Dementation

• Passion

  Level 1

  Like the Maenads of old, you can heighten emotions to a fever pitch, driving any fears, desires, desperations and urges of your target to the surface. Alternately, you can diminish those emotions, dragging the mind down into cold, rational emptiness

  Spend 1 Blood, expend your standard action, and engage your target in an opposed challenge using the Dementation test pool. If you succeed, you choose either to heighten or dampen her emotions for the next hour.

  If you choose to heighten your target’s emotions, then she experiences a rush of feeling – desperate desire, anxiety, joy, or worry – everything to extremes. She must spend 1 Willpower each time something startling or unsettling happens. If she does not spend this Willpower, she reacts with extreme emotion, either running away or lashing out at the source of her concern.

  If you choose instead to dampen your target’s emotions, then the target feels a draining loss of emotional cognition; her mind slows and her reactions – both emotional and otherwise – become dull and tepid. She feels no emotional response to stimuli such as love, hate, or fear. She is simply and disconcertingly empty. A character with dampened emotions must spend 1 Willpower in order to start a combat or react with any strong conviction. The target is not required to spend Willpower in order to join an already existing combat or to defend herself. You may end the effects of one application of Passion by applying the opposite effect. An individual whose emotions have been dampened is restored by using Passion to heighten her emotions, and vice-versa.

• Haunting

  Level 2

  Nightmarish visions, flitting barely-seen images, surreal echoes, and misunderstood conversations haunt your victim, transforming the world around her into a dreamlike haze. Nothing seems quite right, and strange sensations crawl across the target’s skin. Her subconscious desires may surface, and her inner fears and regrets return to face her through dark, hallucinatory whispers from the past.

  Spend 1 Blood, expend your standard action, and engage your target in an opposed challenge using the Dementation test pool. If you succeed, your target’s subconscious dredges up disturbing visions, sensations, and sounds that only she perceives. Your target suffers a -3 penalty to all attack test pools for the next three turns as she tries (and fails) to separate fantasy and reality. After three turns, the subject becomes more capable of distinguishing what is and is not a hallucination. For the remainder of an hour, the penalty is -1. Penalties from Haunting do not apply to defense test pools.

  Using this power on an individual with a derangement gives her 1 Derangement trait. Multiple uses of Haunting do not stack.

• Eyes of Chaos

  Level 3

  There is wisdom to be found between the cracks and broken fragments of reality, and there are lessons to be learned by watching the universe as it slowly falls apart. With this power, you can discern complex patterns, discover inconsistencies, and track the strange and ethereal connections of fate.

  This power is always active. A character using Eyes of Chaos receives a +5 wild card bonus to any mundane uses of the Investigation skill or to any Academic skill tests focused on trying to break a code, determine a missing piece of information, or piece together clues. Additionally, when making these types of challenges, you can perform the test without physically interacting with your environment; a simple glance around the area (one standard action) is sufficient to perform a thorough search.

  A character utilizing this power might spend a few moments scanning a room and be drawn immediately to the discovery of a pistol concealed in a shoe box under the bed, she might glance at a crossword puzzle and solve it in an instant, or she might count all the ceiling tiles in the room as she walked rapidly past them.

• Voice of Madness

  Level 4

  Your voice can carry the siren call of insanity and the whispered pandemonium of sheer madness. By speaking aloud in a resonant tone, you can summon forth the regrets, fears, pain, horror, and suffering of your target’s entire life and unlife, unleashing her id and giving her inner demons free rein.

  To use Voice of Madness, you must gain your target’s attention and spend at least five turns (15 seconds) describing the derangement you wish to inflict. When you finish this description, spend 1 Blood and make an opposed challenge against your target. If you succeed, you inflict the derangement of your choice on your target for the rest of the evening and 1 Derangement trait. If the individual has pre-existing Derangement traits, this trait may cause an immediate psychotic break. For more information, see Chapter Five: Merits and Flaws, Derangement Traits.

  For example, you might approach the Ventrue Primogen and say, “I saw two Brujah hovering around your car last night. What were they doing? Are you sure you can trust the Brujah?” If you succeed in the challenge thereafter, you could give your target the Phobia derangement, citing “Brujah” as the trigger.

  An individual can only be affected by this power once per Dementation user. If the same character attempts to inflict a second derangement before the first expires, the older derangement is replaced by the newer one. If a second Dementation user successfully targets someone already under the effects of this power, both derangements apply.

