Shade

Height: N/A

Weight: N/A

Environment: Bleak

Population: Majority

Base Features (0 FP)

Realm Bound (18 FP): Shades are no longer alive and cannot die. Being undead spirits bound to the Bleak, they can always reform within it. If they would gain the Death Damage Condition, they instead vanish and reform within the Bleak one hour per 6 FP they possess after they were slain. This still happens if they are killed in the Bleak itself. This is treated as an Immortality Feature.

Undeath (5 FP): Shades are not living creatures and are immune to many of the weaknesses of life. They do not need to sleep, but can meditate for an hour to gain the effects of a full rest.

They are not affected by toxins, pathogens or other things that would not logically harm a corpse or spectral creature. Likewise, they are immune to Features that would rely on sexual arousal or similar biological reactions.

Limited Possession (4 FP): Shades can inhabit corpses, using the bodies of the dead as their own. As twelve actions while touching an empty corpse, they can possess the corpse.

While possessing a corpse, they have the same Height, Weight and Speed as the corpse did when it was alive and do not experience the effects of the Intangible Feature. In addition, the Game Master may allow any of the corpse’s Features they rule as sufficiently physical to be used.

Their inhabited bodies, being dead, do not heal through natural, biological, processes. As three actions, they can leave their corpse.

If a Shade inhabiting a corpse would gain the Unconscious Damage Condition, they are instead expelled from the corpse and cannot enter any corpse for a full rest. This Feature partially negates Intangible.

Spectral Attack (3 FP): Shades have the ability to directly attack the vital mana within living creatures. This allows them to give other creatures appropriate Damage Conditions during combat, even while not in a body. This Feature has no affect on creatures with the Undead or Unworldly Nature Features. This Feature partially negates Intangible.

Devourer (2 FP): Shades can consume souls to bolster their own antimus, acting upon the mana or essence of a soul in a twisted mockery of a Cleanser. When a non-Shade creature within 1 ft. per Smart Ass gains the Death Damage Condition, they may absorb its soul. They may remove a number of Damage Conditions from themselves equal to the creature’s Smart Ass.

A creature whose soul is consumed is cast into the Beyond, causing it to reform in the Bleak with all base Features of the Shade clan immediately. This stops its soul from being available at any point, effects that would return it to life have no affect. It may still be summoned as a Shade. Creatures with Unworldly Nature do not gain the Shade clan, but are otherwise affected by this Feature.

For 1 additional FP, they can consume souls within 10 ft. per Smart Ass.

Shape Of A Soul (0 FP): Although Shades are not what is thought of by mortals as souls, they can perfectly function as such for the purposes of effects that move around souls.

The benefit of this is that a Shade can be placed in a living body just as easily as a captured soul could. This requires the ability to move a soul into a body and return the body to life if it is dead.

While in a living body, effects that would discern the Shade as a Shade only show their non-Shade Features and reveal that the Shade is whatever the living body is. Otherwise, the Shade functions as if inhabiting a body through Limited Possession, except they cannot take actions to leave the body.

If the Shade is killed while in a living body, they reform in the Bleak without the body as normal.

When inhabiting a living body, the Shade is not affected by or have access to the Limited Possession, Undeath, Intangible, Spectral Attack, Walking Corpse or Dead Features.

Timeless (0 FP): Shades don’t age no matter how much time passes.

Walking Corpse (-1 FP): Shades can make the dead act like the living, but they can’t make them look like the living… or smell like them. Even when a Shade manages to find someone willing to interact socially with a walking corpse or penumbral spector, it is hard to create a good impression.

When they make a check to socialize with a living creature, usually meaning checks to convince or comfort, they reduce the result by 1d4. If the check is intimidation based, they add 1d4 to the result.

Dead (-6 FP): Shades lack many of the protections a living creature has to mystical interference. Any effect that can capture or similarly affect the soul of a dead or dying creature treats them as if they were dead or dying. This allows Features that can capture the soul of a creature that dies within a certain range to capture a Shade as soon as it comes within range.

Being captured does not impede them beyond holding them within whatever vessel was used. Any Feature that can be used outside of a body can be used while captured, potentially resulting in freedom.

Intangible (-10 FP): Outside of a body, Shades cannot touch or effect physical matter, damage creatures or use Features that would require them to have a physical body. They are still unable to pass through solid objects, even if they can’t apply force to such objects.

Realm Dam (-15 FP): Due to the Low King’s intervention, the Realm Dam of the Bleak keeps Shades from freely leaving the Bleak. Any knowledgeable creature outside of the Bleak can take an hour to summon a Shade they know the name of to their location, bypassing the Realm Dam.

This requires the creature to provide a sacrificial corpse to serve as a body for the Shade, which must be killed at the completion of the summoning. This sacrifice need not be a sapient, but some Shades may dislike inhabiting the body of an animal.

Optional Features

Penumbral Wounds (4 FP): Some Shades can inflict wounds infused with the Bleak’s power, resisting any attempt to unmake such injuries. When a creature would lose a Damage Condition caused by them directly, it must make a Check for each Damage Condition removed.

If the Damage Condition is being removed by a Feature that innately removes Damage Conditions from it (such as Recuperate or Goat’s Vitality), it must make a Bad Ass Check (1d12 + Bad Ass) to remove the Damage Condition.

