Advanced Abilities & Permissions

Here’s a sampling of advanced abilities and permissions for PCs to acquire through the events of play. You might create your own for your Blades series, focused on the elements that are important in your game. These advanced abilities don’t explain how a C achieves the requirements for them. That’s something to discuss and discover in play.

IRUVIAN SWORD ARTS

When you achieve the rank of student in an Iruvian sword art, you receive permission to study the fundamentals of your chosen style.

When you have proven your command of the fundamentals of the style, you achieve the rank of adept. You receive permission to study the secret arts of the style. You gain the adept fighting maneuver of your style (this does not count as a special ability).

When you have proven your mastery over the secret arts of the style, you become a master. You may take the master special ability of your style as a veteran advance.

Falling Star Style

• [Adept] Sash Fighting: You may wield a special silken sash in combat to interfere with your opponent and open them up to sword attacks. The sash resembles a very long scarf and is weighted at the tips. You may attempt to disarm an opponent or grapple them (to immobilize a limb or choke them), while staying out of arm’s reach. You may also use the sash as climbing gear and to negate harm from falls.

• [Master] The Falling Star: Your sword attacks involve acrobatic leaps with powerful falling slashes. When you make an attack in this way, choose a beneficial extra effect (this effect occurs regardless of the outcome of your action): The target’s armor is ruined—the target’s weapon is ruined— the target is knocked sprawling—the target is forced back out of sword-reach.

Rising Moon Style

• [Adept] Moon Dagger: You may wield a vicious curved dagger in the off- hand to counter your opponent’s moves or launch a wild flurry of cuts with both your blades. During any exchange with an opponent, at your option, choose to fight viciously with dagger and sword— increasing the level of any harm inflicted by you and your opponent, or fight defensively—decreasing the level of any harm inflicted by you and your opponent.

• [Master] The Rising Moon: Your sword attacks involve acrobatic leaps with powerful upward slashes. When you make an attack in this way, choose a beneficial extra effect (this effect occurs regardless of the outcome of your action): The target’s armor is ruined— the target’s weapon is ruined—the target is knocked sprawling—the target is forced in close where a sword is useless.

THE FORGOTTEN GODS

When you open your mind to the thought-tendrils of a forgotten god, you suffer 1 trauma and become an adept of its cult. You gain access to the following special abilities as veteran advances:

• The Closing of the Eye: You no longer suffer terror from the supernatural, and can choose to take only 1 stress when you resist mental, electroplasmic, or spiritual harm, regardless of the result of your roll.

• Glorious Visage: You may extend the thought-tendrils of the god from your own mind to those around you, granting them a vision of its formless form. This is a psychic attack that inflicts 3 stress on you and has an effect determined by your trauma level. Trauma 1+: all those who can see you must look away and leave your presence, or be paralyzed with dread. Trauma 2+: In addition, you inflict level 2 harm (formless dread) to all who can see you. Trauma 3+: Instead of level 2 harm, you inflict level 3 harm “Catatonic.” Trauma 4+: In addition, you may also focus on one person who can see you and inflict fatal psychic harm “Shattered Mind.”

When you suffer your fourth trauma, your mind is prepared and you ascend to mastery in the cult of your forgotten god. You receive permission to call upon your god to briefly manifest in the physical world and enact its will, at the cost of 6 stress. You receive permission to continue to play your character rather than retiring, with the following restrictions:

• You may now heal stress only by serving the will of your forgotten god. Your vice becomes Servitude.

• When next you suffer trauma (your fifth), you transform into an avatar of the god, losing your human mind and will as the thought-tendrils of the god fully manifest within you. Retire your character to their dark fate.

THE PATH OF ECHOES

When you achieve the rank of initiate, you receive permission to attend the secret rituals of the cult. When you make the appropriate sacrifices to the cult, master the ways of the secret rituals, and offer up your absolute loyalty to the Path, you become an adept. When you achieve the rank of adept, you receive permission to attend the forbidden spirit well rituals in the deathlands. You may also take the following special ability as a veteran advance:

• Spirit Link: The death or ghostly possession of your physical body instantly frees your spirit. You arise from any spirit well you have previously visited. Switch to the Ghost playbook and immediately take a playbook advancement.

BOUND TO THE DEMON

When, having bound yourself by arcane ritual to a demon, you indulge its dark desire, you receive permission to command it and it may not refuse you. When the demon’s desire is not well-satisfied, it receives permission to work in secret toward your destruction to be free of its binding.

You may also take the following special abilities as veteran advances:

• Demonic Attendant: A demon bound to you is compelled to stay always at hand, veiled and hidden within a nearby source of its elemental affinity, ready to appear at an instant to serve you. While its dark desire is well-satisfied, the demon will manifest to interpose itself for your protection or to offer its wisdom or aid without need for your specific command.

• Demonic Artifact: You may force a demon bound to you to inhabit an artifact created by arcane methods. The demon’s abilities are then controlled by the wielder, so long as the demon’s dark desire is satisfied.