White Wolf Wiki
White Wolf Wiki
Advertisement
Fetish (WTA) e

A Ratkin with a Pain Dagger, a Circular Saw Launcher and other various fetishes, art by Jeff Rebner.

Ratkin Fetishes are fetishes unique to the Ratkin.

Overview[]

Ratkin rarely create their own fetishes, preferring to steal what they can get from the unwary. Wererats can use fetishes created by any supernatural creature, but with a higher degree of difficulty. To activate a stolen fetish, a Ratkin must either spend an extra Gnosis point or make the standard activation roll, but at a +3 difficulty. For more nifty items to swipe, check out the Appendix of the Werewolf rulebook, the Werewolf Players Guide, the other Changing Breed books, or Tribebooks. There's plenty of loot out there for you to rip off.

List of Ratkin Fetishes[]

  • Allamande: Toothbite - Pain-dagger, Gnosis 5. It feeds on a victim's Willpower, sucking a point per attack. Toothbite then transfers one point of Willpower to Allamande for every three points she sucks. During interrogations, this can be very handy. Since the fetish drains the victim's Will, he becomes more compliant and easier to interrogate.
  • Lucky Bone - A old finger bone that dangles from a leather strap with an edge sharpened like a shiv. Points to the location of where opponents are going so as to not lose them.[1]
  • Pain-Dagger - Level 1, Gnosis 6 - (The signature weapon of the Warrior Ratkin. Created via the Rite of the Pain Dagger.) The Pain Dagger is a sacred blade crafted from something of significance to the Blade Save and bound with a spirit of war, of disease, or of pain. It is an expression of the purity of a Ratkin's devotion to the Warrior Aspect. The blade is only used in battle; once it is drawn, the Warrior's pride is at stake. Only a Blade Slave can own and bond to a Pain Dagger - stealing one from a Warrior is tantamount to stealing a piece of their soul, and any non-Warrior to own a Pain Dagger will not live to know the prize they have stolen. The Blade Slave must treat the spirit inside the blade with respect or face a significant loss of Renown. Drawing a Pain-Dagger takes a point of Gnosis, which automatically activates the fetish. It's an easy weapon to use - the difficulty to attack with it is 5, and it deals Strength + 1 aggravated damage to anything except the wererat bonded to the Pain-Dagger. Some Pain-Daggers allows the wererat to use a Charm of the spirit bound within. Each Charm increases the Pain Dagger's level by one. The wererat must take two dots of the Fetish Background per Charm. Each use requires an activation roll for the fetish. Any of the following charms are available if the character has bound an appropriate spirit: Airt Sense, Armor, Blast, Create Fires, Create Wind, Freeze, Shatter Glass, Short Out, or Tracking. Use the successes on the activation roll in place of any required roll or spirit Traits - Armor or Freeze would use the successes in lieu of the spirit's Rage or Gnosis, Shatter Glass or Tracking work as normal as long as the Fetish activation succeeds.
  • Pipes of the Swarm - Level 1, Gnosis 4 - For a young rat fueled by the need for vengeance, learning the Rite of the Swarm requires too much patience. Unfortunately, several talented young Seers have learned a short-cut. This mystical pipe has an angry young Rat-spirit trapped inside. Activating the fetish requires a powerful set of lungs, an atonal melody, and a successful Gnosis roll. Usually a Ratkin needs a damn good reason to summon a swarm, but not if he's using this fetish. The spirit is pissed off enough to summon one regardless of the circumstances. For each success on the activation roll, the swarm has one health level; these are "normal rats," as described in the Swarm section of Chapter Five. As one would expect, most rates who trade these items claim that theirs was the original fetish by the Pied Piper centuries ago.
  • Standard Issue Sunglasses - Level 1, Gnosis 6 - The Ratkin get everywhere but tend to be twitchy and easily noticed in a crowd. An air-spirit bound into a cheap pair of sunglasses, this fetish helps deflect suspicion. These sunglasses make humans ignore the presence of the Ratkin as much as possible.
