Thanatosis

• Hag’s Wrinkles

  Level 1

  Perpetual rot makes the character’s flesh malleable. You can contract or expand your skin, sending it into wrinkled, rippling waves or pulling it taut over your undead flesh. You can even cause folds to form in your flesh, allowing you to store objects within the leathery ripples, like a kangaroo’s pouch

  The bodies of Thanatosis practitioners become rotted and malleable. By spending a standard action to tug or twist your skin, you can open folds and pouches in your flesh. These pouches are capable of storing items up to the size of a large handgun. Accessing items stored in these pouches requires a simple action.

  Additionally, you can slightly alter your appearance by over-tightening the skin around your face or by allowing it to hang wrinkled and loose. These changes may be enough to fool uninformed mortals, but they do not alter your appearance enough to fool someone who knows you.

• Putrefaction

  Level 2

  With but a touch, you can inflict decay on your target. You cause putrescent, festering decay to spread from your point of contact.

  Spend 1 point of Blood and use your standard action to rot any organic, inanimate object you touch, to the point of uselessness. A single application of Putrefaction can destroy wood, cloth, plastic, and rubber, but harder items, such as metal, glass, or stone, require two applications of this power to putrefy. Objects larger than a standard door require more than one application of Putrefaction to destroy. This power has no effect on living or undead matter, but can be used to rot true corpses (dead bodies) into unrecognizability

• Ashes to Ashes

  Level 3

  Under extreme circumstances, it is often best to allow an opponent a psychological victory in order to gain the element of surprise. The Samedi are masters of such deceit. With this power, you can collapse into a thick, sticky white powder that resembles a desiccated heap of ash.

  By spending 1 point of Blood and using your standard action, you transform into a pile of ash. While in this form, you cannot spend Blood, move from your location, take actions, or use supernatural powers, but you are immune to Physical damage, fire, and sunlight. You also retain a limited awareness of everything within five steps.

  The form granted by Ashes to Ashes does not confer complete invulnerability. The ashes have a certain resistance to being dispersed, but if you are scattered too widely, you can be killed. While using Ashes to Ashes, you have 10 points of Cohesion. If other individuals or factors of the environment, such as high winds or a blaze of fire, conspire to scatter your ashes, you may lose 1 to 3 points of Cohesion per turn, determined at the Storyteller’s discretion. If you reform after losing Cohesion, you lose 1 point of Blood per point of Cohesion you suffered. If you run out of Blood in this manner, you take 1 point of aggravated damage per point of Cohesion lost. This damage cannot be reduced or negated. If your Cohesion reaches zero, you suffer Final Death.

  This power makes you appear as though you are a normal pile of ash, but does not alter your aura. Someone looking at a character in Ashes to Ashes with Aura Perception will be able to tell that the pile of ash has a vampiric aura.

  Ashes to Ashes is a transformative power and cannot be combined with other transformative powers.

• Withering

  Level 4

  By clutching a victim’s limb and activating this hideous power, you shrivel the limb and render it useless by infecting it with decay. A target suffering under the effects of this power finds herself in horrible pain, her limbs shrinking and bones snapping within your grasp.

  Use a standard action to Grapple a target. If you are successful, spend 1 Blood to inflict Withering on the victim, as well as inflicting all standard effects of a Grapple. Thereafter, the target suffers a -1 penalty to her Physical attribute. This effect is not considered damage, and is not affected by powers or abilities that negate or lessen damage.

  To use Withering on a target, you must first be successful using a Grapple combat maneuver against that target. If your target is already grappled, you can activate this power by spending 1 Blood and using your standard action. Withering can be used during Celerity rounds, so long as you pay the full cost for each use.

  Penalties from repeated use of Withering on a single target accumulate, whether those penalties were applied by one practitioner of Thanatosis or multiple practitioners. If this penalty reaches -5, one of the victim’s limbs (chosen by the attacker) becomes useless. If the penalty reaches -10, the target must choose a second limb that becomes useless, and so on, until all of the target’s limbs are unusable.

  If one or both of a character’s legs have been withered, she can only move one step per action by limping or crawling. If either of a character’s arms have been withered, she suffers a -5 penalty to Brawl and Melee attacks, unless the character is ambidextrous, in which case, she only suffers a -3 penalty. A character with a withered arm cannot use two-handed weapons. A character with two withered arms cannot make Physical attacks unless she is capable of biting without grappling, or if she has more than two other useable limbs, such as those granted by Black Metamorphosis or limbs created with Vicissitude.

  Physical attribute penalties from Withering subside after 10 minutes, but a withered limb is not so easily restored. A mortal whose limb has been withered is permanently crippled. A supernatural creature’s withered limbs will recover after two games or one month, whichever is longer.

