge. If the Triton enters combat against this group, she gains a + 2 trait advantage in ties against the weakest member.
Silence the Catch:
Cost: One Gnosis
Challenge: Social Vs Target Willpower
Effect: Perhaps the most disturbing Gift the Tritons as a tribe have access to, Silence the Catch allows a Merfolk to cut a victim off from any means of help by rendering him unable to make sounds of any kind. As if they were deep underwater, even if they are not. Even pounding his fists on the windows of a room will not disturb the beings therein. The victim must see the Triton in order for the character to activate this Gift. The player spends one Gnosis point and rolls Social (difficulty of the target’s Willpower). If the chop succeeds, the target is unable to make sound for one scene. The target cannot speak, and cannot make sound by touching an object. This also means the target may not use mental communications such as packlink either.
Duration: One Scene
Crab's Fury:
Cost: One Rage
Effect: With this gift, you need never be unarmed. You shapeshift your arms itself into long snapping crab claws . Your attacks with these claws, deal two Aggravated damage, and rely on the Melee Ability for retests. You are at a +3 trait bonus to grab challenges when using your crab claws. You automatically suffer one level of Lethal damage if you attempt any claw-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
Reshape Object
Cost: One Gnosis
Challenge: Social vs. a Storyteller-chosen difficulty, based on the change being attempted
Retest: Repair
Followup Cost: 0 to 3 Mental traits or a permanent Gnosis for duration; an optional Gnosis to deal Aggravated damage (see effect)
Effect: You extend your shape-shifting spirit into an organic, non-living object, changing its shape and size to suit your needs: you can turn a dead branch into a spear, a pile of leaves into armor, or a piece of bone into a canoe, for example. If you create a weapon and spend an additional Gnosis, this new object can deal Aggravated damage.
Duration: The duration depends on the followup cost paid:
0 Mental Traits: 5 minutes;
1 Mental Trait: 10 minutes;
2 Mental Traits: 1 hour;
3 Mental Traits: the remainder of the session; or
1 Permanent Gnosis: the change is permanent.
Advanced:
Revenge of the Seas:
Required: Being under the Sea.
Cost: One Gnosis and one Rage (yes, this is an exception)
Challenge: static Social vs. the Gauntlet rating
Retest: Primal Urge
Effect: You unleash the wrath of the wilderness against your foes. Every natural feature in the sea attacks the intruders in any way possible: Rocks may fall from underwater cliff faces, sinkholes open beneath unwary feet, Seaweed entangle them, etc. The exact effects are up to the Storyteller.
Duration: Storyteller-determined
Survivor
Cost: One Gnosis
Effect: You exemplify the Triton ideal, surviving almost any extremes. Upon activating the Gift, choose either Extreme Survivor or Trauma Survivor. If you choose Extreme Survivor, you suffer no ill effects from hunger, thirst, lack of sleep, temperature extremes, or harsh weather conditions. If you choose Trauma Survivor, you become immune to all mundane poison and disease, and even Wyrm-enhanced versions of these work at half normal strength; you gain the additional Physical Traits Tough x3 and the Ability Traits Survival x2; and you suffer no wound penalties. You may activate both of these effects, but they count as separate gift activations.
Duration: Extreme Survivor lasts a full day; Trauma Survivor lasts ten turns.