Quietus

• Silence of Death

  Level 1

  The first lesson is that of silence. Anonymity and surprise are two of the most powerful weapons in a vampire’s arsenal, helping an ambush provide a truly insurmountable advantage. With the use of this power, you can hide your approach, attack, and escape, smothering your victim’s desperate pleas for help or mercy.

  Spend 1 point of Blood and use a simple action to create an area of absolute silence. The area affected by Silence of Death is a sphere surrounding your physical form. This sphere extends a maximum of three steps in every direction, though you may choose to make the sphere of effect smaller, if you wish. Once created, you can shrink the size of the sphere by spending a simple action, but you cannot extend it to exceed the three-step maximum.

  Sounds originating within the sphere of your Silence of Death are completely silenced. Powers that rely on sound can be blocked by Silence of Death. This might mean such powers fail at origin, because the user is within the silence, or it might mean that these powers fail because the target of such a power is within the sound-dampening sphere. This includes effects such as the Melpominee power Death of the Drum and the Dominate powers Mesmerism or Command (though Dominate powers can be utilized without sound, and such applications succeed).

  Note that some uses of blood magic, such as Thaumaturgy or Necromancy , require the caster to speak. However, those powers do not require their target be able to hear the words spoken. Thus, such powers are not hampered by Silence of Death, even if the user of those powers is within the globe.

  Silence of Death lasts for a maximum of 10 minutes, unless you end the power early by spending a simple action.

• Scorpion’s Touch

  Level 2

  Through meditation, the use of herbal concoctions, and natural soporifics, you can change the properties of your vitae. When you activate this power, your blood becomes a powerful poison that slows injured prey and robs them of their ability to fight.

  Spend 1 point of Blood and use your simple action to meditate upon the properties of your vitae, and then draw a sharpened blade across your skin, creating a shallow cut in order to coat the edge of the weapon with a layer of your own vitae. This weapon must be used quickly, before the blood dries and loses its supernatural properties. For the next three turns, anyone struck with this weapon is poisoned by your venomous blood.

  Individuals struck by a weapon coated with Scorpion’s Touch suffer a -2 penalty to all Physical attack test pools. These penalties last for five minutes. Additional applications of Scorpion’s Touch do not add further penalties, but do extend the duration of the original penalties by an additional five minutes. For example, a character hit by three such attacks would suffer a -2 penalty to all Physical attack test pools for the next 15 minutes.

  An individual successfully struck by a weapon poisoned with Scorpion’s Touch suffers these penalties even if the attack did not inflict damage after your opponent applies her defensive powers. The venom only needs to touch its target, not damage.

  You are immune to your own Scorpion’s Touch, but other individuals wielding weapons coated with your venom risk being poisoned. If someone else uses a weapon coated by your Scorpion’s Touch, she receives this power’s penalties if she loses any test involved in the challenge. This occurs even if the individual wins the overall challenge. It is possible for both a weapon’s wielder and the target of that attack to be affected by your venom in the same action. If the wielder repeatedly loses tests in challenges, she suffers the same extended penalty durations as does someone who was struck multiple times.

  You can poison a single sword-sized or smaller weapon with each expenditure of Scorpion’s Touch. This item could be a dagger, a sword, one crossbow bolt, one arrow, or something similar. Scorpion’s Touch is normally used with edged or sharpened weapons. If used on a non-edged weapon, you must spend a standard action, rather than a simple action, to tear open your flesh by some other means and coat the weapon with vitae. Scorpion’s Touch cannot be used to modify bullets or other firearms equipment, as the heat and speed of a firearm destroys the blood coating on any projectile fired.

  Scorpion’s Touch cannot be used with unarmed attacks.

• Dagon’s Call

  Level 3

  This vicious power allows a vampire to use a target’s blood against her, bursting blood vessels and causing organs to bleed internally. These ruptures are intensely painful, delivering swift internal agony to anyone affected by this power.

  Spend 1 point of Blood, expend your standard action, and engage your target in an opposed challenge using the Quietus test pool. If you succeed, you cause your target’s internal organs to rupture and bleed.

  A character successfully targeted by Dagon’s Call takes 2 points of normal damage in any turn during which she spends Blood. This damage occurs the moment the victim spends her first point of Blood in a given turn. After the first turn, you can spend your simple action on every subsequent turn in order to maintain this power’s effect, for up to five turns in total.

  Damage caused by Dagon’s Call cannot be reduced or negated. Multiple uses of Dagon’s Call do not stack. A character affected by two uses of this power still only takes 2 points of normal damage per turn.

