ColossusCrusher
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« Reply #1 on: March 07, 2021, 01:30:55 AM » |
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The Devourers Suggested Path: Any, as long as a Mage is willing to make the sacrifices necessary to attain as much power as possible. Suggested Order: None. The Pentacle and even the Seers try to mention this Legacy as little as possible, as they both fear the potential of ambitious Mages using the Legacy's Attainments - they have one and only one purpose: the accumulation of as much power as possible at the expense of anyone else. Anyone who investigates this Legacy without authorization is swiftly punished.
Suggested Oblations: Identifying optimal souls for harvest, observing the effects of harvest on affected mortals, creating a method to maximize consumption and minimize detection. Most Devourers focus on optimizing their "eating" habits to an extreme degree, to the point that these acts have become oblations for them, provided they spend the requisite amount of time on them.
Attainment 1: Harvest of Conscience (Gnosis 3, Death 2 (Primary), Life 2, Mind 2) All Devourers innately know how to remove a soul from its' host. As an extended action they may create an effect similar to the spell "Sever the Sleeping Soul" without spending Mana, rolling Presence + Intimidation + Death contested by their target's Resolve. Success allows a Devourer to hold onto the soul (the target suffers from soul loss as usual), up to a number of souls equal to his or her Gnosis. With Death 5 this effect may be made at sensory range. As an instant action the Devourer may harvest the soul of its Morality, gaining a number of temporary dots equal to the soul's Morality score. These dots may be allocated among the Devourer's Skills or Attributes up to a limit of his or her dots in the Death Arcanum, and vanish at the end of the scene. The soul itself is released back into the world, where it can reunite with its host, albeit stripped of all Morality. Devourers who rely heavily on this Attainment often leave a trail of chaos in their wake, courtesy of their fully functional but utterly amoral victims.
Optional: Prime 2 With this level of Prime, a Devourer can roughly estimate the quality of a soul. When viewing a person with the "Soul Marks" spell, he or she gains a rough idea of the quality of that person's soul, revealed by how tattered the soul is: shredded (Morality 0), tattered (Morality 1-3), damaged (Morality 4-6), intact (Morality 7-9), pristine (Morality 10)
Attainment 2: Harvest of Body (Gnosis 5, Death 3) Devourers who have advanced to this level in the Legacy have discovered how to improve on their first Attainment to create permanent benefits, albeit at greater cost. A Devourer may now consume three or five souls at once when using Harvest of Conscience. Instead of temporarily adding to his or her Skills or Attributes, the Devourer may now permanently increase one of his or her Skills or Attributes by one dot up to a maximum of his or her dots in the Death Arcanum, depending on if he or she consumed three or five souls. As before, the souls are released back into the world bereft of any of their morality.
Optional: Prime 3 With this level of Prime, a Devourer who uses Harvest of Conscience to temporarily increase his or her abilities may also convert Morality dots into Mana, almost as if the soul was Tass.
Attainment 3: Supernal Harvest (Gnosis 7, Death 4) Master Devourers are truly forces to be reckoned with. When consuming multiple souls at once, they may now use up seven souls at once in order to permanently increase their skill in one of the ten Arcana by one dot, up to half of their dots in the Death Arcanum, rounded up.
Optional: Prime 4 With this level of Prime, a Devourer with a full soul reserve may consume all of them in order to permanently increase his or her Gnosis Score by one dot. This aspect of Supernal Harvest may not be used until the tainted area created by its previous use has faded (see below for details). Truly depraved Devourers steal as many souls as possible in order to ascend to the highest level of raw magical power as quickly as possible.
While the Devourers offer many tempting and powerful rewards, their Attainments come with significant drawbacks - using any of them is a sin against Wisdom 2. Furthermore, using the first Attainment stains the area it is performed in with a dark aura for a number of days equal to the Devourer's Gnosis. Using the second stains the area for a number of weeks equal to the Devourer's Gnosis and using the third stains the area for a number of months equal to the Devourer's Gnosis. Stained areas immediately trigger any Mage's Unseen Sense and with some investigation may reveal residue from the shredded souls' return back to the world, potentially leading investigators to the Devourer. For this reason many Devourers try to use their attainments in secluded areas, although in many cases that is not an option. When a shredded soul returns to its host, the person must immediately check each lost dot of Morality for degeneration as if each dot had been lost one at a time.
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