Chaos (Scion)

Chaos is the Purview of confusion, anarchy and formlessness.

Associated With: Dionysus, Kalfu, Loki, The Morrigan, Set, Sun Wukong, Susano-o

Eye of the Storm
Dice Pool: None Cost: 1 Legend per scene When the Scion finds herself caught up in a chaotic situation unrelated to her—whether she’s dodging a tornado’s debris or emerging from a bar to find a berserk mob rushing toward her to clash with a line of riot cops down the street—she can activate this Boon and become an island of calm in the tumult. She is miraculously untouched in the confusion, and she remains so for as long as she doesn’t actively involve herself. She still suffers normal environmental movement penalties, but environmental dangers such as falling rocks, stampeding beasts or thrashing rioters all fail to touch her.

Hornet's Nest
Dice Pool: Intelligence + Awareness Cost: None If the Boon’s activation roll succeeds, the Storyteller should determine and reveal in general terms what action the Scion can take to either cause the most chaos in the scene or defuse the potential chaos inherent in the situation. The revelation should be something simple like “opening the parrot cage,” “staying in the hallway,” “winking at the Scion of Sif” or “calling the Scion of Ptah’s cell phone.” The Storyteller should explain only which action will lead to which outcome, not how.

Paralyzing Confusion
Dice Pool: Wits + Empathy Cost: 1 Willpower This Boon turns a person’s rational thoughts into seething, chaotic noise. On a successful activation roll, the victim freezes in place, suddenly unable to think, speak or act. He’s unaware of what goes on around him, and he has no memory of the moments before or after the use of this Boon. The effect lasts for a number of actions equal to the successes on the activation roll, and it erases the victim’s memory for an equal amount of time before the roll. If the victim has more dots of Legend than the user, the power doesn’t work. If the victim has an equal Legend rating, the activation roll is contested against the victim’s (Willpower + Integrity + Legend).

Sabot
Dice Pool: Intelligence + Craft Cost: 1 Willpower The Scion can break even the most complicated machine with just the power of her mind. She just stares at the machine in question and her player spends a Willpower and rolls (Intelligence + Craft). If the roll succeeds, the character causes the machine to break down and cease functioning immediately. The number of successes the roll generated then lingers until the machine is repaired. In order to repair the object, a character must accumulate an equal number of successes on an extended (Dexterity + Craft) roll.

A Scion can use this Boon on a given object only once at a time. That is, she cannot use Sabot on the same object a second time until it has been fully repaired from her first application of the Boon. Also, this Boon works only on complex machines, not simple ones. (Sabot won’t make an inclined plane suddenly not work.) It doesn’t work on machines crafted by characters of higher Legend.

Recurring Distraction
Dice Pool: Wits + Empathy Cost: 1 Legend per point of penalty The Scion sings a chorus from a silly song (any Ray Stevens tune will do) or makes some awful witticism (such as, “A good pun is its own reword.”) and uses this Boon to stick that random bit of inanity into the mind of every person who hears and understands her when she does it. Resisting the effect requires a (Willpower + Integrity + Legend) roll that nets more successes than the Scion’s player rolled. Those who cannot resist the effect suffer a distraction penalty to all rolls equal to the number of Legend points the Scion’s player spent to activate the effect (up to a maximum equal to that Scion’s Legend). This distraction lasts for 24 hours.

Labyrinthine Lingering
Dice Pool: Wits + Awareness Cost: 5 Legend The Scion stands in the middle of a crossroads, a hallway or an intersection — any place where a choice of direction could be made — and summons the confusion of chaos into the area. For the rest of the scene, anyone who enters that intersection becomes unable to determine direction. Compasses wildly spin, GPS locators lose their signal and landmarks shift and can’t be pinned down. The Chaos-user remains able to navigate, but anyone else who isn’t touching the invoking Scion becomes completely turned around. When a traveler passes through the area, no matter what precautions he takes, he becomes disoriented and exits in a random direction.