• Baal’s Caress

  Level 4

  By continuing her study into vitae transformation, this power’s user can alter the properties of a vampire’s blood even further, rendering it into an intensely vitrolic ichor. This ichor destroys any flesh it touches, whether living or undead.

  Spend 1 point of Blood and use your simple action to meditate upon the properties of your vitae, and draw a sharpened blade across your skin, creating a shallow cut in order to coat the edge of a weapon with a layer of your own vitae. This weapon must be used quickly, before the blood dries and loses its supernatural properties. For the next three turns, the weapon gains the Deadly trait, and anyone struck with this weapon takes aggravated damage from the weapon’s strike. Note that Baal’s Caress does not increase the damage done by a given weapon, but that weapon infl icts aggravated damage, rather than normal damage.

  You are immune to your own Baal’s Caress, but other individuals wielding weapons coated with your ichor risk being injured. If someone else uses a weapon coated by your Baal’s Caress, she takes a point of aggravated damage if she loses any test involved in the challenge. This occurs even if the individual wins the overall challenge. It is possible for both a weapon’s wielder and the target of that attack to be affected by your ichor in the same action. If the wielder repeatedly loses tests in challenges, she will take multiple points of aggravated damage.

  You can poison a single sword-sized or smaller weapon with each expenditure of Baal’s Caress. This item could be a dagger, a sword, one crossbow bolt, one arrow, or something similar. Baal’s Caress is normally used with edged or sharpened weapons. If used on a non-edged weapon, you must spend a standard action, rather than a simple action, to tear open your flesh by some other means and coat the weapon with vitae. Baal’s Caress cannot be used to modify bullets or other fi rearms equipment, as the heat and speed of a fi rearm destroys the blood coating on any projectile fired.

  Baal’s Caress cannot be used with unarmed attacks.

• Taste of Death

  Level 5

  With this level of mastery, a vampire can commute a small portion of her blood into a caustic acid. Thus transmuted, the vampire can spit this toxic blood at an opponent, searing flesh and corroding bone.

  Spend 1 Blood point. For the rest of the turn, you may use a standard action to spit toxic blood at your target. Attacks made with Taste of Death are made using a test pool consisting of your Physical attribute + Athletics versus the target’s Physical attribute + Dodge.

  When you make an attack using Taste of Death, you must choose whether the blood you spit with this power is transmuted into the poison of Scorpion’s Touch or the vitriolic ichor of Baal’s Caress. Utilizing Scorpion’s Touch through Taste of Death causes the victim to suffer the effects listed under that power. Spitting the ichor of Baal’s Caress deals 2 points of aggravated damage to your target.

  Taste of Death can be used during Celerity rounds.

• Blood Sweat

  Level 6

  By concentrating on a victim, this power’s user causes the blood in that individual’s body to suffer a transmutation, becoming poisonous to her own internal systems. The victim’s body rejects such bile, swiftly expelling it through her sweat glands and pores

  Spend 1 Blood, use your standard action, and make an opposed challenge using the Quietus test pool. If you succeed, the target begins sweating blood. Mortals affected by Blood Sweat lose 2 Blood each turn for the next three turns, and they take 2 points of normal damage for each point of Blood lost.

  Vampires affected by Blood Sweat lose 2 Blood each turn for the next three turns, but do not suffer damage from this blood loss. Multiple applications of Blood Sweat do not stack.

• Baal’s Bloody Talons

  Level 6

  Those who truly master the alchemical proficiency of their blood can grant it incredible capacity to cause harm. Their blood becomes a potent ichor, poisoning flesh with the lightest touch and causing the victim incredible, boiling pain.

  In addition to the standard effects of Baal’s Caress, your applications of this power give a weapon a +2 bonus to Melee test pools. Further, this weapon inflicts an additional point of aggravated damage when it hits successfully. Baal’s Bloody Talons cannot be combined with Taste of Death.

• Revelations of Blood Essence

  Level 6

  For Assamites, the consumption of blood is no mere act of sustenance – it is an act of deliberation, judgment, and conviction. This power grants you a greater suite of abilities in serving your sacred role as a judge of Haqim, allowing you to extract hidden truths or even a portion of the soul.

  Whenever you taste blood, you may spend a simple action to activate this power. Small quantities of blood are sufficient, such as blood dripping from an open wound, or licking the sides of a knife that successfully damaged your target; however, blood splatter and dried blood is not sufficient. When you activate this power choose one of the following effects:

  In addition, whenever you are in the process of committing diablerie you may spend a simple action to share its benefits with up to 2 additional targets. These targets must be present and must join you in physically drinking the target’s soul, but they do not need to possess this power. These targets also receive the penalties of diablerie, including the potential loss of Humanity, subject to your game’s setting (see MET VTM, Chapter Seven: Dramatic Systems, page 306). Among Loyalist Assamites, the inclusion of vampires in this act who are neither Assamites nor Path of Blood devotees is viewed as heretical; however, Assamite antitribu are much more liberal in its applications.

