Lord of music, the sun, art and beauty, Apollo is the healer and the sender of plague. He can cure with a touch or smite with his golden bow. Blond, blue-eyed, with muscled olive-tan skin, his smile sends quivers through half of both male and female populations, yet his love affairs seem fated to be short lived and touched by tragedy. Apollo’s tendency to speak truths others are unwilling to face is guaranteed to win respect from half the room and make the other half want to start swinging.
His Champions tend to take after him. Classically handsome or beautiful, muscular and active, they tend to follow careers in the arts, music or health professions.
Devotion Attributes: Dexterity, Charisma, Wits
Devotion Abilities: Archery, Athletics, Medicine, Occult, Performance
Devotion Basic Blessings: Bolstering Melody, Penetrating Glare, Pulse of Life
Bolstering Melody
The heights and depths of your songs carry powerful emotions. With magnificent arias or oration, you raise others to the heights of passion; black melancholy flows from your melodies of despair.
Cost: 1 Gnosis
Test Pool: None
System:
To use Bolstering Melody, you must sing for at least three turns. All those in hearing range of this power feel an intense emotion of your choice, related to the subject of your performance. This emotion is overwhelming, summoning a rush of memories, images of events that caused similar feelings in the individual’s past. Individuals affected by Bolstering Melody receive a +3 bonus to their test pools to resist emotion-based powers.
Using this power on an individual with a derangement gives her 1 Derangement trait.
The effects of Bolstering Melody last for 10 minutes, plus an additional 10 minutes for every dot the user has of the Performance: Singing skill.
Penetrating Glare
As sunlight only dims when it passes through thick clouds, so too can this champion's vision cut through physical occlusions.
Cost: 1 Gnosis
Test Pool: None
System:
This Blessing, once learned, is always active. The Champion of Apollo sees clearly through such physical impediments as smoke, fog, murky water (if the champion is in said water) or even translucent barriers through which other people can see only silhouettes. The character can even see perfectly clearly in dim light (i.e., light no less intense than a small candle). In total darkness, however, they're just as blind as the next person.
When there is no light, the champion brings their own inner light forth to shine. By spending a simple action and 1 Gnosis, the champion manifests a small nimbus of candlelight around their body, providing low level illumination.
Pulse of Life
Life permeates the world, cycling with the ebb and flow of inevitability. With this power, you can tap into that source, feeling the pulse of the universe and tangibly perceiving the vital energy of individuals nearby.
Cost: 1 Gnosis
Test Pool: None
System:
Spend a simple action to activate Pulse of Life. Until the end of the scene, you gain the instinctive ability to perceive the health of any creature that comes within 10 steps of you. You automatically realize the following information:
- Whether the target is alive, dead, or undead.
- An estimate of how wounded the target is
- The location and severity of any injuries the target currently suffers.
- Whether the target suffers from any diseases or other maladies, and if so, which ones.
- Whether the target has any drugs or poisons in her system, and if so, which ones.
- The disposition of all organs, bones, musculature, and other physical structures of the target’s body. You realize if any organs have been removed or shifted, and you can sense the signs of older, healed injuries or genetic anomalies.
In addition, by spending 1 Gnosis and using a simple action, you can also use Pulse of Life to receive a +5 bonus to any challenges using the Medicine skill or when you are attempting to diagnose a corpse’s cause of death.
Devotion Intermediate Blessings: Anesthetic Touch, Heavenly Flare, Siren's Beckoning
Anesthetic Touch
You have a healer’s touch, and can cause pain to flee or fear to lessen in the heart of your patients. Any subject who voluntarily submits to your Anesthetic Touch can be rendered immune to pain, and any mortal creature affected by your power falls into an immediate healing sleep.
Cost: 1 Gnosis
Test Pool: None
System:
Expend a simple action to target a willing subject within your line of sight. For the next hour, the target feels no pain and suffers no wound penalties. If your target is mortal, you put her into a state of peaceful sleep, where she will feel no pain for the next 10 hours. Further, mortal creatures will heal 3 points of bashing or lethal damage after resting a full eight hours under the effects of this power. Anesthetic Touch can only be used on willing targets.
Heavenly Flare
Concentrating for a moment, the chosen of Apollo builds up and releases a flash of sunlight that’s impossible for anyone within line of sight to miss.
Cost: 1 Gnosis
Test Pool: Charisma + Performance vs. Target's Composure + Willpower
System:
By spending a Standard Action, the character releases a burst of light centered on themselves. When they do so, they make an opposed test against any characters (friend or foe) who were looking at them; if you use your general retest on any of the challenges, you may use your general retest on all remaining challenges without needing to spend another point of Willpower, you may not go back to previous challenges you have already resolved. You are able to shield a number of allies equal to your Performance rating from this effect.
Those targets who fail this test suffers a -3 penalty on all non-defensive challenges until the end of the next turn.
This effect is not true sunlight, but its use can trigger frenzies in vampires as though it was.
Exceptional Success:
The victim is also blinded until the end of the next turn and loses their next Simple Action.
