We're into December now! These final weeks will be all about Martial Arts and Sorcery and Artifacts and Allies and Adversaries! Let's get a little taste of what's to come with a sneak peek at Crystal Chameleon Style!
Crystal Chameleon Style
Crystal Chameleon style is paradoxical, simultaneously stealthy and conspicuous. Its most famous practitioners in Autochthonia are Alchemicals, who weaponize their anima banners to become blinding, brutally effective fighters and assassins. Mortal stylists and Champions alike make use of firecrackers, neon gas bombs, and other gear to generate flashes of light. Its mortal practitioners are thus largely people of means, ingenious alchemists, or those who can otherwise procure such supplies.
Warriors who wish for their work to be noticed prize Crystal Chameleon style, using it across the Eight Nations to brutal effect. It’s the style of Alchemical assassins acting as state-sanctioned heroes, but it’s also the style of killers who want to send a message: tunnel folk raiders, Sovan death commandos, strike-breaking regulators, voidbringer dissidents, and the legbreakers employed by Claslati glot-bosses.
Rare in Creation, the style is preserved by esoteric masters, particularly in societies proficient in alchemy. Many dwell in the forests of the Northeast and Far East, though their secrets have taken root and spread to other stylists, such as Calin’s Five Shades, the enigmatic Forest Witches, and Palanquin rebels. In the South, practitioners use firedust as a form of blinding powder.
Crystal Chameleon Weapons: This style uses ostentatious, flashy kicks and strikes that catch unwary opponents off guard, along with lunging movements that confuse the enemy’s eyes. It also uses the meteor hammer, rope dart, short spear and spear.
Armor: Crystal Chameleon is incompatible with armor.
Complementary Abilities: Stealth is key to this style, while Athletics and Dodge are important for battlefield mobility.
Special: After attacking with a meteor hammer or rope dart, a character may pull it back to hand with a miscellaneous action. With 3+ extra successes on the attack roll, this can be done reflexively. This isn’t compatible with magic that extends the attack’s range, unless the nature of the effect would still let the wielder pull back the rope or chain.
Note: Ranged weapons with the Martial Arts tag can only be used with Martial Arts, as usual. The Archery and Thrown tags are used solely to determine the weapon’s traits.
Compressing her anima into a refracted sheen around her, the stylist dives for cover with light trailing behind her.
The stylist adds (higher of Essence or 3) dice on a Stealth roll to establish concealment in combat. Opposing rolls suffer a −1 visual penalty if the stylist’s anima is at glowing or higher, or if she stunts with the use of blinding powder, firecrackers, or the like. This penalty increases to −2 if the stylist is behind cover.
In Creation, this Charm is known as Just-Another-Branch Deceit.
Light-Treading Technique
Cost: 3m; Mins: Martial Arts 3, Essence 1 Type: Supplemental Keywords: None Duration: Instant Prerequisite Charms: One Wire Among Many
With a flux of her body’s Essence, the stylist bends light around herself to become swifter and step lighter.
The stylist rerolls up to (Anima + 1) dice that roll non-1 failures on a movement action. If she moves while in concealment, this increases to (Anima + 3) dice.
Sudden Radiance Onslaught
Cost: 4m, 1a; Mins: Martial Arts 3, Essence 1 Type: Supplemental Keywords: Dual Duration: Instant Prerequisite Charms: One Wire Among Many
The stylist strikes quickly and brutally in an overawing display, her anima strobing through the spectrum as she attacks.
The stylist adds two dice to an attack’s post-soak withering damage or decisive damage. This increases to (higher of Essence or 3) dice on unexpected attacks, or if the stylist’s anima was at bonfire when she used this Charm. If the attack hits, the enemy’s onslaught penalty doesn’t refresh at the end of his next turn, instead doing so at the end of that round.
Mastery: This Charm’s damage bonus is increased by one die.
Crystal Chameleon Form
Cost: 8m; Mins: Martial Arts 4, Essence 1 Type: Simple Keywords: Form, Uniform Duration: One scene Prerequisite Charms: Light-Trading Technique, Sudden Radiance Onslaught
The stylist strikes the light around her, fracturing it into a shifting prism as she assumes a stance hidden within the grandeur.
The stylist gains the following benefits:
Attacks against her suffer a −(Anima, minimum 1) visual penalty.
She ignores Stealth penalties from her anima, and can attempt to enter concealment even when it’s at burning or higher.
When she makes a surprise attack from behind cover, the Defense penalty increases to −3.
She adds (Anima, minimum 1) dice to movement actions in combat.
Special activation rules: Whenever the stylist rises two levels of anima in a single instant while in combat, she may reflexively enter this Form.
The blinding radiance of the stylist is the last thing her victims ever see.
The stylist makes a decisive attack against an enemy within short range, immediately crossing the distance between them in a flash step. She adds (higher of Essence or Anima) dice of damage, plus an additional die of damage for each of the following conditions she satisfies:
The target is currently suffering visual penalties. (This includes the penalty inflicted by this style’s Form.)
The stylist’s anima is at burning or higher.
The attack is unexpected.
The stylist is attacking from behind cover.
Mastery: The stylist adds two dice of damage for each condition she meets.
Live Wire Style
Live Wire style uses flowing movements and whips to entrap enemies, then delivers painful and debilitating strikes with brutal speed. Most Autochthonians know it as the style of the Flashing Wire Collective, an international fraternity of regulators. Its members wield braided steel cables as whips, fighting in underground tournaments that pit each nation’s regulators against each other in fierce competition.
