Castigation

= Castigation =

Abaddon’s Call
Hunters the world over tell tales of encountering undead creatures that aren’t vampires: lurching zombies, hungry ghosts, vengeful revenants, etc. Many who take up the Vigil are forced to wonder from whence such creatures come. What wills an otherwise unexceptional corpse to get up and start shambling around?

Sometimes it’s the work of witches, sometimes possessing spirits, and sometimes it’s the power of the Lucifuge. This Castigation allows the hunter to command a corpse to rise and come to the aid of its new master for a short duration—though rumors abound of ways to make the effects permanent.

The use of this power is incredibly vulgar and not publicly tolerated by the Lucifuge, but this is largely a conspiracy of iconoclasts and outcasts, so rules don’t always apply. The force that animates the corpse is not necessarily that of the previous tenant. Popular wisdom would suggest a demon inhabits the body but it could possibly be a compelled spirit or simply the user’s own unconscious that dictates the actions of the body.

Cost: 1 Willpower, X points of bashing damage (see below)

Action: Extended (number of successes required equals two times the number of days the corpse has been dead, to a maximum of 20 days; each roll is equal to fifteen minutes, and during each roll the hunter suffers two points of bashing damage as he is wracked with aches and seizures).

Dice Pool: Resolve + Medicine

Roll Results

Dramatic Failure: The body animates as if by a normal success in all ways, except it will focus its attention solely on ending the one who called it to life, attacking ceaselessly until it is felled. Failure: The hunter takes the wounds, but nothing occurs: the Castigation doesn’t elicit even a twitch from the body.

Success: The use of this Endowment wracks the user’s body with pain as she exerts her will over death itself. The raised body is in all ways a shambling simpleton and is only good for following simple instructions (“Go get me that book from the second floor,” is fine, but “Drive my car northbound on Route 22” will be met with gaping confusion).

If called to fight it will do so in the most brutish and straightforward manner possible. Every attack will be an “all-out attack”; it cannot use complex tools; it does not roll for Initiative (automatically going last); and it will pursue its target with no regard for its own safety or that of the practitioner and her cellmates. If the creature sustains more damage of any type than it has Health levels it returns to its inanimate state (a lot worse for wear, but hey, it was already dead) and cannot be used for this infernal purpose again.

It only rises for one day per the hunter’s dots in Castigation, but with the cost of one permanent Willpower dot, the creature will remain shambling about for as long as it is able. As above, it doesn’t heal damage and retains any wounds (even those from, say, accidentally tumbling down a set of steps) for the remainder of its potentially-short unlife.

Exceptional Success: As above, but the creature doubles its Defense and Speed scores (see sidebar for traits).

animated dead traits

Attributes: Strength 3, Stamina 3, Dexterity 1, Resolve 1 and Composure 1,

Skills: Brawl 1, Athletics 1

Willpower: None

Initiative: None

Defense: 1

Speed: 4

Size: 5 (average)

Health: 8

Abyssal Bondage
Hell is a place of fire and brimstone, but it contains multitudes. Part of it is the Great Pit, the well that scours souls from existence. Some ancient tomes equate this Pit with the metaphysical Abyss, the Formless Land, or the Void.

Nobody knows the truth, but they do know that witches are scared shitless of anything summoned forth from this Abyss. The witch’s shadow intensifies into a pool of inky blackness, and tendrils of Abyssal energies snake into her soul, consuming the magical energy within. The hunter cannot contain the energy of the Void within her — if she tried, she’d be lucky to end up in Hell.

Instead she uses herself as a conduit, pouring the energy into a handful of her own blood. The blood must be freshly drawn at the time of the ritual. The touch of the Formless Land still chills her to the bone, reminding her of what awaits if the First of the Fallen finds her wanting.

When the hunter splashes her Abyssal blood over a witch, the energies react with the arcane power that a witch calls forth, warping it beyond her control. The entities that wait in the Void lust after the life-force of pure arterial blood. It’s more costly for the hunter to draw it out, but the effects can be nothing short of astounding.

Cost: 1 Willpower and one point of lethal or aggravated damage (see below)

Action: Extended (15 successes required, each roll represents 10 minutes)

Dice Pool: Stamina + Resolve Roll

Results

Dramatic Failure: The Lucifuge is wracked by the energies of the Void as they feast upon her soul and devour her. She suffers one point of lethal damage over and above whatever injury she took for the rite to work, and loses two points of Willpower in addition to the cost of this rite.

Failure: The hunter fails to make contact with the Formless Land. Perhaps that’s for the best.

Success: The hunter infuses an amount of her blood with the energy of the Abyss, using herself as a channel. She must still strike the witch in question with her blood, which is a Dexterity + Athletics roll minus the target’s Defense.

Each use of this ritual empowers enough blood for one attempt only, and the blood remains empowered until the next sunrise. If the hunter took lethal damage when preparing this rite, the witch’s next spell has strange effects. The spell affects a random target chosen from all possible viable targets in range — if the spell targets the witch’s human ally, then all humans in the range of the spell are possible targets, including the hunters and the witch.

If the casting roll succeeds, the new target takes the effects of the spell as normal. If the casting roll fails, the new target suffers the opposite effects: a fireball cleanses its target of wounds; a sensory spell strikes the target blind. If the hunter powered this rite with aggravated damage, then not only are the specifics of the magic altered, but the form itself twists out of control.

The Storyteller should come up with a new spell from the same Mystery as the intended one, though not constrained by the witch’s rating in that Mystery. The new spell affects everyone in a radius of 20 yards per dot of the witch’s Gnosis.

Exceptional Success: The dark powers of the Abyss smile upon the hunter, refunding the point of Willpower and making sure they know of the hunter’s existence.

Calling Forth the Pit
According to the Lucifuge’s infernal lore, when Lucifer was cast into Hell, it was an empty, endless void. Only by the light of the Morningstar’s will was it transformed into a kingdom suitable for his demonic followers. The very act of willing the unholy city into being, however, bound up its existence with Lucifer’s.

The First of the Fallen is a part of Hell now, and it is a part of him. His mortal descendants carry a bit of that connection in their blood, and through application of the proper ritual acts, a Lucifuge may draw a portion of Hell to himself, commanding the pit to either disgorge one of its demonic denizens into the earthly realm or to swallow up one of its children and drag it back to Hell.

