Covenent of Nergal
In Babylonian myth, the war-god Nergal and his wife Ereshkigal, queen of the dead, had special command over plague-demons. Through this path, an ashipu claims this baleful power over disease. The path also grants limited powers to abate sickness. All the powers of this path affect Cainites as well as mortals, which gives the path an evil reputation among the undead.
Notes: Fortitude does not afford its normal defense against most Covenant of Nergal attacks. Each dot of Fortitude, however, gives the afflicted Kindred's player one more die on any rolls to resist Nergal's Wrath or Ill Wind. Covenant of Nergal attacks also do not work against vampires who have a higher rating in the path than the attacker.
Most of the powers in this path reduce a victim's Physical Attributes. If either Strength, Dexterity or Stamina drop to 0, the character is immediately Incapacitated regardless of her actual health levels. Strength or Dexterity cannot drop below 0. An attack that would reduce a victim's Stamina below 0 kills a mortal or drives a Kindred into torpor.
Most Covenant of Nergal attacks do not accumulate with each other, and higher-level powers supersede lower-level powers; Ill Wind forms the exception. For instance, Maskim's Touch and Breath of Ereshkigal cannot affect a victim already suffering from Nergal's Wrath. The last-named power would affect a person who already suffered from the lower-level powers, but its effects would not become noticeable until they exceeded the lesser power's effects or the lesser power's duration ended.
Of all the powers, only the Breath of Ereshkigal can cause an increased effect from multiple uses. Covenant of Nergal powers do accumulate their effect with other attacks that cause Attribute loss, such as the Quietus power of Scorpion's Touch.
1) Maskim's Touch
By touching the subject - or at least getting near enough to touch - the magician causes effects much like influenza: fever, nausea, sore joints and the like. This makes the target slower, weaker and more frail.
System: If the Willpower roll succeeds, the victim loses one dot each from his Strength, Dexterity and Stamina. This loss lasts for one scene. Multiple Maskim's Touch attacks do not accumulate effects, either with each other or with higher-level Covenant of Nergal attacks. Effects will accumulate, however, with deleterious effects produced by other Disciplines, such as the Scorpion's Touch power of Quietus.
2) Breath of Ereshkigal
Simply by drawing a breath and exhaling in the victim's direction, a vampire can inflict disease upon her target. The sickness can affect victims some distance away. Unlike the Maskim's Touch, a vampire can use the Breath of Ereshkigal more than once upon a target.
System: The magician can attack anyone within about 50 feet. If the attack succeeds, the Breath of Ereshkigal reduces each of the victim's Physical Attributes by one. The number of successes determines the duration of the magical sickness:
1 success: One Scene
2 successes: One night
3 successes: Two nights
4 successes: Four nights
5 successes: One week
Multiple attacks can accumulate, further reducing the victim's Physical Attributes, but only if the subsequent attack has at least as many successes as the previous attacks. Thus, if a vampire's player rolled three successes for the ashipu's first attack, a second attack would strip another dot from each Physical Attribute only if the player rolled three or more successes for its effect. If the player rolled four successes on the second attack, subsequent Breath of Ereshkigal attacks would need at least four successes to increase the effect.
A vampire or ghoul can raise Physical Attributes by expending vitae, and so counter the Breath of Ereshkigal. Raising all three Attributes back to their starting value completely cures the magical illness. Then, however, the attacker can start over again. Mortals must simply wait for the curse to run its course.
3) Nergal's Blessing
This power curse mild diseases, and at least reduce (sic) the effect of severe disease. The user touches the target for about a minute. Nergal's Blessing completely heals any health or Attribute loss from the Maskim's Hand or Breath of Ereshkigal. It partly negates the effects of higher-level Covenant of Nergal powers.
The Hand of Nergal cannot cure non-pathogenic diseases such as allergies, deficiency diseases, cancer, arthritis, or genetic disorders, although it alleviates their effects for a day. It also does nothing for purely mental illness (though it may help in cases of mental illness with organic causes).
In countries that lack modern hospitals, ashipu still use Nergal's Blessing to buy favors and goodwill from mortals. In "developed" countries, ashipu find fewer truly desperate clients -but they do find them. AIDS is not the only disease that modern medicine cannot yet cure.