If the Damage Condition is being removed by an effect from outside it (such as Heal or a Healing Potion), the source of the effect must make a Smart Ass Check (1d12 + Smart Ass) to remove the Damage Condition. If the effect is not from a creature, the Game Master determines its functional Smart Ass for the purpose of this Check.

If the Check is greater than six plus their Kick Ass, the Damage Condition is removed. This Check must be individually attempted for each Damage Condition caused by the material that they try to remove.

Siphon (4 FP): The Shade can steal the life of those who still have it and make it their own. When they enter combat with a creature, they may remove Damage Conditions from themselves proportionate to the Damage Conditions they cause during the combat. The Damage Conditions removed or altered are at Game Master discretion. This does not function on creature’s without souls, such as Invaders.

Corruption (2 FP): Some Shades can sense when their name is spoken aloud, the invocation of their name attracting a sliver of their being to the location of the speaker. Whenever a creature speaks their name out loud, or similarly projects the meaning to the outside world, they instantly become aware of the creature, its surroundings and any subsequent events that relate to the invocation.

The creature does not need to be intending to draw their attention or know their identity, but does need to realize that their name is a name. Any name that the Shade has consciously acknowledged as their name counts as a name for this Feature, which allows them to have numerous names at a time.

They are aware if another creature with this Feature has already claimed a name they intend to claim as theirs and cannot claim a name that has already been taken.

For 2 additional FP, as three actions, they can form a mental link to the creature that has drawn their attention. The link allows them to appear as a mental projection within the creature’s environment, visible and audible only to the creature and only aware of what the creature observes with its own senses.

The link can be formed and functions across realms, including from the Bleak. They cannot harm or otherwise affect the creature except for communication. They can appear to it in any manner they wish, but do not gain insight from this Feature into the creature.

As an action, the creature can try to make a Bad Ass Check (1d12 + Bad Ass) against their emotional armor (6 + Smart Ass) to break the link. If it succeeds, the link is broken and can only be reestablished if the creature speaks their name again. If it fails, it cannot attempt to break the link again until it has finished a full rest. They can break the link as an action without the need for a Check.

For another additional 1 FP, whenever they succeed at a Check to convince the creature to perform a specific action it would not of its own volition, the creature gains a copy of the Shade Corruption Damage Condition.

For each copy of Shade Corruption, any Check against the creature by the Shade who gave the Damage Condition has its result increased by 1d4. If the link to them is broken, all copies of Shade Corruption they have given are removed.

Fracture Self (2 FP): Shades are manifestations of their own influence from Beyond, even if antimus is the only thing receptive enough to obey their feeble command. Because they have no true soul, some can divide their imitation into multiple instances of self.

As twelve actions, they can create a second manifestation of themselves that is treated as a separate creature controlled by their mind and sharing their Features. All their manifestations have separate actions, but expend uses of limited use Features as a single creature. They can create as many manifestations as they wish.

For each manifestation they have beyond the first, their functional Kick Ass, Bad Ass and Smart Ass are reduced by 1. All factors dependent on their Ability Scores reduce accordingly.

As an action, they can touch a manifestation and reabsorb it, increasing their functional Kick Ass, Bad Ass and Smart Ass by 1. Manifestations are treated as no different from their original manifestation, meaning they can absorb manifestations from a manifestation other than the original, potentially resulting in a different manifestation becoming the single manifestation by absorbing the others.

If a manifestation is killed, it is not absorbed and their functional Ability Scores do not increase. Instead, it simply reforms in the Bleak as per Realm Bound.

Shadow Shaper (2 FP): Many Shades learn to channel the substance of the Bleak to affect objects at range. Within 10 ft. per Smart Ass, they can interact with objects and creatures as if their body was affecting the object or creature. This lets them use their Features as if at the chosen location, but does not negate the Intangible Feature.

Shade Lord (1 FP): The strongest Shades can make Chosen Ones to enforce their will in a twisted mockery of the Gods. They can create a new Chosen One by using Magic to create an entirely new creature, which has the Penumbra Warlock Feature and Champion Features of their choice. The DC to create the new Chosen One should be determined by the Game Master and incorporate the total FP the Chosen One is being created with.

Alternatively, a preexisting creature that pledges its will to them can be made into a Chosen One without the need for a Casting Check. They gain all knowledge known by such a creature, and an insight into its identity, at the time of its pledge.

If they choose, the creature becomes a Chosen One and gains the Penumbra Warlock Feature and Champion Features of their choice. However, the creature must have sufficient FP.

For 1 additional FP, they can keep themselves from returning too the Bleak after their living body is slain. Instead, when they gain the Death Damage Condition and are under the effects of Shape Of A Soul, they are ejected from their body and lose the Death Damage Condition. They still die and reform in the Bleak if slain outside a living body.

Lesser Shade (-8 FP): The weaker Shades roam the wastelands of the Bleak, not yet capable of controlling their baser natures. Any Smart Ass Check they make is reduced by 2.

In addition, whenever the Shade rolls a 1 on a 1d12, they spend their next turn doing nothing but attacking the nearest creature, using actions to reach that creature if necessary.