Supernatrual Merits

You can take one additional Discipline (Storyteller discretion) as if it were a Clan
Discipline. All costs to learn that Discipline are paid out as if it were
native to your Clan.

A character
cannot take this Merit more than once, and Caitiff vampires cannot take this Merit.

### Ancestor Ally

**1 pt. Merit**

One of your
ancestor spirits is particularly close to you. You have –2 to your difficulty
to contact this ancestor via your Ancestors Background. Flesh out your special
ancestor with a name, personality characteristics, significant abilities or
powers, details about her life, and her reputation among Garou.

To purchase
this Merit, you must have Ancestors as a Background.

### Apostate

**2pt. Merit**

Since their
inception, Nergali Baali have subverted members of other Clans into their own
ranks. Known as Apostates, initiates are first drained completely by a Baali
nest-master, who then extracts the still-beating heart from a mortal victim,
fills it with his own blood, and buries it in a pool of gore within a Well of
Sacrifice.

The
initiate swims through the dismembered bodies and viscous re-mains to find and
consume the heart. In this way, Nergali do not make a victim of those they
Embrace; prospective members must claim it through strength of will.

Apostates
replace any one in-Clan Discipline with Daimoinon, but in turn gain the Baali
Clan weakness on top of their standard Clan weakness.

Apostates
can still pass with relative ease for members of their former Clans, but any
childe they Embrace is indistinguishable from a standard Baali. Further, such a
childe shares none of the Clan Disciplines or weaknesses of their sire’s
for-mer Clan, save those Disciplines that are innate to the Baali.

Apostates
do not lose levels in the Discipline they choose to exchange for Daimoinon, but
further levels in that Discipline are purchased at out-of-Clan costs.

Baali may
not take this Merit.

### Avatar Companion

**7 pt. Merit**

From
lifetime to lifetime, you share a bit of your Avatar with a companion who
follows you through incarnations, recalling more about their details than you
do. Although he’s not as powerful as you are, and lacks the metaphysical
prowess of the Merits: Twin Soul or Shattered Avatar, this companion knows a
great deal about your reincarnated self… quite a bit more about it than then
you do. This loyal (if not always agreeable) character literally follows you
for life, typically ending his life when you do; in the meantime, he provides
insights, advice, information about previous life­times, and whatever other
forms of aid he can possibly offer. Like the Merit: Guardian Angel, the Avatar
Companion is essentially a walking boost from your Storyteller, subject to her
whims but acting in your best interests… for the most part, anyway.

Unless it’s
purchased in addition to the Background: Allies, your companion isn’t anything
special; he could be a person or animal, but not a vampire, a werebeast, or
some other Night-Folk entity. Your Avatar Companion could also be a Ward, the
focus of True Love, or perhaps an embodiment of a Manifest Avatar.

Treat him
badly enough, and he might become an Enemy. As with all other character-based
Traits, this companion has his own personality, desires, and so on. He may be
loyal, but he’s not suicidal, and isn’t likely to be thrilled if the mage
decides to abuse his loyalty!

### Bardic Gift

**2 pt. Merit**

Blessed
with uncanny inspiration, you create profoundly evocative artwork. Truth echoes
through your words, blazes from your canvas, resonates in song, speaks silently
in dance. Although artistic skill is, of course, important, this gift runs
deeper than mere technique.

Art is your
passion, your spirit, your Truth. And that Truth manifests itself in whatever
arts you pursue, up to and including the Magickal Arts.

When making
a roll with the Art Talent, reduce the difficulty by -2. Even when the attempt
itself falls short of your expectations (that is, when you fail a roll), your
creations feature an unmistak­able gleam of brilliance and a preternatural
expression of Truth.

Although
you’re not required (as a player) to employ artwork as part of your magickal
focus, chances are good that your approach to magick does feature elements of
painting, dance, music, and other manifestations of artistic expression.

### Blessed by St. Gustav

**4pt. Merit**

Many
Ventrue antitribu replace their traditional affinity for Presence with an aptitude
for Auspex by means of the ignobilis ritus known as the Prayer to St. Gustav
For your piety and devotion to the Sabbat cause, you have been especially blessed
and have an affinity for both Disciplines.

**System**: This Merit is identical to Additional
Discipline Merit found on V20, p. 494, except that it can only be used to add
Auspex as a fourth in-Clan discipline.

Only
Ventrue antitribu can take this Merit.

### Brahmin

**1pt. Merit**

As a member
of the Brahmin jati, you are a priest, artist, teacher, or other pillar of
society. Perhaps you keep the lore of the Clan, or perhaps you act as an
advisor to other Ravnos in need of wisdom. Once per session, if you fail an Academics
or Expression roll, you may immediately reroll it.

You do not
have to purchase this Merit to be a member of the Brahmin jati, but only
members of the Brahmin jati may have this Merit.

### Burning Aura

**1 pt. Merit**

To those
who can sense it, your aura burns with amazing brilliance and clarity. Even
folks who can’t actually perceive this bright corona of energy realize that
you’re “different.” Entities that can read your aura react accordingly; some
will treat you with uncommon respect, while others will view you as a nice
meal.

The nature
of your aura cannot be hidden easily (+2 to the difficulty of any attempt to do
so), and while this is a dreadful disadvantage for, say, a Nephandus, people
who prize forthright integrity may reduce their difficulties by -2 when they’re
trying to make an impression that’s in accord with that vivid aura and
affecting characters who can sense it.

Assuming
that you employ these optional Traits, your Resonance and Synergy each get a
vivid, one-dot boost from this Merit.

### Celestial Affinity

**3 pt. Merit**

You get
along especially well with a certain type of spirit entity. Depending upon your
practice, you might relate well with nature spirits, High Umbral Courtiers,
Digital Web en­tities, the Restless Dead, the Loa, angelic or demonic beings,
and so forth.

When you’re
dealing with entities within a single selected category, you reduce the
difficulty of your summoning and negotiation rolls by -2. This bonus does not
apply to attempts to bind or ward against such beings, as it’s based upon
goodwill, not force. It does, however, apply to the Arete rolls when casting
the summoning Effect (within the normal modifier limits, as usual), because the
entities in question are more inclined to show up when you call upon them.

For three
additional points per category, you may add another category of spirits,
assuming that your practice favors an affinity for such spirits. (A BCD Void
Engineer “ghost-buster,” for example, could not purchase an Affinity for
ghosts, though a necromancer could certainly do so.) If you abuse this
goodwill, as one might imagine, this bonus, and the Merit, both go away – and
might wind up being replaced by a Flaw like Immortal Enemy if your mage behaves
in an especially foolish manner.

### Circumspect Avatar

**2 pt. Merit**

You’ve
never seen your Avatar, and probably doubt that such a thing exists. Sure, you
have a shadow, and a reflection, or maybe a little dog who’s followed you
around since you were a kid and seems no older even though he should have died
of old age years ago, but an Avatar? Nah – that’s a buncha New Age hippie crap!
You have yet to encounter any such thing, you don’t go on “seekings” or
whatever they’re called, and you get your metaphysical insights the same way
any normal person does: through everyday events in the everyday world.

Essentially,
this Merit grants a “silent” Avatar – one that, for whatever reason, does not
hound or guide your character but merely drops hints, cues, and clues that the
mage either figures out or doesn’t figure out on her own.

Seekings
and Epiphanies take place in the physical realm, typically as puzzles and
dilemmas that happen to be related to issues that the mage needs to sort
through in order to advance to the next level of understanding. During such
situations, the Avatar may indeed appear (possibly even manifest), but only as
some apparently mundane person, creature or thing, not as an obviously
paranormal entity. You could, for instance, get a call from your mother that
sends you into an introspective mood which, in turn, leads you to figure out an
important riddle from your past; Mom, of course, denies even having called you.
Huh. So who could that call have been from, anyway? Or did you, perhaps, just
imagine it after all?

### Clear Sighted

**5 pt. Merit**

Even
without employing your Arts, you have a preternat­ural gift for seeing things
as they are, not as they appear to be. Illusions, disguises, cloaking spells,
and other forms of trickery rarely deceive your eyes.

In game
terms, you can make a Perception + Awareness roll to see through metaphysical
deception powers: vampiric Disciplines, faerie cantrips, werecreature Gifts,
Sphere-based illusions, and other powers that are based on deceiving a wit­nesses’
perceptions. This roll works only against powers that deceive the target’s
perceptions, not against any other form of Gift, Discipline, cantrip, and so
forth. (Vampiric Obfuscate, for example, but not Presence or Dominate.)

The
difficulty for that roll is generally 5 + the highest Sphere Rank or other
level involved in that power; a Forces 2 /Prime 2 illusion, then, would be
difficulty 7, while a vampire’s Mask of a Thousand Faces (Obfuscate 3) would be
difficulty 8. If a character could normally get a roll to see through the
illusion, then your character subtracts -3 from her difficulty when trying to do
so.

