Merits are special capabilities or knacks that add individuality to your character. They’re purchased during character creation or with experience points over the course of your chronicle.
The Merits in this chapter are organized alphabetically into three broad categories: Physical, Mental and Social. Some apply to your character’s basic traits to enhance them in particular situations. Some have prerequisites that must be met before they can be purchased. For example, a character with the Gunslinger Merit must have a Dexterity of 3 and Firearms of 3 or higher to be able to accurately fire two weapons at the same time. By the same token, some Merits apply drawbacks that balance out their inherent advantages. A character with the Fame Merit, for example, is treated like a star wherever he goes — but has a hard time blending into the crowd when he wants to.
Each Merit has a number of dots (•) associated with it. These dots represent the number of points that must be spent to purchase the Merit. Some Merits allow for a range of dots (say, • to •••). These allow you to purchase a low rating if it’s appropriate to your character concept, or you can start with a low level and increase it over time with experience points.
A character is born with some Merits or develops them early in life, while others can be acquired through trail and error, training and effort later in life.
The first kind can be acquired at character creation only and are labeled as such. The second kind can be acquired during play with experience points.
Merit dots must be purchased sequentially with experience points. You have to buy • and then •• before your character can have ••• or more.
The Possessed is tended to by an animal guardian; it’s quite often a black animal, though it may also be an animal that is oddly-colored (an albino, for instance, or a creature whose feathers or fur shows patterns that are not common or ever found in nature). The animal is profoundly loyal, and will protect the Possessed at the cost of its own life (though if that happens, this Merit will need to be re-purchased). The character may still at times need to succeed on a Manipulation + Animal Ken roll to communicate her wishes (which are not purely empathic), but she gains +3 dice on this roll.
The number of dots purchased in this Merit indicate the general strength of the attendant hell-familiar. One dot is usually equivalent to something small (such as a raven). Two dots represent an animal with similar traits to a cat. Three dots provide the character with a beast similar to a dog. (Traits for these three animals can be found on p. 203, World of Darkness Rulebook.)
The Possessed character has an embodied familiar with a physical body—a small imp. The imp, like the Animal Familiar above, is profoundly devoted to its Possessed master (really, it’s more devoted to the demon than to the human host, though imps are allowed to favor the mortal soul, instead). It will throw itself into harm’s way only if the character demands it, however. The Animal Familiar does so without question or command, but imps can be a bit cowardly—an Imp Familiar needs to be urged into combat (or cajoled, or threatened).
If an Imp Familiar is slain, its Infernal spirit usually discorporates and returns to whatever Hell from whence it came. Sometimes, though, it latches onto its master and feeds off his memories, drinking deep of the hunter’s soul to sustain itself in ethereal form. In game terms, a Possessed character’s player may, upon the destruction of his embodied familiar, choose to immediately spend 10 experience points as a reflexive action to preserve the demon as a Twilight Familiar (see Inferno, p 127). Stats for the Imp Familiar can be found in the sidebar below.
Imp Familiar Traits
Attributes: 5/4/3 (divide among Mental, Physical and Social)
Skills: 9/6/3 (divide among Mental, Physical and Social); the familiar receives a free dot in Brawl, Larceny or Stealth
Willpower: Equal to Resolve + Composure
Essence: 10 (10 max)
Initiative: Equal to Dexterity + Composure
Defense: Equal to lowest of Dexterity and Wits
Speed: Strength + Dexterity + 5
Virtue: Choose Virtue
Vice: Any. Most familiars share their master’s Vice, but not all. A familiar regains all spent Willpower by fulfilling its Vice once per chapter, just as a mortal does for fulfilling her Virtue.
Morality: Familiars have no Morality score.
Size: 3 or less
Health: Equal to Stamina + Size
Vestments: Choose two Innate Vestments from the imp’s primary Vice category.
Innocuous: Embodied familiars are very good at not being noticed by others. Anyone but its bonded master suffers a –2 penalty on Perception rolls to notice the familiar, unless it does something to draw attention to itself.
Through the Eyes: By spending a point of Willpower, the master of an embodied familiar can shift his perceptions to the familiar. He sees what the familiar sees, hears what it hears, and so on. He is oblivious to his own surroundings while viewing through his familiar, but still possesses tactile sensation (and thus he is aware of any damage or physical sensation to his own body). Ending this viewing is a reflexive action and requires no roll.
A Twilight Familiar is a spiritual entity with no proper physical body of its own. A Twilight Familiar is also known as a “fetch.” Twilight Familiars can temporarily manifest like ghosts (see Manifestations, p. 210 in The World of Darkness Rulebook), but their ephemeral bodies are otherwise invisible and intangible to the physical world. A Twilight Familiar must manifest or use Numina to affect anything in the physical world—except for its master, whom it can touch at will. (Its master can also see and speak with the familiar freely, even if he cannot see or hear into Twilight.) A Twilight Familiar often leaves behind a subtle sign of its presence, even when it is not manifested. A whiff of sulfur might waft from its location, or the lights may flicker in the room when the entity is present. A Twilight Familiar, when manifested, often represents its Possessed master’s Vice: a Gluttonous character may have something that resembles a bloated, tumor-besieged bullfrog, while a Lustful character may instead be served by a lithe succubus or priapic incubus. Stats for the Twilight Familiar can be found in the sidebar below.