The Lucifuge may attempt to summon a random demon or a specific entity whose name he knows. If he knows the name of a demon he tries to banish, he receives a +2 bonus to his dice pool. A named demon can even be summoned from elsewhere in the material world.

Cost: The Lucifuge must perform a blood sacrifice that inflicts 2 points of lethal damage. This damage may be inflicted on himself or on another intelligent being.

Action: Extended (10 successes; each roll requires a minute in time) to summon a demon, extended and contested to banish one. The first competitor to accumulate the required successes wins Dice Pool: Presence + Resolve versus the subject’s Resistance. Roll Results

Dramatic Failure: The ritual or resistance fails outright and all accumulated successes are lost. If the attempt was a summoning ritual, the Lucifuge may try again; if the Lucifuge rolls a dramatic failure on a banishment roll, he cannot try to banish that demon again for one month. If the demon fails dramatically on a banishment resistance roll, it is immediately banished to the netherworld from whence it came.

Failure: No successes are accumulated at this stage of the contest.

Success: Successes are accumulated toward the total required. If the total reaches 10+ successes for the Lucifuge on a summoning ritual, a demon manifests in the physical world at a point specified by the hunter. The hunter has no control over the summoned demon unless he knows the Mandate of Hell Castigation ritual. If the hunter reaches 10+ successes first on a banishment ritual, the demon is swallowed up by the yawning black gulf of Hell and immediately banished from the mortal world. If the demon acquires 10+ successes first, it is not banished and is immune to further attempts for 24 hours. Exceptional Success: Tremendous progress is made or resistance is shown. Upon an exceptional success, the entity may not return to the mortal world for one month.

Coils of Iniquity
Some within the Lucifuge coyly refer to this as the “vice grip,” as it serves to give the Lucifuge some advantage over those whose predilections and sins are of a specific… flavor. More specifically, it grants the Devil’s agent the ability to more easily manipulate those whose Vice is the same as the one chosen by the hunter using this ritual.

The hunter enacts the ritual in the morning just as the sun rises, anointing herself with three drops of sinner’s blood (one drop on her tongue, one in each eye). The Vice caught in the victim’s blood (like a mosquito in amber) infuses the hunter with an attunement to that Vice, offering her a bonus toward all those who possess that same Vice over the next 24 hour period. If this Castigation ritual is not performed during the hours surrounding dawn it automatically fails.

Cost: Three drops of blood (human or, at least, from a sentient creature), as described above. The Vice belonging to the one-time bearer of that blood is what matters most.

Action: Instant '

Dice Pool: (10 – Morality) + Empathy

Roll Results

Dramatic Failure: The Lucifuge grows distant from the Vice in question rather than gaining proximity. She suffers a -3 penalty on any action performed against a character possessing that Vice.

Failure: The sympathy between the hunter and the Vice in those drops of blood fails to manifest.

Success: For every success gained on the roll, the hunter gains bonus dice on all Social rolls performed against characters possessing the chosen Vice (i.e. the Vice of the individual from whom the three drops of blood were taken). If the Vice trapped in those three drops of blood was Gluttony, and the hunter gains three successes, then she would gain a +3 bonus on all Social rolls involving Gluttonous characters.

Exceptional Success: Beyond the bonus of added successes, the Lucifuge also gains a point of Willpower from the heady rush of sinful sympathy.

Familiar
Descendants of Lucifer often attract tiny, lesser demons to themselves, willingly or unwillingly. These imps and familiars are drawn to the infernal spark in the blood of a Lucifuge, and are compelled by the divine right of Lucifer’s blood to serve and obey. Some do so willingly, so slavish in their devotion to their earthly masters that they are willing to oppose the edicts of Hell. Others serve reluctantly, disgusted to see the seed of the Morningstar debase itself as a servant of humanity but nevertheless bound by their master’s blood.

Still others are insidious, pretending to give loyal service while seeking every opportunity to seduce their “masters” into the open service of evil. A familiar comes in one of two forms, Twilight or embodied. The Lucifuge chooses which type he will have when he learns this rite; the only way to change the type of a character’s familiar is to unlearn the Familiar ritual and then relearn it later. At the player’s choice, this might represent the dismissal of one servant and the summoning of another, or the swap might represent an elaborate ritual to clothe a Twilight familiar in flesh (or release an embodied one from its fleshy prison).

The altered familiar might have similar Traits in its new form, but it might just as easily be radically different in form and powers, with only the personality and memories remaining the same. A character may only have one familiar at a time. A Twilight familiar is a spiritual entity with no proper physical body of its own.

A Twilight familiar is also known as a “fetch.” Twilight familiars can temporarily manifest like ghosts, but their ephemeral bodies are otherwise invisible and intangible to the physical world. A Twilight familiar must manifest or use Dread Powers to affect anything in the physical world — except for its master, whom it can touch at will (its master can also see and speak with the familiar freely, even if he cannot see or hear into Twilight).

A Twilight familiar often leaves behind a subtle sign of its presence, even when it is not manifested. A whiff of brimstone might waft from its location, or its shadow might briefly flicker in the corner of an observer’s eye. Twilight familiars can take any form imaginable: most are small, impish creatures that resemble classical devils or mythological monsters, but they can be as large as man-sized.

A Twilight familiar often represents its master’s Vice: a Wrathful hunter might have a familiar built like a bull, all spines and blood-drenched fangs, while a Lustful character might be served in a more personal capacity by a sultry, fiery-eyed succubus or incubus. An embodied familiar has a physical body and takes the form of an earthly creature. Many of the legendary stories of witches with cunning animal companions — cats, rats, bats — are actually references to embodied familiars.

An embodied familiar often has eyes that gleam an unusual color when they catch the light or that display a peculiar intelligence. Many times, the creature’s markings in some way reflect its master’s appearance. A Lucifuge with an ugly scar across his cheek might attract a catlike creature with an odd stripe of a contrasting color on its jaw.