System: Nergal's Blessing can cure ordinary infections, from acne to pneumonia, with a single use. Notable severe or chronic diseases like hepatitis or malaria might require two uses of this power, at the Storyteller's option. Really nasty or intractable diseases like Ebola or AIDS might require three uses to cure. A single use of Nergal's Blessing always suffices for illness caused by other powers in this path.
Successful use of Nergal's Blessing keeps the subject alive (or undead) for another night, no matter how severe the disease, and palliates the symptoms. This applies to non-pathogenic illness as well. Although the magician can never produce a true cure in such cases, Nergal's Blessing may keep a sick person alive long enough for the target to heal on her own.
4) Nergal's Wrath
This ghastly power induces severe disease in the victim. This is real infection - the appropriate microbes appear in the victim's body - but the disease progresses with unnatural speed. If the ravaging plague takes the form of gangrene, leprosy or some other relatively slow infection, its acceleration baffles and terrifies any doctor.
A vampire who achieves this level of path mastery selects a disease as his personal form of Nergal's Wrath. An attack from one vampire might take the form of cholera, while another uses yellow fever to kill.
System: Nergal's Wrath works by touch. For each success the attacker's player rolls, the victim suffers five hours of the curse's effect. A botch means that the caster suffers the curse's effects instead, for five hours per 1 rolled, on top of the usual Willpower loss. Of course, the magician can use Nergal's Blessing to try curing herself.
For each hour of the character's illness, the victim's player makes a Stamina + Survival roll (difficulty 8). Failure means that the character loses one health level and one dot each from Strength, Dexterity and Stamina. If the victim receives medical care, the doctor can substitute his Medicine Trait for the victim's Survival Trait, but only the victim's Stamina matters in either case. If the victim can accumulate five successes before dying, Nergal's Wrath ends.
A vampire can counter the effects of the curse by expending vitae to heal the damage. that can mean expending a good deal of vitae - and Nergal's Wrath will not stop just because it's daytime and the vampire must sleep.
5) Ill Wind
A master of Nergal's Covenant simply walks by a location and people get sick. The disease appears natural. It will not progress any faster than normal, but the illness may be unusually virulent, and it can affect Kindred too. The Ill Wind ignores most mundane barriers. Only magic or an air-tight chamber can protect against the curse.
The Ill wind always takes the form of a disease that could plausibly occur int eh area where the magician uses the curse. Thus, an ashipu could attack a New York dinner party with ptomaine, E. Coli or even legionnaire's disease, but not smallpox (extinct) or bubonic plague (not native to the area). The Ill Wind's user has no control over what disease he calls, but every victim contracts the same disease.
System: The Ill Wind costs the magician's player one Willpower point in addition to the usual blood point. The number of successes rolled by the ashipu's player determines the number of people affected:
1 success: Four People
2 successes: Eight People
3 successes: 12 People
4 successes: 20 people
5 successes: Everyone in the vampire's immediate area (an entire auditorium, a mob)
If an area holds more people than the vamprie can affect, the Ill Wind infects the people with lower Stamina Traits first. The Ill Wind does not harm the magician herself.
The disease takes effect slowly (growing to full strength at about one day per dot of Stamina for a victim). Once the curse takes effect, the victim loses three health levels and three dots from each Physical Attribute, to a minimum of 0 - at this stage.
A victim has a chance of recovery for each day of bedrest, or sleep for Kindred. The victim's player makes a Stamina + Survival roll (difficulty 7). If the roll succeeds, the victim recovers one dot of each Physical Attribute. Failing the Stamina + Survival roll means losing another dot of Stamina. The curse ends when the victim recovers all her Physical Attributes. AS with Nergal's Wrath, the player of a victim under medical care can add the character's Stamina Trait and the doctor's Medicine Trait.
Unlike other attacks based on Nergal's Covenant, Ill Wind does not protect a victim from the lower-level powers. A sick victim can suffer further Attribute loss from Maskim's Touch, Breath of Ereskigal or Nergal's Wrath.
