Life Powers (FiD)

Starfox's Blades in the Dark Powers

Life power is about life energy. You heal and improve living things.

This is life and life-force at the primal level; the essential principle that fuels all creatures, empowered and mundane. It is at the opposite scale of the evolution from Mind, which deals in intelligence, yet Mind could not exist without Life. It is the antithesis of death, but without death Life would become static.

Life attacks either increase your own physical strength and agility to deliver supernaturally powerful attacks or causes wounds to spontaneously appear on living things and undead but does nothing to things that never lived.

Life is a wide but diffuse energy, there are no life creatures.

Life Abilities

Action	Basic	Advanced	Master	Apex
Dice	—	Minimum 2d	Minimum 4d	Minimum 6d
Stress	No fumble (2+).	Succeed (4+).	Full success (6).	Critical (2 sixes).
Attune	Vital Vision Sense Life.	Vital Vanish Dispel Life.	Vital Vigor Healing.	Vital Vortex Area recovery.
Command	Provoke Profanity Negative emotions.	Provoke Procastrination Sleep.	Provoke Proclaimation Read emotions.	Provoke Progress Permanent change.
Consort	Living Lustre Cosmetic changes.	Living Loom Transform self.	Living Legacy Transmute Crew.	Living Law Transmute crowd.
Finesse	Lithe Leash Ride living creatures.	Lithe Lunge Finesse attack.	Lithe Leverage Bodily reaction.	Lithe Launch Untiring travel.
Hunt	Sanguine Scout Track living creatures.	Sanguine Strike Cause Harm.	Sanguine Sovereignty Control flora and fauna.	Sanguine Surge Cause a surge of blood.
Prowl	Agile Adaptation Hide among the living.	Agile Athletics Empower your own movement.	Agile Assembly Crew Prowling.	Agile Approach Teleport home.
Skirmish	Life Leverage Resist Life Harm.	Life Lance Skirmish attack.	Life Lash Gain Scale.	Life Lockstep Group Action.
Study	Wise Watcher Identify Life.	Wise Word Analyze Life.	Wise Witness Life history.	Wise Weave Area analysis.
Survey	Savage Sight Sense things of Life.	Savage Senses See through Life.	Savage Scrying Spy through Life.	Savage Savant Wide Life Survey.
Sway	Empathic Echo Read motivations.	Empathic Charm Project affection.	Empathic Endearment Project positive emotions.	Empathic Enlist Change emotional setup.
Tinker	Bio-Binder Emulate bio-tools.	Bio-Blender Emulate a bio-workshop.	Bio-Builder Emulate a bio-lab.	Bio-Braid Emulate a bio-factory.
Wreck	Disfigure and Digest Smash living matter.	Deteriorate and Digest Rot Life materials.	Disintegrate and Digest Silent rot.	Devastate and Digest Wide-range rot.

Expanded Life Abilities

Attune

Attune Life has an unique ability among powers, it can heal by reducing Harm.

Vital Vision

Sense Life.

You can see Spirits of all kinds and detect all kinds of living creatures and living objects such as plants. You can narrow the search as desired.

This is so broad that it is of less use than other similar powers, but you can use it to detect creatures with Life powers.

• Limited outcome: what you can clearly see.
• Standard outcome: hidden things.
• Great outcome: behind a wall.

The position usually starts controlled, with the usual consequence that you cannot try again.

Vital Vanish

Dispel Life.

Negate any power on a living thing. You can negate powers affecting any living thing, but you cannot dismiss creatures.

You can force any Spirit to materialize demilitarize. Forcing a Spirit to materialize is easy, but limited in range; if the creature can get away from you it can disappear again. Limited effect only works on spirits within reach. Standard effect can reach out up to a hundred meters. Great effect reaches out kilometers.

