Terrible Flesh

A vampire’s body does not always change as the creature ages, nor does it necessarily need to shift or swell as the fiend’s Blood grows thicker, more puissant. For some, though, especially those creatures possessing this Devotion, the body does and can shift, growing to accommodate its awful lurch forward in power.

Cost: 1 Vitae
Dice Pool: Stamina + Resolve + Protean
Action: Instant

When the vampire’s Blood Potency increases by one, the vampire has a chance to invoke this Devotion. It cannot be invoked at any other time—only when the creature’s Blood becomes more concentrated does he have the chance to perform it. It must be performed that night; failure to do so means the vampire has lost the chance to mold his body to his swollen might.

Successes gained on the roll can be spent in a number of ways:

• A success may be used to increase the vampire’s Size by 1 (which then also increases the vampire’s Health score).
• A success may be used to grow some manner of armor—each success spent in this way adds +1/+1 to the vampire’s existing bodily armor.
• A success may be used to increase the creature’s Max Vitae pool by 1, even beyond what his Blood Potency allows (though on the next Blood Potency dot gained the Max Vitae goes up to the expected level of the new dot, but no more beyond that).
• A success may be used to increase the creature’s Strength score by 1. This does not increase the creature’s Speed score, however (see below).

The flesh doesn’t appear normal after use of this Devotion. The player may define how the flesh appears (though the character has no choice in the matter), and it’s always horrible. The skin bloats or cracks. It may suffer strange striations, stretch marks or black streaks. It may occasionally rupture and leak some kind of clear run-off. (Though this causes no damage, it may incur minor irritation.) Anything from bed sores to reptile scales are possible.

However, invoking this Devotion has two downsides.

The first is that, regardless of the number of successes, as long as one success is gained on this Devotion, the vampire’s Speed suffers a permanent –3 reduction to Speed. Every time he uses this Devotion successfully, his Speed suffers. This does mean that, eventually, it’s possible the vampire will be largely without the ability to move.

The second downside affects the vampire’s Humanity score. The flesh is so plainly inhuman that it is actually more difficult for the vampire to convince himself of his own connections to the human world and mortal physiology. As such, every time this Devotion is used successfully, degeneration rolls suffer a cumulative –1 penalty.