Your clear
sight also reduces your difficulty by -3 when you try to see through a
disguise, a cloaking spell or device, or other attempts to conceal the truth
from an onlooker. It does not, however, allow you to see through darkness,
notice stealthing or invisible characters, or otherwise perceive something that
you would not be able to see without this Merit; combining this Merit with the
physical Merit: Acute Senses, however, could make you a formidably perceptive
character.

### Cloak of the Seasons

**3 pt. Merit**

Adverse
weather does not bother you. Regardless of your clothing or lack thereof,
you’re essentially immune to the effects of exposure to harsh climates. You
still need to eat, drink, and breathe – this Merit won’t save you from starvation
or suffocation – and climate-based obsta­cles (fog, high winds, snowdrifts,
ice, etc.) hinder you as badly as they’ll hinder anybody else.

Aside from
outright attacks by the elements, however, you remain untouched by extremes of
temperature and climate. You might not always be comfortable, but you’ll
survive.

### Cold Read

**3pt. Merit**

Whenever
you meet someone for the first time, you may spend a number of points of
Willpower equal to your Perception. For each point spent, you may ask the Storyteller
one question about the character.

The
Storyteller must either answer truthfully or let you take the Willpower point
back to you to avoid answering the question.

### Connoisseur

**2pt. Merit**

Your study
of the Auspex Discipline, combined with your rarified tastes, allows you
powerful insights into the character of any whose blood you taste.

**System**: The character tastes another’s
blood (potentially risking blood bond), and player rolls Perception + Empathy (difficulty
6 for mortals or 8 for Kindred). If the blood came from a mortal, each success
allows him to learn one of the following: the mortal’s Nature, her Demeanor,
any Derangements she may possess, whether she is blood bonded, and whether she
carries any blood-borne diseases. If the vitae came from a vampire, he can
learn all of the previous information, plus anything discoverable with the
first level of the Path of Blood.

The Ventrue
may taste the blood of a mortal who does not fit within his feeding restriction
long enough to use this ability, but he must immediately spit it out
afterwards.

Vampires
that do not have Auspex dot 2 cannot take this Merit.

### Critters

**2pt. Merit**

You’re
excellent with animals — so much so that they constantly seek to befriend you.
Wherever you go, the animals are happy to see you, and more often than not, happy
to help you when you ask for their aid. You receive a bonus die on Social rolls
to affect small animals. Further, animal companions who have had continual
interaction with you see you as something of a pet, and occasionally bring you
small useful things. Once per game session, animals will bring you a useful
piece of information or a small item relevant to events.

This item
might occasionally play into the individual Ravnos’ particular vice, as the animals
quickly pick up on what pleases their friend.

### Cyclic Magick

**3 pt. Merit/Flaw**

The
strength or weakness of your Arts is tied to some periodic cycle – the phases
of the moon, night or day, your menstrual periods, the rise and fall of the
stock market, and so forth. At the peak of your cycle, your magick flows most
easily; at its nadir, you find it challenging to work with your magick at all.

System-wise,
this Trait is both a Merit and a Flaw, granting bonuses at one point in the
cycle and penalties on its opposite point. At the highest point, you reduce
your casting difficulties by -3 for one hour, while at the lowest point you
increase them by +3 for one hour. On either end of that cycle, you subtract or
add -1 /+1 to your casting difficulties for each hour on both sides – the surge
and the ebb – of that cycle: -2 or + 2 for the two hours on each side of the
peak or nadir, -1 or +1 on the two hours on the side of those two hours, and no
modifiers during the rest of the time in between. If, for example, Victoria
Ashley-Croft bani Flambeau has a peak at midnight and a low at noon, her player
would receive a peak modifier of -3 difficulty at midnight, -2 difficulty at
11:00 PM and 1:00 AM, a -1 difficulty at 10:00 PM and 2:00 AM, and no modifiers
otherwise, aside from the reverse modifiers (+3 at noon, +2 at 11:00 AM and
1:00 PM, and +1 at 10:00 AM and 2:00 PM) at the opposite end of that cycle.

Naturally,
you’ll need to decide just what this cycle is when you select this Trait, and
then determine what the highest and lowest points of that cycle would be.

This Merit
must also be tied into your focus – intrinsically connected to the beliefs you
hold and the practices you follow. Your choice of instruments is often tied to
such cycles too; cycle-bound instruments include celestial alignments,
crossroads and crossing-days, formulae and mathematics, group rites, money and
wealth, music (peaks and lulls in a song, movements in a symphony, etc.),
numbers and numerology, and offerings and sacrifices (“when the stars are
right”). A stockbroker will be watching the peaks and ebbs on Wall Street,
while a witch pays attention to the cycles of the moon or her blood. By
observing your cycles, you’ll have a good idea about the best and worst times
to use your Arts. And by observing you, your allies and enemies may be able to
figure those things out too.

### Danger Sense

**3 pt. Merit**

You’ve got
a knack for knowing when something bad is about to happen. When you are in
danger but not aware of it, the Storyteller should make a secret roll against your
Perception + Alertness; the difficulty corresponds to the immediacy of the
danger.

If the roll
succeeds, you are given a sense of foreboding. Multiple successes may refine
the feeling and give an indication of direction, distance, or nature of the threat.

### Deathwalker

**4 pt. Merit**

The
Underworld welcomes you. While most Umbral travelers are more or less barred
from the Shadowlands and Low Umbra unless they possess special magicks (or have
died), you can step sideways into the Dead Lands with a simple ap­plication of
Spirit 3. When you do so, your aura assumes the pale tone of death, and you
become essentially indistinguish­able from a ghost unless some knowledgeable
entity makes a successful Perception + Occult roll (difficulty 7) to see you
for what you really are. If the Avatar Storm is still raging in your chronicle,
you can pass into the Low Umbra without suffering the Storm’s effects.

This sort
of “gift” often leaves macabre traces on the mortals it favors. Hence, this
Merit is well-suited for the Flaws: Echoes, Uncanny, and Primal Marks. Thanks
to their innate ties to the Dead Lands, Deathwalkers, as a rule, view the
Otherworlds through the Vidare Mortem, suffer from Morbidity Quiets, and tend
to have a rather fatalistic view of life.

### Deceptive Aura

**1pt. Merit**

Your aura
is unnaturally bright and colorful for a vampire. You register as a mortal on
all attempts to read your aura.

### Distracting Aura

**2pt. Merit**

Reading an
aura using Auspex requires the viewer to focus on recurring patterns and colors
to detect a target’s emotional state. Because of the unique state of your
psyche, your aura is even harder to read than most.

All uses of
Aura Perception are at a +2 difficulty against you.

### Dracon’s Temperament

**3pt. Merit**

You emulate
the ideal of Azi Dahaka within and without, to levels visceral and abstract.
Your psyche flows with the permutable nature of change. Like the protean
Dracon, you are a whirlwind of temperaments. This is not multiple
personalities. You are one identity shown through the prism of ever-shifting
Natures. No anchor fetters your sense of self. You can be any you.

At the
start of each story, you may choose one Personality Archetype to function as
your Nature, spending the rest of the story perceiving the world through that
perspective.

You also
regain Willpower according to your new Nature and may be affected by other
effects or Discipline powers as per your new Nature as well.

### Dual Affiliation

**7 pt. Merit**

You’ve been
initiated and trained in two different Awakened groups. Perhaps you were a
Verbena who gravitated toward the Virtual Adepts, or a Man in Black who sought
refuge among the Templars. Whatever your history and affiliations might be,
you’re intimately familiar with both groups, have connections (not nec­essarily
friends) in both groups, and may use and understand the practices, tools and
beliefs (in short, the focus) of either group.

Rules-wise,
your mage enjoys the benefits of each affilia­tion. If he’s a former Technocrat
who went over to the mystic side, he can still use technomagick while
transcending the usual Technocratic bans regarding Arete and focus. When
raising a Sphere, your character gets to use the Affinity Sphere rate for one Sphere
per group. His former associates probably don’t view him very favorably,
though, unless he “cross-trained” within friendly groups, like a Dreamspeaker
who went Ecstatic or a Hermetic who joined the Children of Knowledge.

### Embraced without the Cup

**1pt. Merit**

For some
reason you did not drink the blood of the elders when you were inducted into
Clan Tremere. More dangerously, it may have had no effect on you. As a result,
you are not bound to the Clan the way most Tremere are.

Should it
be discovered, it will usually be corrected, but one might almost believe there
was some purpose to this lapse, as the Tremere don’t make mistakes. Perhaps the
Clan has a special task in mind for you, one where you might be forced to act
against the Clan to maintain a cover….

### Eyes of Shadow

**1-4pt. Merit**

There is
something about your eyes that makes you look dark and dangerous. Making eye
contact with you is like staring into the Abyss. It may not be obvious why, but
anyone you talk to gets a chill when they meet your gaze. The difficulty for
any Intimidation roll is reduced by the number of points in this Merit (to a
minimum of 2).

### Fae Blood

**4 pt. Merit**

Your veins
pulse with the enigmatic blood of the fae. Although not a full changeling, you
possess a distant tie to the Dreaming by way of your strange heritage. In
Changeling: The Dreaming terms, you’re kinain: a mortal human related to their
kind. Your Banality rating is low (no higher than 4, and often lower than
that), and you remain permanently enchanted in the sense that you perceive, and
are affected by, the changeling world.