  • Circular Saw Launcher - Level 2, Gnosis 5 - Ratkin Engineers pride themselves on ingenious engines of destruction. This device is composed of a long piece of plywood, a makeshift gun stock, several industrial rubber bands, and a circular saw blade. When properly used, the weapon launches a flying circle of steel through a method similar to the Gift: Shadow Throw. Any spiritually aware Ratkin can use it. Once the blade is activated, aiming it requires a Dexterity + occult roll, difficulty 7. If the Gnosis roll fails, or the aiming roll botches, it will injure the user instead of its intended victim. The whirling blades inflict three dice of aggravated damage, plus one for each success on the attack roll.
  • Automatic Map - Level 2, Gnosis 6 - The Ratkin tend to be rather proud of their knowledge of the underground world. That said, they're still fallible. They get lost, especially in unfamiliar territory. A map really comes in handy, but the places Ratkin go don't tend to have maps. So they make their own. The Automatic Map is a black sheet of paper, bound with an insect-spirit of any kind. When activated, the map begins to start drawing upon itself in charcoal. It lays out the entire cavern or tunnel structure around the Ratkin for a radius of one mile, including any structural damage or blockages. However, it does not map anything animal or human inside ever, it does not map anything animal or human inside the caverns, so it can't be used to track where people are. It's designed purely for the purposes of navigation. Once activated, the effect is instant, so if the Ratkin moves out of the radius, he'll need to reactivate the fetish. When the fetish is activated after the first time, the charcoal on the page blows off like dust first. clever Ratkin have employed this effect to blow charcoal into an enemies face, which works about as well as you could expect for a last resort; sometimes very well, sometimes miserably. Some Ratkin have designed an aboveground version of this fetish, employing a bird-spirit rather than an insect-spirit, but this variation is considerably rarer.
  • Rat Mask - Level 3, Gnosis 6 - Shadow Seers who have reached the pinnacle of their craft bind spirits into these fetishes. Such items are highly treasured by young adventurers and may only be used by Ratkin. A Rat Mask is shaped to resemble a parody of a human or other creature. Upon completion, the creator gives the mask an archetypal name, an apt description of what it represents. Examples include the Ubiquitous Tourist, the Overworked Mother, the Swaggering Tough Guy, the Beer-Swilling Yokel, and so on. As long as the Ratkin can do a passable impersonation of the mundane in question, no one will think of doubting the disguise. Anyone with the least amount of supernatural insight (either through Auspex Discipline, the Spirit Sphere, Spirit Sight, or some similar contrivance) may see the mask for what it is by actively looking for the mask wearer's true identity. The number of successes he rolls must exceed the number of successes on the Ratkin's initial Gnosis roll (difficulty 6).
  • Voodoo Blade - Level 4, Gnosis 6 - The purpose of the Ratkin is to eliminate people in large numbers. they may have been forced to abandon that role since then, but that doesn't mean that a few remnants of their true purpose don't find their way down through the ages. One of these is the Voodoo Blade. Almost certainly called something else originally, the effect of the blade is what has given it its current name. Bound with a snake-spirit, the voodoo blade is a short sword split into two points at the tip, like a snake's forked tongue. The Ratkin activates the blade after he strikes an opponent in a battle in which more than one opponent is involved in the struggle. If the activation works, then the blade cuts another opponent (whichever opponent is closest to the one just struck, and the blade can distinguish friend and foe), in exactly the same place. Both opponents suffer exactly the same damage (Strength +2, aggravated). Hitting an opponent with a Voodoo Blade is difficulty 6.