• Total Insanity

  Level 5

  By using this power, utter madness – the full shattering of the mirror – is unleashed within your victim’s mind. You draw forth every insecurity, every forgotten slight, every panic or fit of anger, and then cause those emotional wounds to magnify a hundredfold and wreak havoc on your target’s mind.

  The target must have her attention focused on you in order for Total Insanity to function. Once you have your target’s attention, spend 1 Blood, expend your standard action, and make an opposed challenge against that target. If you succeed, you drive her insane for the next hour.

  Total Insanity fills your target’s mind with conflicting derangements, making it difficult for her to act with any rational logic. Your target should work with the Storyteller to determine exactly how this insanity affects her, but for mechanical purposes, the user of Total Insanity selects one of the following effects to apply to her victim:

  • Fear: The victim is terrified of anything that is even remotely threatening and will seek to run away and hide in a safe place until Total Insanity fades. The victim will not fight unless cornered and, if forced to fight, will flee at her first opportunity.

  • Confusion: The victim suffers a -5 penalty to all attack test pools for the duration of Total Insanity as she tries to separate fantasy and reality. This penalty does not apply to defense test pools.

  • Fugue: The target withdraws mentally, sitting quietly and talking only to friends she trusts. If forced out of her shell, she will either attack or flee from the person who provoked her (target’s choice).

• Lingering Malaise

  Level 6

  Sharing madness is as natural to you as drinking blood…and as fulfilling. Those elders who master this power can inflict a much more substantive affliction upon others’ minds.

  Characters affected by your Voice of Madness set their Derangement traits to 2; any time a victim experiences a psychotic break while under the effects of this power, the psychotic break does not reset her Derangement traits to 0 (or 1, if the character is a Malkavian). Instead, her Derangement traits reset to 2.

• La Llorona’s Lament

  Level 6

  The power of grief, though all but forgotten in modern times, was once widely respected. Among some cultures it was believed that if no one wept for a fallen soul it could not find its way to the afterlife. The expression of grief was an outpouring of emotion, unburdening the soul of its sorrow and the pain of regret. With this power, your sorrow is infectious, as your tears prompt outpourings of grief in others. The use of this power in modern times is attributed to Manuela Bolivar, the Malkavian Justicar, whose dissent over an action taken at the Sao Paulo conclave of 2011 is reported to have reduced the assembly to open wailing.

  Spend 1 point of Blood and your simple action to emanate feelings of despair, angst, and anguish. You must then issue a prohibition of your choosing to everyone in your vicinity. For example, you might say “do not disturb my roses” to someone about to trample your garden, or “do not defile the sanctuary” to a group of burglars who broke into your property. Regardless of their affiliation with you, whenever a character within your line of sight spends an action to violate your prohibition, she gains a point of Despair. She gains this point whether or not she succeeds in the action. For example, if you proclaimed “don’t hurt me” to a character and that character attempts to attack you but fails, that character gains a point of Despair. Characters who have one or more points of Despair feel a growing sadness within them and understand intuitively that what they are doing will result in harm. A character receives a -3 penalty to her initiative score for each point of Despair she has. If a character accumulates 3 points of Despair, she is overcome with grief and must spend her next simple and standard action openly and violently sobbing as she cries tears of blood in great quantity. As she cries she loses 3 points of Blood and her Despair traits revert to zero; however, if you possess the Dementation elder power Lingering Malaise, your target reverts to 1 point of Despair instead.

  If this power is activated outside of combat, you must spend 1 point of Blood every 5 minutes to maintain it. Once combat begins, this power lasts until your next action on the everyman round, and you must spend 1 point of Blood and a simple action every turn you wish to maintain it. In combat you can change the prohibition on your action by speaking a new one aloud. Doing so does not cost an action. Despair traits fade away at a rate equal to one every 5 minutes.

  The prohibition given must be simple and direct. Prohibitions that are roundabout commands or that require inferences to be drawn from a statement, such as “don’t allow him to live a second longer” which implies that someone should be killed, are invalid. This power cannot be used to gain information through specific wording such as “any diablerists shall not remain silent”. Non-vampires affected by this power are able to cry actual tears and do not lose blood when they are overcome with grief.

• Deny

  Level 6

  The world we see and experience is not a real world. The truths we know and trust are not real truths. These are only shadows, nothing more than refl ections of something deeper, which lies beyond. With this power, you can prove the truth of Plato’s old adage, and deny the collective assumptions of the world.