As a
default member of that eldritch fellowship, you also tend to get swept up in
their odd intrigues, and know an uncomfortable amount about their hidden world.

As with the
Merit: Faerie Affinity, this Merit is forbidden to technomancers of all kinds.
Their Banality is too high to sustain this gift of the blood.

### Faerie Affinity

**2 pt. Merit**

Fae beings
like you. Drawn by an ineffable appeal, they seek you out and share secrets
with you that few mortals even comprehend. System-wise, you lower the
difficulty of your social rolls by -2 when you’re dealing with changelings and
related entities; in return, changelings reduce their difficulty by -2 when
they attempt – through whatever method – to obtain Glamour from you, or to
enchant you so as to bring you into their ephemeral realm.

Story-wise,
the Fae tend to favor you over other mortals, even when your temperaments would
seem to be at odds with one another. A gruff Nocker, for example, normally has
no use for frivolity… but in your case, you silly Cultist, he’ll make this one
exception!

Technomancers,
being considered “banal” in the eyes of the Fae, may not purchase this Merit.
Even if they don’t be­long to the Technocratic Union, the presence of such
mages is metaphysical poison to the Dreaming Ones.

### False Reflection

**3pt. Merit**

Even when
using their Obfuscate abilities, Nosferatu still show up in their true form
when noticed by machines, such as cameras or video surveillance. With this
ability, the Nosferatu can extend their power to recorded images and media.
However, as with Mask of the Thousand Faces, the original image isn’t actually
changed; it is just that people see it the way the Nosferatu wants it seen.
Unfortunately, computers are not so easily fooled: if the image is used for facial
recognition software (for instance), the computer will see the Nosferatu’s real
face and fail to find a match.

The
Nosferatu has best take care how this power is used, as it may wear off in
time. Some archived photos have given librarians a nasty surprise, years after
going into storage.

### Fetish

**5-7 pt. Merit**

You own a
fetish. You may have inherited this item, received it as a gift, or found it on
your own.

You and
your Storyteller should work together on constructing the item and establishing
how it came into your possession.

Five points
equals a Level One fetish, six points a Level Two fetish, and seven points a
Level Three fetish.

If you do
not have the Gnosis Merit, you may not be able to attune the Fetish to yourself
or use it.

### Fury’s Focus

**3pt. Merit**

Prerequisite: Path of Entelechy

Brujah who
have devoted themselves to mastering their frenzies through the Path of
Entelechy sometimes find tangible benefits resulting from their efforts. A
Brujah with this Merit may briefly delay the full onset of frenzy.

**System**: The player spends a Willpower point
at the onset of frenzy and then rolls the Brujah’s Entelechy rating. The
difficulty is one higher than the original roll to resist frenzy.

The Brujah
still frenzies, but the player controls her character’s actions for one turn
per success. Furthermore, when the period of partial control ends and the
Brujah loses control, the difficulty of any degeneration rolls triggered by
sins committed during the frenzy are reduced by the number of successes rolled,
to a minimum difficulty of 4.

### Ghoul

**5 pt. Merit**

The blood
of vampiric Kindred has made you something more than human. Willingly or
otherwise, you have supped on a vampire’s blood, and although you’re probably
not blood-bound to her service any longer (unless you are), that creature’s
unnatural vitality has become your own. Trouble is, you need more vitae to
sustain your uncanny abilities… and, as many mages have discovered, such blood
is exceedingly addictive.

A ghouled
character ages very slowly, gets one automatic success on any Strength-based
roll, and inflicts one extra die of damage with all hand-to-hand, non-magickal
attacks. If your chronicle employs Vampire: The Masquerade rules, your
character also has a blood pool, one dot in Potence, and the potential to buy
and employ Fortitude, Potence, and an ability from the initiating vampire’s
clan.

That’s the
good part; the bad parts involve the constant craving for more vitae, the loss
of those supernatural bonuses after roughly a month without vampire blood,
several dots in Resonance that reflect the corrupt nature of the undead, and
the obvious drawbacks of hanging around with vampires just so you can drink
their blood.

### Gnosis

**5-7 pt. Merit**

More than
any other blessing, the possession of Gnosis among Kin is a special mark of
Gaia’s favor. It’s extremely rare for mortals to be so gifted.

Having
Gnosis grants many privileges, such as the ability to learn a broader range of Gifts,
use fetishes, and — if Embraced by a vampire — the chance to die with dignity
and honor, rather than suffer unlife.

Kinfolk lucky
enough to possess Gnosis recover it in the same manner as Garou.

Five points
spent on the Merit grants one point of Gnosis; six points, two points of
Gnosis; and seven points, three points of Gnosis.

### Green Thumb

**1 pt. Merit**

Plants
flourish from your touch. Although they don’t bloom and grow on contact (a
wildly paranormal effect which was part of this Merit’s original form), they do
attain a healthy boost when you work with them. Reduce the difficulty of all
non-Arete rolls by -2, and reduce the difficulty of Arete rolls by -1, when you
work with plants, trees, and other forms of vege­tation –algae, mold, fungus,
seaweed, and the like.

Story-wise,
your aura pulsates with green vitality, plant matter grows fast and robust in
your presence, and your Resonance and Synergy reflect a powerful connection to
the green world.

A common
Merit among Verbena, Bata’a, and other primal mystics, this could also
represent a strange acumen for vegetative biomass that certain technomancers
enjoy.

### Guardian Angel

**6 pt. Merit**

A powerful
entity is watching over you, providing advice, assistance, and occasional
protection when things get ugly. Such aid is beyond your control (perhaps even
beyond your comprehension) and while this “angel” has certainly supported your
best interests thus far, there could be a terrible price-tag attached to all
this help. You think your angel is of the better sort, but seriously – have you
read the lore about angels? Sweetness and light are not among their more noted
characteristics.

From a Merit
perspective, this Trait provides occasional help from the Storyteller. The
nature of said help is entirely up to the Storyteller, although it should be
beneficial in at least the short term. The help in question should also suit
the nature of the mage and her paradigm, although that suitability might turn
out to be rather ironic – an actual angel, for example, watching over an
Infernalist mage, or a nature spirit protecting an avowed Technocrat.

The helpful
party may be waiting for the mage to “see the light,” honoring an ancient vow
to the mage’s ancestors, leading the protected party toward a new and
unexpected Path, or perhaps setting him up for a final revelation that could be
more terrible than the things the angel has been driving away.

From a
Storyteller standpoint, we recommend playing up the mysterious and potentially
frightening nature of this guardian “angel.” Legendary angels tend to be
notoriously bloody in their work, and can scare the living hell of mortals even
when their intentions are technically righteous. As a Storyteller, determine
who is helping the mage out, and why; that information, of course, can be for
you to know and your players to wonder about. Whenever the angel manifests,
play up the implacable weirdness of such entities, couching their appearances
in eerie symbolism and elemental phenomena (winds, fires, earthquakes, and so
forth) whenever they appear.

Conversely,
the angel could be an apparently mundane person or animal who just happens to
unleash hell on the mage’s behalf. Even if the angel is exactly that – a
messenger from the Biblical God – such messengers can be pretty frightening.
Check out Ezekiel 1-10, Genesis 3, Revelations 4, and other awe-inspiring
manifestations.

If the
Powers That Be behind this guardian angel are more along the lines of Pagan
gods or cosmic horrors, this unearthly Merit could unleash some rather scary
things…

### Hands of Daedalus

**3 pt. Merit**

You’ve got
an innate gift for crafting machines and tech­nology. Such devices seem to come
to life in your hands, fitting easily into place and functioning with
incredible precision once you’ve worked with ‘em. Although this gift does not
extend to the ins and outs of software technology, you can work on computer
hardware (assuming that you know what you’re doing) as naturally as you can
tune a ’58 Ford.

From a
systems standpoint, any rolls you make to craft, repair, invent, or otherwise
modify mechanical technologies are at -2 difficulty when you’ve got the
opportunity to put those Hands of Daedalus to work. Tech-based magickal
instruments and practices function, in your hands, as Personalized Instruments
once you’ve had a chance to get familiar with them… and to have them get
familiar with you.

### Haven Affinity

**3pt. Merit**

You are the
land. The land is you. The home soil calls to you. You give to it, and it gives
to you. Your connection to the earth of your prime haven grants you an extra
die to all dice pools when operating there. It also acts as a mystic beacon,
allowing you to home in on its location with a standard Perception + Survival
roll (difficulty 6), +1 difficulty when a state or country separates you; +2 if
you’re halfway across the globe.

This
applies only to your primary haven.

### Healing Touch

**1pt. Merit**

Normally
vampires can only seal the wounds they inflict from feeding by licking them.
With but a touch, you can achieve the same effect, closing the puncture wounds
left by drinking blood.

### Hidden Diablerie

**3pt. Merit**

The
tell-tale black streaks of diablerie do not manifest in your aura.