Siren's Beckoning
By beckoning to the turmoil and emotional wounds within a subject, you awaken insanity within an individual’s soul. The sound of your voice overwhelms a listener’s mind, as your song shatters her hold on reality.
Cost: 1 Gnosis
Test Pool: Special, See below
System:
To use Siren’s Beckoning, you must use a standard action to sing. Choose a number of individuals within hearing range equal to your Performance: Singing skill. Mortals do not count toward your maximum number of targets for Siren’s Beckoning. These individuals immediately enter a fugue-like state, stopping all other activity in order to listen to your performance. So long as you continue to spend your standard action singing each round, your listeners will remain utterly captivated by the song. If you use your simple action to walk, they will follow at a slow pace, unaware of events happening around them; they will not notice breaches of the Veil or other general events. However, if a beckoned individual is attacked, put in danger (you cannot lead them over a pit nor in front of a stampeding horse), or targeted by an offensive power, your Siren’s Beckoning will immediately break.
All those who wish to resist your Siren’s Beckoning must make an opposed challenge using their Composure + Willpower versus your Charisma + Performance test pool.
Using this power on an individual with a derangement gives her 2 Derangement traits. If this causes the individual to experience a psychotic break, that break will not occur until after Siren’s Beckoning ends.
Devotion Advanced Blessings: Apollo's Blessing, Death of the Drum, Halo of the Sun
Apollo's Blessing
By laying your hands upon the sick or injured, you heal the subject’s body of any affliction or malady, bringing her to a state of full health. When this occurs, a gentle feeling of peace spreads throughout your target’s soul, rendering it temporarily joyful and in harmony with the world.
Cost: 3 Gnosis
Test Pool: None
System:
Touch a willing target for one minute to activate Apollo's Blessing. Thereafter, you heal any physical maladies your target currently suffers, so long as you wish to cure those issues. Apollo's Blessing can be used to heal wounds, regrow lost limbs, rectify genetic defects, counteract poisons or drugs, cure disease, and remove unwanted alterations to the physical form, such as those caused by supernatural means. Apollo’s Blessing can only be used on willing targets.
Use of Apollo's Blessing can also bring peace to those with psychological ailments or wounds, and can even cure derangements. After fulfilling all other costs of this power, you can also remove one derangement from an individual.
Note that this power cannot permanently remove an Ostraka's deformities. Rather those are suppressed for an hour, and then return. If this power would cure a flaw the character possesses, it suppresses the effect for the session, the character may choose to immediately buy off the flaw at this point. If they do not have sufficient XP they may go into XP debt to buy off the flaw. If the flaw is not bought off then the flaw returns next session, further uses of this power may not then suppress the flaw again unless the character intends to buy off the flaw.
Death of the Drum
Sound can be a deadly and explosive force, and the power of harmonics can shake apart even the most stalwart materials. By pitching your voice to the exact frequency of an enemy’s physical form, you can cause severe injury to your target.
Cost: 1 Gnosis
Test Pool: Charisma + Performance vs Composure +Willpower
System:
Spend 1 point of Gnosis and expend a standard action to sing, shriek, or otherwise audibly evoke Death of the Drum. Make an opposed challenge against an opponent. If you are successful, your victim takes 3 points of aggravated damage. You can also target objects with Death of the Drum. Most solid items will shatter after a single round of song, but the Storyteller may require multiple rounds of singing to break exceptionally tough or thick substances.
You can activate Death of the Drum against a target repeatedly; this is an exception to the rule that prohibits a character from using a Social power on the same target immediately after failing. If you fail to use Death of the Drum against an opponent, you may try again against that same opponent (or someone else) on the next turn.
Exceptional Success:
Your use of Death of the Drum deals 4 points of aggravated damage, rather than 3.
Halo of the Sun
The character whispers an ancient word sacred to Apollo and is immediately surrounded by a sphere of blazing sunlight. Those creatures who fear the sun may flee before the Champion.
Cost: 1 Gnosis
Test Pool: None
System:
Expend 1 point of Gnosis and a simple action wreath themselves in sunlight until the end of the scene. The character's Brawl attacks deal one additional level of damage and cause aggravated damage no matter what form they are in. Anyone directly facing the champion suffers a -3 penalty to attack them due to the glare. Any vampires within 20 steps suffer three levels of Aggravated damage per turn.
Instead of a whisper, the character can let out a scream at the top of their lungs, binding their Rage into a single solid sunbeam that they pull down from the heavens. This changes the normal effects of this Blessing as follows:
Instead of enhancing their Brawl attacks, the champion can choose to forge the sunlight into a weapon usable with Archery, Athletics, or Melee with two traits of your choice. The weapon always has the Strange Composition: Sunlight trait, deals one additional level of damage, and always deals aggravated damage. If a ranged weapon is chosen, such as a spear or an arrow, it returns to their hand at the beginning of each round.
The other effects of Halo of the Sun remain unchanged and in effect as long as this Blessing is active.