Twilight Familiar Traits
Attributes: 3/3/2 (allocate dots in any order among Power, Finesse and Resistance)
Willpower: Equal to Power + Resistance
Essence: 10 (10 max); the demon regains 1 point of spent Essence per day spent in its master’s presence. A familiar can also regain spent Essence by witnessing (or causing) acts related to its Vice.
Initiative: Equal to Finesse + Resistance
Defense: Equal to highest of Power and Finesse
Speed: Equal to Power + Finesse + 5
Virtue: Choose Virtue
Vice: Any. Most familiars share their master’s Vice, but not all. A familiar regains all spent Willpower by fulfilling its Vice once per chapter, just as a mortal does for fulfilling her Virtue.
Morality: Familiars have no Morality score.
Size: 5 or less
Corpus: Equal to Resistance + Size
Born of Sin: The Twilight Familiar is a base creature, born of sin and capable of calling that sin out in others. The familiar can manipulate the presence of its Vice, enhancing or manipulating its manifestation in a creature, mortal or otherwise. The target need not have the same Vice as the demon; he must merely be experiencing the emotion. A character whose Vice is Pride can still feel Lust for a beautiful woman, or Envy of a neighbor’s new car, for example. The demon cannot create a Vice where none exists. Enhancing a Vice, making an individual feel the emotion more strongly, requires the expenditure of 1 point of Essence and a contested roll of Power + Finesse versus the target’s Resolve or Composure, whichever is higher. The familiar can produce a moderate shift with a success; mild attraction might become infatuation, or infatuation might become full-blown obsession in the case of Lust, but mild attraction cannot be turned into full-blown obsession directly. An exceptional success, however, allows the demon to fan even the tiniest spark of Vice into an inferno. The changes last for one minute per success. The demon cannot enhance the same Vice in the same target more than once per scene.
Manipulating a Vice, changing its target, requires the expenditure of 2 points of Essence and a contested roll of Power + Finesse versus the target’s Resolve or Composure, whichever is higher. Success allows the demon to slightly alter the target of a character’s emotion. For example, a character feeling Sloth toward his work might have that laziness redirected toward laziness regarding investigating those weird sounds in the basement, or a man proud of his status as a player might instead be made to focus that Pride upon his ass-kicking prowess— which might cause problems if he’s never been in a fight in his life.
Numina: Assign three Numina.
Anchor: The demon’s master is considered to be its anchor to the material world, although there is no limit to how far a familiar can travel from its master. See Anchors on p. 209 of the World of Darkness Rulebook.
When a familiar manifests, use the following modifiers:
Location - Modifier
Profane or blasphemous site (desecrated church, massacre location) - +3
Place associated with the demon’s Vice - +2
Occult location (ley line nexus, pagan temple, etc.) - +1
Within line of sight of a holy symbol (cross, Star of David, statue of Buddha) - –1
Within line of sight of a church synagogue, temple, etc. - –2
Holy ground - –3
Demons have their own tongue, known colloquially as the Dragon’s Tongue. What are the origins of this strange language? Why is it for some a series of hisses and clicks, while for others it is a mad susurration of sibilant noises? Frankly, few know; some suggest it is a remnant language cobbled together from the Babel-speak of angels, of God, and of Adam and Eve. Others say it’s more a conceptual meta-language, a tongue that is as much meaning as it is sound. All demons know it, but the Possessed do not automatically have access to it: it seems that, for some, once the demon has taken possession it can- not always parse its understanding of the Dragon’s Tongue through the host’s plainly human mind. However, those Possessed who purchase this Merit at 1 dot find that their minds do understand it, and can move their mouths to speak it. Those Possessed who purchase this at 2 dots find that they can communicate with all demons (within and without) all the more completely: they gain +1 to Social rolls with demons outside their bodies, and they gain +1 to any Contest of Wills rolls made against the demon within their bodies.
In regard to dealing with demons, this Merit allows the character to speak and understand the language of demons, allowing her to summon and negotiate with them without using the usual rituals (found in the previous chapter). Demons aren’t necessarily impressed by this knowledge—some, in fact, consider it an affront. Likewise, this Merit does not allow the character to command demons; it simply removes many of the obstacles to talking to them. The game mechanics for using Dragon’s Tongue to call and interact with demons are explained on p. 83.
Dragon’s Tongue can be acquired at any point in a character’s life. Some characters (seventh son of a seventh son) have it from birth, others gain this dubious blessing later, perhaps as the result of a curse or a failed summoning ritual. Dragon’s Tongue can be purchased as part of a demonic pact, though the demon granting it generally works in a clause that prohibits the character from using the knowledge to control or take advantage of that particular demon.
Unlike the other Merits in this section, any character can purchase this Merit. In addition, characters with supernatural templates can purchase the Dragon’s Tongue Merit.