### Hive-Minded

**1 or 2pt. Merit**

Your
Animalism works on insects and other creepy-crawlies in addition to mammalian animals.
If you select the two-point version of this merit, your Protean forms may take
the form of an insectoid swarm rather than a single creature (though the swarm
must be of a size equivalent to a wolf or a bat, as appropriate).

### Lesser Mark of the Beast

**4pt. Merit**

Common to
the Gangrel known as the Knights of Avalon, you are able to control how your
Beast manifests more than others do. Whenever you would gain an animalistic
feature, roll your current Willpower (difficulty 12 - Humanity rating, maximum
9). If successful, you manage to channel your humanity to avoid gaining an
animalistic feature. However, your Beast is further from you, making you at +2
difficulty to rolls involving Animalism or Protean (or combo Disciplines
involving those powers) for the rest of the evening. Vampires on a Path of
Enlightenment lose all access to this Merit.

### "Immortal"

**5 or 7 pt. Merit**

Thanks to
some uncanny gift, you age slowly (if at all) and are extremely hard to kill.

This gift
comes not from Sphere magick but from a metaphysical legacy or curse that
transcends the fleeting nature of the flesh.

You’re not
truly immortal, as death will probably claim you eventually; by normal
standards, though, you exist outside of the usual range of human mortality.

This Merit
features two levels:

**5 points:** You age very slowly – perhaps one
year for every passing decade – and eventually recover (at the usual speed)
from any injuries and illnesses that do not immediately kill you outright. A
wasting disease or infection, for instance, won’t kill you (though you might
wish it would), but a bullet in the heart would do so.

**7 points:** In addition to the slow-aging
process, you’re also immune to death itself unless you meet your special doom
(as described below) or have your body completely obliterated. Shooting won’t
kill you, poison won’t kill you, starvation won’t kill you, but being
incinerated or dissolved in acid would end your life for good. Otherwise, your
wounds heal at the usual rate, eventually bringing you back from the dead…
which, if you’ve been buried, embalmed, entombed, or otherwise trapped could be
a very bad thing for you!

Regardless
of the level of this Merit, you must have at least one special doom: an event
that will kill your ass dead for good. This doom could involve decapitation,
burning of your body, immersion in salt water, removal of the eternal
revivification unit installed within your heart, and so forth. This doom must
be determined before the chronicle begins, and if it ever befalls you… well,
life was fun while it lasted, right?

This Merit
goes well with Traits like the Background: Leg­end, the Supernatural Merits:
Mark of Favor, Nephilim, Spark of Life, and Twin Souls, or the Supernatural
Flaws: Phylactery and Primal Marks

It cannot
be taken in addition to the Merit: Nine Lives and, for obvious reasons, this
Merit might not be available to player characters within your chronicle at all.

### Immune to Wyrm Emanations

**6 pt. Merit**

Gaia has
blessed you with a powerful resistance to the poisons of the Wyrm. Although you
still take damage from balefire, supernaturally-caused radiation, Wyrm elementals,
or other forms of Wyrm toxins, you do not suffer any dice pool penalties from
them.

Banes
cannot possess you.

### Inner Knight

**5 pt. Merit**

In your
heart of hearts, you’re a hero. While your com­panions work toward their own
selfish ends, you embody a higher purpose. This purpose guides you in uncanny
ways that feel, at times, as if you’re being moved by a force greater than
yourself – a noble force, naturally, but one that transcends even your personal
Enlightenment. In dreams, you see yourself as a Warrior of Reason, a Champion
of Truth. A paladin. A genius. A knight of everything that is worth defending.

Intended
more for Technocratic operatives and skeptical technomancers than for mages who
accept reincarnation as a metaphysical truth, this Merit grants you special
gifts when it seems like all hope has been lost. These gifts allow you to…

access Traits you don’t possess, as per the Background: Dream (at a
rating of 5) but without entering a trance;

add five temporary points to your Willpower Trait, to use during that
“hope is lost” crisis;

…and perhaps recall things from a previous life that the character could
not possibly have known – a language she does not know, an escape route in a
place he’s never visited, a person they’ve never met before, and so forth.

These
boosts last only through the current scene, but include a burst of vitalizing
energy and a sense of your inner hero coming through to save the day again.

This isn’t
the sort of thing you talk about, of course, especially not if you’re an agent
of the Technocratic Union. The benefits, though, cannot be denied, even if
their source is clearly… well, improbable, at best. And while this Merit was
originally created for the sourcebook Guide to the Technocracy, any mage with a
sense of higher purpose can take it.

Just
remember that the biggest difference between a knight and a murderer is the
side of his sword you happen to be on at the time.

### Inoffensive to Animals

**1pt. Merit**

With rare
exceptions, animals usually despise the Kindred. Some flee, others attack, but
all dislike being in the presence of a vampire. You have no such problem. Animals
may not enjoy being in your company, but they don’t actively flee from you.

### Instrument of God

**5pt. Merit**

Your
self-confidence comes not from a belief in your own abilities, but due to a
direct manifesto from the Lord. You have a divine purpose and He works through
you, even though your goals may seem anything but holy. Whether it is because
of you powerful will or an actual connection to the divine, you gain three
additional dice to resist the powers of True Faith when they are used against
you.

### Legendary Attributes

**5 pt. Merit**

Gifted with
the strength of Shango or the beauty of Lucifer, you may exceed the human
capacity for one Attribute Trait. That Trait is not automatically higher than
usual (you still need to spend points to raise the favored Attribute), but you
may purchase up to six dots in a given Attribute for your character, exceeding
the usual limit of five dots.

Beyond that
higher maximum, you also get one heroic capability that’s linked to that
Attribute. The Shango-strength mage might always inflict at least one health
level of damage with hand-to-hand blows, while the Luciferian seducer could
score an automatic success whenever he tries to charm someone who ought to know
better. These bonuses are always subject to Storyteller approval, however, and
they don’t kick in until you reach six dots in the given Trait. Not even
Lucifer, after all, possessed his full charm when he was just a little devil…

### Lucky

**3pt. Merit**

You were
born lucky — or else the Devil looks after his own. Either way, you may repeat
any three failed rolls per story, including botches, but you may try only once
per failed roll.

### Magic Resistance

**2pt. Merit**

You have an
inherent resistance to the rituals of the Tremere and the spells of the mages
of other Clans. The difficulty of all such magic, both malicious and
beneficent, is two higher when directed at you.

You may
never learn magical Disciplines such as Thaumaturgy and Necromancy.

### Manifest Avatar

**3 pt. Merit**

For most
mages, the Avatar remains a mysterious figure, goading them from the sidelines
and appearing primarily within a Seeking or during other moments of intense
stress. For you, however, the Avatar is a vibrant presence in your life, as
real to you as anyone else. Essentially a character in its own right, this
manifested Avatar interacts with you on an almost daily basis. In certain
situations, it might interact with other people, as manifestly real as any
other person in your world.

The
Manifest Avatar Merit embodies the Avatar as a full character under the
Storyteller’s control.

On its own,
this Merit reflects that Avatar as a person who only the associated mage can
see, hear, and interact with on a physical level; in conjunction with the
Background: Allies, however, the Avatar becomes a character that everyone can
see, hear, and feel. In both cases, the Avatar may come and go as it pleases,
bound only by the physical laws with which it chooses to be bound.

The
physical Avatar’s shell can be injured or killed, but that in itself does not
kill the Avatar – merely its body. For obvious reasons, that solid Avatar
should have a guise that won’t be too vulgar or bizarre for the Consensus to
endure – a cloaked, whispering figure, perhaps, but not a screeching, tentacled
monstrosity. The manifested Avatar’s Traits depend upon the value of the Allies
Background, as well as the physical form of that incarnation. An equine or
lupine Avatar, for instance, will have different Traits than an Avatar that
manifests as a crow, shadow, mirror, or child.

Your Avatar
does not hang a sign around her neck that proclaims Avatar. In the first
edition Cult of Ecstasy Tradition Book, for example, Cassie deals with a
manifested Avatar named Aria who never reveals herself to be anything other
than a wild child who looks disturbingly like an alternate-reality version of
Cassie and knows things no one else should know about Cassie’s past, present,
future, and inner self. Unless either the mage or the Avatar announces its true
identity, other characters don’t usually think that your manifested Avatar is
anything other than what it appears to be.

Mages or
Night-Folk who can see auras or souls might catch on, but most other folks
remain clueless.

An Avatar
manifesting only for the mage can affect the material world only when no other
characters or devices can see that entity, although it might appear to others
as an online presence, a ghostly figure, as odd sounds, or through other phe­nomena.

An
Allies-based Avatar remains as solid as it wants to be, lacking the powers of a
human mage but possessed (literally) of the power to fade in and blink out as
it desires. Again, the Manifested Avatar is a Storyteller character, with
agendas and behavioral quirks that confound both the mage and his player.

Although
that Avatar has its mage’s best interests at heart, it might play the role of a
rival, lover, best friend, or nemesis… quite possibly all of them at once.