This power doesn’t affect anyone with a higher Legend rating than the invoking Scion. Other creatures with Legend ratings may attempt to resist it with a (Perception + Awareness + Legend) roll, pitted against the invoking Scion’s initial successes. Mortals and creatures without a Legend rating have no defense and are automatically misled.

Crawling Chaos
Dice Pool: Wits + Empathy Cost: 1 Willpower + 3 Legend This Boon inflicts a nastier version of Paralyzing Confusion (Chaos •••). Its effects last longer and are transmissible. The Scion activates it just as she activates Paralyzing Confusion, subject to the same restrictions based on relative Legend. The first person she targets suffers the effects for one hour per dot of Legend the Scion has. The seething riot of contradictory thoughts also erases the victim’s memory of events for the same amount of time before the Boon affected him.

When the next hapless victim comes close enough to see and recognize the first victim, she too suffers the effect as if the Scion had targeted her with it. The next person who comes along after that and sees either one of them is likewise subject to the effect. Anyone who can see an affected victim clearly enough to recognize that victim (regardless of whether the witness actually knows the victim personally) is subject to the effect. It doesn’t matter if the new victim is looking at a previous victim through binoculars, a sniper scope or on a live broadcast. Only characters with an equal or greater Legend than the Scion who used the Boon stand a chance to resist this mental paralysis, as they’re the only ones whose players actually get a roll to resist.

The Scion who used the Boon remains immune to the transmission of her own effect. Resisting the effect once with a successful (Willpower + Integrity + Legend) roll is proof against it thereafter from every affected party until the duration lapses. Fortunately for everyone involved, the paralysis lasts only as long as it affects the initial victim. No matter how widespread the effect is, when the initial victim snaps out of it, everyone else does too.

Instant Riot
Dice Pool: Charisma + Presence Cost: 1 Willpower + 5 Legend The Scion stands before a crowd and shouts some incendiary catch phrase such as, “Remember Kent State!”, “Rangers lead the way!” or “See you all in Sto-Va-Kor!” (Whatever’s appropriate to the circumstances.) If the activation roll succeeds, a riot breaks out. Five people per success on the roll immediately lose all sense of decorum and civility and start wrecking the joint. They work together en masse, to cause property damage and to chase down and attack hapless victims who don’t go with the flow. (Such victims usually include people who flee the chaos rather than wholeheartedly joining the mob, as well as the riot cops who inevitably have to deal with the rioters’ shenanigans.)

The riot carries on for a number of hours equal to the Scion’s Legend, unless the police manage to put a stop to it sooner. Anyone who participates in the madness retains full memory of every awful thing he or she did, and the shameful memory wipes out all of a rioter’s Willpower points for the week following the riot. Generally, only mortals will allow themselves to be swept along in the riot, but titanspawn and opportunistic Scions might decide to ride the wave too. (Doing so still wipes out their Willpower afterward.) Scions who practice the Chaos Purview must have a higher Legend than the one who incited the riot in order for Eye of the Storm (Chaos •) to protect them from the rioters.

Insanity
Dice Pool: Manipulation + Empathy Cost: 5+ Legend The God can touch his victims’ minds and overwhelm them with the essence of pure chaos. The God need only be able to see his victims in person as his player rolls (Manipulation + Empathy) and spends five Legend points. With the base activation, the God can affect a number of targets equal to his Legend. Each additional Legend point he spends adds another number of victims equal to his Legend. Each victim’s player resists with a (Willpower + Integrity + Legend) roll. (The Storyteller can roll once for a group of extras.) This power has no effect against a character with higher Legend than the one using it.

If the roll succeeds and a victim is a mortal or a supernatural creature of Legend 1–4, that victim goes completely and permanently insane. He has no impulse control, no sense of right and wrong, and no understanding of the consequences of any action. If the victim is of Legend 5–8, he remains insane for only a number of days equal to the threshold successes on the activation roll. If the victim is of Legend 9 or better—but less than or equal to that of the God using the power—the insanity lasts only a number of hours equal to threshold successes. Should a victim survive his bout of insanity, he emerges into lucidity with no memory of what happened to him while his mind was away.

