Death’s Head Path

Necromancy -x- Giovanni

Introduction

The Skull Path of Necromancy (sometimes referred to as the Death’s Head Path by older Necromancers) is a variant upon the more widely practiced Bone Path, thought to be a holdover from the unrefined death-magic of the original Death Clan from which the Giovanni usurped their status as one of the 13 major bloodlines. This avenue of corporeal animation allows the Necromancer to channel dark energies through bones and skeletons. She may animate skeletal servants of various sorts, and may even become a walking skeletal thing herself.

While most necromancers learn the Bone Path in order to animate undead servants, the Skull Path grants the blood magician a number of abilities unavailable to practitioners of the Bone Path. In addition, Skeletons are easier to create and maintain: the bones are much more resistant to decay. The strange and ineffable Harbingers of Skulls are known to practice this path with surprising frequency, seeming to prefer it to the more common Bone Path, although the Giovanni also retain records of the Skull Path’s workings, and it occasionally finds its way into the hands of a young Necromancer looking for an interesting diversion from the standard zombie-making curriculum.

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The Mortis Question: The Skull Path is indeed a holdover from the days of Mortis when vampiric death-powers were almost completely physical in nature (before the induction of the Venetian Giovanni into the Cappadocian clan). Storytellers who are running Dark Ages chronicles may wish to make the Skull Path (previously known as the "Death’s Head Path") available to Cappadocian and Lamia characters. With the rise of the Bone Path of Necromancy, the Death’s Head Path becomes more of a novelty, as the zombies created through the Bone Path tend to be sturdier and more resilient. During the dark ages, however, the Mortis Path of Cadaverous Animation is still unrefined, and the Death’s Head Path offers something of a quick-but-limited alternative method of animating corpses. While spying skulls are immobile, and the skeletons are more fragile than zombu, the necromancer can animate skeletal servants more quickly in the path’s progression.

Skeleton Statistics: Skeletons animated through The Skull Path have the following statistics: Strength 2, Dexterity 3, Stamina 2, Brawl 2, Dodge 2. Skeletons possess an Initiative rating of 5. They have 0 willpower, but resist mental control and other attacks as if they had Willpower 10. All Mental and Social attributes are 0. Skeleton’s dice pools are not affected by damage, except wounds caused by fire or the teeth and claws of supernatural creatures. They may soak Bashing and Lethal damage with their Stamina, but not Aggravated damage. Lethal damage (including that from Bullets and aggravated damage from the claws and teeth of supernatural beings) is halved after soak (much as vampires halve Bashing damage). Most skeletons have 7 health levels but are incapable of healing the damage they suffer unless their master utilizes the fifth level power of the Skull Path, Osseous Construct, for that purpose.

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· Empty Sockets

The Necromancer may drip her own Vitae into the eye sockets of a human or animal skull, thereby creating a sympathetic bond between herself and the head-bone. Once done, the skull becomes a sort of spy or security camera. Anytime after enchanting the skull, the Necromancer may close her eyes and shift her perceptions to the skull’s point of view. The vampire may choose to utilize the skulls of small animals when secrecy is necessary, but doing so is problematic. Her sensory information is somewhat distorted with human skulls, and the smaller the bone, the more distortion occurs.

System: A blood point must be spent—this point is dripped into the eye sockets of the skull. The Necromancer then rolls Perception + Occult (difficulty 6) each success the vampire gains increases the duration of the spell by 1 day. The vampire may leave the skull wherever she desires.

Anytime there after, up to the rolled duration, the player may roll Perception + Alertness, difficulty 8. If successful, the vampire may shift her senses into the skull. The amount of sensory information gained depends on the successes rolled on the Perception + Alertness roll. The storyteller must determine how much distortion occurs, depending on how small of a skull the vampire uses.

This power may be used on Skeletons created via the higher levels of the Skull Path, thus allowing the necromancer to view through the skeletons empty eye sockets.

1 Success The vampire may see through the skull’s eye sockets, but her vision is tinted red.

3 Successes The vampire may hear through the skull, although the sound is often distorted slightly.

5 Successes The vampire may even speak through the skull if a Willpower point is spent (this allows 1 brief message or response per point of willpower spent to do so).

·· Bone Dance

The character may animate skeletons, causing them to move as if they still possessed flesh and muscle. They may perform tasks or even attack, but their existence is quite limited. The Skeletons must either be visible to the Necromancer, or she must know that they are present (such as when standing over a graveyard). If this spell is cast upon a more fleshy corpse, the skin immediate rots and withers away. In addition to creating temporary servants, this power is ideal for ridding one’s self of undesirable corpses (and only a Necromancer would find corpses desirable…) as the bones fall to dust once the magic has expired.