This sometimes leads to the misconception that a Lucifuge can physically transform into an animal. Remember also that an embodied familiar is a demon in animal form, not a true animal; many embodied familiars have one or two unnatural traits, like paws with a sickening resemblance to human hands or a vocalization that comes close to being actual speech. If an embodied familiar is slain, its infernal spirit usually discorporates and returns to the Hell from whence it came.

Sometimes, though, it latches onto its master and feeds off his memories, drinking deep of the hunter’s soul to sustain itself in ethereal form. In game terms, a Lucifuge’s player may, upon the destruction of his embodied familiar, choose to preserve the demon as a Twilight familiar. Effectively, the Lucifuge sacrifices these experience points to swap out his Familiar ritual without going through the usual extended Resolve + Occult roll.

The Storyteller designs the demon’s traits, with the player’s participation. Each familiar begins play with at least one dot in each Attribute, with extra dots as listed in the sidebars. Twilight familiar Traits follow the same rules as those for ghosts, except as noted in the Twilight Familiar Traits sidebar. Embodied familiars are treated as normal animals, except as described in the Embodied Familiar Traits sidebar.

The master and familiar have an empathic connection; each can automatically feel the emotions of the other. (Magical effects that damage or manipulate the familiar through an emotional attack don’t damage or manipulate the master.) The familiar can always understand its master, no matter what language the master speaks, and vice versa.

TWILIGHT FAMILIAR TRAITS
Attributes: Attributes: 3/3/2 (allocate dots in any order among Power, Finesse and Resistance) Willpower: Willpower: Equal to Power + Resistance Essence: Essence: 10 (10 max); the demon regains one point of spent Essence per day spent in its master’s presence. A familiar can also regain spent Essence by witnessing (or causing) acts related to its Vice.

Initiative: Initiative: Equal to Finesse + Resistance

Defense: Defense: Equal to highest of Power and Finesse

Speed:

Speed: Equal to Power + Finesse + 5

Virtue: Virtue: Choose Virtue Vice: Vice: Any.

Most familiars share their master’s Vice, but not all. A familiar regains all spent Willpower by fulfilling its Vice once per chapter, just as a mortal does for fulfilling her Virtue. Morality: Morality: Familiars have no Morality score. Size: Size: 5 or less Corpus: Corpus: Equal to Resistance + Size

Born of Sin: Born of Sin: The Twilight familiar is a base creature, born of sin and capable of calling that sin out in others. The familiar can manipulate the presence of its Vice, enhancing or manipulating its manifestation in a creature, mortal or otherwise. The target need not have the same Vice as the demon; he must merely be experiencing the emotion.

A character whose Vice is Pride can still feel lust for a beautiful woman, or envy of a neighbor’s new car, for example. The demon cannot create a Vice where none exists. Enhancing a Vice, making an individual feel the emotion more strongly, requires the expenditure of one point of Essence and a contested roll of Power + Finesse versus the target’s Resolve or Composure, whichever is higher.

The familiar can produce a moderate shift with a success; mild attraction might become infatuation, or infatuation might become full-blown obsession in the case of Lust, but mild attraction cannot be turned into full-blown obsession directly. An exceptional success, however, allows the demon to fan even the tiniest spark of Vice into an inferno. The changes last for one minute per success.

The demon cannot enhance the same Vice in the same target more than once per scene. Manipulating a Vice, changing its target, requires the expenditure of two points of Essence and a contested roll of Power + Finesse versus the target’s Resolve or Composure, whichever is higher. Success allows the demon to slightly alter the target of a character’s emotion.

For example, a character feeling slothful toward his work might have that laziness redirected toward laziness regarding investigating those weird sounds in the basement, or a man proud of his status as a player might instead be made to focus that pride on his ass-kicking prowess — which might cause problems if he’s never been in a fight in his life.

Dread Powers: Dread Powers: Assign three dots among Dread Powers. Ban: The familiar has one Ban, chosen by the Storyteller.

Anchor: The demon’s master is considered to be its anchor to the material world, although there is no limit to how far a familiar can travel from its master.

EMBODIED FAMILIAR TRAITS
Attributes: Attributes: 5/4/3 (divide among Mental, Physical and Social) Skills: 9/6/3 (divide among Mental, Physical and Social); the familiar receives a free dot in Brawl, Larceny, or Stealth Willpower: Equal to Resolve + Composure Essence: 10 (10 max) Initiative: Equal to Dexterity + Composure

Defense: Equal to lowest of Dexterity and Wits Speed: Strength + Dexterity + “species factor” (based on its animal type) Virtue: Choose Virtue Vice: Vice: Any. Most familiars share their master’s Vice, but not all.

A familiar regains all spent Willpower by fulfilling its Vice once per chapter, just as a mortal does for fulfilling her Virtue. Morality: Familiars have no Morality score.

Size: 5 or less (based on its animal type) Health: Equal to Stamina + Size

Dread Powers: Assign four dots among Dread Powers.

Ban: The familiar has one Ban, chosen by the Storyteller.

Innocuous: Embodied familiars are very good at not being noticed by others. Anyone but its bonded master suffers a -2 penalty on perception rolls to notice the familiar, unless it does something to draw attention to itself.

Through the Eyes: Through the Eyes: By spending a point of Willpower, the master of an embodied familiar can shift his perceptions to the familiar. He sees what the familiar sees, hears what it hears, and so on. He is oblivious to his own surroundings while viewing through his familiar, but still possesses tactile sensation (thus he is aware of any damage or physical sensation to his own body). Ending this viewing is a reflexive action and requires no roll.

Familiar Betrayal
Many werewolf packs follow a tradition of binding a spirit to the pack as a whole. This familiar spirit can aid the creatures by lending them some of its strength, as a liaison to other spirits and as a spy or guardian. The Children of the Seventh Generation are well versed in the aspects of familiar relationships and use that knowledge to force pack familiars to turn against their masters.

Cost: 1 Willpower each day in addition to other costs (see below)

Effect: Mechanically, Familiar Betrayal works in the exact same way as the summoning aspect of “Calling Forth the Pit”, with the exception that the hunter must know the name of the pack familiar he is attempting to summon.

