Among the Kindred, vampiric power flows through blood, shadow, and instinct. Their gifts are not taught but awakened, surfacing in moments of hunger, danger, or dominance. These skills reflect their predatory essence — the way they vanish into darkness, command through blood, stalk with unerring instinct, and shield themselves with night’s curse. To encounter a Kindred in full command of their powers is to face the perfection of the predator.
Shadowmeld is the unnatural grace of the Kindred, an elegant step into silence, absence, and forgotten corners of perception. Whether slipping past a mortal or escaping the gaze of a hunter, the vampire becomes a phantom in flesh. This skill can only be used at night or in places where the sun doesn’t shine, like caves or tunnels. (While the vampire may be hidden for the scene, there will be a lingering thought in the mind of those who didn’t detect them, something unsettling or out of sorts.)
Once the Vampire engages in any action their presence is revealed and Shadowsmeld will no longer be effective at all Task levels
Simple Task - SLIP: Briefly obscure your presence or muffle your trace. Useful for casual misdirection, passive concealment, or vanishing from low-alert observation.
Novice level success: You’re briefly overlooked or ignored. If an observer is actively searching for the vampire, it would take them a moment to find them. The hidden effect lasts for one post, and the vampire cannot move.
Intermediate level success: You move quietly and vanish into light cover with little disturbance. This does not render ineffective hunter or shifter perception skills, but would delay their ability to discover the vampire's path for two posts.
Expert level success: disappear entirely from awareness. This does not allow the vampire to attack, but is an escape mechanic. If they attempt to attack, they will be discovered without surprise by any supernaturals with heightened senses. It lasts three posts.
Difficult Task - EVADE: Move through an actively monitored or dangerous space while remaining unseen. Often used to bypass magical detection or mechanical security systems.
Novice level success: you're able to slip past a security system that isn’t tuned to detect supernatural energy. This is not permanent but lasts for a period before an anomaly, shadow, or movement is detected.
Intermediate level success: the vampire can slip past a magical security system, but can’t linger in the space. Spirits can still detect the vampire, and it lasts 2 posts.
Expert level success: Your presence is completely undetected, even to those actively searching for 3 posts.
Challenging Task - VANISH: Fully disappear, even in mid-pursuit. This is the height of supernatural stealth, obliteration from memory, trace, and scent. In the wake of your absence, all that remains is a chill and the feeling that something just stepped into, then out of, the world.
Novice level success: You are lost to normal senses and to super natural senses for one post.
Intermediate level success: Supernatural senses falter. You automatically escape combat or surveillance unless pursued by magic of equal strength and can be used for two posts.
Expert level success: You vanish so cleanly the world forgets you passed. There is no possibility for your trail to be picked up by humans, gifted or supernatural. It lasts three posts.
A signature power of the Kindred, Voice of the Blood manifests through charisma, hypnotic cadence, and the haunting pull of undead allure. Whether by words, gaze, or sheer presence, this ability bends the emotions and thoughts of others to the vampire’s will: seduction, suggestion, and psychic command blending seamlessly. Mortals fall easily to its sway; stronger minds may resist, but not without effort.
Mechanics & Requirements:
Requires eye contact, proximity, or verbal engagement.
Most effective on mortals. Supernaturals will have more resistance.
It always requires the opponent (no matter the race) to roll defense.
It requires OOC consent-based roleplay for lasting or identity-altering effects. Any FTB scenes must be discussed, and an outcome must be agreed upon.
This skill can only be used once per scene unless agreed OOC, emotional fatigue or suspicion will build and the skill will no longer work.
This skill only affects one person and cannot be used as an AOE skill.
Once the skill fails it can no longer be attempted in the scene at all task levels
Simple Task - SOOTHE: Disarm tension, plant emotional suggestion, or gently guide perception. Calm a frightened being, deflect suspicion, soften a guard’s resolve, distract someone with charm.
Novice level success: Target feels vaguely at ease, hesitates, or becomes more open to dialogue. The effect lasts for one post and can be used to make a person pause or distract them.
Intermediate level success: Target becomes calm, relaxed, and distractible for two posts. Minor requests are granted.
Expert level success: Target experiences strong positive emotion, comfort, admiration, trust or curiosity for three posts. They become socially pliable. This can also be used to ease a person's pain or offer them a boost of confidence in a situation.
Difficult Task - COMPEL: Issue a direct suggestion or implant a short action directive. “Open the door.” “Forget you saw this.” “Tell me the truth.” “Run.” ‘stop”
Novice level success: Target is confused but complies for one post. May second-guess themselves. After the scene they realize there was something odd or unsettling about the interaction and are somewhat cautious about engagement again or might be curious and seek out the vampire. This depends on the personality of the character.
