Outsider Information

This should remain out of context to the game, but I figure I would share the list of Outsider Influences with you folks so you have some idea of what your capabilities are. While I wanted to keep things a mystery - I figure it would be better for testing if you knew a little of what to expect.

AURA:
1 - Hide Presnce: Make your aura look normalish by making the supernatural bits harder to read
2 - Sense: The ability to read auras as colors
3 - Resonate: Chamleon your own aura to immitate something else as you see fit.
4 - Flex: The ability to show your power and cow or impress throse around you with your power
5 - Overwhelm: As with flex, but has the ability to cause damage or stunning over an area

BATTLE
1 - Field of Battle: Gain certain advantages by getting to know an area before battle.
2 - Challenge: A compulsion that will attempt to lock an opponent onto you
3 - Style: Gain dots in fighting styles as if you knew them natrually.
4 - Power: Infuse a chosen weapon with advantages using your essence
5 - Deadly Match: Equalize the battle in certain ways betwen you and your foe

BAN FORGE
Allows you to create bans on people, places and things for a period of time, as well has being able to reshape or dispel bans temporally on you or other people. You can also gain temporary advantages and/or power by forging additional bans on yourself.

BEARING
1 - Command: Issue a simple command that compulses a target to comply.
2 - Inspire: Give bonuses to your allies for a while.
3 - Agent: Create a truely loyal subject simulacrum.
4 - Domain: Create a territory for yourself, gain bonuses within your territory.
5 - Obedience: Place a geas upon a subject to force them to comply with your demands.

CONJURATION
Allows an Outsider to create simple and basic objects with essence. Higher dots allow more complex or unique things to be constructed.

DOMAIN - Marks a small area as your own.
1 - Alarm: Create a supernatural alarm system in an area that is empathically linked to you.
2 - Shadowless: Create a spirit-free zone, a place that no longer resonates in Shadow.
3 - Gauntlet Barrier: Weaken or strengthen the gauntlet in an area.
4 - Spirit Warden: Summon a guardian spirit into your domain.
5 - Side Step: The ability to vanish behind objects and appear in your own domain.

EASING
1 - Calm: The ability to take aggression out of a target
2 - Sense Manipulation: The ability to repair or disable various senses
3 - Pain: Take or give pain penalties to a target
4 - Emotions: Invoke or dispell emotions in a target
5 - Mind Shield: Protect targets from mental manipulations

ELEMENTS
Elements allows an Outsider to manipulate a basic type of element of thier choosing. Can be used for attacks, defenses or even shaping your desired element as needed.

FORCE
1 - Telekinesis: Gain the ability to manipulate objects at a distance.
2 - Ripple: Send a force of telekinetic power outward from yourself in an attempt to bowl things over.
3 - Lance: Create a spear of telekinetic force to blast targets with.
4 - Crush: Hold and cause damage to a target.
5 - Ride: Lift yourself or others with telekinesis and take flight.

HEALING
1 - Aid: Give bonuses to targets for a small amount of time
2 - Mend: Heal wound levels at the cost of essence
3 - Extract: Take out poisons or illnesses out of a target.
4 - Reconstruction: Regrow lost limbs or damaged major organs on a target
5 - Grace: Use any of your healing abilities at range or in an area.

ILLUSIONS
1 - Glimmer: Create a distraction
2 - Hide Self: Become invisible or look like something else.
3 - Fascinate: Hold the attention of one or more targets in an area.
4 - Construction: Create realistic interactive environments for a period of time
5 - Simulacrum: Create lifelike illusions that can speak and think in limited fashion.

MOVEMENT
1 - Accelerate: Increase the rate of movement in yourself, others or what you are riding in/on.
2 - Levitate: The ability to slowly lift yourself upward and into the air.
3 - Blur: Increase defense by becoming blurry.
4 - Shunt: Teleportation
5 - Gateway: Create a gateway that others can use to move from one place to another. With extra effort - to other planes of existance.

REGENERATION
Use essence to heal wounds and lost limbs.

RESISTANCE
1 - Illness Immunity: Become immune to normal diseases and bio-toxins. Gain resistance versus supernatural ones.
2 - Toxin Immunity: Become immune to normal poisons, and gain resistance versus supernatural ones.
3 - Toughness: Gain points of armor in exchange for essence
4 - Element Immunity: Choose an element, gain immunity to it.
5 - Immortality: Immunity to the ravages of aging and time.

SENSES
1 - Enhance: Gain bonuses to perceiving your environment
2 - Aura Read: As with Aura 2, but gives better more concise information. Works reflexively.
3 - Sense Power: Detect and identify supernatural activity in your vacinity.
4 - Construct Sense: The ability to manipulate your senses into performing various tricks: X-ray vision, clairsentience, psychometry, etc.
5 - Know: Gain exacting knowledge about a subject you have come in contact with.

SHAPE
1 - Masks: Look like someone else, take upon the guise of an animal.
2 - War Shapes: Gain weapons and armor by manipulating your body.
3 - Utility: Gain various useful tools through shapeshifting.
4 - Immitate Pattern: Precisely shift into another form, complete with mannerisms, scent, aura and appearance.
5 - Reshape: The ability to shapesift things other than yourself.

