Vicissitude

Vicissitude is the signature power of the Tzimisce and is almost unknown outside the clan. Similar in some respects to Protean, Vicissitude allows the Fiends to shape and sculpt their own or others' flesh and bone. When a Tzimisce uses Vicissitude to alter mortals, ghouls and vampires of higher generation, the effects of the power are permanent; vampires of equal or lower generation may heal the effects of Vicissitude as though they were aggravated wounds. Naturally, a wielder can always reshape her own flesh.

Note that while this Discipline permits powerful and horrific effects, the wielder must obtain skin-to-skin contact and must often physically sculpt the desired result. This even applies to the use of the power on oneself. Tzimisce skilled in Vicissitude are often inhumanly beautiful; those less skilled are simply inhuman.

Note: Nosferatu always "heal" back Vicissitude alterations, at least the ones that make them better-looking. The ancient curse of the clan may not be circumvented through Vicissitude, except possibly by the Antediluvian of the Tzimisce clan (who is rumored to have been destroyed anyway).

*Malleable Visage

A vampire with this power may alter her own bodily parameters: height, build, voice, facial features and skin tone, among other things. Such changes are cosmetic and minor in scope – no more than a foot in height gained or lost, for example. She must physically mould the alteration, literally shaping her flesh into the desired result.
System: The player must spend a blood point for each body part to be changed, then roll Intelligence + Body Crafts (Diff 6). To duplicate another person or voice requires a Perception + Body Crafts roll (Diff Cool, and five successes are required for a flawless copy; fewer successes leave minute, or not so minute, flaws. Increasing one’s Appearance Trait is difficulty 10, thus usually requiring Willpower expenditure for even minimal success, and a botch permanently reduces the Attribute by one.

**Flesh Craft

This power is similar to Malleable Visage, above, but allows the vampire to perform drastic, grotesque alterations on other creatures. Tzimisce often use this power to transform their servitors into monstrous guards, the better to frighten foes. Only flesh (skin, muscle, fat and cartilage, but not bone) may be transformed.
System: The vampire must grapple the intended victim, while her player makes a successful Dexterity and Body Craft roll (difficulty variable: 5 for a crude yank and tuck, up to 9 for precise transformations). A vampire who wishes to increase another’s Appearance Trait does so as described under Malleable Visage; reducing the Attribute is considerable easier (Diff 5), though truly inspired disfigurement may dictate a higher difficulty. In either case, each success increases/reduces the Attribute by one. A Vampire may use this power to move clumps of skin, fat and muscle tissue, thus providing additional padding where needed. For each success scored on a Dexterity + Body Crafts roll (Diff Cool, the vampire may increase the subject’s soak dice pool by one, at the expense of either a point of Strength or a Health Level (vampire’s choice).

***Bone Craft

This terrible power allows a vampire to manipulate bone in the same manner that flesh is shaped. In conjunction with Flesh Craft, above, this power enables a Vicissitude practitioner to deform a victim (or herself) beyond recognition. This power should be used in conjunction with the flesh-shaping arts, unless the vampire wants to inflict injury on the victim.
System: The vampire’s player makes a Strength + Body Crafts roll (Diff as above). Bone Craft mat be used without the flesh shaping arts, as an offensive weapon. Each success scored on the Strength + Body Crafts roll (Diff 7) inflicts one health level of lethal damage on the victim, as his bones rip, puncture and slice their way out of his skin. The vampire may utilize this power (on herself or others) to form spikes or talons of bone, either on the knuckles as an offensive weapon or all over the body as defensive “quills.” If bone spikes are used, the vampire or victim takes one health level of lethal damage (the vampire’s comes from having the very sharp bone pierce through his skin – this weaponry doesn’t come cheaply). In the case of quills, the subject takes a number of health levels equal to five minus the number of successes (a botch kills the subject or sends the vampire into torpor). These health levels may be healed normally. Knuckle spikes inflict Strength +1 lethal damage, while defensive quills inflict a hand to hand attacker’s Strength in lethal damage unless the attacker scores three or more on the attack roll (the defender still takes damage normally). Quills also enable the vampire or altered subject to add two to all damage inflicted via holds, clinches or tackles. A vampire who scores five or more successes on the Strength + Body Crafts roll may cause a rival vampire’s rib cage to curve inward and pierce the heart. While this does not send a vampire into torpor, it does cause the affected vampire to lose half his blood points, as the seat of his vitae ruptures in a shower of gore.

