Revelation

Revelation replaces Dementation in its entirety: if you encounter a reference to Dementation in the rules, please read it as a reference to Revelation.

The Embrace opens the minds of Malkavians, expanding their consciousness to a point almost beyond bearing. They become visionaries, catalysts of change, carrying both wisdom and pandemonium in their wake. Their signature discipline, the power of Revelation, carries this insight forward, spreading it throughout the world. The discipline unlocks the doors of the subconscious and frees the ego, showing the cracks in the target’s rationalisations and opening them to the chaos of reality.

System

A character must either be a Malkavian or have the Gehenna Prophet Flaw to learn this Discipline.  If a character does not have the Gehenna Prophet Flaw when they first learn this Discipline, they immediately gain it for no XP.

Test Pool

Revelation Test Pool: The Revelation wielder uses their Social attribute + Empathy, versus the target’s Social attribute + Willpower.

Passion

Level: 1

Cost: 1 Blood

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

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

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

If you choose instead to dampen your target’s emotions, then the target feels a draining loss of emotional cognition; their mind slows and their reactions – both emotional and otherwise – become dull and tepid. They feel no emotional response to stimuli such as love, hate, or fear. They are 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 themselves. 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 their emotions, and vice-versa.

Exceptional Success: For the next three turns, your target cannot spend Willpower to resist the consequences of this power.

Focus (Charisma): You can also apply Passion in the following ways: By either speaking to your target calmly or by detailing possible dangers, you can either end the effects of a fear-based power currently affecting that target or make the target more vulnerable to fear-based effects. Speak with your target for three full turns, spend 1 point of Blood, and make an opposed challenge. If successful, you either end the effects of powers like Dread Gaze or give your subject a -2 penalty to defense test pools to resist supernatural fear for the next hour

Haunting

Level: 2

Cost: 1 Blood

Nightmarish visions of possible futures haunt your victim, transforming the world around them into a dreamlike haze. Nothing seems quite right, and prophetic images of horrible doom beset them.

System: Spend 1 Blood, expend your standard action, and engage your target in an opposed challenge using the Revelation test pool. If you succeed, your target’s subconscious dredges up dark visions that only they perceive. Your target suffers a -3 penalty to all attack test pools for the next three turns as they try (and fail) to separate present and dark future. After three turns, the subject becomes more capable of distinguishing what is and is not prophecy. For the remainder of an hour, the penalty is -1. Penalties from Haunting do not apply to defense test pools.

Using this power on a Malkavian or an individual with the Gehenna Prophet Flaw makes them lose 1 Willpower. Multiple uses of Haunting do not stack.

Exceptional Success: Your victim suffers a -3 penalty to their attack test pools for five turns, and afterward suffers a -1 penalty to all attack test pools for the rest of the night. In addition, using this power on a Malkavian or an individual with the Gehenna Prophet Flaw makes them lose 2 Willpower, instead of 1.

Focus (Charisma): While under the effects of Haunting, your target loses access to their Mental attribute focus. If they have more than one Mental focus, your target chooses which focus is temporarily removed.

Eyes of Chaos

Level: 3

There is wisdom to be found 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.

System: 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 utilising this power might spend a few moments scanning a room and be drawn immediately to the discovery of a heretical text concealed under the bed, they might glance at a complex puzzle and solve it in an instant, or they might count all the tiles in a mosaic as they walked rapidly past it.

Focus (Manipulation): You can utilise Eyes of Chaos by expending a simple action, rather than expending a standard action.

Ancient Curse

Level: 4

Cost: 1 Blood

Your voice can carry the same curse that Apollo laid upon Cassandra, improved by time and practice. By speaking aloud in a resonant tone, you can summon forth the regrets, fears, pain, horror, and suffering of another life your target might have lived – or one that yet lays ahead of them.

