Facility with this Discipline is considered the dividing line between what makes a Kindred a Mekhet with a peculiar feeding habit and a confirmed member of the Morbus bloodline. Any Kindred can choose to feed from diseased mortals if he’s willing to risk spreading infection to the rest of the herd, but only the Morbus can turn the effects of their feeding predilection into this formidable and dangerous Discipline.
Cachexy allows the user to selectively spread, inflict or worsen the effects of any of the myriad diseases he carries at any given time. Some of the effects require the character to touch his intended target, while the dangerously high-level ones eliminate that impediment and render users walking biological hazards.
When a Morbus intentionally spreads a disease with Cachexy, the player decides which of the diseases his character has sampled is inflicted. The specific disease isn’t important as far as rules are concerned, but the choice should have some sort of resounding effect on (or be driven by) the themes of your story. For the basic rules on diseases, see p. 176 of the World of Darkness Rulebook.
Probably the most important power of this Discipline, Diagnose helps Morbus vampires identify suitable vessels from the throngs of the kine. The power reveals the taint in someone’s blood as it moves through his body, and it calls out to the Morbus’ Beast.
Cost: None
Dice Pool: Intelligence + Medicine + Cachexy
Action: Instant
Roll Results
Dramatic Failure:
The character receives a completely false or misleading impression of the subject’s condition.
Failure:
The character receives no impression at all of the subject’s condition.
Success:
The character receives a sense (lasting a scene) of who in his line of sight carries infected blood.
Exceptional Success:
As per success, but the character can also intuitively identify what diseases people carry.
A Morbus can also use Diagnose to identify Kindred who’ve been feeding on tainted blood (and whether those Kindred are Morbus themselves). Uses of Obfuscate, however, confound this power as surely as they confound the naked eye. Diagnose detects only those diseases that are currently active in a creature’s body. Pathogens that travel through the air, that are sealed in biohazard containers, that grow in a test tube or that thrive on a dirty countertop are undetectable.
Contact with the blood of a Morbus might result in infection from whatever diseases he has sampled, but this power ensures it. By smearing a hand-held object or a small area (up to a square yard) with a point’s worth of his Vitae, the Morbus contaminates that object with a supernaturally resistant strain of one of the diseases he carries. Should a mortal or Kindred (other than the Morbus who activated the power) touch the affected area with bare flesh or touch or ingest the affected object, that person risks being infected.
Cost: 1 Vitae
Dice Pool: No roll is required to activate this power.
Action: Instant
The disease remains hardy and viable from the time it is applied to the object or area until the sun rises the next morning, or until someone touches it and is infected. While the disease remains in waiting on the object, it cannot be washed away or sterilized by any normal means except fire, but neither can it be spread through the air. After the sun comes up, it dissipates completely as if it were never there.
Once contact or ingestion transmits the disease, a reflexive Stamina roll is made for the victim. If it fails, the disease takes hold and thrives, affecting the character as per the normal rules for diseases. (Kindred victims become carriers only.) Should the roll succeed, the victim eradicates the disease from his system. If an exceptional success is rolled, the subject is immune to further mystical attempts to inflict the same disease. Victims who are affected can transmit the disease normally.
Once a Morbus successfully infects a victim with Contaminate, or identifies a pre-existing disease with Diagnose, he can call out to it with the power of his Blood and intensify its effects.
Cost: 1 Vitae
Dice Pool: Wits + Survival + Cachexy – subject’s Stamina
Action: Instant
Roll Results
Dramatic Failure:
The Morbus accidentally sends the disease into remission for the rest of the story. If the victim is only a carrier of the chosen disease but is not affected by it (be he Kindred or just a semi-lucky mortal), a dramatic failure scourges the disease from his system entirely.
Failure:
The character is unable to affect the victim in that turn.
Success:
The character inflames the victim’s condition temporarily, inflicting a -2 modifier to all of the victim’s rolls for a number of turns equal to successes rolled.
Exceptional Success:
As a success, plus the victim collapses before he can take an action in the first turn. He is unable to rise or otherwise act until the next turn.