  Spend 3 Blood and use your simple action to Deny the existence of an inanimate object. This power cannot be used to deny the existence of living creatures, undead, or spirits; it works only on inanimate objects. You are consciously aware that, to the weak-minded, the object you’ve denied still exists, but for you, it is nothing more than a semi-transparent, obviously false refl ection of reality. The object you’ve denied cannot obscure your sight, block your movement, touch, or harm you in any way.

  A user of Deny can step through a locked door that she “doesn’t see,” as if it is an archway, and a sword that she refuses to acknowledge fails to cut her, passing right through her body. The Dementation wielder can Deny any object within her line of sight, but she can only extend her denial to objects she is touching. For example, the Dementation user can swing a fire ax through a door that she has denied and strike the opponent on the other side, but if she fires a pistol through the denied wall, the bullets hit the wall as usual.

  You can Deny any object up to the size of a small car. It is possible to Deny up to three objects at the same time, but you must spend 3 Blood and a simple action for each object. Deny lasts for one hour, or until you spend a simple action to end its effects.

• Restructure

  Level 6

  Much of a person’s identity is a product of their nature; a set of defining characteristics and principles that influence her decisions. While some view nature as immutable, you have the power to fundamentally redesign a person’s core personality. You can remove or change not only your subject’s Archetype but the very foundations of what makes her who she is. For some this is a boon, giving them the ability to live a night as someone new. Your victims, however, are condemned to an evening of languor and apathy as they no longer understand their purpose in the world, nor do they have the desire to find one.

  Spend 2 points of Blood and 3 standard actions to use Restructure. If the target is unwilling, you must win an opposed challenge. If you succeed, you may affect her with this power. If your target has an Archetype, you may immediately change her Archetype and any of her focuses to other focuses in the same category. These changes last for the remainder of the night. You may only affect a character’s base permanent Archetype and focuses; bonus focuses or a bonus Archetype, such as from the merit Versatile or the Dominate power Fealty cannot be changed. Willing participants affected by this power may spend a point of Willpower to make the change permanent. Characters affected by this power feel as if their motivations and purpose have been realigned. This may be a relief for some, or disconcerting for others.

  If your target is a Stock NPC, you may grant her an Archetype and the benefits that come with it, including an Archetype retest. Stock NPCs affected by this power feel a surge of inspiration and direction, as if they have been given a new purpose.

  Alternatively, you may use this power to strip your opponent of her identity leaving her directionless, dispassionate, and overwhelmed by an identity crisis. Using Restructure in this way causes your target to lose access to her Archetype (if she has one) as well as any focuses. A use of Restructure in this way lasts for the next hour. Removing a character’s Archetype in this way affects only her permanent Archetype and focuses, and not those obtained from bonuses. However, this use does affect permanent focuses obtained from merits such as Versatile or Expanded Consciousness.

• Fractaline Epiphany

  Level 7

  A broken mind is not unlike a broken mirror – a collection of reflections, angles, and edges. Some of them are pretty, insightful, or wise, and some are sharp and jagged. To such a mind, the distinctions of identity and consciousness are arbitrary constructs, and defeat is a label borne by struggling fools who fail to see the entire forest through the trees. Where others are burdened by setbacks, you do not falter, for you are privy to a secret truth: the only real limitation is one of perspective, and by staring into the world through the pane of your mind’s eye you see infinite possibilities.

  Once learned, this power is always active. Whenever you fail an opposed Mental or Social challenge, your target does not gain immunity to your power or action for the next ten minutes. Should a power like Majesty prevent you from attempting to resist its effects after an initial failure to resist, you may instead try again on your next available action.

• Wave of Insanity

  Level 7

  The onset of insanity is sometimes described as a flood; a slow but ruinous onslaught of emotion that is both inescapable and devastating. Your supreme mastery of Dementation allows you to create a veritable torrent of madness, assailing the minds of any who provoke you.

  When attempting to use the Dementation power Total Insanity, you may choose to spend 4 additional Blood points to activate Wave of Insanity. If you do, you may target up to 2 additional individuals within your line of sight. All 3 targets must meet the criteria to be targeted by Total Insanity and you must choose a singular effect to apply to all of them. When using this power, you must make a separate opposed challenge using the Dementation test pool against each defender. Should you spend Willpower to retest any of these opposed challenges, you also gain that retest for the remainder of the opposed challenges without spending further points of Willpower. Unlike a standard application of Total Insanity, the effects will end after 10 minutes.