  • Nezumi Kite - Level 4, Gnosis 7 - Though devised in the distant past of the Japanese Ratkin, this fetish is as useful today as it ever war. On the ground, it is a quite visible, obviously bulky one-man kite. Once airborne, however, it is ideal for secretive reconnaissance. The Nezumi Kite may only be used at night and can only carry one person in Homid form (or possibly several in Rodens form at the Storyteller's option). Spirits of the night keep it from being seen, cloaking it with a variant of the Ratkin Gift: Cloak of Shadows. Spirits of the air keep it aloft; it can sail wherever the user desires after it is detached from its string. The kite can only move as fast as a gentle breeze, but can land almost anywhere.
  • Lots o' Whatever Bag - Level 5, Gnosis 7 - It sure doesn't look like much. A burlap bag, tied up with a bit of rope. But bound into this thing is a female rat-spirit, and rats are expert at breeding damn quickly. Anything put into this bag does exactly the same thing - it begins multiplying at a quite stunning rate. Every minute, the number of objects in the bag doubles. Put a single pebble into the bag, and in ten minutes you'd have over a thousand of them, except that they probably wouldn't all fit. Once the bag is full, the effect ends. There's a whole host of uses for this, and the Ratkin like them all. Even if the bag can't duplicate any gems, precious metal or coinage more valuable than a quarter, sticking a quarter in the sack is still easier money than working fast food at O'Tolley's. As an ammunition holder, it's really primo. But the possibility that would scare the rest of the Changing Breeds witless isn't any of these. The bag holds stuff really well too, you can pour water into it and it won't leak. No air escapes from it. And thus the truly frightening possibility make one of these and find a terminally ill patient somewhere, dying of a hideous airborne disease. And they're going to get them to cough into it. The fact that there are plenty of Ratkin crazy enough to do this even makes some folks glad they seem more intent on stealing fetishes than making their own.
  • Mystery Machine - Level 5, Gnosis 8 - This is one of the most valuable items a Ratkin can have: crash space on wheels. To mundanes, the Mystery Machine looks like a battered, dilapidated van, but wererat rituals turn it into a haven for a traveling rat pack. Though there is only enough room in the back for two or three humans to sleep comfortably, there is plenty of room for a deceit of rat-form wererats. The engine can only eke out mediocre gas mileage, but in a pinch, it can run of pure Gnosis. Praying or meditating inside the interior of the van will keep it running for a full day for each point spent. The vehicle is also difficult to track; the driver can activate the fetish, invoking the Gift: Silent Running to obscure it up to three times a day. The inside of the conveyance has been blessed so that those within can mediate safely. For anyone inside, lower the difficulty of all meditation or Rapture rolls by 1. The spirit of the van has also been awakened; it is fully visible in the Umbra while traveling through the physical world. Flashing the high-beams will allow the driver to take the vehicle into the Umbra; this requires each passenger to spend a point of Gnosis. The driver must then make a successful Gnosis roll against the difficulty of the local Gauntlet. While in the spirit world, the driver may activate the Charm: Airt Sense to prevent the vehicle from getting lost. Currently, there are only a tiny few of these fetishes in the world; Tunnel Runners have been known to kill to obtain one.

Hengeyokai Fetishes[]

(Nezumi) See Hengeyokai Fetishes here.

Trivia[]

  • Ratkin fetishes are often referred to as "Shiny Things," "Knick-Knacks" and "Doohickeys."

References[]

Werewolf: The Apocalypse Fetishes and Talens
Garou Ancestor · Apocalyptic · Artifacts · Auspice · Breed · Caern · Celestial · Claw Carvings · Cyberfetishes · Drums · General Fetishes · Klaives: Bane Klaives - Grand Klaives · Legendary · Masks · Natural · Scars/Tattoos · Softwere · Special Items · Talens · Torcs · Tribal · Umbral · WeaverTech: Hardware - Software - Wetware · Wyld · Wyrm
Kinfolk Kinfolk Fetishes · Kinfolk Talens
Fera Ahadi · Ajaba · Camazotz · Drums · Fylfot · Gurahl · Hengeyokai · Kitsune · Masks · Mokolé · Nagah: - Bindhi · Nuwisha · Rokea · Scars/Tattoos · Shiny Things · Trinkets · Toys
Fomori Wyrm
Mages, Dreamspeakers & Spirit Sphere General Fetishes · Trinkets
Fifth Edition Talismans Klaives · Legendary · Talismans · Talens
Advertisement