Life is good at dispelling since you can negate or counter any power targeting a living creature. Dispelling can be used as a defense against others' use of powers, or it can be used to break continuing effects. Dispelling is often used as a setup action to help another character in a situation when the opposition is using powers. This usually improves the position of the supported action and can work in addition to other Set Up actions. When used directly, the effect is usually limited unless the opponent is relying on powers for their safety. Against an opponent that uses astral projection or turned into a merman to breathe underwater you have a better base effect. When its dramatically appropriate that a power is hard to dispel, often because it is the crux of the situation, this may not negate the power but instead give you a clue to what you need to do to resolve the situation.

Forcing a spirit to materialize or de-materialize is easy, but limited in range. The spirit cannot return under its own power for a while, usually after the score.

• Limited Outcome only works on spirits within reach.
• Standard Outcome covers an area based on your tier (p 220).
• Great Outcome reaches out to a range covered by tier (p 220).

Dismissing a creature back to its home plane and usually requires a high Outcome.

• Limited Outcome: Dismissing a creature that wants to return.
• Standard Outcome: Dismissing a weakened or damaged creature.
• Great Outcome: This is the norm, most dismissing requires this Outcome.

This can also remove temporary effects that are not strictly Powers or Harm but reduces the targets vitality, like drunkenness, hangovers, bruises, colds, and lingering drugs. You can cure withdrawal symptoms which over time helps the victim fight addiction.

Vital Vigor

Healing.

Use life energy to reduce Harm. The Outcome needed depends on the level of Harm you are working to reduce.

• Limited Outcome erases one box of level 1 or 2 Harm.
• Standard Outcome erases one box of level 3 Harm.
• Great Outcome erases level 1 Harm, reduces all other harm by one level.

Specific types of Harm that do not involve conventional hurt may not be recoverable this way, but this should be rare. Permanent aliments and Harm more than 9 moths old cannot be healed this way.

The Position depends on the situation, used in a score this is usually Risky, done in your lair the position is Controlled. Consequences might give the patient lingering injuries, prevent further Life healing, transfer the harm to you, or be the result of interference from your surroundings.

Vital Vortex

Area recovery.

Free living creatures within Range (p. 221) from life-affecting powers and stabilize the dying.

• Limited Outcome: Vital Vision on everyone in the area.
• Standard Outcome: Vital Vanish on everyone in the area.
• Great Outcome: Vital Vanish on everyone in the area and stabilize all dying creatures (reducing Level 4 Harm to Level 3), as Vital Vigor.

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Command

Command Life deals with negative emotions. The intensity of the emotion is set by the outcome and the target's self-control and tendency to such emotions. It is hard to excite a calm creature and might be impossible to make a true pacifist start a fight. You cannot create thoughts or change positive emotions. If you create a negative emotion about something the target has a positive attitude to, yu create ambivalence and tension.

Position mainly depends on the scene; are you in a dangerous spot, in a hurry, or dealing with a dangerous target? Consequences range from changing your own emotions, provoking the target, causing Heat, or creating permanent enmity.

Provoke Profanity

Negative emotions.

You control negative emotions.

This is commonly used as a setup action to help some other social interaction to strengthen or calm negative emotions like fear, hate, inferiority, uncertainty, disgust, and the like. If such an emotion is already present you can intensify it to provoke an immediate outburst; otherwise the effect is slow and limited.

Provoke Procastrination

Sleep.

Tiredness, laziness, and unreadiness function as emotions you can play on. Targets may just doze a few seconds while still standing, enough to rush past a guard, or you may make them gradually relax, move into a sedate position, and sleep. This is similar to an attack in position and effect; it is pretty easy when used on unsuspecting target(s), much harder during a fight. Only works on living creatures.

Provoke Proclaimation

Read emotions.

You can sense the mood of crowds, judging the morale of an army or the mood of a town. This allows you to predict routs, riots, rebellions, and other upheavals and to judge how harsh you can be without provoking people. Often used as a Set Up for other command actions.

Provoke Progress

Permanent change.

This is similar to Provoke Profanity, but you can inflict the full range of emotions in others, and the result lasts for days and can be made permanent. Usually used to create fear or respect, you might make any emotion dominant in the target. This imposes emotional pressure but does not alter beliefs, memories, or reasoning.