Hunters could learn the true name of the familiar by questioning other spirits in the area, by overhearing the pack talk about the spirit, or by tricking the familiar into revealing it to them. If the hunter succeeds in summoning the spirit she may immediately bind that spirit to serve her as a temporary familiar (characters may only have one familiar at a time) as per the “Familiar” Castigation.

For the next six days the spirit is bound to follow the wishes of the hunter to the letter, even if it means turning against the spirit’s former masters. To maintain her hold over the spirit, the hunter must reinforce the binding each evening at sunset by spending one Willpower. Unless the familiar does something to betray its new allegiance, the werewolf pack remains ignorant of the betrayal.

Family Vestment

Every Lucifuge hunter’s bloodline contains some germ of the infernal; some chromosomal pair or twist of DNA bears a whiff of sulfur, a throwback to whatever elder beast seduced or forced its way into the family so many eons ago.

For the most part, this reveals itself in subtle ways— the agelessness of the hunter, the ability to command demons with but a salacious whisper, the power to see the stains of sin that mark a man’s soul.

Some, though, see the true lineage of their family brood in unexpected—and ultimately more overt— ways. Just as parents might pass to their children green eyes, a receding hairline, or an increased risk for prostate cancer, the Lucifuge may find that the infernal spark within has passed down strange physical augmentations known as Vestments.

The Vestment isn’t ever-present; a lashing tail or hooked claws don’t exist until the hunter ritually calls upon them, drawing them out of his damaged genetics and to his flesh. The player may buy this ritual multiple times (remember, though, he can only possess as many rituals as he has dots in Castigation), with each instance offering one new Vestment from this list:

-The Devil’s Wings: The hunter grows wings. They might appear as bloodstained angel wings, ragged bat wings, or something more bizarre (gold leaf with shifting veins of copper).

The character’s clothing must accommodate the wings, or the transformation will tear the clothing and cause the hunter two points of bashing damage. The character gains actual fight capabilities, but since he’s not a demon, it’s imperfect: he can stay aloft for a number of turns equal to his Strength dots + dots possessed in the Castigation Endowment. The character flies at a Speed of twice his normal Speed score. Tricky maneuvers may require a Dexterity + Athletics roll to perform (as the Storyteller’s discretion).

-Dread Attack: The Lucifuge manifests some physical change that allows him to do lethal damage on Brawl rolls (instead of the usual bashing). This could include ichorous black claws, a mouth of hooked teeth, a lashing tail or rough, scaly flesh.

-Dread Gaze: The hunter’s eyes manifest a strange and unnatural color, perhaps even appearing reptilian or feline. Choose one Social Skill that Dread Gaze modifies; any time the hunter calls upon this Vestment, he gains a bonus to rolls involving that Skill equal to dots possessed in the Castigation Endowment

-Hellflesh: The hunter’s body in some way accommodates greater Health or flesh-bound armor (choose which at the time of purchasing this Vestment). The hunter’s flesh might bloat and swell or she might gain leathery skin or a layer of gristly muscle. She gains dots added to her Health or to her Armor (+1/+1) per dot possessed in the Castigation Endowment.

-Physical Endowment: Choose one Physical Skill at the time of purchasing this ritual; the physical modification provides a bonus to that Skill (when the modification is drawn to the flesh) equal to the character’s dots in the Castigation Endowment. The modification should be appropriate to the Skill it modifies—modifying Larceny might cause the character’s fingers to grow into something resembling multi-joint spider legs (for picking locks and pocket), while modifying Stealth might stain the character’s skin inky black.

The only Skill that cannot be modified is Drive. Firearms could be modified with a change to one’s eyes, while Weaponry might cause the weapon-wielding arm to become more fluid in its movement due to length or additional joints.

Cost: 1 Willpower point, and when the Vestment finally goes away, the character gains a mild derangement for the subsequent 24-hour period. Calling upon one’s demonic nature is rarely a comfortable feeling, and often leaves characters feeling less than human. Action: Instant

Dice Pool: Strength + Stamina

Roll Results

Dramatic Failure: The character’s human nature and physiology prevails—sure, that sounds like a good thing, and in some ways, it is. But it doesn’t feel good; bones compress, bruises appear, and blood trickles from every orifice. The character suffers three points of bashing damage.

Failure: The Vestment does not manifest.

Success: The character manifests the Vestment, which lasts for one full scene. The character can extend it beyond the scene by willfully assuming one point of lethal damage to resist the change back to her wholly human form. Each point of damage taken in this way extends the duration by one additional scene.

Exceptional Success: The character wears the flesh well. This allows the character to extend the duration by spending points of Willpower (one point per one scene) instead of suffering lethal damage.

Gaze of the Penitent
Hell is a place of fire and torment, but also, according to many philosophies, a place where the evil is scourged from the soul so that it might pass on to the next world. The torments of the Pit are not punishment, but an encouragement to repentance.

Tortures are tailored to the soul’s particular sins to remind the damned of what brought them there in the first place. Whether any soul actually escapes the iron walls of Pandemonium is a matter of philosophical debate, but Lucifuge who know this ritual are capable of drawing on that same affinity for the sins of an individual and laying them bare, wracking mortal man and unholy monster alike with the pain and guilt of past transgressions.

The Gaze of the Penitent ritual requires eye contact; if the target moves about or actively avoids making eye contact, or if he wears dark glasses, the activation roll suffers a -1 penalty. The Lucifuge must also possess a bit of blood, hair, or similar substance from the target.

This corporal requirement is waived if the Lucifuge has witnessed the target committing one of the seven deadly sins in the last 24 hours.

Cost: 1 Willpower.

Action: Contested. Dice Pool: Wits + Empathy vs. Resolve.

Roll Results

Dramatic Failure: The hunter’s power is reflected back on herself. She suffers a penalty to all dice pools equal to (10 - her Morality) for the rest of the scene. She may spend a Willpower point to negate this penalty for a turn.

Failure: The ritual fails to take effect.

Success: The target of the ritual is wracked with guilt and the imagined torments of Hell that will be visited upon him for his sins. He suffers a penalty to all dice pools equal to (10 - his Morality) for a number of turns equal to the successes rolled on the activation roll. He may spend a Willpower point to negate this penalty for a turn and act normally.

Exceptional Success: The guilt and pain last for an entire scene.