• Necrosis

  Level 5

  A horrific and potent power, Necrosis allows you to rot away your opponent’s muscle and bone, rendering her into putrid fat and tissue. The hideous decomposition induced by this power disgusts and revolts even the hardiest constitution as it accelerates the forces of decay and exposes internal organs in a terrifying spectacle of pain.

  Spend 1 Blood and use your simple action to activate Necrosis. For the next hour, anytime you successfully Grapple a target or maintain an existing Grapple on a target, you may choose to inflict necrotic rot on your victim. You can only inflict Necrosis once per turn, but you can do so during either everyman or Celerity rounds.

  The first time you use Necrosis on a target, you must succeed in using the Grapple combat maneuver against that target. On subsequent rounds, if you are still grappling the target, you may activate Necrosis by using your standard action. (For more information on grappling, see Chapter: Six, Core Rules, page 280). Your target take 3 points of aggravated damage as her flesh rots and sloughs away.

  The damage normally dealt by a Grapple does not convert to aggravated damage by this power. The damage dealt by Necrosis is not reduced by the effect of the Grapple combat maneuver. Necrosis cannot be used with other powers that require you to touch or grapple your target.

• One Foot in the Grave

  Level 6

  The Baron delights in those who seek his power, for the aid he grants them comes at the expense of their lifeforce. He realizes that all power is temporal and that as lord of the dead, all will return to the earth. With this ability, you can bestow the power of the grave upon your servants, granting them greater strength while dragging them closer to their demise.

  Your blood carries a portion of deathly energy that, when imbibed by the living, grants them a portion of the power of death. Whenever you feed your blood to a retainer, you may choose to activate this power, if you do, your retainer becomes both a ghoul and a zombie. These retainers remain valid targets for powers that affect the living but are also considered valid targets for the Bone Path of Necromancy and other powers that affect zombies. However, the Bone Path power Destroy Husk will not function against them as they are still alive. In addition, giving blood to a ghoul in this manner raises its NPC rating by 1 point to a maximum of 6.

  Ghouls made into zombies are considered valid targets for the Bone Path power Death’s Puppetry but retain the ability to spend Blood. If a ghoul goes 3 months without an application of this power, but still consumes vampire blood, it ceases to be a zombie and loses the benefits of this power and any zombie effects placed upon it.

• Rigor Mortis

  Level 6

  Before the rotting process begins, a corpse exists in a state of rigidity caused by hydrolysis in the muscles. Through your purview over death and decay, you can inflict a paralysis like rigor mortis on a creature. Once targeted, your victim must literally break bones and tear cartilage before she can move normally.

  Spend 2 points of Blood, use your standard action, and make an opposed challenge using the Thanatosis test pool. If you succeed in the opposed challenge you inflict a supernatural rigor mortis on your opponent, locking up her joints and muscles preventing her from moving. Thereafter, she takes 1 normal damage for every movement step she takes. This damage cannot be reduced or negated. Once the opponent has taken a total of 6 steps and 6 points of damage in this way the power ends. A character can only be affected by one use of Rigor Mortis at a time. If a character decides not to move, this power’s effects end in 5 minutes.

• Corrupt the Flesh

  Level 6

  You have become a true master of the powers of rot and decay. Through the use of Corrupt the Flesh, you can infect a subject with a wasting disease that dissolves her internal organs.

  Spend 3 Blood, use your standard action, and make an opposed challenge using the Thanatosis test pool. If you succeed, you infect your target with a corrupting disease. Mortal targets infected with Corrupt the Flesh die instantly as their skin erupts into boils and their internal organs liquefy. A supernatural creature suffers a -3 penalty to her Physical attribute for the next hour, and she loses her Physical attribute focus. The effects of Corrupt the Flesh last for an hour.

• Fallowed Ground

  Level 7

  You stand upon the earth like a discarded and decaying scarecrow of undeath. A conduit to Oblivion, you radiate an aura of decay that denies the restorative effects of any supernatural powers. Your cadaverous affinity to death calls out to the forgotten spirits that rest hidden beyond as you channel your powers through the befouled earth.

  Spend 3 points of Blood and your simple action as you cause necrotic energies to gather around you. Ghostly spirits coalesce from the other side of the Shroud as the barrier between the living and the dead thins. Any healing or regeneration effects that are used within 5 steps of you or that would heal anyone within 5 steps of you such as healing by spending Blood, are negated regardless of their source. Note this does not affect damage reduction powers or equipment such as Fortitude or armor. You are immune to this effect, but should another character have this power active within 5 steps of you, you will be affected.

  In addition, anyone standing within this area is considered a valid target for your Thanatosis powers without the need of establishing a Grapple. Instead of the normal Blood and action cost or Grapple requirement, spend 1 point of Blood and standard action. If you succeed in a challenge using the Thanatosis test pool, you may choose the effects of one of the Thanatosis powers you possess and apply it to your target.