Liala Hagerman
  1. Characters

Liala Hagerman

Relevant Tangent
NPC
The NWA Corridor

I had strings, but now I'm free. There are no strings on me.

Title
Relevant Tangent

Type
NPC

Race
Human

Age
21

Gender
Female

Abilities

Animalism

Feral Whispers • - Discipline

To those she would command, a vampire must first make herself understood. So it is with beasts as well as men. A vampire using Feral Whispers overpowers the animal’s instinctive reactions and forces it to understand. She can ask questions of a creature and it must respond as best it can, and with a further slight nudge, she can compel it to obey her. A canny vampire can use magpies and crows to spy on her victims from above, or command a gangster’s mastiffs to savage their owner.

The vampire talks to the animal, either using human words or, much more frequently, by making animal sounds of her own. She can command groups of animals, such as a flock of birds or a swarm of rats, as long as she is close enough that the animals can all hear her, and she can see all of them.

Cost: None
Dice Pool: Manipulation + Animal Ken + Animalism 

Action: Instant
Duration: Scene, command can persist up to a night.

Roll Results

Dramatic Failure: The animal misunderstands the vampire’s command, giving false information when the vampire asks, or obeying a twisted version of the vampire’s command.

Failure: The animals fear the Beast, fleeing from a superior predator.

Success: The vampire can communicate with an animal, asking it what it has perceived. Most animals can remember what has happened over the last night. Animals relate what they have encountered through the lens of their own perceptions — dogs answer in terms of smell and hearing, while birds relate what they could see. The vampire can also give the victim a simple command, equivalent to what the animal could do on its own, such as “attack him,” “follow her then return here,” “chew through these cables.” The command doesn’t normally persist for more than a night, but the vampire can add simple contingencies such as forcing the beast to go to ground if noticed, or to return once the command is complete.

Exceptional Success: The animal is exceptionally obedient to the vampire, improvising to follow the spirit of the Kindred’s command.

Disciplines

Resilience - Discipline

The Kindred are walking corpses, free of the frailties of a mortal form. Their bodies are capable of great endurance, but Resilience harnesses the Beast to take that endurance beyond “great” and into “impossible.” With Resilience a vampire could continue to act even when his body has been reduced to little more than bone and tendon.

Cost: None or 1 Vitae per effect

Dice Pool: None

Action: None (for persistent effects) or Reflexive (for active effects)

Duration: Permanent (for persistent effects) or one turn (for active effects)

Like other physical Disciplines, Resilience has two kinds of effects: persistent and active. Persistent effects are always on, and have no cost. Active effects are Reflexive, and cost one Vitae per effect.

Persistent: Add the vampire’s dots in Resilience to his Stamina. This may raise a character’s Stamina above the normal limits imposed by his Blood Potency. Whenever he is dealt aggravated damage, for each dot of Resilience he possesses, downgrade one point of aggravated damage to lethal. This applies to damage from fire and all acquired banes, but not sunlight. Resilience offers no reprieve from the sun’s blazing eye.

Active: By spending Vitae a vampire can dismiss grievous wounds, even those from banes. For each point of Vitae spent, choose one effect from the following list. A vampire may spend additional Vitae to invoke multiple effects simultaneously, but no effect of Resilience may be used more than once per turn.

• Subtract his Resilience dots plus one from all non-bane sources of damage. Mechanically this is similar to armor, but does nothing to reduce the visual and superficial signs of injury. Removed damage appears to be dealt, but resisted wounds do not inhibit the vampire physically in any way, though in a social context they likely create some difficulties. All superficial wounds may be healed completely for one Vitae whenever he next slumbers.

If an injury specifically removes a limb, an eye, or so on, the vampire does suffer logical impairments from the injuries.

This method of reducing damage does make it more difficult to stake a vampire.

• Subtract his Resilience dots from all damage from fire or other acquired banes. Sunlight still remains beyond the power of Resilience to defend against. All superficial signs of damage remain: Even if a vampire lost no Health while dashing through an inferno, he still emerges a burnt corpse. In this case, however, the visible damage is only as severe as it would be for a mortal who’d suffered the same level of harm.

Protean

Beast’s Skin ••• - Discipline

The Beast can warp a vampire’s flesh, taking the form of an animal that she has consumed. Her body warps and shifts, growing extra muscle or folding in on itself until she fully resembles an animal she has consumed. The Beast will not give her the form of prey — her new skin must resonate with her predatory nature in some way.