Gulf of Hades
Underground in a cavern, with no source of light, the blackness is almost palpable. That unyielding darkness can cause hallucinations, as the human mind creates visual input to busy itself and remain anchored in reality. The Gulf of Hades, the stretch of spiritual blackness leading to Hell, is dark beyond that word’s ability to convey meaning — it’s not just the absence of light, it’s the absence of the concept of light.

The hunter using this rite can call up that blackness to sap the energy out of a target. When used on an electronic device, the Gulf of Hades shuts it off completely — cars roll to a halt, computers shut down instantly, and doors with electronic locks pop open. When used on a person, however, the rite induces hypothermia within seconds as the victim suffers the effects of extreme cold.

Cost: None

Action: Instant

Dice Pool: Presence + Occult

Roll Results

Dramatic Failure: The Gulf of Hades turns itself on the hunter. The character immediately loses all Willpower points, and gains the Shaken Condition.

Failure: No effect.

Success: The character calls up a tiny fraction of the void. The area grows noticeably darker, and witnesses might hear faint, mournful howls. The hunter must target a person or object within 20 feet. If the target is human, the person immediately suffers lethal damage equal to the hunter’s successes. These wounds manifest as blistering on exposed flesh, similar to frostbite. The target also suffers the effects of the Extreme Cold Tilt, if in combat.

If the target is a device that runs on electricity, it immediately shuts off and cannot be reactivated for a number of hours equal to the Lucifuge’s successes.

Exceptional Success: The Lucifuge absorbs a small amount of the energy the Gulf takes. The character regains all spent Willpower or may heal up to three points of bashing or lethal damage.

Guilt’s Bloody Trail
The torments of Hell scourge all traces of sin from the souls of men. That much is true. Hell knows and sees all sins, even those that man chooses to ignore. A member of the Lucifuge can tap into this universal library of guilt and sin, bringing a sign of Hell’s impending judgment to a killer.

The hunter must be present at the scene of a murder, with the body still in residence. He smears the deceased’s blood on his tongue and concentrates. After a few seconds, he begins to feel a pull towards the killer. At the same time, the killer develops stigmata — wounds on the palms or wrists that bleed freely and do not heal.

Medical examination shows no cause for the wounds, but enough fresh blood wells up through them to soak through the thickest bandage. The killer isn’t losing his own vital fluids; instead, the blood that drips from his hands is that of his victim.

Any forensics test will bear that out — the blood is identical to that in the victim’s body at the time of death.

Cost: 1 Willpower

Action: Contested; resistance is reflexive.

Dice Pool: Intelligence + Investigation vs. Wits + Subterfuge

Roll Results

Dramatic Failure: The hunter may taste the blood of someone other than the victim, or Hell’s archivists may just be in a capricious mood. Whatever the case, he receives all the effects of a success but directed against a person innocent of the murder.

Failure: The hunter gains no information as to the killer’s location.

Success: The killer’s hands or wrists start bleeding, slowly but steadily. After a couple of minutes, blood will drip from his fingers if the wounds remain unbound. Even if bound, the blood eventually soaks through the bandages. While the killer bleeds, the hunter knows a vague direction and distance — a rough idea that’s only accurate to about 500 yards and one of the eight compass points. The stigmata and associated direction sense last until the end of the scene.

Exceptional Success: The blood flows over the killer’s hands, reminding him of his crime and stirring feelings of guilt and shame possibly long thought forgotten. This so unnerves the killer that he must make a degeneration roll as though he had committed a sin with Morality Threshold 2.

Hellfire
Hell has been associated with fire and brimstone, especially in Western culture, for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Lucifer himself is called the Morningstar, which has implications of fiery radiance. The Lucifuge is at home with heat and flame, and through the power of their infernal parentage, some learn to control and conjure these hellish flames to scourge their enemies.

Cost: 1 Willpower or 1 Willpower and one point of aggravated damage (see below).

Action: Instant.

Dice Pool: Dexterity + Athletics - target’s Defense.

Roll Results

Dramatic Failure: The Lucifuge conjures up hellish flames from the Abyss, but is unable to control them. She suffers three points of lethal damage, as though she has stepped into a bonfire with the intensity of a torch. Failure: The hunter fails to summon forth the fires of the Pit.

Success: The Lucifuge conjures a bolt of unnatural, hellish fire that consumes her target. The Hellfire might look like ordinary flames, or it might be an unusual color or produce a sound like the roar of a wounded beast. The fire originates from the hunter, but may manifest in any fashion — some Lucifuge project fire from their hands or eyes; others breathe flame like a dragon. The fire inflicts one point of lethal damage per success, unless the target naturally suffers aggravated damage from fire (like a vampire).

By reaching deeper into her infernal soul, a Lucifuge may conjure searing, white-hot Hellfire that inflicts aggravated damage, but this fire is too hot for any mortal to contain entirely. The Lucifuge herself suffers one point of aggravated damage as the flames wreathe her body.

Exceptional Success: No additional effect beyond tremendous damage.

Infernal Visions
The Luciferan blood that courses through the veins of the Lucifuge often carries with it the gift of prophecy. This “gift” is dubious at best; often the insight of this ritual comes in the form of terrifying nightmares and visions of the infernal court of their “father.”

Whatever form the insight takes, the character has a connection to primordial forces in the world, ancient truths that can be seen and comprehended only in dreams. He gains insight into secrets through reverie and visions, finding answers to questions he couldn’t normally get by mundane means.

He might dream of a hellish future in which all he loves is burned to ash, or he might meditate until his soul is cast, screaming, into the Abyss, to converse with Lucifer and his chief ministers, or he might just shut his eyes tight and listen to the snarled wisdom of the thing that lurks outside his window every night.

Once per game session, the Lucifuge can use his Infernal Visions ability to gain a supernatural insight concerning a question or topic. Activating this ability requires at least one hour spent in sleep, trance or an activity exclusively focused on accessing an altered state of consciousness.

Cost: None, but the nightmares associated with the visions prevent the character from regaining a Willpower point from the next night’s rest.

Action: Instant.

Dice Pool: Wits + Composure. The Storyteller should roll in secret so the player doesn’t know if he is receiving useful clues or meaningless imagery.