System: A blood point and a Willpower point must be spent, and a roll of Wits + Occult, difficulty 6 must succeed. Each success on this roll animates 1 skeleton. These skeletons may perform one task, although this may include conditional orders (such as "Follow me, and attack on my signal"). If erected for Combat, the skeletons last for one scene. Otherwise, they last until their task is completed, at which point they crumble to dust.

··· Death Guard

The vampire may now animate a permanent regiment of skeletal warriors to stand guard or fight beside her.

System: The vampire spends a Willpower point and then rolls Wits + Occult, difficulty 6. Each success on this roll can animate 1 skeleton, up to the maximum determined by how much blood points are expended; for each skeleton raised, the vampire must expend one blood point. These skeletons remain animate until destroyed.

···· Osseous Construct

The necromancer may piece together various bits of bone and cartilage from humans, animals, and even vampires, to form a larger, more menacing skeletal creation.

System: The vampire must expend 1 Willpower point and 1 Blood point, and roll Intelligence + Occult, difficulty 8. Each success allows the vampire to expend 1 more point of blood and willpower. The initial construct has the base statistics of a Skeleton as presented above, but each additional point of blood and willpower grants one of the following:

2 Extra Health levels

2 Dots in physical attributes

2 Extra soak dice

Claws, Fangs, Bone Spurs or Spikes, or other weapons (+1 Lethal Damage per success, or 1 additional feature per success)

2 additional limbs (+2 dice to grappling maneuvers, and may take actions while sustaining a hold)

The Osseous Construct can follow simple commands, as per levels 2 and 3 of the Skull Path. Indeed, this power may be utilized to augment existing skeletons and zombies (doing so does not require the initial expenditure of blood and Willpower). An Osseous Construct lasts until it is destroyed.

Note that Osseous Construct can be used to repair the damage inflicted upon existing skeletal minions or zombies created through the Bone Path (although repeated use of this power on a zombie—enough to completely replace the zombie’s original health levels— may eventually alter it to such an extent that it should be considered skeletons from there on in). In this case, each success on the roll "heals" two health levels of damage, although Aggravated damage cannot be repaired in this way.

···· Assume the Aspect of Death

The vampire’s skin melts and evaporates, leaving behind only a skeleton. Such a transformation is not only shocking, but grants the vampire an increased resistance to many forms of damage. She is fully capable of movement, even though she possesses no musculature to speak of, and the divested body weight even grants additional ease of motion.

System: The vampire must expend 2 blood points and roll Stamina + Occult, difficulty 8. The transformation takes 2 turns, during which time the vampire’s flesh boils and sheds from her bones. Any mortals viewing this spectacle must roll Courage, difficulty 8, or flee in panic. If fewer than 3 successes are scored, then the target can take no action save stand, watching in horror, until the vampire completes her transformation. After two turns, the vampire remains only as a Skeleton with sharp fangs protruding from its jaw.

While the vampire is in this form, she may see as though she possessed Level 1 Protean, although she actually has no eyeballs. Her fingers sport bony talons with which she may attack for Strength +1 Lethal damage, and her bite causes Aggravated damage as usual. The necromancer loses the normal vampiric ability to halve damage from Bashing attacks (although she may still soak them normally), but instead gains the ability to halve Lethal damage after soak (round down).

She may also use her Stamina to soak damage from the Claws and Fangs of supernatural creatures and magical weapons. Additionally, while in this form, the vampire is immune to staking (as her heart dissolves with her flesh), and any firearms or archery attacks (save for shotguns or rapid fire submachine-guns and pistols) suffer a +2 difficulty to their attack roll. Because the vampires body has been reduced in weight as a result of the dissolved flesh, her Dexterity increase by 2 for the purposes of movement and initiative only (she does not gain any dice to her Dexterity dice pools, but her Dexterity rating is considered 2 higher when calculating these traits or any difficulty for an opposing roll based on her Dexterity).

The Vicissitude power - flesh-craft becomes useless when attempted on her, although all difficulties to use Bone-craft on the skeletal vampire are at -2 difficulty (the bones can be manipulated directly, rather than having to wade through sloughs of flesh). While the vampire is no longer buoyant as a result of lost flesh, she need not worry about the intense pressures deep below water.

The vampire retains her normal blood pool... the blood is simply crammed into her bones instead of her flesh. When she feeds, the bones grow a dark shade of red for a few moments before returning to their stark white color. If she needs to bleed for any reason… to activate powers or to feed another vampire, she simply scratches her bones, and the blood bubbles forth.

Unfortunately, the vampire’s tongue disappears along with the rest of her flesh, and therefore she is unable to close the wounds she causes with her fangs and claws via a healing lick. Oddly, she may still speak...