### Mark of Favor

**3 pt. Merit**
A godlike entity
has claimed you as its own, and has stamped your features with evidence of that
claim. You might have the bushy red hair and sly eyes of Reynard the Fox, the
hearty temper and brawny build of Thor, the compassionate fury of the Christ in
your eyes, or Legba’s lame leg and penchant for corncob pipes and tobacco.
Folks who understand the lore of your associated god-form recognize this Mark
of Favor, and even those who don’t know who you’re marked by realize that
there’s something special about you.

An excellent
companion to the Background: Legend, and already an element of the Background:
Totem, this Trait provides a recognizable connection to a renowned god-form. Whether
or not this actually is a sign of divine favor, of course, depends upon your
Storyteller’s preferred theological metaphysics. As far as your character is
concerned, it totally is. Note that such favor isn’t always a happy thing;
mythology is full of people who shared dysfunctional relationships with divine
parents and patrons!

When dealing
with people who recognize the Mark and respect the deity that bestowed it, you
subtract -2 from the dif­ficulty of related social rolls. Opponents of your
divine patron consider you an enemy, and although intimidation-style rolls
still receive the -2 reduction in difficulty, rolls that attempt to get on the
good side of such people add +2 to the difficulty instead.

A Mark of
Favor may, at the Storyteller’s discretion, bestow other miraculous talents,
too. Strange things happen, and those things remain beyond the Marked
character’s control. Someone chosen by the Virgin Mary could possess a minor
healing touch, while the chosen of Thor has a literally shocking touch when he
gets mad. Again, these powers exist completely at the Storyteller’s whim, and
suit the flavor of the story, not the desires of the player.

Essentially,
they’re miracles granted by your god, both given and taken in mysterious ways.

### Medium

**2pt. Merit**

You possess
the natural affinity to sense and hear spirits, ghosts, and shades. Though you
cannot see them, you can sense them, speak to them and, through pleading or
cajoling, draw them to your presence. You may call upon them for aid or advice,
but there will always be a price.

Also, your
difficulty is reduced by two for all Awareness rolls involving the spirits of
the dead.

### Moon-Bound

**1 pt. Merit**

You are
more in tune with your auspice than most Garou. When Luna waxes in your
auspice, you receive one extra die to each of your rolls. Correspondingly, when
Luna wanes in your auspice, you receive one less die to every roll.

### Mortuario

**2 or 4pt. Merit**

You died.
Perhaps you were murdered, or simply had a car accident. Whatever the cause,
you were gone. But your sire found you too useful, or couldn’t let you go. You
were Embraced using the Ferryman’s Recall ritual.

The Embrace
left you with the scars of your death, eternal tracework reminders of your trip
to the other side. It also left you with the taut, pallid complexion of the
dead. In addition to the traditional weakness of your Clan, you also suffer
disfigurement from your time as a true corpse. While you are able to heal
yourself just like any other vampire, the wounds do not heal cleanly. You
retain the scars of every experience.

Depending
on the nature of the damage, this can make social dealings exceedingly
difficult, and may decrease your Appearance dots over time (even to 0).
However, your time across the Shroud also gave you a natural feel for necromantic
blood magic. The difficulties of all Necromancy rolls are reduced by two. This
trait costs 4 points for characters who already have an appearance of 0 (such
as Samedi and the Harbingers of Skulls), or 2 points for any other Kindred.

It is an
incredibly rare condition even among the Giovanni, and essentially unknown
outside the Clan. Giovanni with this Merit generally arouse the superstition of
their Clan, and are treated with a definite wariness, particularly by Anziani.
Characters with the Mortuario Merit may not also possess the Sanguine
Incongruity Merit or similar flaws such as Monstrous.

### Mute Devotion

**1pt. Merit**

Your
Animalism carries an unusual side effect: it lingers in the minds of the beasts
you speak with or control, lending them a certain resistance to others. When
someone else attempts to command a creature you have previously controlled with
Animalism, their difficulty levels are at +2.

### Natural Channel

**3 pt. Merit**

You find
crossing the Gauntlet easier than many of your fellow Garou. The difficulty for
stepping sideways is one less for you.

### Nephilim /Laham

**7 pt. Merit**

Long ago,
it has been said, immortals walked the earth, siring offspring whose
descendants still live among us now. The Hebrew Bible refers to them as
nephilim, an ambiguous word that seems to be related to root words for
“fallen,” “prisoners,” and “overseers.” Later transliterations refer to them as
giants, monsters, watchers, and the fallen (or violent) ones. Were they gods?
Angels? Demons? Not even the Awakened know for sure; you, however, have a bit
of High Umbral essence within you, and this nephilim inher­itance – known
sometimes by the demon-blooded name of laham – marks you as something more than
merely human (Awakened or otherwise).

A living
crossroads between the Astral Realm and the mortal world, you exist in a
heightened state of spiritual essence. Your aura burns with unearthly
intensity, and your presence frightens many Otherworldly denizens. Your
connection to High Umbral entities might involve a distant relationship to
primordial sires, or the far more recent ac­tivities of mortals and spirits who
shared a distinctly carnal relationship. (“Mom, seriously – I need to know the
truth about Dad”) Are you part-demon? Descended from an angel? Sired by an
entity whose nature transcends mortal concepts like “good” and “evil”? You
probably don’t even know, although events in your chronicle might reveal the
truth whether you want to learn it or not.

System-wise,
this Merit confers the following drawbacks and benefits:

* As noted above, your aura blazes with inhuman clarity and brilliance.

* Your temperament favors your Umbral ancestor, and you tend to act accordingly.

* You must take at least three points’ worth of Physical Flaws to reflect the unstable nature of your physi­cal form and the surging metaphysical energies it contains. These Flaws do not count toward your total Flaw points, nor do you get points for taking those Flaws.

* Those energies give you a Quintessence rating of 7, and those points automatically refresh up to that seven-point maximum each time you go to sleep, regardless of your Avatar rating.

* If your chronicle employs the Resonance rules in Chapter Two, you begin play with three points in Resonance, not one. If not, you get three points’ worth of the Flaw: Echoes. Again, those phenomena reflect the tempera­ment of your Umbral ancestor.

* You subtract -1 from the difficulties of your casting rolls when you cast Effects using the Mind Sphere, the Spirit Sphere, or both in relation to the High Umbra. If, for example, the demon-blooded laham mage Jenatrix wanted to read someone’s mind, her casting difficulty would be normal; if she wanted to project her astral self into the High Umbra, however, she’d reduce the difficulty by -1.

* You can travel physically into the High Umbra by using a Mind 4 /Spirit 3 Effect.

* When attempting to intimidate, command, or bargain with High Umbral entities, you add two dice to which­ever dice pool you happen to be using in that attempt. Despite your advantage, however, using your uncanny heritage as leverage will not exactly endear you to the entities in question. In such negotiations, it’s generally more constructive to use a carrot than a stick.

* On a related note, you suffer a penalty of +2 to the dif­ficulty of your rolls to resist, soak or counter rituals cast by Hermetic High Ritual wizards or Awakened clerics from the Jewish, Muslim, and Christian denominations. These folks have spent millennia studying your kind, and be ye angel or be ye demon, they know how to deal with you more effectively than most mages do. (By rituals, we’re referring to extended-roll ceremonial magicks, not off-the-cuff spells. Your chances are as good as anybody else’s if a wizard tosses a lightning bolt at you; if he draws up a summoning circle, though, you’re kinda screwed.)

* At the Storyteller’s option, you may also receive up to sev­en points in the Advantages described in Mage 20, p. 658 (and expanded further in the Mage 20 sourcebook Gods, Monsters & Familiar Strangers). Demon-blooded laham characters may, instead, take up to seven points in the demonic Investments described in the Mage: The Sorcerers Crusade sourcebook Infernalism: The Path of Screams or the Mage 20 supplement The Book of the Fallen. In either case, these additional and optional benefits get balanced out with a five-point Derangement Flaw of the Storyteller’s choice. Although the player might not know what sort of entity her character is descended from, the Storyteller ought to de­termine the character’s heritage, and then plant clues (dreams, visions, weird greetings from characters who seem to know more about the mage than she knows about herself…) throughout the story. He ought to feed roleplaying notes to the player, too: This Realm seems familiar even though you don’t recall having been here before, You can almost taste the evil in that girl’s soul, Man, you just wanna rip that dude’s throat out and you’re not sure why… The player, of course, can draw her own conclusions – conclusions that might not necessarily be accurate at all.

As with the Merit: “Immortal,” this Trait could be too powerful for player characters to
take. Supporting characters, however, could be nephilim-descended, which would
make for potent friends and memorable enemies.

### Natural Shapeshifter

**3 pt. Merit**

Guided by
an innate affinity for metamorphosis, you can change your shape more easily
than most mages do. Such changes still demand the usual Life Sphere Ranks and
Effects, but your difficulty for such rolls is reduced by -2 (the usual limits
apply), and you don’t need to worry about losing yourself in the new form, as
described in How Do You DO That?.

Such
talents don’t necessarily link you to the Night-Folk, although this Merit fits
in well with Fae Blood or Shapechanger Kin (and the Mental Flaw: Feral Mind.