****Horrid Form

The Tzimisce use this power to become hideous monsters; naturally, this provides great advantages in combat. The vampire’s stature increases to a full eight feet; the skin becomes a sickly greenish-grey or greyish-black chitin; the arms become ape like and ropy, tipped with ragged black nails; and the face warps into something out of a nightmare. A row of spines sprouts from the vertebrae, and the external carapace exudes foul-smelling grease.
System: The Horrid Form costs two blood points to awaken. All Physical Attributes (Strength, Dexterity, Stamina) increase by three, but all Social Attributes drop to zero, save when dealing with others also in Horrid Form. However, a vampire in Horrid Form who is trying to intimidate someone may substitute Strength for a social attribute. Damage inflicted in brawling combat increases by one due to the jagged ridges and bony knobs creasing the creature’s hands.

*****Blood Form

A vampire with this power can physically transform all or part of her body into sentient vitae. This blood is in all respects identical to the vampire’s normal vitae; she can use it to nourish herself or others, create ghouls or establish blood bonds. If all this blood is imbibed or otherwise destroyed, the vampire meets Final Death.
System: The vampire may transform all or part of herself as she deems fit. Each leg can turn into two blood points worth of vitae, as can the torso; each arm, the head and the abdomen convert to one blood point. The blood can be reconverted to the body part, provided it is in contact with the vampire. If the blood has been utilised or destroyed, the vampire must spend a number of blood points equal to what was originally created to re-grow the missing body part. A vampire entirely in this form may not be staked, cut, bludgeoned or pierced, but can be burned or exposed to the sun. The vampire may ooze along, drip up walls and flow through the narrowest cracks, as though she were in Tenebrous Form (Obtenebration). Mental Disciplines may be used, provided no eye contact or vocal utterance is necessary – and if a vampire in this form “washes” over a mortal or animal, that mortal must make a Courage roll (Diff Cool or fly into a panic.


ELDERS

[ 6 ] Chiropteran Marauder

Similar to Horrid Form, the Chiropteran Marauder is a terrifying, bipedal bat, bearing a wickedly fanged maw and veined, leathery wings. This power confers all of the benefits of the Horrid Form, in addition to a few others. The mere sight of the marauder is enough to make mortals or weak-willed vampires flee in horror.

System: The vampire gains all the effects of the Horrid Form. Further, the Marauder's fluted wings allow flight at 25 mph (40 kph), during which the vampire may carry, but not manipulate, objects no larger than it can hold in its hands. If the player chooses to, she may make a Strength + Medicine roll (difficulty 6) to extend bony claws at the ends of the vampire's wings. These claws inflict Strength +2 aggravated damage. Also, the vampire subtracts two from all hearing-based Perception rolls (though he adds one to vision- based Wits and Perception rolls). Assuming the mantle of the Chiropteran Marauder costs three blood points.


[ 6 ] Blood Of Acid

At this level of mastery, the vampire has converted his blood to a viscous acid. Any blood he consumes likewise becomes acid, which is corrosive enough to burn human (and vampiric flesh) as well as wood. This effect is particularly potent when the vampire assumes the Bloodform. One of the side effects of this power is the complete inability to create new vampires and ghouls, or give blood to another vampire -- the acid would corrode them as they drank it. The obvious benefit, however, is that would-be diablerists are likewise unable to devour the Cainite's blood.

System: Each acidified blood point that comes in contact with something other than the vampire himself does five dice worth of aggravated damage. If the vampire is injured in combat, his blood may spatter on an opponent -- foes must make Dexterity + Athletics rolls to avoid the blood, which must be accomplished by splitting their dice pools. (Unless an opponent knows the vampire has this power, she's unlikely to split her dice pool on her first attack, which causes many Tzimisce to cackle with glee.)


