Hecate is a goddess in ancient Greek mythology, most often shown holding a pair of torches or a key and in later periods depicted in triple form. She is variously associated with crossroads, entrance-ways, light, magic, witchcraft, knowledge of herbs and poisonous plants, ghosts, necromancy, and sorcery. She was the only child of the Titans Perses and Asteria. Hecate assisted Demeter in her search for Persephone, guiding her through the night with flaming torches. After the mother-daughter reunion became she Persephone's minister and companion in Hades.
Devotion Attributes: Charisma, Manipulation, Intelligence
Devotion Abilities: Awareness, Hearth Wisdom, Occult, Rituals, Theology
Devotion Basic Blessings: Eyes of the Dead, Night Eyes, Sight of Hidden Places
Eyes of the Dead
You are no stranger to corpses and the remnants of hewed flesh. You have the ability to glance at a corpse and understand the manner of its death.
Cost: None
Test Pool: None
System:
Target a true corpse within line of sight and expend your simple action. You instantly know the manner of that creature’s death, as well as when the death occurred and whether the corpse has been moved or otherwise altered. Further, by spending a standard action in concentration, you can sense the presence of corpses within 100 yards and discover their locations.
Additionally, by spending 1 Gnosis, you can also disguise the manner of a corpse’s death, rendering the body in every way as though it had died in a manner of your choosing and erasing all traces of any other injuries or reason for its death. Once you have invoked this power on a corpse, others cannot tell that the corpse has been tampered with this Blessing.
Night Eyes
The Champion becomes attuned to the darkness, able to perceive in even the darkest abyss.
Cost: None
Test Pool: None
System:
Once learned, this Blessing is always active. Darkness no longer inflicts visibility penalties on the character. They can see in pitch-blackness almost as well as they can see in bright sunlight, losing only the ability to perceive colors. (Objects they see in darkness are black-on-black yet perfectly distinguishable in a way that’s conveniently impossible to describe to someone who doesn’t have this Blessing.) The Champion cannot see through physical impediments, however.
You also gain a +2 wild card bonus to your Dodge and Stealth test pools when you are in dim or darker lighting.
Sight of Hidden Places
The world is never what it seems at a mere glance. Truth hides beneath the deceptive illusion of normality, if only you dare to seek it. After taking a moment to attune yourself to the energies imbued into a place, you learn everything special or hidden about the location. You intuitively know about hidden passages, secret caves, or buried treasure. If you are looking for a mundane object hidden within the location, you immediately know its location.
Cost: 1 Gnosis
Test Pool: None
System:
By spending 1 point of Gnosis and spending a full turn doing nothing but concentrating, you can mystically attune yourself to a place. If you are in a building, you immediately learn its layout and number of inhabitants at that moment. You receive accurate information about the building’s design—where each room is, whether there are secret passages or hidden chambers, and so forth. In addition, you also learn the location, approximate size, and general type (humanoid or animal) of all living (and undead) things within.
If you are outside and away from a city, you know the geographical lay of the land within a mile of your current location and can locate hidden caves, hollows in trees, or buried treasure. Within a city, you only obtain information about the layout and structure of two city blocks. If you seek a lost item, such as a map, a scroll, or a hidden trove of gems, you can locate it immediately by expending a standard action.
You can only be attuned to one place at a time. Sight of Hidden Places does not directly pierce Blur of the Milky Eye or other supernatural means of hiding, but it does allow you to know the number of creatures in the location and their general locations, even if they are supernaturally hidden.
You also gain a +2 wild card bonus to your Dodge test pool when you are attuned to the location in which you are attacked.
Devotion Intermediate Blessings: Coils of the Serpent, Shadow Step, Shambling Hordes
Coils of the Serpent
You can summon forth dark serpentine tentacles that spring from your flesh, entangling your enemies and holding them in a viselike grip or shielding you from attack. Some believe that this Blessing reflects a darkness from a time before memory. Others believe that this power is a tangible manifestation of the Dark Umbra.
Cost: 1 Gnosis
Test Pool: None
System:
Spend 1 point of Gnosis and expend your standard action to sprout four serpentine tentacles from your abdomen. Each tentacle is six feet in length, comprised of shadow and mist. These Coils of the Serpent act independently of you, each functioning as a single sentient creature, but remain attached to you. Each Coil of the Serpent has 6 health levels, has one standard action each turn that acts on your intuitive, and has a test pool of 6.
Coils of the Serpent have two different methods of attack:
• The coil may strike any target within two steps, inflicting 2 points of bashing damage per successful strike.
• The coil may attempt the Grapple combat maneuver without spending Willpower.
In mass combat, Coils of the Serpent can help you with the Assist Attacker or Assist Defender mass combat tactics, using the same rules for NPCs, but not both.
Coils of the Serpent have no ability to think and cannot be targeted by Mental and Social powers. If you are incapable of attacking a target, your arms are also incapable of taking hostile action against that target.
Shadow Step
Your attunement with the darkness is so great that you can do more than draw darkness into this world; you can actually travel through it. This power allows you to travel short distances, stepping into one shadow and emerging from another.
Cost: 1 Gnosis
Test Pool: None
System:
Spend 1 Gnosis and expend your standard action to step into one shadow and exit from another, teleporting up to 50 steps in any direction.
