Custom Blood Magic: Path

The Path of the Graveborn taps into the necromantic energies surrounding the processes of death and decay. Unlike the Bone Path which focuses merely on creating and controlling zombies, practitioners of the Path of the Graveborn recognize that the vampiric form is that of a walking corpse and they have thus learned to draw from the power of Necromancy to augment the user in a variety of ways and provide a greater state of synthesis with death itself.

Masters of the Path of the Graveborn are scholars of death, entropy, and decay, often living or studying near cemeteries, crypts, and mausoleums. They care little for Noddist theories as to why Caine rejected God’s grace, instead fixating on how the vampiric condition holds power over death. While the Tzimisce clan seeks to perfect their bodies through the mastery of flesh, practitioners of this Path view that as a flawed approach. To a student of the Path of the Graveborn, only by studying the process of death and spark of unlife can perfection be unlocked. They believe that the flesh is merely the vessel for a stronger source of power. Unsurprisingly, more than a few practitioners of this Path also follow the Path of Metamorphosis.

•Lord of the Flies
From the moment of death, vermin are attracted to a corpse. By expelling necromantic energies from your body, you beckon a thick black swarm of blowflies. These are quickly followed by flesh flies, dung beetles, and moths that surround you in a thick cloud of carrion insects hungry for dead flesh.

SYSTEM
Spend 1 point of Blood and an action to summon a swarm of carrion insects that envelop you until the end of the next turn, obscuring you from your enemies and making it more difficult for you to be targeted by a Firearms, Throwing Attacks, or power that requires line of sight. This grants you a +2 trait defense against line of sight attacks or powers. You may make ranged attacks and use line of sight powers normally. You may choose which types of insects you summon; practitioners with Egyptian ties are known to favor scarabs while South American practitioners often employ bot flies. When this power expires, the insects withdraw inside you and are consumed, healing you for 1 point of lethal damage.

••Death's Scythe
The iconography of Death carrying a scythe is derived from the Greek god Chronos and Cronus, a lesser god of the harvest who carried a sickle used to cut grain. In mythology, Chronos eating his children was an allegory for time devouring all things. The scythe becomes an image that reminds us that death reaps the souls of the living like a farmer who harvests crops from the field. Manifesting your power over death, you call forth terrible necromantic energies and shape them into the visage of Death’s most terrifying weapon.

SYSTEM
Spend a Blood and a simple action to summon an ethereal scythe bathed in a cold blue flame. If you have access to it, you may use the Quick Draw ability (or Fast-Draw ability) to quickly produce the weapon instead of spending a simple action, but you must pay the cost to activate the maneuver. This weapon is an extension of your necromantic powers and cannot be given to another character nor enhanced by other powers such as Quietus. You may make a successful Melee attack with the weapon that does base of 1 point of aggravated damage and converts additional damage from Potence to aggravated. The weapon possesses the named traits Deadly and Brutal, you may bid these traits for a challenge but if you lose the challenge the Scythe shatters and must be summoned again. The scythe functions with any Potence powers you have.

Once created, this weapon cannot be broken even with Elder levels of Potence, nor removed from your hands, nor can it be handed to another character, picked up or used by anyone else. Once conjured, the scythe remains material for 1 scene or hour.

•••Reaper's Due
Archetypal concepts of death and money are often intertwined, with deities such as Hades and Baron Samedi having jurisdiction over wealth in addition to the afterlife. To these figures, the souls of the departed are theirs to claim, pledged either through willful agreement or ancient laws. By leveraging these debts, you exert power over those who drift closer to death, assailing them with necrotic energies.

SYSTEM
Spend one Willpower and concentrate and visibly point to your target as you make her mortality the subject of your attention. Thereafter, whenever she spends or loses a point of Willpower in your presence you gain a +1 bonus in offensive challenges against her for each point of Willpower she has spent or lost over the next 10 minutes, up to a maximum of 5 points. In addition, this person cannot break line of sight for the duration of this power within 50 feet. The Necromancer has an otherworldly focus on their target

You may only have one designated target at a time. If you choose an additional target, any effects against your previous target fade and the count of how many times she spent Willpower in your presence resets.

••••Knitted Flesh
The necrotic energies that make up the necromancer's body can be bent towards keeping the Necromancer going in most fights when they are stretched out over a period of time. They are able to gain additional benefit from their focus of Will with the ability to stoke the necrotic energies to restore your form.

SYSTEM
This power requires the caster to spend a Blood to activate this for 10 minutes.  During that time any activity that requires a willpower expenditure also triggers knitted flesh.

Upon activating this power and whenever you spend a point of Willpower to retest a challenge, you may immediately heal health levels, either 3 lethal or 1 aggravated per activation. You must spend Willpower to gain this benefit; abilities that allow you to forego the actual spending of Willpower cannot be used in conjunction with this ability. Quell the Beast or other powers that stop the Necromancer from spending Willpower will stop this power, however, if the Necromancer spends a permanent Willpower through the use of another discipline this will engage the healing effect of the power regardless if such powers are used.

•••••Death Perfected
To live as a vampire is to deny one’s mortality, holding onto life by drinking the blood of the living. By wrapping yourself in energies from the Shadowlands, you transcend the vampiric state and fully embrace the inevitability of death and the power it brings. To confront you is to oppose mortality itself, a terrifying ordeal even for the so-called Undead. This transformation is a dramatic one as you emerge as an unrelenting force of entropy that is devoid of life.

SYSTEM
Spend 1 Willpower and an action to channel necromantic energies throughout your body, flooding you with the power of entropy and transforming you into an unmistakable yet undeniably powerful figure of perfect death.

In this form, the finality and single-mindedness of death drives your actions and purpose making you much harder to control or influence. You may add 1/2 your permanent Physical attributes rounded down to your Mental or Social attribute when defending against Mental or Social challenges.