SORCERY
This ability allows an Outsider to construct spells as a mage, but never more powerful than Mages.

SPIRIT CONTROL
1 - Sense: See and hear spirits in the area, as well as in Shadow.
2 - Ward: Create a spiritual ward that weakens spirits who enter the area.
3 - Capture: Cause a spirit to become trapped within an object.
4 - Enthrall: Bind a spirit to serve you for a time.
5 - Influence: Infuse an object with a spirits essence and use it to manipulate things around you based on the bound spirits spheres of influence.

STORM
This ability set allows an Outsider to control, predict and attack by manipulating the environment.

WEAPON
1 - Create: The ability to construct, repair and attune a weapon to the Outsider.
2 - Bringer: The ability to dismiss or summon a created and attuned weapon.
3 - Empower: The ability to give your attuned weapon special powers
4 - Dispell: Cause malfunctions in other weapons
5 - Absolution: Gain a higher order of powers for your attuned weapon.


SPECIAL MERITS FOR OUTSIDERS(Require in-game reference to begin purchasing)

Phylactery (1 to 5) - The ability to create and identify containers of spiritual power. Usually personal essence is stored in such vessels, up to and including an Outsider's soul.

Birthrights, Titles, Relics: These pertain to the Lineage of the Crown, though they may be used by other Outsiders to gain respect within that society.

Status: Lineage (1 to 5) - Gain respect within your own Outsider Lineage.

Status: Outsiders (1 to 5) - Gain respect among all Outsiders as a whole

Draw Pool (1 to 5): Works like Herd for Vampires. This is a set of people, places or circumstances that allow you to draw essence upon each week.

Spirit Ties (3 dots): You are more connected to the world of spirits than you are to the world of humans, allowing you to speak the language of spirits, and sense thier presences. You also gain no bad stuff if you should find yourself in Shadow (such as addictions and compulsions that go with exposure to Shadow).

Verge Key (5 Dots): You have knowledge of the location of a Verge and what will cause it to open a path into Shadow.

Ban Ebbing (2 Dots): Allows you a Resolve + Composure roll when encountering a personal ban or a ban placed on you. If this roll fails, you must heed the ban. You may only roll against a particular ban once a year. Those who buy Ban Ebbing, cannot invest in Spirit Ties as you are embracing your human side (Same holds true in reverse).

Essence Jar (1 to 5): You are able to create specialized containers to hold your particular brand of Essence. Unlike a phylactery, only you or those who share your Sphere of Influence may use this source of essence. Each dot in this merit can store a point of essence for up to one cycle of the moon.

SPHERE OF INFLUENCE
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Each Outsider has a sphere of influence that controls and enhances the spiritual side of thier life. It is usualy a concept or type of thing that is relatively common. An example list of influences is as such:

Cars
Stone
Doors
Home
Women/Men
Children
Animals
Lights
Emotions
Truth/Lies
Promises
Decadence/Restoration
Speech
Knowledge/Secrets

This influence decides the bans that will start to form on an Outsider as they grow in Rank. Each rank of power is required to take on a new ban (or bans) pertaining to thier sphere of influence. Also, the Outsider has a draw from thier Sphere of Influence - a way to gain spiritual essence from the subject matter. Often this is an odd ceremony that makes little sense - as much as bans do. Sometimes the Outsider is lucky and the bans and draws have little effect on thier normal routine.

An Outsider is always attracted to the subject of Influence. An outsider with the influence of Cars will either always be around cars, or own many cars. One with the Influence of Truth will always strive to do so, and hang around more honest people. The problem is that thier influence also becomes polarized against them from time to time. The Outsider with cars, may find that his cars have problems or get stolen. Honest people don't always stay that way. This is the problem with drawing essence from these sources, you are making them less of what they are. Eventually a source will completely break down and provide no more essence.

BANS
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There are four levels of bans: Simple - which can be annoying for daily life, but don't impact it very much. Average Bans can be a little more intrusive and make life difficult from time to time. Difficult Bans are just that, they are encountered almost daily in one's routine and can also make people regard the Outsider as odd or obsessive about something. Impossible Bans are something that make life very difficult as you manuever to fullfill or avoid them.

Sample: Influence of Cars

Simple: Must polish and clean owned cars daily or Must greet any car that is starting up with a loud shout.
Average: Can only ride in cars that are clean, or cannot come within five feet of dirty or old beaten up car.
Difficult: Can only be in a car that he owns, or cannot drive a car faster than X miles per hour.
Impossible: Must always been in sight of a car, or carry a piece of a car with him at all times (of a certain noticeable size)

Sample: Influence of Truth
Simple: Is always angry when telling the truth
Average: Can only tell the truth as it is known to him
Difficult: Will forget anything that has not been proven to be true the next day
Impossible: Cannot speak of anything they are unsure of if not all truthful facts are known about a subject.

Whenever you gain a Spirit Rank, you gain more bans. You can combine two simple into an Average ban, or two Average into a Difficult ban. You may also do the reverse. One difficult ban may become two average or four simple, or perhaps even two simple and an average.