To use Shadow Step, you must step into a patch of natural darkness. You immediately exit from another natural shadow within your line of sight, as though it were your next step. Shadow Step cannot be used in brightly lit areas and cannot be used if you are grappled.
You can bring another individual with you, so long as you hold her in a firm grip. To do so, you must spend 1 additional Gnosis to Shadow Step and bring the subject along. If the subject is unwilling, you must Grapple the target before using Shadow Step in this manner.
It is not possible to take more than one additional character with you when using Shadow Step; you also cannot bring items that you cannot carry easily.
Shambling Hordes
By summoning your necromantic might, you empower deceased bodies with the raw essence of death, animating the rotting flesh. So long as a corpse is mostly in one piece, it can ignore physical debilitation – shuffling on broken legs, or seeing despite empty eyesockets – to obey your will.
Cost: 1 Gnosis
Test Pool: None
System:
Spend 1 Gnosis and use your standard action to cause a true corpse to rise and obey your verbal commands. You must already possess (and have with you) a suitable corpse to animate in order to use this power. At any given time, you can control a number of zombies equal to the number of dots you possess of the Occult skill. Each zombie must be animated separately.
You can cause corpses to animate within their graves, even if you cannot see such corpses, so long as you are aware that corpses are in the area, such as by using Eyes of the Dead. It may take such zombies several turns to reach you, as they slowly dig or hammer their way out of graves or mausoleums.
The creatures created with this power are zombies, with very little sentience and absolutely no creativity. The zombies attempt to obey your requests and follow your orders. These zombies are relatively permanent; they last until you release them, or until they take enough damage to incapacitate them.
A zombie cannot perform downtime actions or act independently, although it can perform simple tasks while unsupervised, such as sweeping the floor or attacking anyone who enters a room.
Devotion Advanced Blessings: Gnosis Drain, Shadow Craft, Stygian Lance
Gnosis Drain
Gnosis is the very stuff of life, fueling its mysteries, wonders, and secrets. Because of its mystical nature, Chosen of Hecate can steal Gnosis and turn it to their own purposes. You’ve learned to suck the Gnosis from your enemies and use it to recharge your own spiritual batteries. This power can cripple shapeshifters and consume spirits.
Cost: 1 Gnosis
Test Pool: Intelligence + Occult vs. Resolve + Willpower
System:
Spend 1 point of Gnosis and use your standard action gesturing towards a target no more than 25 steps away from you. If you succeed in an opposed challenge, you mystically draw 3 points of Gnosis from your victim into yourself. This energy cascades out of your enemy’s skin in a shimmering light into your open hand, to be absorbed instantly into your system. The target senses that you have somehow sucked away a portion of her life-force and will experience it as a painful loss.
In addition, you have learned to absorb the supernatural resources from other awakened creatures in the same manner. This power recharges your Gnosis pool, but it does not protect you from the consequences of ingesting such substances. For example, if you drain vitae from a vampire, you are susceptible to the effects of the blood bond.
You may attempt to use Gnosis Drain on the same target again, if you failed against her. This is an exception to the rule preventing you from repeating a failed Mental challenge against the same target.
Exceptional Success:
You steal 4 points of Gnosis from your target, rather than 3.
Shadow Craft
Reaching out to the darkness itself, the Chosen of Hecate are able to twist that darkness to their will.
Cost: 1 Gnosis and 1 Willpower
Test Pool: None
System:
This Blessing allows for two effects. First, the Champion can change the shape of a projected shadow in any way he sees fit as long as 1.) they can see it and 2.) they maintain the shadow’s original surface area in the finished shape. They can move the shadow around in defiance of ambient light sources, break it into bits and bend and stretch it any way they want. Doing so costs nothing, and the shape in which they leave the shadow remains thus for a number of hours equal to their Gnosis Rating. The complexity of the finished image is determined by the Chosen's Occult Rating.
The second effect costs one Willpower and one Gnosis. The Chosen reaches into the nearest shadow, thinks of an item they need but do not have and pulls out just such an item made of solid shadow. Items retrieved thus must be relatively simple and not mechanical. The most complex item a Champion could produce would be a plain longbow with a stout shadow string. The most common items Chosen create with this Blessing are weapons, but wrenches, ropes, chairs, doorstops, flutes, shields, fans, and all manner of simple objects are possible. The objects are just as sturdy and useful as their material counterparts, and they can withstand even the brightest direct light. The Champion may create (and have active at one time) as many objects at once as they have points of Occult.
Stygian Lance
Deep within the Underworld, powerful tempests and storms ravage the landscape, ranging from rains of plasm to lightning-flashes of soulfire. You can unleash this dark power, hurling a lance of pure oblivion toward your enemies.
Cost: 1 Gnosis
Test Pool: Charisma + Occult vs. Dexterity + Dodge
System:
Spend 1 Gnosis and use a standard action to hurl a bolt of darkness from the waters of the River Styx. Make an opposed challenge using your Charisma + Occult versus the target’s Dexterity + Dodge. If successful, this attack deals 3 points of aggravated damage, and it can strike individuals in the Underworld – including wraiths, physical travelers, and individuals whose souls have been stolen – as well as those on the physical plane. Damage from your Stygian Lance cannot be reduced or negated, but can be healed normally.
Exceptional Success:
Your Stygian Lance deals 4 points of aggravated damage, instead of 3.