MET LARP SRD

You have the ability to enchant a stake of wood to purposefully seek out your enemy’s heart.

This ritual turns an ordinary stake of rowan wood into a particularly vicious weapon. When the stake penetrates a vampire’s body, the tip breaks off and begins working its way through the victim’s flesh to her heart. The trip may take several hours or several nights, depending on where the stake struck. The stake eludes attempts to remove it, burrowing further into the victim’s body to escape surgical removal. Vampires who have had their hearts removed by Serpentis (or are otherwise immune to staking) are immune to this internal attack.

The ritual takes an entire night to complete. The stake must be carved of rowan wood, coated with 3 points of the caster’s Blood, and blackened in an oak-wood fi re. When the ritual is complete, the stake is enchanted to act as described below. A wielder performs an attack with a Shaft of Belated Quiescence as she would with a normal weapon. If she inflicts at least 1 point of damage after the target’s Fortitude or similar defensive abilities reduce the incoming damage, the tip of the stake breaks off and begins burrowing. If the attack deals no damage, the stake can be used to make subsequent attacks until it strikes deep enough to activate. Once the tip of the stake is in the victim’s body, she must make an opposed challenge every hour to avoid being staked, as the wood attempts to worm through her body. The caster uses her Thaumaturgy test pool versus the victim’s Physical attribute + Survival to resolve this challenge. Each time the target succeeds in the opposed challenge, she takes 3 points of normal damage. If, at any point, the victim marks off an Incapacitated health level as a result of this damage, the tip pierces her heart.

Removing the part of the body where the tip impacted, such as by a Vicissitude user activating Blood Form, or a vampire electing to cut off her arm, may stop the tip’s progress, at the Storyteller’s discretion. A character with 3 or more dots of the Medicine skill can remove the shaft by performing a 10-minute operation. Attempts to surgically remove the tip of the shaft are made using a character’s Physical attribute + Medicine test pool against a difficulty rating of 10. Once the tip pierces the target’s heart, it stakes a vampire and instantly kills mortals and partially supernatural creatures, such as ghouls.

You can perform the Shaft of Belated Quiescence ritual on other wooden weapons, such as spears, arrows, practice swords, and pool cues, provided that they are made of rowan wood. The ritual cannot, however, augment a bullet or a weapon that does not have the staking quality. A thaumaturge can have one Shaft of Belated Quiescence in existence for every 2 dots she possesses of the Occult skill. If she makes a new Shaft of Belated Quiescence that exceeds this limit, a shaft created earlier is destroyed.