DRAWS
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Draws are the antithesis of Bans. This is a small ceremony or action that must be performed in order to gain essence from a source. Essence may only be drawn from a particular source once per day, and as described above eventually this will cause problems with the source after a while - which may include something falling into disrepair, nullifying friendships, causing a truthful person to become decptive and untrustworthy, or even creating poisonous essence which can eat away at good essence you have. It takes extended periods of time for a source to right itself.

The other side effect is repulsion. Your draw source will become harder to find, attract or maintain the more you draw. Someone with the Car influence will find it difficult to actually be around cars - finding that they spend less time around such vehicles or finding working cars. Thier own car might even be stolen or burst into flame suddenly from a gas leak. It is a balancing act an Outsider must face. Gorging can kill an outsider especially in gluts where thier Sphere is plentiful.

A draw is always related to your influence, but may be a strange and bizzare forula for achieving it. Usually a skill is chosen to associate with your draw. Such as Animal Ken or Survival. Once that is decided by the ST, the actual action is created.

A draw from Cars, with say Animal Ken would mean that you must either have a live animal in your car while driving to gain essence or perhaps you must cover your car in animal scents to make it more appealing to animals. Another example would be Seduction and Truth. Succeeding in seducing a person while using the truth will draw essence from them.

Draws will change as an Outsider gains rank, what worked for a while may not work down the line.

STARVATION OF ESSENCE
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Whenever you are low on essence as an outsider, you are opening yourself to a world of hurt. First, you begin loosing your ties to your spirit half - unable to use powers of your Outsider, even those that cost no essence. Second your own soul starts dripping raw essence into Shadow. This attracts hungry spirits who will use your own raw bleed into shadow to trap you and continue to starve you as they feed themselves. After a while, you will become ill. This period of sickness lasts for about of month, as if withdrawing from substance abuse. After that either the Outsider dies, or becomes a normal human being - but weakened from the experience from loosing half thier being.

RANK
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An outsiders Supernatural Advantage, or Potency is Rank. This is similar to ranks of Spirits. It must be known however that a rank 10 Outsider would never compare to the awesome power of a Rank 10 spirit (which would be godlike in most cases). Rank decides the maximum dots in Influences (powers you may have) which is Rank + 1. You must be at least Rank 4 to be able to use five dot powers. Rank allows ability maximums to go up as well. But there are problems with rank as well. You must take on more or more powerful bans to be able to contain your spirit side.

BAN BURN
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If you are unable to comply with a ban or purposely break a ban you start to bleed essence until the Ban is fullfilled or corrected. You loose 1 point of essence until you can make amends with your Influence and the Ban. Once all essence is gone, you begin taking a bruise level per minute. Once all bruise levels are filled, an Outsider begins taking a lethal every hour. Aggravated damage is then taken every day after lethal has been filled. Someone suffering ban burn will be wracked with pain, looking withered and sickly.

You must be able to appease your ban in some way to fix the problem. Usually by finding your influence and performing your ban ritual upon it. An Intelligence + Rank roll will usually clue an Outsider into what is needed to appease the burning spirit within.

You may spend a point of Essence or Willpower before the event of non-compliance in order to ignore your ban for a scene. This must be declared disctinctly as an action. It is notiable to others when doing so that you are trying to perform an act of appeasement. The act simply gives your Sphere of Influence something to feed from and make it forget for a time.

ESSENCE INVESTING
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You may invest points of essence into your sphere of influence in order to restore balance to the object. Every two points of essence will restore some of the draw you have taken from it. You may also invest Essence into something in your Sphere of Influence in order to improve it for a time (about a day). The object or subject of your influence gains a bonus. For instance, a car gets better handling or gas mileage. The truth if told, even if harmful seems to sting less for the person it is told to.

BINDING
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Each lineage of Outsiders has a particular quirk associated with it. This is the binding, the force that binds spirit and mortal together to make up the oddity that is an Outsider. The binding does not dictate any action on the part of the character directly, but rather happens to the character as time passes on. Some Outsiders suffer thier bindings like a curse, while others must deal with the consequences of the use of thier power. No binding is truely a good thing except that it gives the Outsider power through lineage.

LINEAGE
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Lineage has very little to do with the human aspect of an Outsider, and more to do with the Mortal Spirit bound to the human. How your lineage may have come about is a mystery, but each lineage worked for the binding to a Mortal and survived the ages. There are perhaps lesser lines of Mortal Bound Spirits out there, but none are as pronouced as the few that have lasted (such as yours) through the ages. There are nine major lineages, and the rest are spoilers who have earned no proper place in Outsider Society.

SPIRIT CONNECTION
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Spirits will love and hate Outsiders. They respect that they are spirits of a kind, and follow some of the edicts and ways of spirits - at the same time spirits are jealous of the ability of Outsiders to be in the mortal world which is full of raw tastey essence. Spirits may favor to befriend an Outsider, or they may seek to extinguish a known Outsider. Some spirits are opportunists and will follow an Outsider around to steal essence away from the Outsider, especially spirits who have similar spheres of influence.