Invoking this power imposes certain effects on the subject at the Morbus’ discretion. The exact details of those effects are best left to the player and Storyteller to decide based on what disease is inflamed, but they have a generic, quantifiable impact. Be it due to a splitting headache, overwhelming nausea or intense muscle pain, the victim suffers a -2 distraction penalty on all rolls for actions (except reflexive actions) for a number of turns equal to the successes achieved on the power’s activation.
A Morbus cannot use this power on a single victim more than once at a time. It can be used repeatedly to extend the effects of the disease on the victim, however.
The power affects only mortal carriers or sufferers of a disease.
Although it is not the most immediately deadly application of Cachexy, this power is the one that is most widely feared by other Kindred. A Morbus can use it to infect a rival’s entire herd out of spite, turn an entire coterie into plague-dogs like him, or taint broad swaths of victims at the local Rack so that they’re suitable vessels for only his ilk.
Cost: 1 Vitae per turn
Dice Pool: Intelligence + Medicine + Cachexy
Action: Instant (That is, initial use is instant, but the effect can be multiplied over several turns as long as the player is willing to keep spending Vitae.)
Roll Results
Dramatic Failure:
The character infects no one, and he cannot use any Cachexy power for the rest of the night.
Failure:
The character infects no one, and he cannot use Plague-Bearer again for the rest of the night.
Success:
The character infects up to three mortals or one Kindred with a chosen disease per success rolled. The same number of victims can be infected in each turn thereafter when Vitae is spent.
Exceptional Success:
No additional effect beyond the staggering number of people who can be infected.
By concentrating and burning the blood within himself, a Morbus can spread one of the diseases that he carries to a crowd of unsuspecting victims. Those victims (be they mortal or Kindred) can then go on to spread the disease themselves until the Morbus is the epicenter of a potentially devastating outbreak.
If the player spends one Vitae and succeeds on the activation roll, the Morbus infects up to three mortals or one Kindred per success. If the first attempt is successful, another Vitae may be spent per turn thereafter to infect the same number of people. No rolls are made in subsequent turns, but perpetuating the infection requires all of the character’s concentration. The character can perform simple actions such as standing up, looking around or pretending to drink a beer at a bar. He can even move up to his Speed in a single turn. He cannot engage in combat, walk from room to room looking for people to infect, engage in conversation or even so much as tie his shoes while using this power. The effective range from which a character can infect victims is 10 yards per dot of Stamina that he has.
So, if three successes are achieved when this power is activated, up to nine mortals or three Kindred can be infected in the first turn. Each turn thereafter, another nine mortals or three Kindred can be infected if a Vitae is spent.
Once Vitae expenditure stops or the vampire’s concentration is broken, the disease cannot be spread any further. The power must be activated anew if the spread is to continue.
Once the Morbus has begun to use Plague-Bearer, his chosen victims are affected as per Contaminate with concomitant reflexive Stamina rolls and subsequent effects.
Once a Morbus infects a victim with Contaminate or Plague-Bearer (or identifies an infection with Diagnose), he may wreak havoc with the person’s health. By calling on the power of his tainted blood and its sympathy with that of the victim, he can send the subject’s disease into a destructive frenzy that more than likely proves fatal.
Cost: 1 Willpower
Dice Pool: Wits + Survival + Cachexy – subject’s Stamina
Action: Instant
Roll Results
Dramatic Failure:
The Morbus sends the disease into remission for the rest of the story. If the victim is only a carrier of the chosen disease and is not affected by it (be he Kindred or just a semi-lucky mortal), a dramatic failure scourges the disease from his system entirely.
Failure:
The character has no effect on his chosen victim.
Success:
The character automatically inflicts a point of lethal damage per success rolled.
Exceptional Success:
As a success, with no additional effect.
If the Morbus activates this power successfully, he accelerates the pace of the disease eating away at a victim to such an extent that the subject starts to die immediately, regardless of any medication he might be on or how advanced the disease is. For every success rolled, the victim suffers one point of lethal damage automatically as buboes or bloody lesions erupt on his flesh, ulcers spill stomach acid, or what have you. This effect occurs in the space of a single turn and the disease returns to its normal pace thereafter, assuming the victim survives. The power has no effect on other Kindred.