For this power to work, the victim must have a rational thought process to disrupt. It does not work on mindless creatures or beings who are already insane.

Unlikely Pattern
Dice Pool: Wits + Craft Cost: 1 Willpower + 10 Legend The God picks up a series of items, then throws them up into the air. When they land, they amazingly come together in the form desired by the God or in a position that the God wishes. The difficulty of this trick depends on the number of items used and the complexity of the final item. Use the accompanying table as a guideline.

Not every item created in this fashion comes out quite right. If the player scored an even number of successes, the object functions as desired. If the player scored an odd number of successes, the item has some sort of quirk, flaw or dramatically-appropriate hindrance. Normally, an item created in this fashion falls into its component parts at the end of the scene. If the player spends a permanent dot of Willpower, the object remains permanent. This expenditure must come before the God knows whether or not the item is flawed, though.

Shuck Fate
Dice Pool: Wits + Occult Cost: (1 Willpower + 5 Legend) per bond A God with this Boon is slippery in the strands of Fate. If the God accrues a Fatebond in a scene, he activates this Boon and shuffles the coil of destiny onto another character. The person—or people—to whom the God would have been newly Fatebound are now Fatebound to the target character instead. After circumstances force the Storyteller to roll the God’s Legend as a dice pool to determine Fatebinding, the God’s player may roll (Wits + Occult). The difficulty is equal to the number of successes on the Legend roll, and that threshold must exceed the successes on a roll of (Willpower + Integrity + Legend) from the character onto whom he intends to shuck his Fatebonds. If the God has successes left over, the power works. He may then spend (one Willpower point and five Legend points) per Fatebond generated by the aforementioned Legend roll. Having done so, the God ducks the tightening bonds of Fate and sees the other character ensnared in them.

Since he’s spent Legend to empower a Boon, though, the God is subject to one last Legend roll. He can’t use this Boon to shirk it either. Any Fatebinding that arises from that roll applies at its full strength to the character onto whom he foisted his other Fatebonds.

Unintended Purpose
Dice Pool: Wits + Craft Cost: 1 Willpower + 10 Legend It doesn’t matter if you can’t tell a hawk from a handsaw. With this Boon, the character can use any item he has at hand as if it were another completely different item of a similar size. He touches the item and spends one Willpower point and 10 Legend points as his player rolls (Wits + Craft). For a number of days equal to the roll’s successes, the item he’s touching serves in all ways but appearance as another item of his choosing. If he sacrifices a permanent dot of Willpower, the effect is permanent.

The original item that is put to its unintended purpose must be larger or equal in size (though not necessarily mass) to the item as which it is being used. Also, both items must be nonliving, mundane objects that can be found or produced by mortal effort in the World. For instance, the God could cause a football to act as a grenade. (Simply pull the laces out and punt the ball, and three seconds later it goes off.) He could also cause a grenade to act like an apple turnover. (If he can catch the grenade and use this power on it before it explodes, he can eat it with no harm done.) With this Boon, a God pretty much becomes the main character in a cartoon he’s also writing and drawing.

Avatar of Chaos (The Void)
Cost: 1 Willpower + 30 Legend For one scene, the character becomes The Void. The Void is without shape or size. It can consume a thriving metropolis or burrow inside the consciousness of an unborn child. When The Void passes over an area, men go mad—tearing at each other’s flesh, lining up in perfect fractal patterns, spelling out the secret names of the Titans in the blood of their loved ones or screaming until they die of exhaustion. The Void breaks down the physical structure of solid things it looks upon, reconstructing them into impossible configurations. Unprotected Gods can only stare in confusion as The Void passes. Titans turn against each other, rebuild what they have destroyed or become as cultured and refined as their divine offspring until their base natures reassert themselves.