Dramatic failure: A nightmare. The character can interpret it any way he wants, but it probably leads to more trouble than solutions.

Failure: Meaningless images.

Success: One or more clues (one per success), although they must be interpreted.

Exceptional success: One or more clues (one per success), and a suggestion about their interpretation provided by the Storyteller. The information conveyed is hidden behind allegory, symbols and archetypes. Infernal Visions rarely answer questions directly, typically relying on symbolism and imagery to convey information.

A sorcerer seeking a specific person’s location wouldn’t see his address, but landmarks nearby could lead the way: a river, a tower or even the face of a man walking by at dusk. The answer has the potential to resolve the problem. It’s a tool for the Storyteller to help drive events of the story, not the answer on a plate.

Mandate of Hell 

No matter how diluted, the blood of a Lucifuge contains a tiny spark of the blood royal of Hell. By dint of their ancestry, members of the Lucifuge have the ability to master demons and bend the legions of Hell to their will. Some manifest this bond by possessing a familiar spirit, others learn to summon or banish demonic entities, but still others draw upon their infernal sovereignty to dominate lesser demons and bend them to their will. The merest glance and a harsh word of command forces demonic beings to obey their mortal masters.

The Mandate of Hell can be used in two ways: a short, simple, one- or two-word command (“Bow down,” “Kill him!”) is an instant contested action. More complex orders can also be given, but this requires that the demon be stationary (either willingly or bound in the Shackles of Pandemonium) and requires an extended action. The Lucifuge must spend 1 Willpower to enact a complex order.

The number of successes required is equal to three per “step” of the complete command.

For example, the command “Go to the corner of 7th and Maple, kill the man you find there, and afterwards, return to Hell and do not return” requires 12 successes, because it is a four-step command. The demon’s contested roll, on the other hand, must reach a total number of successes equal to (15 - the Lucifuge’s Morality). Each contested roll represents one turn in this scenario.

Cost: None or 1 Willpower (see below).

Action: Contested or extended and contested (see below).

Dice Pool: Presence + Composure vs. subject’s Resistance.

Roll Results

Dramatic Failure: The command fails and the subject is immune to all further commands from the Lucifuge for 24 hours. Failure: A simple command fails to take effect, or no progress is made toward a more complex command.

Success: The demon is compelled to obey a simple command for one turn, or progress is made toward giving the demon a complex command.

Exceptional Success: A simple command is obeyed for a full minute, or exceptional progress is made toward a complex command.

Mark of the Beast
Though formidable, the strength of a werewolf is nothing when compared with that of true demons of the pit. As their lord and ruler, the strength of Lucifer eclipses that of even the mightiest of his legion and his children can call upon that unholy strength.

The process isn’t pleasant. To call up the strength of hell requires the Children of the Seventh Generation to take on the guise of their demonic ancestor in a painful transformation.

Cost: 2 Willpower; 1 point of lethal damage

Action: Instant

Dice Pool: Resolve + Intimidation

Effect: The child of Lucifer calls upon her demonic heritage and takes the form of a demon. The transformation takes one turn and the hunter twists and writhes in agony as her body changes, resulting in one point of lethal damage. No two members of the Lucifuge share the exact same features after the transformation.

One member might take the form of a fallen angel with ripped and tattered wings, weeping tears of blood that mar otherwise perfect features, while the form of another member might echo the bestial nature of her sire complete with burning red eyes, claws, and fangs.

The demonic visage remains consistent each time the hunter activates the Castigation, leading some of the Lucifuge to wonder if the demonic version isn’t their soul’s “true” form. While transformed, the hunter gains a pool of points equal to her Castigation score that she may use to increase any Physical Attribute in any combination she desires.

A hunter with four dots in Castigation could, for example, raise her Strength by two and her Stamina by two, or instead raise her Dexterity by two, her Strength by one and her Stamina by one. This effect ignores the usual Attribute maximum for mortal characters. The character’s Size is also increased by one (remember to recalculate secondary Attributes such as Speed and Health based on the new form).

The hunter may heal wounds of any type by spending one Willpower (one Willpower spent heals one wound) and she gains an Armor rating of two. The presence of the demonic form can inspire fear and terror in those who witness it (even other hunters) similar to the effects of Lunacy. The flesh of a mortal can only maintain the form of a demon for a limited time and is physically, mentally, and spiritually exhausting.

The hunter can only remain in her demonic form for a number of turns equal to her Stamina + Castigation each day, though she may voluntarily end the transformation at any time (turns may be divided over multiple uses). Any wounds suffered by the character that exceed her normal Health after she returns to mortal form are not carried over to her human body.

Instead, the twisted nature of the demonic form inflicts the wounds on the very next person (or thing) the hunter sees before lapsing into unconsciousness (the presence of extra wounds indicates that the normal Health track of the hunter has already been filled).

Any damage caused by the hunter while in demonic form is considered lethal damage, regardless of source, unless the hunter does something to change his damage to aggravated (using silver against werewolves, for example). After the hunter reverts to her normal form she suffers from a wave of exhaustion that hinders her ability to act or even think clearly.

Until the hunter sleeps for a full eight hours, any action taken by the character is penalized -3 dice. Potentially more dangerous is the spiritual exhaustion. Calling on her demon form is recognition of the dark side of her nature and her pool to resist degeneration is reduced by one for the next 24 hours.

Potential Modifiers: Mark of the Beast is used within six minutes of 3 A.M. (+3).

Roll Results

Dramatic Failure: The hunter fails to transform but still suffers the aftereffects of a transformation.

Failure: The transformation fails.

Success: The hunter successfully transforms.

Exceptional Success: As above and the turns spent in demonic form don’t count against the maximum number of turns for the day.

The Mark of Lucifuge
The mythological Mark of Cain made it so all who looked upon the first murderer would know him. Thus were the wages of sin when angels roamed the earth. A lesser form of this mark is known to the Lucifuge. By laying a hand on the bare skin of a vampire, the Lucifuge brands its flesh with the merest stroke of that original mark. True to legend, once the vampire is marked, nothing can be done to rid itself of it. The char will not wash off long after the wound has healed; its burning cannot be carved out with a blade, nor can its flickering light be covered by any amount of clothing.