[ 7 ] Cocoon

The Cainite can form an opaque cocoon from blood and other fluids excreted from her body. The cocoon hardens after a few moments, turning into a tough, white shell. This cocoon provides considerable protection to the vampire, even shielding her from sunlight and, to a limited degree, fire.

System: A vampire may only cocoon herself, and the process takes 10 minutes. Additionally, creating a cocoon costs three blood points. The cocoon offers complete protection from sunlight, and provides a number of dice of soak equal to twice the vampire's unmodified Stamina against all damage, aggravated or otherwise. It lasts as long as the Cainite wishes, and she may dissolve it at her whim, emerging from a pulpy, bloody paste. A vampire contained within a cocoon may still use mental Disciplines that do not require eye contact or other conditions to be met.


[ 8 ] Breath Of The Dragon

The vampire becomes like one of the terrible draculs of the Old World, able to exhale a deadly gout of flame. This flame does not hurt the vampire himself, though he may become trapped in flames if it engulfs flammable objects.

System: The flaming cloud affects a six-foot area, doing two dice of aggravated damage to anyone in the flames' circumference. This fire may cause combustible items to ignite, and it may ignite victims who suffer fire damage as per the fire rules.


[ 8 ] Oathbreaker

Prerequisite: Anarch

What greater oppression exists than the hated blood bond, so callously employed by the elders to bring their headstrong childer to heel? A symbol of the vast abuses of the War of Ages, blood bonds represent the ultimate tyranny: The subjugation of the self and the denial of freedom to make one's own way.

An enterprising Tzimisce discovered -- or perhaps rediscovered -- the secrets of shattering the blood bond over eight centuries ago, which played no small part in touching off the Anarch Revolt. With but a word, the Tzimisce could release a vampire from the shackles of the blood bond. And given the strange properties of Tzimisce vitae, this potential sometimes passed on to Cainites who didn't belong to the clan, especially after partaking of the Vaulderie cup with one of the fiends.

Needless to say, this is certainly a fool's bargain, but it is important for two reasons. First, the power of Oathbreaker is so rare that tales of its duplicity exist, and in fact form some of the legendry of the Anarch Revolt itself. Second, some suspect that this power provided the basis for the ritus that became the Vaulderie. It is a historical curiosity, to be sure, but every now and then, some powerful Tzimisce or other Cainite afflicted with Vicissitude manages to dupe a reckless and desperate Lick into emancipating himself with tainted blood. Better to have the fool bonded, even if imperfectly, to oneself than to the true lord of the dom.

System: The vampire spends a blood point and a Willpower point and imbues her blood with the ability to suborn blood bonds. Each blood point creates one draught's worth of blood that can be consumed in this way, and it retains this property for one night before it becomes dead and inert. The vampire who consumes the blood feels an immediate cessation of any blood bond that exists.

This freedom graces the vampire for one month and one night, whereupon the Kindred who activated the power may spend a Willpower point and replace the suborned (but true) blood bond with an illusory blood bond to herself. This replacement blood bond lasts for one night. Alternatively, she may spend ten Willpower in a single scene and sustain the illusory bond for one year and a night.

If the vampire replacing the bond chooses not to spend the Willpower point at the point when it would normally be renewed, the original blood bond returns, and the false one ceases immediately.


[ 9 ] Earth's Vast Haven

This power, developed in the nights when the Tzimisce were the terrible masters of Eastern Europe, allows the vampire to sink into and disperse himself through the ground. Unlike the Protean power of Earth Meld, however, the vampire actually dissolves his body into the ground; nothing short of a wide-area explosion can affect him, and he may not be dug up bodily. In addition, from sunset to sunrise, the vampire may see and hear everything happening in his environment through his mystical connection to the land. The mere fact that this power exists terrifies many Tzimisce, who are secretly unsure of whether or not the diablerie of their Antediluvian was successful.

System: This power costs six blood points to activate, and it lasts as long as the vampire wishes to remain contained within the soil. As per the Cocoon, the vampire may use mental Disciplines that do not require physical solvency or eye contact. He may communicate mentally with anyone who wanders into the area under which he rests.