System: To use Ancient Curse, you must gain your target’s attention and spend at least five turns (15 seconds) describing a particular alternate past to your target, in which they were Embraced as a different Clan – or perhaps a future where they diablerise and are overwhelmed by the soul of an elder of another Clan.  When you finish this description, spend 1 Blood and make an opposed challenge against your target.  If you succeed, you may give them any Clan weakness except the Malkavian one for the rest of the evening.  They still have their original Clan weakness as well.  If they are a Malkavian or Gehenna Prophet, they also lose 1 Willpower.

Exceptional Success: The effect lasts through downtime and until the end of the next game

Focus (Manipulation): Rather than spending five turns (15 seconds) talking to your target, you can inflict a new Clan weakness with but a single phrase and a single standard action.

Shattered Mirror

Level: 5

Cost: 1 Blood

By using this power, the full shattering of the mirror that shows the future is unleashed within your victim’s mind. You draw forth every possible outcome of every possible action, and then cause those cascading consequences to magnify a hundredfold and wreak havoc on your target.

System: The target must have her attention focused on you in order for Shattered Mirror 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 overwhelm their mind with possible futures for the next hour.

Your target should work with the Storyteller to determine exactly how this revelation affects them, but for mechanical purposes, the user of Shattered Mirror selects one of the following effects to apply to their 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 Shattered Mirror fades. The victim will not fight unless cornered and, if forced to fight, will flee at the first opportunity.
  • Confusion: The victim suffers a -5 penalty to all attack test pools for the duration of Shattered Mirror as they struggle to separate prophecy and present. This penalty does not apply to defense test pools.
  • Fugue: The target withdraws mentally, sitting quietly and talking only to friends they trust. If forced out of their shell, they will either attack or flee from the person who provoked them (target’s choice).

Exceptional Success: The effects last for two hours, instead of one.

Focus (Charisma): The target loses all of their Mental and Social attribute focuses for the duration of this power.

Deny

Level: 6

Cost: 3 Blood

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 reflections 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.

System: 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 blinkered, the object you’ve denied still exists, but for you, it is nothing more than a semi-transparent, obviously false reflection 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 they “don’t see,” as if it is an archway, and a sword that they refuse to acknowledge fails to cut them, passing right through their body. The Revelation wielder can Deny any object within their line of sight, but can only extend their denial to objects they are touching. For example, the Revelation user can swing an axe through a door that they have denied and strike the opponent on the other side, but if they shoot a crossbow through the denied door, the bolt hits the door as usual.

You can Deny any object up to the size of a horse. 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.

Sword of Malkav

Level: 6

Cost: 2 Blood

Much of a person’s identity is bound up in a set of defining characteristics and principles that influence their decisions. Wielding your prophetic gifts like a knife, you can cut them to the core, and shake the very foundations of what makes them who they are. Instead they become someone else, someone who chose a different path at a crucial moment in their life, the echoes of that change played forward into now.

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 them with this power. If your target has an Archetype, you may immediately change their Archetype and any of their 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 them 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 their identity leaving them directionless, dispassionate, and overwhelmed by an identity crisis. Using the Sword of Malkav in this way causes your target to lose access to their Archetype (if they have one) as well as any focuses. A use of the Sword of Malkav in this way lasts for the next hour. Removing a character’s Archetype in this way affects only their 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.

Exceptional Success: If you have chosen to strip your target of their identity, they lose their Archetype and focuses for the remainder of the night.

Fractaline Epiphany

Level: 7

The future 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 a mind capable of perceiving it, 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 future through the pane of your mind’s eye you see infinite possibilities.

System: 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.

Wilderness of Mirrors

Level: 7

Cost: 4 Blood

You have the power to force those around you to see what lies ahead, whether or not they want to, whether or not they are remotely prepared for it. That same shattered mirror that shows you all possible futures can easily overwhelm the unwary.

System: When attempting to use the Revelation power Shattered Mirror, you may choose to spend 4 additional Blood points to activate Wilderness of Mirrors. 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 Shattered Mirror 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 Revelation 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 Shattered Mirror, the effects will end after 10 minutes.

Techniques