Cost: 1 or 2 Willpower (see below), 1 point of lethal damage

Action: Instant

Dice Pool: None

The hunter spends her Willpower and takes one point of lethal damage as she draws the mark across her palm (it appears like a second-degree burn). In many cases, the hunter may first need to succeed on a touch attack or have a cellmate grapple the creature. Branding causes one point of aggravated damage to the target. From now on, any and all Lucifuge to encounter the marked individual will recognize it and its unholy nature even across a crowded room.

What’s interesting, though, is who else can see the mark. Other creatures can see the mark. Humans—meaning, most other hunters—cannot. Doubly strange is that hunters of the Cainite Heresy can see the brand, and in fact the Cainites claim it as a mark quite familiar to them (they often leave the mark at the scenes of their hunts). This ritual works on other creatures besides vampires, but doing so necessitates spending 2 Willpower points instead of the 1 necessary to “brand” a vampire.

Prima Dictum
Blood is the animating force behind the vampire’s impossible life. Some suggest it’s blood that keeps vampires somewhat human—as a human element, the blood perhaps keeps them from turning into the mindless dead, shambling toward an open patch of sunlight. It could be said that blood is also the power of the Lucifuge. Through the veins of every member in their twisted family tree flows the distilled power of the Prince of Darkness.

Such infernal genetics—at times—come with a certain amount of privilege. Some family members have discovered the ability to deny vampires access to that which they rely on most—the very fuel that keeps them going in their cold mockery of life-blood. Generally, hunters who know the dark syllables of Prima Dictum do not like to linger long on the how’s and why’s of what it does, for fear that its origins contain madness for the castigator.

By drawing his own blood, the hunter utters a curse that burbles up from the depth of Hell. She brings the supernatural authority of her bloodline to bear, denying the vampire access to their precious animating fluids. It’s unlikely that full rigor mortis steps in, but the creature’s limbs start to tighten—the mystical transubstantiation of blood into will begins to fail on a fundamental level.

Dice Pool: Resolve + Occult + Castigation versus target’s Resolve + Potency

Cost: 2 Willpower and 1 point of lethal damage (this damage must draw blood, and the blood must splash the vampire; this may necessitate success on a touch attack, first)

Action: Instant and contested

Roll Results

Dramatic Failure: In drawing the blood and uttering the attendant guttural curse, the hunter evokes quite a different response, sending the vampire into frenzy with herself as the primary focus of said frenzy.

Failure: The Willpower is spent and the damage is taken, but curse doesn’t come and the vampire is unaffected.

Success: The hunter wins the contest. The vampire’s body stiffens; it becomes difficult for the creature to move. The vampire suffers a penalty to all Physical rolls—the modifier is equal to successes gained over the creature. In addition, any rolls made on behalf of the vampire to use Dread Powers are penalized by -1 die. This penalty lasts for the remainder of the scene.

Exceptional Success: As above, except now the vampire may not utilize any Dread Powers that necessitate an expenditure of Willpower (i.e. the creature’s own blood).

Sense of the Unrighteous
Wickedness and sin are everywhere in the World of Darkness. More immediately, wickedness and sin are in the Lucifuge’s nature, no matter how they try to deny it. Rather than seal away that aspect of themselves, some Lucifuge choose to acknowledge it and embrace it as a tool. Sin calls to sin, as the saying goes, and by meditating on his own wicked nature, a Lucifuge can develop a sense for the sins of others.

Individual hunters experience this sense in different ways. Some feel the taint of wickedness as an overpowering, nauseating stench; others see chains of sin winding around the unrighteous and dragging them down to Hell. Still others taste a foulness on their tongues or feel a throbbing pain behind their eyes or hear the screams of the damned surround them.

Cost: None.

Action: Extended; each roll represents one minute of meditation on one’s own wickedness.

Dice Pool: 10 - Morality

Roll Results

Dramatic Failure: The hunter is overwhelmed by his own sins; he loses all accumulated successes and must spend a Willpower point every turn in which he takes an action other than retching and cowering from his own nature.

Failure: No progress is made toward reaching out to sense the unrighteous.

Success: The Lucifuge makes a metaphysical connection between his own base nature and the wickedness of the world.

He can sense the presence of sin in creatures and even locations within two yards per success. Characters with a Morality (or equivalent Advantage) of 7 or higher do not register to the character’s sense.

Characters with a 5 or 6 Morality register as a mild sensation — a faint odor, ghostly image, and so on. Characters with a 3 or 4 Morality register as a moderate sensation — sounds about at conversational volume, a painful but not crippling headache, and so on.

Characters with a 1 or 2 Morality register with extremely strong sensations: clear, realistic hallucinations, the smell of a slaughterhouse, and so on. Characters with a Morality of 0, or unnatural creatures entirely lacking a Morality Trait, register as overpowering sensations: a blinding headache, terrifyingly real hallucinations, and the like.

The Lucifuge suffers a -1 penalty to all actions for the remainder of the scene after witnessing such shocking depravity. The Lucifuge can also sense the lingering presence of a sin committed in an area. A sin against Morality 4 registers as a minor sensation, sins against Morality 3 register as moderate sensation, sins against Morality 2 as severe sensations, and sins against Morality 1 as overwhelming sensations.

The imprint of a Morality 4 sin can linger for a few days, Morality 3 sins linger for several months, Morality 2 sins for one to six years, and Morality 1 sins can linger indefinitely. Sins against Morality 5 or higher are not severe enough to linger beyond their commission. The hunter knows the source of the sins he senses (the person in question or the precise location and approximate time where a past sin occurred), but not the nature of the sin itself.

Exceptional Success: If the player rolls five or more successes on a single roll, the hunter gains a general sense of an individual’s most severe sin or the nature of a lingering past sin.

Example: Herr von Murnau, a Lucifuge hunter with a 5 Morality, uses Sense of the Unrighteous while sitting in the audience of a play that has been connected to some strange disappearances. On his first roll, he scores three successes, allowing him to sense wickedness within six yards of his seat. Most of the audience consists of average people with a Morality of 7, and do not register to his senses.

One man in the next row, though, gives off a mild sense of sin; the smell of burned asphalt mingled with sulfur. Von Murnau continues to expand his senses, rolling four more successes on his next roll.