Cost: 2 Vitae
Dice Pool: None Action: Instant Duration: Indefinite

Her flesh ripples and warps as the vampire takes on the form of an animal. She must have consumed the beast — killing it by feeding from it. She can only take on the form of predatory animals, carrion-eaters, plague-carrying beasts, and parasites between Size 1 and 7. A vampire can keep a number of forms ready equal to her dots in Protean; to add or replace one she must consume the appropriate beast then slumber for a full day and night in her Unmarked Grave.

In animal form, she takes on the beast’s Physical Attributes and Skills, and its Size, Speed, and Health. She can move and sense and attack in any way that the animal can — a shark can swim and bite and sense blood, while a rat can scurry and bite, and a crow can fly. She may be unable to use some Physical Merits at the Storyteller’s discretion. She can remain in her animal form indefinitely, but she still feels the need for blood burning within her, and sunlight still harms her. While in animal form, the vampire can use her Disciplines as normal.

Predatory Aspect •• - Discipline

All the vampire has to do is give in just a little bit, and her Beast can slip out through her flesh, warping her body into a monstrous form. While every Gangrel’s Beast is different, its manifestation usually takes inspiration from a predatory or scavenging animal of some form. Some twist their bodies to run on all fours like a wolf, while others take on the rough skin and strange senses of a shark.

Cost: 1 Vitae Dice Pool: None Action: Reflexive Duration: Scene

By spending a point of Vitae, the vampire can manifest a small host of bestial traits. When she first learns Predatory Aspect, she picks three adaptations from the list below. From then on, she can manifest any or all of these changes for the rest of the scene by spending a point of Vitae.

If none of these adaptations make sense for the character, the player and Storyteller should work together to create new ones, using these as guidelines.

• Aquatic: Growing webbed hands or slick scales, the vampire can swim at the same Speed she can run on land.

• Claws: Sharp claws grow from the vampire’s fingers. They are 1L mundane weapons that use Brawl to attack.

• Extra Sense: The Kindred grows extra sensory organs, giving her tremor sense, echolocation, or some other sense that allows her to “see” without using her eyes. Using this sense, she has a 360-degree field of vision.

• Feral Senses: Taking on a hawk’s eyes or a dog’s sense of smell allows the vampire to hear heartbeats and see or smell blood as though her Blood Potency were two dots higher.

• Patagia: By growing a flap of leathery skin between her arms and torso, the vampire can glide — as long as she falls at least ten yards (ten meters), she can travel thirty yards (thirty meters) horizontally, and she takes no damage from the fall.

• Prehensile Tail: The vampire grows a long, prehensile tail. She can use it to grab things as though it were an extra arm, though it doesn’t have a hand and can’t be used for fine-motor tasks like unlocking a door or firing a gun.

• Quadripedal: Longer arms and shorter legs allow a vampire to run on all fours like a cheetah or wolf. When running on all fours, add +4 to her Speed and double all jump distances.

• Wall Crawling: The vampire grows hundreds of tiny insect legs, claws on his feet, or barbed hairs on his body that allow him to move freely across walls and ceilings without an Athletics roll.

A character can change her adaptations by spending a day in her Unmarked Grave and spending one point of Vitae for each adaptation she wants to replace. When she changes adaptation, the player should work to maintain the theme of a specific predatory creature — though she may pick a different predator to copy when the vampire’s adaptations change.

Unmarked Grave • - Discipline

With a silent command, the earth itself yawns open to embrace the vampire. She merges with the ground, becoming immune to almost any harm. She can remain there indefinitely, waiting in a cocoon of soil until the time is right for her to emerge. She does not have to find stone or mud, she can just as easily slip into concrete — as long as she has servants willing to feed her while she rests.

Cost: Varies; 0 for soil or earth, otherwise Vitae equal to the Durability of the material.

Requirement: The vampire’s hiding place must be at least the same Size as her.

Dice Pool: None Action: Instant Duration: Indefinite

The vampire sinks bodily into the earth, for as long as she desires. Once interred, she’s mostly insensible to the outside world, though she can remain conscious if she so wishes. She has a sense of the ground above her — she’s well aware if someone tries to concrete over her hiding place. Her Kindred senses continue to function, and she remains capable of sensing the predatory aura even though her safe haven means another vampire’s predatory aura can’t force her into a fight-or-flight reaction. Should someone spill blood or Vitae upon the ground, she can absorb it. The ground dilutes Vitae enough that it can’t result in a blood bond, but to a Vitae-addicted vampire just the taste might be enough to drive her out of the ground, thirsty for more.

The only way to harm the vampire is to damage or destroy the ground she resides in; she takes one point of bashing damage for each point of Structure that her haven loses. When she takes her first point of lethal damage she emerges from the ground, unable to hold herself in.

Connections

Description Entity Location
Friend Tanner Lefler
Friend Kenton Lefler
Acquaintance Armonia