• Purification

  Level 6

  The Children of Haqim — known in the western world by the sobriquet Assamites — believe that they were chosen by their founder to be the judges of all vampires and the protectors of humanity. By using the power of vitae to cleanse and restore mortals and vampires alike, your mastery of Quietus allows you to clean other individuals’ minds and souls of stains, including those left by the mind control of other vampires. The vampire using this power expels his own blood through the skin of her hands and allows it to soak through her subject, slowly dissipating. As it does, it carries away spiritual impurities and outside influences.

  To activate this power, you must have a willing target, or you must succeed in a Physical challenge. Spend one point of Blood and your standard action to lay your hands on your target as you concentrate to expel her spiritual impurities. This bloody anointment creates a spiritual bond between you and your target, granting each of you familiarity with the other. Once completed, Purification removes any harmful targeted Mental, Physical, or Social effects, such as those originating from the powers of Dementation, Dominate, Presence, or Thaumaturgy. This power can cure mundane toxins or poisons but cannot cure mundane diseases. Mystical effects borne through the blood, such as blood bonds or flaws (including clan or inherent weaknesses) are not affected. You cannot use Purification on yourself.

• Awaken the Heartsblood

  Level 7

  The Heartsblood is a great magical well situated in the Assamite fortress of Alamut that is filled with vitae from all Assamites that have ever visited the mountain fortress. You are able to tap into this magical well, calling upon the collective might of the clan, though not without cost. Some speculate the overuse of this power is responsible for the zealotry shown by so many Assamite elders.

  Once this power is learned, you are able to extract blood through a mystic connection to a seemingly endless source of vitae. You may spend up to 2 additional points of Blood per turn in excess of your generational limits, drawing from the Heartsblood rather than from your own body. Doing so preserves your own Blood pool and draws upon the ancestral blood of your clan. You must actively spend this Blood; it cannot be used to restore your Blood pool or to feed others.

  However, this process is not without cost. The first time each night you Awaken the Heartsblood you immediately gain a compulsion derangement with the trigger of the Laws of Haqim that lasts the remainder of the night. You feel compelled to both act and advocate that others act in accordance with the laws as described below. Consuming the Heartsblood in this way does not create a blood bond nor does it count as drinking vampiric blood for the purpose of the Assamite clan weakness as it has been magically purified.

  Although you have access to a vast supply of blood, you still experience hunger in the same manner and receive no relief from the effects of hunger and hunger frenzies by invoking this power.

  The Law of Leadership- Honor the Eldest among you, for he is to rule my House when I am absent. The Law of Protection- Ward the mortals from Caine’s descendants and treat them with honor in all things. The Law of Destruction- Slay not those of the Blood, for that judgment is for the Eldest alone. The Law of the Word- Deceive not those of the Blood, for my house is founded on truth. The Law of Judgment- Judge those of Caine’s blood and punish them should they be found wanting.

• Erosion

  Level 7

  The potency of toxins and venoms created throughout the animal kingdom vary in strength and intensity. Some are used to discourage attackers and others to weaken otherwise powerful prey. By calling upon the potency of vitae and invoking your clan’s mandate to punish the wicked, you purify your vitae into a deadly weapon to overwhelm a target’s resolve, diminishing her strength and crippling her attacks against you and your allies.

  When activating Scorpion’s Touch, you may spend an additional point of Blood to enact Erosion. The poisons you generate with Erosion are extremely potent and capable of devastating harm over time. Whenever your target is struck by your application of Erosion, she receives a -2 penalty to her Physical attribute instead of just her Physical attack pools. A character’s test pool cannot be reduced below 1 in this way. In addition, your applications of this power are now cumulative with other applications of this power, either by you or from another vampire. For example, if after striking your opponent once with a weapon coated by your Scorpion’s Touch you strike her a second time, your opponent’s penalty to her Physical attribute changes from -2 to -4.

  Track any applications of the penalty inflicted by Erosion separately from any normal applications of Scorpion’s Touch for both penalty and duration. For example, if you strike someone who is already afflicted by Scorpion’s Touch, your target now has a -2 penalty to her Physical attribute and a -2 penalty to her Physical attack pools. Both the effects of Scorpion’s Touch and Erosion have a 5-minute duration.

  You may utilize this power when using Scorpion’s Touch through the Quietus power Taste of Death.