Now he can sense 14 yards, enough to reach the stage and sense the severe wickedness of the lead actor — the man flickers in his sight, sometimes appearing normal, sometimes drenched in blood and smiling blandly. Hoping to gain some further clues to go on, von Murnau rolls again, this time getting an exceptional success.

Not only do his senses now reach backstage, allowing him to feel the lingering presence of a severe sin that occurred three months ago — he feels an oppressive weight bearing down on him, and hears the echoes of a woman’s scream — but he also now has a general sense of the nature of those sins. He knows that the man in front of him once stole a car, the lead actor has murdered casually, and three months ago, an actress was raped in her dressing room.

Shackles of Pandemonium
The Shackles of Pandemonium ritual allows a Lucifuge to bind a demon to a particular place by trapping it within a ritual circle. The particulars of the ritual circle vary from Lucifuge to Lucifuge — some draw a simple chalk loop with a few ancient sigils of binding; others use corn meal to draw elaborate veves or mark out a complete Solomonic Circle. Whatever form it takes, the circle requires 10 minutes to draw and infuse with infernal power. As long as the circle remains intact, it can lie dormant indefinitely, waiting for a demon to enter it.

A binding circle can be used like a trap, drawn in a place the demon is likely to cross, or it can be prepared in advance of a summoning (see Calling Forth the Pit, above) to ensure that a called demon can’t go anywhere once it arrives. A circle can even be concealed (for example, drawn onto the floorboards under a carpet or marked in the dirt and loosely covered with brush), although this incurs a -1 penalty on the activation roll.

Some Lucifuge mark the entrances of their homes with permanent circles — carved, etched or inlaid on the floor, walls, or even ceiling — to trap infernal intruders. A permanent circle is harder to break, but it must still be “reset” by performing a 10-minute ritual after a bound demon is released. A single binding circle can only bind one demon at a time.

Cost: The Lucifuge must anoint the binding circle with her own blood. This inflicts 1 point of lethal damage.

Action: Instant (once circle has been prepared, which may require a Wits + Expression roll if the Storyteller considers it suitably complex).

Dice Pool: Presence + Intimidation versus spirit’s Resistance.

Roll Results

Dramatic Failure: The binding circle is broken, and the demon gains an extra point of Resistance for the duration of the scene. Failure: An equal number or the most successes are rolled for the demon. The binding circle is broken, and the spirit may escape.

Success: The most successes are rolled for the Lucifuge. The demon is successfully bound and cannot break free except under a few circumstances:

• If the ritualist who binds the demon releases it with the phrase, “I release you” or something similar.

• If the binding circle is broken by an outside force. The bound demon cannot break the circle itself.

• The Lucifuge must designate one other way that the demon can be freed, and she must express this method to at least two other entities within an hour of the demon’s binding. One of those two may be the demon, but it doesn’t have to be. If the condition is a task the demon must perform, it must be a task that can be performed within the binding circle. For example, the demon could be ordered to answer three questions truthfully if it wishes to be freed, but not to kill someone in another city.

Exceptional Success: The most successes — five or more — are rolled for the Lucifuge. When the demon is freed by any means, it is immediately returned to the netherworld from whence it came; it cannot linger to, for example, inflict revenge on the hunter.

Tongue of Babel
Once, the stories say, all humanity was united in a single language; any man could speak freely with any other, no matter how foreign. But when humankind came together to build a tower that would reach Heaven, God threw down that tower and cursed humankind to speak a multitude of tongues that divided them into nations and peoples and tribes and prevented such unity from recurring. The Lucifuge holds that the whole

thing was Lucifer’s idea, one of the Fallen One’s more overt attempts to reopen the War in Heaven. Whether that’s true or not, the Lucifuge has carefully collected the scattered remnants of that lost primordial tongue, and through the power of its members’ semi-divine blood, they can learn to speak it.

Cost: None.

Action: None.

Dice Pool: None. As long as the Lucifuge knows this ritual, he can speak and understand every human language on earth. He actually speaks the words in the ancient tongue of the tower-builders, but a vestige of racial memory coupled with his angelic blood causes listeners to hear him speaking a language they understand.

Even if he addresses multiple people with no common language, each understands him clearly, and he understands them. This ritual gives the hunter no facility with secret codes or encryptions, nor does it allow him to understand the written form of any language he cannot already read.

The words must be spoken by someone who understands them, not just read out phonetically.

For example, a character who doesn’t speak Spanish cannot use this ritual to read a note written in Spanish, nor could he sound it out himself and gain understanding. He could, however, have a Spanish-speaker read it aloud and understand it that way. Finally, this ritual does not allow him to translate mystical languages, such as the tongue of spirits or the magical tongue witches sometimes use to enhance their magic

Unholy Aura
17th century English poet, John Milton wrote that it was better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven, and the Lucifuge agree. Through this rite, they are able to access some of the supernatural magnitude possessed by infernal overlords, making them physically and emotionally impressive and intimidating.

Fae creatures recognize a resonance similar to that of the Fae Lords and Ladies in the power this rite bestows. This makes them especially vulnerable to the unholy authority of this rite. The hunter using this rite wraps himself in an aura of demonic superiority.

Cost: None

Action: Instant

Dice Pool: Presence + Intimidation

Roll Results

Dramatic Failure: The Unholy Aura backlashes on the hunter. She gains an Unholy Condition that causes her to suffer a penalty to Social actions equal to 10-Integrity. As well, others get exceptional successes against her in Social actions with three successes instead of five. It resolves when she suffers an exceptional success from another.

Failure: No effect.

Success: The character wraps herself in a demonic aura that others find intimidating, attractive, ingratiating, or the like, depending on how it is wielded. For the remainder of the scene, all of the hunter’s Social dice pools receive a +3 bonus and the 9-again quality.

Social dice pools lesser Faerie creatures receive a +6 bonus. Sidhe Lords are likely to recognize this aura as similar to their own. Unfortunately, it is possible the Fae will target the Lucifuge hunter over others present in the scene, as a rival.

Exceptional Success: The Lucifuge receives the benefit of the effects until the next dusk or dawn, whichever comes first.