Lithe, tanned, dark-haired Hermes is the swift-footed messenger of the Gods. He has gone everywhere and done everything. A master trickster and illusionist, he tricked Apollo out of his cows and paid him back with music made with a harp of cow-guts. He stole his magic from Hera, wealth from Hades, and his traveler’s wits from Artemis. The other Gods are not always fond of him, but they can’t deny he has a certain playful usefulness.
The herald of the Gods makes a good diplomat and trouble-shooter, both for Gods and mortals, and he enjoys making deals that leave everyone but the Titans happy. As a God of merchants and travelers Hermes loves the mortal World and travels in it far more often than the other Gods do. He serves as the principal agent of the Dodecatheon and is often the first contact with the divine hierarchy. Hermes’ Chosen are often pressed into similar roles.
Devotion Attributes: Dexterity, Intelligence, Wits
Devotion Abilities: Athletics, Commerce, Legerdemain, Streetwise, Subterfuge
Devotion Basic Blessings: Conceal, Unerring Orientation, Voice of the Muse
Conceal
This Blessing allows you to blur objects in your possession, causing them to be ignored even if you are being searched. Such items appear or disappear on your person as you wish, staying cloaked from view so long as they are not actively in use.
Cost: 1 Gnosis
Test Pool: None
System:
Expend a simple action to conceal a weapon or other object you possess; the item must be no longer than three feet. Objects hidden with Conceal remain invisible as long as they are physically on your person. Conceal cannot be used to hide living beings (or parts thereof). Conceal cannot be used to hide negative space; it can hide a chair, but not a doorway.
If another individual is looking at an item when you Conceal it, the observer automatically sees through this use of Conceal. However, if the observer looks away for more than a few seconds (one turn in combat) she will lose track of the object and it will be concealed.
Conceal can be used to maintain the invisibility of up to ten objects at once. You may end an object’s Conceal at any time.
If you interact with a Concealed object, use it to attack someone, or otherwise draw attention to the object, it will become visible. If you place other characters in a position where they must logically acknowledge the object’s existence, the Conceal will fail and the object will become visible to all. For example, no one will notice a knife in a sheathe behind you, but if you reach back and obviously draw that knife, it will appear. People might not notice you carrying a book, but if you are struggling under the weight of a handheld anvil, it will become visible to all.
Unerring Orientation
No matter where you wander, you always have an unerring sense of where you are.
Cost: None
Test Pool: None
System:
This Blessing, once learned, is always active. In a locale she knows well, such as her hometown or a national park she visits every autumn, the Champion knows how to get from any point within to any other point. In an unfamiliar locale, her sense of direction defaults to a standard compass rose. Should someone give her correct directions in an unfamiliar locale, she retains them thereafter. If she studies a map of an unfamiliar city for five minutes, that information remains imprinted on her mind until she leaves that city for longer than a week.
For the cost of one Gnosis, this Blessing can also reveal to a Champion how far away and in what direction the location she considers home lies. Alternatively, if the Champion finds herself in a strange place—if she’s been drugged and kidnapped, for instance—this Blessing can tell her how far she is and in what direction she traveled from the last place she wasn’t lost.
Voice of the Muse
With concentration, you can cause your voice to emit from a location other than your own.
Cost: 1 Gnosis
Test Pool: None
System:
By spending 1 Gnosis and expending a simple action, you cause your voice to generate from thin air. Using this power allows you to make your voice emanate from any location within your line of sight or from any location with which you are familiar. When you use Voice of the Muse, you do not have to move your lips or otherwise show any signs of speaking. If you choose, you may allow one willing person to respond in kind; her voice will softly emanate just within your hearing. A character who has the Gift: Wolf Senses and is within three steps of the location where a Voice of the Muse emanates will overhear a conversation held through Voice of the Muse.
You can have only one application of Voice of the Muse in operation at a time. However, you can carry on two conversations simultaneously, one through Voice of the Muse, and one spoken normally. You cannot use other powers or supernatural effects through Voice of the Muse.
Rather than using Voice of the Muse on a target or location you can see, you can use it on any individual you are familiar with, regardless of range. Your voice emanates from just behind the target, allowing you to communicate with her. Further, if you wish, you may allow your target’s voice to echo back to you.
Devotion Intermediate Blessings: Fool's Gold, Hermes' Wings, Unbarred Entry
Fool's Gold
Beyond simply concealing items, tricksters occasionally make worthless leaves, rocks or sticks seem valuable—or otherwise make objects seem like things they’re not.
Cost: 1 Gnosis
Test Pool: Special, See Below
System:
The Chosen can disguise items up to the size of a person, but they Chosen must conceal the item in some way. They can then reveal the item as something else by spending 1 Gnosis and a Standard Action. (The Chosen could place a convenient object in a pocket or satchel where it can’t be seen and then activate the power at a later time, seeming to pull out something else that’s just the thing he needs.)
The source object must be about the same size as the illusory object and have some other trait in common, such as its shape, color or composition. For instance, the Chosen could make a sack of yellow autumn leaves seem to be a sack of gold coins. He couldn’t disguise a clay goblet as a huge diamond or a ballista.
Casual handling of the illusory item does not reveal its true nature, though breaking it or other violence does so. The object does not actually have the physical properties of the real object, but it appears to function as expected. Golden leaf-coins will fall, not flutter, and land with a heavy clink.
The item remains disguised for until the end of the scene. If any onlooker suspects a fraud, her player must test Wits + Alertness and succeed against the Chosen's Wits + Legerdemain to see through the deception. For purposes of this power, anything that the Chosen can hold in one hand counts as one “item,” so a handful of leaves could all be disguised at once. Fool’s Gold cannot make an item appear as a living creature, nor can it disguise a living creature. It affects only inanimate objects.
