Makara encompass all manner of creatures, each strange and wondrous in its own right. Some are cold-blooded behemoths floating in murk and staring with huge, lidless eyes. Some are saw-toothed horrors, forever swimming, their senses enlivened with the promise of blood in the water. A few are beautiful, even enchanting, by human standards — and that is just another lure.
Dice Pool: Manipulation + Persuasion vs. Resolve + Supernatural Tolerance (Low Satiety); Presence + Expression – Stamina (Satiety Expenditure)
Action: Reflexive or instant (Satiety expenditure)
Normal Effect: Deceit is the siren’s greatest weapon. At its simplest, she can alter her pitch, timbre, and other vocal qualities to resemble any sound she can imagine, from another person’s voice to a weeping child to haunting and ethereal music. Her voices carries unnaturally well, too, especially over the water or through fog.
The Beast can slip this ability into everyday speech and performances by subtly modulating her voice, adding her Lair dots as a bonus on all Social rolls involving speech or song (including rolls involving Animal Ken, as lesser creatures are just as swayed by the Beast’s voice). Furthermore, she speaks to the darkness within each person and always counts as tempting their Vice when using the Social maneuvering rules.
Low Satiety: The hungry Beast cannot keep need from her voice, but others are fascinated instead of repulsed by her dissonant song, as long as it is not overtly threatening. The player rolls Manipulation + Persuasion and speaks or sings.
Roll Results
Dramatic Failure: The victim hears the song, but recognizes it as a source of danger and avoids it.
Failure: Targets hear the song, but do not feel any compulsion to follow it.
Success: Listeners feel compelled to follow or investigate the source of the sound unless they successfully resist. Anyone who resists is immune to this aspect of the Beast’s song for the rest of the chapter.
Once fascinated, the Beast’s victim suffers her Lair dots as a penalty on Perception rolls made to detect and avoid danger, including being surprised. Traditionally, sirens used this ability to lure in sailors and make them run aground. They would then drag the sailors ashore and devour them, regardless of whether they were dead or alive. However, this ability is also useful as a distraction or as a precursor to certain Nightmares.
Satiety Expenditure: The unwary discount sirens as a threat because of their beauty, but the Beast’s voice is a greater weapon than they realize. She can switch from an alluring song to a cutting shriek at a moment’s notice. With the expenditure of a dot of Satiety, the Beast can unleash destructive blasts of sound for the rest of the scene. Each scream requires an instant action.
The player rolls Presence + Expression – Stamina as an attack against everyone in earshot except the Beast and her broodmates (resist with the highest Stamina rating among the targets). This attack ignores armor and any form of supernatural protection that does not shield the victim’s senses. A successful attack inflicts 1 lethal damage per success, with the Beast’s Lair dots as a weapon modifier. Anyone who takes damage from the siren’s scream suffers the Deafened Condition in both ears until the wounds are healed. The shriek also shatters any glass in the immediate area.