Path of Karma
Knowledge of other people's pasts is one of the most common powers claimed for Indian magicians, even to knowing a person's previous incarnations. Any mystic worth his title can remember his own past lives. Knowledge of the future is nearly as easy. Through the Siddhi of Karma, an Indian sorcerer can learn many secrets about another person's life, both past and yet to come. At higher levels, a sadhu can call upon the Abilities from his past lives. A true master can wrench control of the cycle of reincarnation to change destinies in this life and beyond.
Each power requires the expenditure of one blood point.
1) Threads of the Past:
The first siddhi of this path is knowledge of the important events of another person's past - the events that made her who she is tonight, and brought her to her present place.
System: for each success rolled by the player, the character receives one brief impression of an important event in the target's past. As a guideline, the Storyteller should describe each impression in one short paragraph of pure description, like a snapshot. The sadhu does not receive these impressions in any particular order; he can only guess at their interpretation. If the sadhu uses this power on a Kindred, however, the list of impressions always includes the subject's Embrace as the single most important event in that person's existence. The sorcerer also learns the target's common name (though not his True Name).
2) Weave of the Future:
The sadhu can receive brief impressions of potentially important events within the next year of the subject's existence. The events may be good or bad, dangers or opportunities. A person can try to avoid foreseen dangers, but this is never reliable. Sometimes the very action taken to avoid an event causes it to take place.
A sadhu can use this power for his own benefit, but only rarely. He cannot learn about events from his own future until all the events previously foreseen either have taken place or he has successfully avoided them.
System: For each success the player rolls, the sadhu sees one brief scene from the target's future (or his own). Again, the Storyteller should describe these in one image, like a snapshot, with no explanation of context or meaning, though the character can see if the subject faces obvious danger.
3) Certain Fate:
At this level, a sadhu can see farther and pick out the events, people and forces that inexorable shape the person's future. The magician gains more detailed knowledge, but the subject has less chance to change to future; The events grow from the whole shape of the person's life and, Hindus believe, past lives. Once again, these aren't necessarily bad things, but the Certain Fate often presents dire but obscure warnings. A sadhu cannot use this power on herself.
System: For each success rolled, the character receives one fact about the subject's entire future existence; for instance, an important conflict he will face, or a person who will become important to him in some way. As is the way with prophecies, the sorcerer sees the setup of future situations but generally not how they turn out. If the sadhu receives three or more successes, the visions include a scene of the subject's most probable death and whether or not a mortal subject is destined to become a Kindred, wraith or kuei-jin.
4) Past Lives:
At this level, a sadhu obtains moderately detailed, capsule biographies of a person's previous incarnations. A sorcerer can examine her own past lives, too. In India, people believe that events in this life reward and punish their deeds in past lives, so knowing previous incarnations can help one cope with this life's trials. The sooner you expiate your sins, the sooner you can accumulate merit for a better life in your next incarnation.
On a more practical level, a sadhu can use this power to temporarily gain Abilities that she knew in her past lives. She can thus gain virtually any skill she wants.
'System: Each use of this power provides an overview of one of the subject's past lives. By itself, this has no immediate, practical benefit, but it's a great way to impress one's aptitudes on other people: They instinctively know that the sadhu tells the truth.
A sadhu can also use this power to "remember" Abilities from her own past lives. For each success her player rolls, the sadhu gains one dot to place in any Ability she wants, subject only to the limitations that she cannot raise any Ability above three dots. The Abilities last a single scene. Note that the Ability comes from a past life, and are thus limited by the age of the Cainite in question. For example, a thousand-year-old sadhu would not be able to call upon her past lives for potential with the Computer Knowledge.
5) Master of Samsara:
Samsara is the cycle of birth, death and rebirth. A master of Karma can not only look ahead to see a person's next incarnation, he can shape that incarnation to some degree. Even more amazingly, he has a limited power to reverse the wheel of samsara and briefly restore people to a previous incarnation.
System: All applications of this power require only a single success on a player's roll, but demand that the player spend one point of permanent Willpower. For this, the sadhu not only receives a capsule description of the person's next live, he can perform one of the following feats:
- Ordain one fact about that person's future life (nearly anything, comparable in power to imposing a Dark Fate but it could just as easily be a good thing).
- Preordain that a person becomes a wraith or Cathayan vampire upon death... or not.
- Transform a mortal (not a vampire) into whoever or whatever she was in a previous life for one scene. The target character retains only a dreamlike awareness of her "current" self. the subject temporarily becomes a different character. The sadhu can choose among the incarnations revealed by the Past Lives power, transform the subject in her immediately previous incarnation, or leave it all to chance and the Storyteller's whim.
- Transform a mortal (not a vampire) into whoever or whatever he will be in his next life; or
- Set the circumstances of his own next incarnation.
An undead sadhu can view and select his own future existence after his destruction as a vampire, but cannot use any of the other powers on himself. A sadhu who uses Master of Samasara often takes a rather casual attitude to the prospect of Final Death, since the sadhu has already selected a comfortable next incarnation... possibly including revenge on his enemies.
