The Grave's Decay
The first Mortis path is derived from the observation of the working of time on all things mortal. Stone crumbles and the corpse rots away to nothing, a process of endless fascination to the elders and scholars of Clan Cappadocian. Indeed, for the undying, the process of decay is a fascinating disease that afflicts everyone and everything save them. Under this path, a practitioner of Mortis channels that force.
1) Destroy the Husk
Cainites who kill their victims, rather than just feeding upon them, frequently find themselves in need of a quick way to dispose of a corpse. While there are many ways to make sure that a corpse is not found - feed it to a pack of hounds or weigh it down and throw it in a river - many of these methods do involve risk to the vampire and are not guaranteed to succeed. Destroy the Husk, by contrast, is foolproof. Use of this power simply turns one human corpse to a pile of about 30 pounds of unremarkable dust, roughly the size and shape of that body.
System: The player spends one blood point as the vampire drips her vitae onto the corpse. The player then rolls Intelligence + Medicine (difficulty 6). One success is all that is needed to render the corpse into dust, although the process takes a number of turns equal to five minus the successes. While successful use of mortal hedge magic, Thaumaturgy, Auspex or an appropriate Mortis ritual might tell a wizard or vampire something about the pile of dust's prior identity, no ordinary mortal force can ascertain the dust's former nature.
2) Rigor Mortis
One of the first changes that comes over a dead body is rigidity; the corpse becomes stiff as a board, frozen in a single pose. The Cainite who wields Rigor Mortis is able to push a living or undead body to that frozen point using only his will and understanding of the forces of decay. She forces her target to become rigid, unable to move without enormous effort of will as his very muscles betray him.
System: The player spends a point of Willpower and rolls Manipulation + Medicine (difficulty 7). Each success freezes the target in place for one turn. A failure simply indicates the loss of your Willpower point, while a botch renders the target immune to your use of the Grave's Decay for the next 24 hours. The target must be visible and within about 25 yards for this ability to take effect. A frozen target is treated as though he has been staked (see p. 254). With a Willpower roll (difficulty 7) and two successes, the target can break out of the rigor on his or her turn. Failure causes a level of bashing damage and means another turn wasted and frozen.
3) Wither:
Reminiscent of some of the abilities of clan Tzimisce, the Wither power allows a vampire to cripple an opponent's limb. Whether the foe is living or undead, muscle shrivels away, skin peels, and bone becomes brittle. The target is unable to exert any noteworthy strength in the crippled limb. this injury lasts for far longer than most injuries trouble Cainites, and in mortals it simply does not heal.
Wither doesn't have to be used on a limb, although that is the usual purpose. It can also be used simply to affect the target's face and hair, making him appear venerable beyond his years. It could also be applied to a target's eye or ear, killing the sense in that organ (and thus requiring two uses to permanently blind or deafen). Wither cannot be used as an "instant-kill" power - Cainites cannot wither vital organs - but it can inflict a wide variety of injuries on a foe.
System: The player spends a Willpower point. The character chooses a limb on the target and then touches that limb. If the target is trying to avoid contact, the player rolls Dexterity + Brawl to hit as normal. If the character succeeds in touching the intended limb, the target suffers two aggravated wounds. Unless the target soaks both wounds (with Fortitude), the struck limb is crippled and unusable until both of those wounds have healed. Cainites heal the wounds as they would any other aggravated wound (see p. 253). Mortals are incapable of healing aggravated wounds, so they suffer throughout their lives unless they are healed through supernatural means. A withered limb does not degenerate further, even on a mortal. The character may be crippled for life, but the limb won't become infected or gangrenous.
The effects of the withering depend on the affected limb. A crippled arm has a Strength of 0 and cannot carry anything heavier than about half a pound. A crippled leg prevents the character from moving at faster than a stuttering hop or dragging limp. The character suffers the effects of the Lame Flaw (see p. 304). A single withered eye or ear imposes a +1 difficulty to relevant Perception rolls. Losing both eyes or both ears imposes the effects of the Blind or Deaf Flaws (see p. 304). A withered tongue imposes the effects of the Mute Flaw (p. 304), while a withered face reduces the targets Appearance by one for each aggravated wound suffered.
4) Corrupt the Undead Flesh:
Corrupt the Undead Flesh blurs the line between life and undeath, turning an undead creature into something just living enough to carry and suffer from disease. The disease inflicts the target, causing lethargy, dizziness, loss of strength, clumsiness and the inability to keep blood in his system. This pernicious influence is extremely virulent among mortals. They pick the disease up simply by spending a few hours near the victim. Other Cainites have a harder time acquiring the disease. They must consume the victim's blood to do so, but they suffer just as much as the original target of the Discipline afterward - including passing the affliction on to others.
The disease fades after roughly a week.
System: The player chooses a target within her character's line of sight and no more than 20 yards away. She rolls Manipulation + Medicine (difficulty 6) and spends a point of willpower. The victim's player must roll Stamina (+ Fortitude, if appropriate) against a difficulty equal to the attacker's Willpower. If the player scores more successes than the victim, he acquires a virulent disease immediately. The disease has the following effects:
- -- The victim's Strength and Wits are halved (round down).
- -- The victim loses one point of Dexterity.
- -- The victim's player must spend one additional blood point every evening, just for the vampire to rouse himself to consciousness. Mortals lose one health level per day, instead.
- -- The victim's player must roll Self-Control or Instinct after each time the character feeds (difficulty 8). On a failure, the vampire cannot keep the blood he just ingested inside his body, and he vomits it up in great horrifying gouts of gore, losing any benefit the blood might have provided. Humans vomit up food.
Every evening at sunset, the victim has a change to throw the plague off. The victim's player rolls Stamina, with a difficulty equal to 11 minus the number of sunsets since acquiring the plague. On a successful roll, the character fights the disease to a standstill and begins to recover. He instantly regains his ability to manage blood, and heals back one lost Attribute point per hour until all have returned.
5) Dissolve the Flesh:
This ability brings the Grave's Decay path full circle, as it returns to the level-one power, Destroy the Husk, as applied to vampires. Dissolve the Flesh allows a Cappadocian to attempt to turn vampiric flesh to dust or ash, as though the target had been burned or left out in the sun.
System: The player spends two blood points and a Willpower point as the vampire extracts a quantity of her vitae charged with the power of the grave. If she drips it onto a single Cainite victim anytime within the next few turns (most of the blood must reach the victim, so flinging a few drops is ineffective), it causes whole chunks of the victim's body to crumble to ash. The player rolls Willpower against a difficulty of the victim's Stamina + 3. For every success, the target takes one aggravated wound.
The undead flesh damaged by this power turns to dust (gone for the time being), and it must be regenerated painstakingly by the victim, should he survive. That dust doubtlessly has mystical properties that the Cappadocians, Tremere and other blood sorcerers might be able to take advantage of. Every wound inflicted by this ability represents the loss of about one-eighth of the target's weight; the Storyteller chooses where the loss comes from. (It might be shed from all over, leaving the victim a bit gaunter, at the victim's discretion).
Regenerating body parts occurs naturally while healing aggravated wounds at the normal rate (see p. 254).