Intermediate level success: Target obeys quickly, rationalizing it as their own idea for two posts. After the scene they feel a little uneasy. They might be compelled to ask people. In that case if told they will remember the event and what happened.
Expert level success: Target is fully influenced, obeys without question and holds no suspicion for three posts. After the scene they will not remember what happened or why they complied but only if someone explains or offers evidence of the event. A photo, recording or other documentation of the event will awaken them to what happened.
Challenging Task - ENTHRALL: Override core thoughts, extract memory, or impose deep emotional effects. Instill obsession, extract a hidden truth, rewrite perception of an event, cause paralysis of thought.
Novice level success: Target’s surface thoughts become visible or influenced.
Intermediate level success: Target forgets a detail, reveals private memory, or becomes emotionally bound.
Expert level success: Target becomes enthralled, obsessed, or emotionally rewired.
A manifestation of the vampire’s inner beast, Predatory Instinct fuses supernatural speed, strength, and primal survival. Honed through centuries of predation and bloodshed, it allows a Kindred to move like a predator: silent, lethal, and unrelenting. These instincts grant an edge in combat, from sudden lunges to monstrous endurance. Actions are visceral, this is a feral survival instinct, not a martial or elegant art.
Simple Task - REACT: Allows for basic quick reactions that offer some minor level of defence.
Novice level success: Dodge an ambush.
Intermediate level success: interrupt an enemy’s move, rendering their attack ineffective.
Expert level success: catch a weapon mid-air. Potentially disarming them.
Difficult Task - STRIKE: Unleash feral power in combat, brutal, overwhelming, and instinctively accurate. Tear through armor, hurl a target, land a crippling blow.
Novice level success: land a blow that stuns for one post.
Intermediate level success: land a crippling blow that lasts for two posts
Expert level success: Tear through physical armor, rendering it useless for the rest of the scene
Challenging Task - ENDURE: Push past pain and injury with supernatural resilience. Stay standing when all else would fall. Withstand fire, poison, holy wounds, or relentless assault. The Beast inside refuses to submit, forcing the body to obey even when the flesh should fail.
Novice level success: Ignore pain long enough to finish a fight or escape a deadly situation. Damage is felt but does not impair immediate action.
Intermediate level success: Remain fully functional despite grievous injury, shrugging off effects that would cripple mortals—moving and fighting without penalty for the scene.
Expert level success: Momentarily achieve an almost unstoppable state, fighting through otherwise lethal blows or supernatural effects. Even the destruction of vital organs or extreme trauma fails to stop movement until the scene ends.
By channeling ancient vitae through focused will, the vampire can form a barrier between themselves and harm. This protective technique turns blood into a reactive defense absorbing impacts, deflecting minor magics, or reinforcing the body’s natural resilience. The blood hardens momentarily under the skin, vaporizes into mist, or lashes out in retaliation. Older vampires develop it instinctively; younger ones learn it through ritual discipline.
This is not a flashy magical shield: it’s visceral, internal, and bloody.
The defense might look like black veins, misting blood, or tightened skin
It is painful, but the vampire chooses to endure
these skills are exhausting and can only be used once a scene at any task level
Simple Task - BRACE: Reinforce the body with supernatural blood flow, reducing incoming harm. Shrug off a punch, dull the pain of sunlight, stay upright under pressure.
Novice level success: You shrug off minor wounds, scratches, bruises, and shallow cuts.
Intermediate level success: You take a serious hit without slowing. Reduced recovery time from blow..
Expert level success: You continue unfazed after impalement, extreme impact, or prolonged exposure to the environmental elements.
Difficult Task - ORB: Manifest a reactive blood barrier or mist-like cloak that softens magic or ranged attacks.
Novice level success: Block a projectile or level 1 curse.
Intermediate level success: Stop or deflect a level 2 supernatural strike (hex, minor artifact blast)
Expert level success: stops a level 3 magical effect or multiple ranged strikes in a single moment.
Challenging Task - SACRIFICE: Spend your own blood to negate a lethal effect or take damage meant for another. Absorb a cursed blade, step into fire to protect a comrade, delay death for a moment longer.
Novice level success: Stay alive despite a fatal blow, remaining conscious for a few moments longer.
Intermediate level success: Fully absorb damage from a lethal strike for yourself or another, though you collapse immediately afterward.
Expert level success: Take the full brunt of a devastating or supernatural attack in someone else’s place and survive, barely, with grievous wounds.