The gift
does not, however, affect your ability to change other people’s shapes in any
way. Such talent works for you alone.

### Nine Lives

**6 pt. Merit**

Oh, you
lucky bastard! Somehow, you manage to cheat the Reaper with hair-raising
regularity.

If a die roll
would result in your character’s death, the person who made that roll must roll
again. If the second roll allows your character to live, then you and /or your
Storyteller mark off one of your nine “lives” and your character survives the
thing that would otherwise have killed her.

If that
roll fails, then one “life” gets marked off anyway and another roll is made.

The rolls
continue until either the character survives or the lives get used up.

As the name
suggests, however, this Merit lasts only nine times, tops. And if the final die
roll still results in your character’s death… well, your luck was bound to run
out sooner or later anyway.

### Oracular Ability

**3pt. Merit**

You can see
and interpret signs and omens. You are able to draw advice from these omens,
for they provide hints of the future and warnings of the present.

When the
Storyteller feels that you are in position to see an omen, you will be required
to make a Perception + Awareness roll, with the difficulty relative to how well
the omen is concealed. If successful, you may then roll Intelligence + Occult
to interpret what you have seen; the difficulty is again relative to the
complexity of the omen.

### Parlor Trick

**3 pt. Merit**

You’ve honed
a special trick – a simple, specific, non-com­bat application of your Arts –
which you can perform without making a casting roll. Such tricks include things
like conjuring a business card, stirring a pot without touching the spoon (or
the pot), igniting your cigarette without lighters or a match, producing a
small amount of light without mechanical contriv­ance, changing your hair color
with a shake of your head, and so on. To a Sleeper, these tricks look like
something a normal person could do with a mysterious bit of skill. You, of
course, realize that the skill in question is not quite what they think it is.

Three
important rules govern this Merit:

* It cannot be a feat with direct damage-producing combat applications (though a “light your cigarette” trick could also work with a stream of flowing gasoline). No popping claws or conjuring firearms!

* It must be a quick, simple action that a Sleeper witness could explain away as practiced sleight of hand.

* These tricks are limited to things you could do with Sphere Ranks 1 to 3, apply to only one specific trick (con­juring a rose, say, not conjuring anything that’s roughly rose-sized), and you must have the Spheres necessary to perform the feat in the first place.

This Merit does not allow you to cast Effects above your normal abilities!
Each trick costs three points, and must suit your character’s metaphysical focus. You can take this Merit up to three times, total. Obviously vulgar feats (making yourself disappear in broad daylight) are prohibited, although a clever use of circumstances could be included in your bag of tricks.
This Merit is intended to give your character and chronicle a little extra flair. It should not be allowed as an end-around to skirt the rules, or as a secret
weapon that he can use without consequences like Paradox.
Under unfamiliar and /or hostile circumstances, like stirring someone else’s pot in someone else’s kitchen, this Parlor Trick might not work at all.

### Powerful Ally

**5 to 8 pt. Merit**

You’ve got
seriously badass friends – a vampire lord, a faerie noble, a werewolf pack,
Umbrood courtiers, or other similarly magnificent entities. In most respects,
this is the Supernatural Companion Merit but with a much higher power-level… a
level which might be beyond the capacity of mages below the Master rank. And
while the Storyteller determines who your friends are, what they can do, and
what they want out of their relationship with you, the value of this Merit
depends upon their relative benefit to you:

**5 points:** One buddy of considerable power and
in­fluence within his community – a Prince of the City, a Garou elder, and so
forth.

**6 points:** A small group of Supernatural
Companions (five or so), or an especially powerful representative of his kind.

**7 points:** A larger group of Companions (around a dozen),
or two or three powerful friends.

**8 points:** Over a dozen Companions, a handful
of powerful friends, or one ally of near-godlike power.

Again, the
Storyteller decides who these allies are, why they’re interested in your
goodwill, and what the cost of their aid might be. You get nothing for nothing,
after all, especially not when such beings are involved! For a commensurate
level of enemies, see the Flaw: Immortal Enemy.

### Promethean Clay

**5pt. Merit**

Your flesh
ripples and molds itself to your preternatural will, almost before you
consciously invoke the change. The difficulty to use any Vicissitude power on
yourself is two less than normal, and you may activate Vicissitude powers reflexively
at your full dice pool while taking other actions.

Powers that
require multiple turns to activate still require the usual duration. The change
simply occurs without conscious direction.

As a final
benefit, you need no physical sculpting to use the first three levels of
Vicissitude on yourself, as your flesh undulates and extrudes to its desired
shape. Only characters with at least one dot of Vicissitude may purchase this
Merit.

### Prophetic Dreams

**2pt. Merit**

You have
dreams during your daylight sleep. Dreams you remember. Sometimes, they even
come true. Rather than regain a point of Willpower when you rest during the
day, you may choose to have the Storyteller give your character a lucid dream
featuring foreshadowing about upcoming events, characters, and situations.

### Psychic Leech

**5pt. Merit**

At the cost
of one Willpower point, you may feed on the Willpower of your victims from a
distance. The con-sumed Willpower strengthens the potency of your own blood,
effectively transforming it into temporary blood that dissipates at the end of
the night.

These temporary
blood points may be spent just like regular blood points, but cannot be lost
due to damage or blood drain, do not affect hunger rolls for frenzy, and may
not be used to create or sustain blood bonds or ghouls.

To activate
this ability, the target must have at least one of your blood points in their
system, and they must be engaged in eye contact with you.

### Resistance

**1pt. Merit**

Your
character cannot be blood bound by anyone who shares his mortal bloodline. That
is, if you were born into the Giovanni family, you cannot be bound by anyone
else who was born a Giovanni, though you can still be bound by, say, a Pisanob
of the Giovanni Clan, or by Kindred of any other Clan. Similarly, a Dunsirn
with Consanguineous Resistance could not be bound by others who were born into
the mortal Dunsirn family, but could be bound by a Milliner of the Giovanni
Clan.

The
Giovanni are extremely suspicious of anyone known to manifest this quirk.
Although this blood-borne aberration hasn’t been documented, a few savvy
Giovanni have a rough idea of what it is and does. It’s generally associated
with being a rebellious young smartass who needs to be put down.

This is not
as unfair as it sounds; by the time a bond resistance is really obvious, it’s
likely because a punishment isn’t working. A character who is discovered to
have this trait probably earns her sire’s hostility at the very least.

### Revenant Disciplines

**3pt. Merit**

The blood
of your revenant family runs deep, deeper than the Embrace. The Disciplines
that were innate to you as a ghoul have remained so as a Cainite. At character
creation, select the ghoul family from which you hail. Instead of the
Tzimisce’s standard complement of Animalism, Auspex, and Vicissitude, you draw
from your three family Disciplines for your starting allocation (though you may
buy other Disciplines with freebies, as normal).

You trade
in the entire set of Tzimisce Clan Disciplines for the set of revenant family
Disciplines, for the purposes of in-Clan Experience cost.

### Sanguine Incongruity

**5pt. Merit**

Giovanni
with this atavism are few and far between. Kindred possessing it do not bear
the traditional Giovanni Clan weakness, the so-called Curse of Lamia; their
Kiss causes no more damage than the blood loss itself. These vampires acquire a
peculiar pallor upon their Embrace, however — they look like corpses, and no
amount of blood ingestion can flush their features (as other vampires are able
to do). Indeed, the bearer of this Merit more closely resembles the Clan’s Cappadocian
ancestors, and they have a slightly unnerving air about them. As a result, all
rolls involving a Social attribute (Charisma, Manipulation, or Appearance) are
at +1 difficulty.

Giovanni
with this Merit are afforded wide berth, as the Giovanni tend to be quite
superstitious about it. Characters with the Sanguine Incongruity Merit may not
also possess the Mortuario Merit.

### Setite Initiate

**5pt. Merit**

You were
Embraced into a Clan other than the Followers of Set. However, you have
accepted the Setite religion, undergone the vetting process and rites, and have
been formally inducted into the cult. You have access to Serpentis and Setite
Blood Sorcery (though you pay out-of-Clan costs to learn the,). You may even
study one of their Paths of Enlightenment.

It is
important to note that “Setites” from other Clans or bloodlines are not treated
as second-class citizens. You are no longer a dupe they can string along. Once
you are in, you are a sibling of faith, which is a much more important
distinction than blood.

An outsider
accepting the Dark God is a joyous event, even to the most conservative elder.
There are even rumors of non-Kindred supernatural beings joining the cult.

### Shapechanger Kin

**4 pt. Merit**

Through a
distant but noticeable quirk of lineage, you share a touch of the Changing
Blood. In plain English, you’re related to one of the were-breeds: werewolves,
werecats, were­crows, and so forth.

This gift
does not grant you their powers or Gnosis, but you probably know a few secrets
(in game terms, Lore Knowledge) about your kin. You remain immune to the
primal-fear Delirium that affects most people in a werecreature’s presence (not
that mages suffer from it anyway); can travel in the Otherworlds longer than
most mortals manage, without suffering the Disconnection and Acclimation
side-effects of such travel; and possibly enjoy some goodwill from your feral
family, so long as you haven’t done anything to piss them off.