Hermes' Wings
This Blessing, named for the legendary sandals of the god unfetter you from the constraints of gravity allowing you to fly through the air.
Cost: 1 Gnosis
Test Pool: None
System:
Spend 1 point of Gnosis and use your standard action to sprout giant black-feathered wings. For the next 15 minutes, you can hover, fly, or float in the air, moving at your normal speed. While flying, you can carry up to 80 pounds of equipment for each dot you possess of the Athletics skill. Hermes’ Wings may be augmented with other supernatural gifts or blessings to increase your flight speed.
Unbarred Entry
Nothing can bar your entry from those places you wish to enter. You are able to slip past the most sophisticated locks and obstacles. Such is your connection with the spiritual world that you can even pass through solid objects, if you desire.
Cost: 1 Gnosis
Test Pool: None
System:
Expend 1 point of Gnosis and use your standard action to align yourself with the spirit world. For the next five minutes, you can travel through any obstruction that bars your path—locks open and traps fail to spring, allowing you ingress. You may even walk through solid objects that impede you, although you are still vulnerable to harm, per normal, and can still be the target of combat attacks. This power does not function when you are grappled, handcuffed, or otherwise restrained.
While your Unbarred Entry is active, you may see through solid objects by spending a simple action to do so. Nothing less than lead lining, or a two foot thick span of stone will impede your vision.
Devotion Advanced Blessings: Celestial Compass, Come Along, Impeccable Character
Celestial Compass
With a traveler's sixth sense, the Chosen can mystically feel her way to the nearest place of power, mystical gateway, or other strange place relative to her location. If she's standing in the ruins of the Minoan palace at Knossus, she can feel the way to the entrance to the Labyrinth. If she's on an boat lost at sea in the Aegean, she can feel the path to the gates of Atlantis. If her journey is carrying her toward the threshold of any of the many mythic realms connected to the world and the character puts her mind to finding that threshold, she can find it with this Blessing.
Cost: 2 Gnosis
Test Pool: Special, see below
System: The champion spends 2 Gnosis and three standard actions attuning herself to the world around her. As she does so, she declares either an intended location or an intention to discover something nearby. Depending on the choice, they make a test in order to successfully find their bearings. If they choose a specific location they make a test of their Wits + Awareness against a difficulty determined by the storyteller based on the difficulty of what place they are searching for. If they open themselves up to discovery, they instead test their Wits + Awareness against a static difficulty of 8.
Regardless of which decision they made, if they succeed, they feel an ethereal pull tugging them gently in the direction of their target. It is important to note, that this power gives the true direction of the target and does not follow the paths of roads, so the Chosen may find themselves directed through the path of a building or mountain they suddenly have to navigate around. Once a direction is determined, the ethereal pull lasts for one week or until the Chosen arrives at their destination.
When the character arrives, she gets a sense of what she has to do to enter (if some special requirement must be met). If she has to make a sacrifice to some hidden guardian, she understands that a sacrifice must be made. If she has to answer some riddle to gain admittance, she gets a sense to that effect. This Blessing won't tell her the specifics required for entry—it won't give her the riddle's answer, for instance—but it will give her enough information to put her search on the right track.
As a note, if the Chosen decides to discover something nearby, they sense the location and general nature of a nearby place of power or mystical significance — a shadowland, node, otherworldly gateway, lost caern, etc. The Storyteller will choose not the closest such locale, but the one that’s most interesting and narratively relevant.
Come Along
Most gifts that allow for supernatural travel apply only to the character who uses them. With this supplemental Blessing, however, the Chosen can bring other people whose presence they're aware of (and are willing) along with her when they use those gifts as if those others both had and used the gifts in question themselves.
Cost: 1 Gnosis
Test Pool: None
System:
Spend one Gnosis when activating a movement based gift of your own. You may choose a number of targets up to your Athletics Rating. While the effect lasts, each target moves in whatever supernatural way the Champion does. Only movement and entry based gifts can be conferred on others with this blessing. In addition, those actively moving while under an effect of a Gift shared by the Chosen gain +2 to all Dodge skill based tests as they move faster and more fluidly. This blessing, when activated, lasts for one journey.
If the Chosen spends an additional Gnosis, they can choose to affect an entire vehicle or boat (up to the size of a trireme) instead of individuals, bestowing the same effects (proportionally) upon the vehicle or ship and all those upon it.
Impeccable Character
Some Chosen are just too likable to take the blame. When the character gets into trouble with some angry witness or authority figure—be it the police, a mortal parent, one’s long-suffering spouse, etc.—he need only shrug haplessly, grin foolishly or do likewise.
Cost: 1 Gnosis
Test Pool: Charisma + Subterfuge vs. Resolve + Willpower
System:
The character spends 1 Gnosis and a standard action to make an opposed test with a target (typically an authority figure). If successful, the target decides that whatever the character did wasn’t really that bad. The character gets a slap on the wrist, a stern warning or no punishment at all, depending on when he chooses to use it.
When this Blessing is successfully activated in order to calm the anger of an authority figure after a disaster, the player may also choose to pay one additional Gnosis. If they do, then, the Chosen just glances at someone else, makes a brief comment about “Well, it wasn’t my idea…” or somehow gives the impression that the narrowly-averted trouble was the result of someone else’s malfeasance. So impressive is the Chosen's demeanor that the disciplinary authority figure becomes convinced that the other individual had something to do with the event, and is in some way culpable.
Exceptional Success:
The Chosen gains a +3 Bonus on all further social tests against the target for 24 hours.