Kamak’s Wickedness-Threshing Bureau was originally a regulator task force — and part of the Flashing Whip Collective — devoted to rooting out antisocial conspiracies, but it went renegade during the Communal Revolution, siding against the Tripartite Assembly. Centuries later, its legend has been revived by a cell of the One Tier Movement, whose members keep lengths of precious alloy wire hidden until it is time to strike.
Among the tunnel folk, this style is practiced by the Maker’s Flails, who traverse labyrinthine snarls of giant, electrified cables in the Reaches. Their warriors wield filament-thin whips to combat gremlins drawn to these vital conduits of the Maker’s electric Essence. They freely share their techniques with outsiders, building a distributed network of gremlin hunters.
In Creation, Strangling Lightning style is a close cousin of Live Wire, though its masters are more likely to wield whips of tanned hide than woven wire. The South’s Thunder Children are mercenaries and outlaws, currently in the employ of Rankar VII, despot of the volcano city of Gem. The Sweet Executioners wield glass-studded whips in raids on traders leaving Chiaroscuro, when they aren’t protecting them as hired caravan guards. Across the waters of the Dreaming Sea, half a dozen pirates claim to be undisputed masters of the style, denying any association with the others.
Live Wire Weapons: Live Wire style’s unarmed attacks utilize flowing movements that suddenly explode into lashing strikes. It’s most often used with whips, typically wielded in pairs. Some of its Charms work better with whips, or require the stylist to wield them.
Armor: Live Wire Style is compatible with all armor.
The stylist is never outnumbered, her blows singing outward in all directions as they crash against her enemies.
The martial artist makes two decisive attacks. If she uses paired whips to attack, she adds an automatic success on both attack rolls. She divides her Initiative evenly between these attacks to determine their damage, rounding up. If the stylist makes both attacks against the same enemy and hits with at least one of them, that character’s attacks don’t inflict onslaught penalties on the stylist until the end of that character’s next turn.
In Creation, this Charm is called Howling Levin Note.
Mastery: This Charm prevents hit enemies from inflicting onslaught penalties even if the stylist attacks two different characters.
Lightning Supremacy Reversal
Cost: 4m; Mins: Martial Arts 3, Essence 1 Type: Supplemental Keywords: Decisive-only, Terrestrial Duration: Instant Prerequisite Charms: Whistling Analog Signal
The stylist strikes in a flickering, formless movement, trapping her enemy’s weapon within coils of crackling Essence.
The stylist adds one die on the attack roll and Initiative roll for a disarm gambit. or two dice against metal weapons. If she uses a whip and rolls 3+ extra successes on the Initiative roll, she can throw a disarmed weapon an additional range band away.
Terrestrial: The stylist only gains the increased disarm range if her Initiative is at least ten higher than her target’s.
Tangled Weaver’s Trap
Cost: 5m; Mins: Martial Arts 3, Essence 1 Type: Simple Keywords: Decisive-only Duration: Instant Prerequisite Charms: Whistling Analog Signal
The martial artist’s whips lashing out in a sizzling helix, ensuring no fugitive can flee beyond her reach.
The stylist uses a whip to make a disarm or grapple gambit against an enemy within short range, adding one die on the attack roll. If she’s dual wielding whips, she adds two dice instead. With grapples, her enemy remains in place, entangled by her whip, which works as a normal grapple. Enemies can attempt a difficulty 3 gambit to free him, rolling against the stylist’s Parry.
The stylist can use this Charm at medium range while in Live Wire Form, entangling arcs of lightning branching outward from her whip.
Mastery: This Charm’s range is enhanced even when the stylist isn’t in Live Wire Form.
Live Wire Form
Cost: 8m; Mins: Martial Arts 4, Essence 1 Type: Simple Keywords: Form, Uniform Duration: One scene Prerequisite Charms: Lightning Supremacy Reversal, Tangled Weaver’s Trap
The stylist lashes her whips in jagged zigzag patterns that contrast her fluid movements. Her sudden, vicious strikes crackle and pulse with electrical charge.
The martial artist gains the following benefits:
When the stylist successfully lands an attack — withering or decisive — her target suffers two dice of unsoakable withering damage from crawling electrical energy after the attack’s damage roll. He suffers three dice instead if he’s wearing metal armor. The stylist doesn’t gain Initiative from this.
She can reflexively summon whips of lighting into her empty hands, with the traits of a mundane whips.
She increases the bonus on clash attacks for dual wielding whips by one die.
She reduces the Defense penalty for grappling by one.
In Creation, this Charm is known as Strangling Lighting Form.
Special activation rules: When the martial artist succeeds on a grapple or disarm gambit and rolls 3+ extra successes on the Initiative roll, she may reflexively enter Live Wire Form.
The stylist unleashes electric vengeance on those who refuse to heed her authority, hands and whips moving with impossible speed and crackling with Essence.
When an enemy with Initiative lower than the martial artist’s makes a non-ranged attack against her, she reflexively clashes with a decisive attack. While wielding a whip, she can clash ranged attacks, but only deals damage if the opposing attack used a projectile that she can redirect.
If the stylist is dual wielding whips, she converts the attack roll dice bonus from dual wielding to non-Charm successes.
Terrestrial: The clash counts as the stylist’s attack for the round — or the next round, if she’s already attacked.