Their
enemies, however, are your enemies, which makes this an extremely double-edged
Merit.

### Shattered Avatar

**5 pt. Merit**

Your Avatar
has been broken into pieces by some past-life trauma. As a result, the part
within you is incomplete… but that situation can be rectified. If and when you
locate the missing pieces of your Avatar, you could make that inner spirit
stronger. In gamespeak, this Merit allows you to increase your Avatar
Background after character creation – a thing that cannot, ordinarily, be done.

As with
Twin Souls, above, this Merit provides plenty of dramatic story hooks. The
missing pieces of your Avatar might be incarnated in other people; trapped in
spiritual prisons (Paradox Realms, demonic hells, soul-snares, enchanted gems,
and so forth); embedded in a tree in a garden that’s warded by five dragons,
and so on. The quest for your soul-fragments can be an epic part of your chron­icle,
with puzzles, twists, reversals, betrayals, and battles for which your soul is
literally the prize. This sort of thing might be hard to reconcile with your
beliefs if, for example, you happen to be a Technocrat. Still, until you unite
the missing bits of your Avatar, there’ll be an essential part of you that
feels incomplete.

The
Storyteller should determine exactly what it was that shattered your Avatar,
and what you need to do in order to reunite the various bits into one spirit again.
Whether or not she shares that information with you is up to her – it might be
something you’ll discover over the course of the game. With each piece
restored, you add one dot to your Avatar Background rating, unless that Avatar
was embodied in another mage; in that case, his Avatar rating gets added to
your own if you manage to kill him… and if he kills you first, then your Avatar
gets added to his own. (There can, apparently, be only one.)

No matter
how many pieces are involved, however, the Avatar Background maxes out at 5
dots. Although this Merit allows you to raise your Trait’s rating, it does not
allow you to raise it above that level.

### Silver Tolerance

**7 pt. Merit**

You are
blessed with an extremely unusual tolerance toward silver. You may soak silver
damage in any form at difficulty 8, although this does not change the type of damage
that silver does.

### Sleep Unseen

**2pt. Merit**

The power
of Obfuscate usually requires you to concentrate at least a little. However,
you are able to lock the power on, allowing you to sleep while remaining hidden.
To do so requires the expenditure of another blood point, but it will last
throughout the day’s rest.

Those with
Auspex can still attempt to detect you, but mortals will be unaware of your
sanctuary. This can be a useful trick for Kindred who like to travel.

### Slowed Degeneration

**5pt. Merit**

Your
Humanity is strong and can more easily withstand the Beast’s assaults. You gain
two additional dice on any Conscience roll. This degree of moral resilience
allows a well-behaved vampire to lose Humanity at a much slower rate than would
otherwise be possible.

Only
vampires following Humanity may take this Merit, and the Merit is lost forever
in the event that the vampire takes up another Path of Enlightenment.

### Spark of Life

**5 pt. Merit**

Blessed
with great vitality, you heal injuries with heroic speed and ease. Your own
injuries from lethal damage heal as if they were bashing damage, and aggravated
damage heals as if it were one level higher than it is. (Wounded-level damage,
for instance, would heal at the Injured-level rate.) Bashing damage, regardless
of its extent, heals within an hour.

If you’re
trying to heal someone else, you subtract -2 from the difficul­ty of the roll,
even if that roll involves casting a Life Sphere healing Effect. As long as you
remain in physical touch with the injured party, that character uses your
healing rate as her own. Your touch also soothes minor pains – muscle spasms,
headaches, and so forth – within a minute or two.

Beyond its
healing pow­ers, this rush of life-energy simply feels good, too. Your aura
shines with bright vitality, and our Reso­nance reflects your strong connection
to the primal life-force. On the inevita­ble downside, vampires find your blood
delicious – twice as potent as normal human vitae (worth double the usual blood
points, for players of Vampire: The Masquerade) – and unspeakably refreshing.

### Spawning Pool

**1-3pt. Merit**

You have a
spawning pool of your own (or possibly donate heavily to the Clan’s main pool).
Creating such a pool takes time, and requires regular infusions of blood, at
least six blood points a week for a year.

The Merit
grants its level as a dice pool bonus to the Nosferatu’s use of Animalism in
their home city, but only with animals considered vermin, such as rats and cockroaches.
Essentially the bonus is only available for creatures that might conceivably
drink regularly from the tainted blood.

Once
established, the spawning pool requires twice its level in blood points each
week to it. Without proper maintenance, its level will drop by one. It can be
rebuilt by maintaining it at the new level and adding four additional blood
points each week for six months.

The Merit
cannot be improved above its initial level, as this also represents the
convenience of its location and the variety of creatures that might find it.

### Sphere Natural

**6 pt. Merit**

For a
single element of magick – the Sphere of your choice – you enjoy an innate
proficiency. The powers of that Sphere come to you more easily than usual, and
you advance faster in that field of knowledge than you do in other Spheres.
System-wise, you pay 70% of the usual experience cost, rounded up, when
advancing in that Sphere. Naturally, such advancement costs even less when
you’re raising your Affinity Sphere.

The Mage 20
version of this Merit costs more than the ver­sion presented in previous
editions because the cost of improving Spheres with experience has gone down,
and so the benefits involved in this Merit have gone up. You may select this
Merit only once, for a single Sphere, and that Sphere should have some
intrinsic connection to your mage’s concept, backstory, and magickal focus.
This is, after all, an Art that comes naturally to you, and so that
predisposition should come through in many different aspects of your
character’s personality.

### Spirit Magnet

**Werewolf:**

**1 pt. Merit**

You
naturally attract the attention of the spirits whenever you cross the Gauntlet
into the Umbra. Most of the time, the Umbral inhabitants are simply curious,
gathering around you to see who you are and what you’re doing in their “neck of
the woods.” Occasionally you attract more than you bargained for — Banes are
also likely to come calling.
None of the spirits who collect in your vicinity are under your command unless
you use a Gift that allows you to command them or influence them in some way.

**Mage:**

**3 to 7 pt. Merit or Flaw**

Ephemeral
entities flock to your presence. The essence of who you are – benign or
malignant – draws spirits to you, and they, in turn, affect the essence of who
you are. For the most part, these entities cluster around you in the Penumbra,
invisible to mortal perceptions; whenever you cross the Gauntlet, though
(either with your perceptions or with your body), they’re waiting for you
there. Spirits that can manifest physical forms may come across the Gauntlet to
visit you, and those that cannot take on physical bodies still energize the
spiritual atmosphere in your vicinity. Whether or not this is a good thing for
you depends upon whether you select this Trait as a Merit or a Flaw:

**The Merit**
form of
Spirit Magnet draws generally benev­olent spirits – Naturae, Lunes, totem and
animal entities of the gentler variety, and so on. These spirits protect you
from malignant entities, warn you of impending danger, offer advice, help you
out when you visit the Otherworlds, and generally make your life easier. Folks
who can sense those spirits (mediums, shamans, med­icine-folk, werecreatures,
etc.) tend to favor you; after all, if the better sorts of spirits like you,
then you must be someone worth knowing.

**The Flaw** version represents the presence of
malevo­lent spirits – Banes, demons, and other nasty Umbral beasts. Summoned by
curses or spiritual corruption, these entities seek to tempt you, poison you,
feed off your vitality, and otherwise turn your life into a self-contained Hell
On Wheels. Spirit-sensitive folk will avoid you unless they’re into that sort
of thing, and werewolves will consider you to be “of the Wyrm” (whatever the
hell that means), if only because of the company you keep. Although you might
not consider yourself a bad person at heart, your spiritual compan­ions say
otherwise!

The value
of this Merit of Flaw is, as always, based on how helpful or troublesome the
spirits can be, how powerful they are, and how many of them you have to deal
with when they appear.

**3 points**: Minor entities occasionally offer
aid or hindrance.

**4 points:** Minor entities show up frequently,
or in small numbers.

**5 points:** Minor entities surround you often,
whether you want them to or not, and more potent ones have taken interest in
your existence.

**6 points:** You have the interest of one or two
entities of significance, and plenty of minor ones pay great attention to you.

**7 points:** You’re never alone, even when you
probably wish you could be.

This spiritual
companionship could be directly opposed to your true nature. A really awful
person might attract be­nevolent entities who want to save her, while a
veritable St. Anthony could be plagued with demons intent on fucking up his
soul. Even so, such constant presence does have an effect on your overall
health. Mind, body, and spirit are interwoven whether we want to recognize that
or not, and a mortal who attracts Otherworldly entities has got something
unusual going on under the skin.

### Spirit Mentor

**3pt. Merit**

You have a
ghostly companion and guide. The identity and exact powers of this spirit are
up to the Storyteller, but it can be called upon in difficult situations for
help and guidance.

### Stormwarden/ Quantum Voyager

**3 or 5pt. Merit**

Despite the
fury of the Avatar Storm, some people remain immune. With this Merit (known as
Quantum Voyager for Technocratic characters), you possess that precious rare immunity
– the ability to reach through and travel beyond the Gauntlet without suffering
the effects of the Storm.

For 3
points, your character can pass without harm through the Gauntlet.

For 5
points, she can take everyone and everything she touches and desires to
protect. Correspondence-based touching protects a warded character as well as a
physical touch, but a person that the mage does not want to protect will suffer
the usual Avatar Storm effects even if he happens to be touching her at the
time.

Obviously,
this Merit doesn’t apply if the Avatar Storm never happened in your chronicle. This
protection does not in any way protect against Disembodiment or other potential
hazards of the Otherworlds. Under the Mage Revised metaplot, Stormwardens are
incredibly rare – almost legendary – and fiercely hoarded by the Awakened
groups.

### Supernatural Companion

**3 pt. Merit**

You’ve got
a friend among the Night-Folk: a vampire, a changeling, a werebeast, a ghost,
or some other entity who exists outside the Sleeping Masses. This friend isn’t
quite as reliable as an Ally Background character, but can aid you if need be.
That door swings both ways, of course; your companion will also call on you
from time to time, and not always on the most convenient occasions!

Folks (and
Night-Folks) probably frown upon this friend­ship. Werewolves, for example,
aren’t fond of you Caern-robbing mage-types! That’s especially true if you’re a
Technocrat who’s buddy-buddy with one of those damned Reality Deviants, or a
Tradition mage who pals around with a bloodsucking fiend. Yeah, this friendship
is worth the trouble, but it can really be a hassle at times. Whoever and
whatever this friend might be, the Storyteller creates and controls the
character in question… with all the strange priorities, conflicting needs, and
secret agendas that situation suggests.

### The High Price

**3pt. Merit**

The burden
of acquiring truth or power always comes at a high price. None know that more
than these Baali, who sacrifice a part of their own soul in aspiration of
greatness.

Their physical
body is wracked with weakness and pain, capping any Physical Attributes at four
dots and costing 1 Willpower point every evening when they rise. In exchange
for this tribute, the Baali receive +2 dice to any Discipline-related checks.

### Totemic Change

**5pt. Merit**

Your
Protean forms are flexible; you may choose a different animal form each time
you change shape. The form you choose each time must follow all the conventions
and rules of standard Protean animal shapes; you simply may choose to appear as
a different animal each time you take Beast Form.

### True Faith

**7pt. Merit**

You have a
deep-seated faith in and love for God, or whatever name you choose to call the
Almighty. You begin the game with one point of True Faith; this Trait adds one die
per point to all Willpower and Virtue rolls.

**Vampire**: You must have a Humanity of 9 or
higher to choose this Merit, and if you lose even a single point, all your
Faith points are lost and may be regained only when the lost Humanity is recovered.
Individuals with True Faith are capable of performing magical acts akin to
miracles, but the exact nature of those acts are up to the Storyteller.

**Mage**: Strong belief is essential for a
mage. You, however, hold stronger beliefs than usual. Possessing convictions in
a greater outside power, you can channel that power for miraculous feats that
go beyond mere magick.

### True Love

**4pt. Merit**

Whenever
you suffer, the thought of your true love gives you the strength to persevere.
This it grants you one automatic success on all Willpower rolls, which can be
negated only by a botch die.

This can be
a great gift but also a hindrance, for your true love may require protection
and occasionally rescue.

**Vampire**: You have discovered, perhaps too
late, a true love. He or she is mortal, but is the center of your existence, and
inspires you to keep going in a world of darkness and despair.

**Werewolf**: You have a true love — a Kinfolk,
human, wolf, or perhaps even another Garou. Simply the knowledge that this
individual exists provides joy and strength to you even in the darkest hour.
The Wyrm may be winning, the battle may be endless, but you know there is
something beyond the esoteric to keep fighting for. When you are suffering, the
thought of your true love gives you strength.

Also, the
power of your love may be strong enough to protect you from other supernatural
forces (at the Storyteller’s discretion).

True Love
between Garou (even if it is not acted upon) may be seen as near-enough to a
breach of the Litany to cause scorn or even scandal if it is suspected by
others, making it appropriate justification for a Dark Secret Flaw as well.

### Twin Souls

**4 pt. Merit**

To you, the
term soulmate is literally true. Your Avatar has a twin that has been embodied
within another mortal body.

That other
person (typically a human being, but potentially an animal) shares your Nature
and Essence, and possibly your Demeanor as well. Even so, your “twin” can be a
very different person – different gender, different ethnicity, different
culture, and again possibly even a “higher” animal like a wolf, bear, hawk,
bison, and so forth. That person might live on the other side of the world, and
may not even know that you exist.

If
soul-twins meet in person, though, both feel an unmistakable connection to one
another. This connection, however, might not necessarily translate to goodwill.
Blood-siblings often clash, and soulmates can clash as well.

If that
twin is also a mage (many twin Avatars are not yet Awakened), then both mages
have the same Avatar rating. You can both share Quintessence and cast spells
together if you happen to be physically touching (or, in the Umbra, ephemerally
touching). In this case, the character with the highest Arete rating and Sphere
Ranks is the one whose Traits get used to cast those Effects. Both mages, when
they’re within arm’s reach, also get an amount of bonus Quintessence points
that’s equal to their Avatar rating; if Ryan Summers and his twin Sylvia Jane
have three dots in Avatar, they each get an additional three points of
Quintessence when they’re close enough to touch one another. For details about
collaborative spellcasting, see Acting in Concert in Mage 20, pp. 542-543.
Shared souls, however, also share equally in any Paradox gathered by their
magicks, with each twin separately getting the full amount of Paradox. If Ryan
and Sylvia cast an Effect that earns 10 points of Paradox, then both Ryan and
Sylvia get 10 Paradox points each.

Whether or
not your twin is a mage, you can use magick to keep track of them once you’ve
met your twin. A single dot of Correspondence will let you know where your
soulmate is, a single dot in Life will let you know their current state of
health, and a single dot in Mind allows you to share thoughts with one another.

A twin’s
death, however, is a shattering event; if your twin dies, you must make a
Willpower roll (difficulty 8) or else suffer the psychic shock of Things Man
Was Not Meant to Know. Until that twin’s Avatar reincarnates (which might not
happen in your own lifetime), and is met in person once again, you cannot use
the shared powers you had once enjoyed.

As with other
character-based Traits, your twin is not a walking Merit, but a character in
their own right. Both twins could be roleplayed by different players in the
same group, and probably should not be played by the same player. The quest to
find a soulmate, a bitter dispute between soulmates, two soul­mates on opposing
factions of the Ascension War – such stories could provide the foundation for
pivotal events and themes in your chronicle.

This Merit
goes well with the Background: Allies, the Merit: True Love, and the Flaws:
Enemy, Sleeping with the Enemy, and Ward. Because of the already-Awakened
natures of the Night-Folk, however, a soul-twin cannot be a vampire,
werecreature, changeling, or other paranormal entity.

### Umbral Affinity

**4 pt. Merit**

Something
in your background grants you an innate affinity for the Otherworlds. Perhaps
you have some distant relation to shapeshifter blood, or a Pagan heritage that
links you to the oldest of Old Ways. Whatever the source might be, you can
travel further and longer in the Otherworlds than most mortal humans can
manage.

Game-wise,
your character suffers no ill effects from first- and second-degree
Acclimation, and all other stages affect her at one stage less than usual.
Beyond that, the character does not need to worry about Disembodiment until six
full moon-cycles (roughly six months) have passed.

In general,
the character feels at home in most strange Umbral Realms, and she might be recognized
as a natural traveler who has an innate right to be there.

### Unaging

**2 pt. Merit**

The years
seem to pass you by. Time moves on, but you remain essentially the same
physical age as you were when this Merit stopped your aging process. Maybe you discovered
the Fountain of Youth, upgraded yourself to perpetual stability, assumed an odd
relationship with the time stream, or entered an uncanny bargain that preserved
your current age.

And so,
although you continue to accumulate the scars, experience, and perspective of
age, your body maintains a consistent state of chronological development.

Note that
this is not the same thing as immortality – injuries and sickness can kill you
just as surely as they’ll kill any other person. Age-based decrepitude, however,
is not something you’ll have to worry about.

### Unbondable

**5pt. Merit**

You are
immune to being blood bound.

Tremere
cannot take this Merit.

### Unmarked Antitribu

**2 or 5pt. Merit**

While you
are part of the Sabbat and a traitor to House and Clan Tremere, somehow you
remain unmarked by the antitribu curse. You are not easily recognized as a
renegade Tremere, and the magic that burned so many of your brethren cannot
target you. Further, other Sabbat members cannot judge you at a glance.

Those of
the Telyavelic bloodline can purchase this Merit at 2 points, while other
Tremere pay 5 points.

### Without a Trace

**2pt. Merit**

When in the
wilderness, the earth fills in your footprints. You leave no noticeable traces,
not even a scent.

Normal
attempts at tracking automatically fail. Supernatural attempts are done with a
+2 difficulty.