• Limited outcome inflicts only negative emotions, or positive emotions of short duration.
• Standard outcome can inflict any emotion, and you control whom it is directed at. This can make the target afraid of dogs or in love with a specific person.
• Great outcome allows subtle manipulation that can change the target's attitudes in selected situations.

Permanent effects require a long-term project.

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Consort

Consort allows you to change your own form and later that of other living creatures. Often Consort rolls are not actually made when you use the power to change your appearance or form, it is rolled when in the social situation and effect and position is decided at this critical point.

Living Lustre

Cosmetic changes.

You can make cosmetic changes to your own body, growing or losing hair, changing coloration, gaining or losing up to 10% of height and weight, changing apparent gender, and similar cosmetic changes.

You can use this on your entire Crew as an Advanced ability.

Living Loom

Transform self.

You assume the form of a mundane humanoid or animal. This is a true physical transmutation and you can have it last until the end of the score. You can only change into existing species, but you can vary cosmetic detail. When appropriate, your new form can use Basic and Advanced Earth powers inherently without risking stress.

Living Loom can work as a set-up action for a number of other actions but may penalize other things, as appropriate to your new form.

• Limited outcome allows you to transform into yourself like you would have been, had you grown up as the creature whose form you assume. Those familiar with you will recognize you.
• Standard outcome can make you a generic creature, very hard to recognize as yourself.
• Great outcome allows you to assume the shape and some of the personality of a specific creature you have studied.

Living Legacy

Transmute Crew.

This is Living Loom applied to your Crew or to a willing or helpless creature. The duration depends of the outcome.

• Limited outcome is very temporary.
• Standard outcome lasts for the duration of a score.
• Great outcome lasts a long time and potentially becomes permanent, depending on the the story.

If you also want to make the target unrecognizable, that requires additional outcome, see Living Loom.

This is sometimes used as a kind of poetic justice, transforming the target as a punishment, a curse that is very hard to break.

Living Law

Transmute crowd.

This is where Consort becomes similar to an Attune ability to summon. You transform a number of existing creatures and give them a task that they will perform with gusto, turning them into single-minded minions. Targets must be willing, Non-Sentient like animals, or just very minor figures in the plot, many tiers below you.

This creates a gang cohort (p 96) that they can be given bit parts as servants or laborers or fight and chase for you. Such goons are more useful for chasing and cornering targets than in actual combat.

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Finesse

Lithe Leash

Ride living creatures.

You can communicate emotionally with and ride any living but non-sapient creature capable of carrying you. You can instead enhance your run speed and agility to elite levels, which increases your Effect when racing on foot. You can do this for your crew as an Advanced power.

Lithe Lunge

Finesse attack.

You can use the power of Life as a Fine and Potent close-range attack, similar in effect to a Fine and Potent dueling sword or pistol. Life attacks enhance your physique or strain, tear, or rupture living tissue through enhanced force or biological disruption. You cannot cause wounds to spontaneously appear on automatons, robots, elementals, or other non-living creatures.

Lithe Leverage

Bodily reaction.

Trigger a minor bodily reaction in a target, such as a gasp, twitch, or physiological release. The effect is small, precise, and momentary. When it makes sense in the story that this creates leverage, you may roll Finesse without expending any time. Resolve this as a normal Set Up, then immediately roll the Action you are Setting Up.

Lithe Launch

Untiring travel.

Your crew and their living mounts can continuously travel at full speed without rest, food, or water. This does not prevent Harm from other sources such environmental dangers or combat.

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Hunt

Sanguine Scout

Track living creatures.

You can track living creatures by following biological signs such as blood, scent, or heat, even when no mundane trail is visible. This cannot track a specific individual without prior contact or a link.

Sanguine Strike

Cause Harm.

You can disrupt Life at a distance, attacking in a way similar in effect to a Fine and Potent rifle. You rupture tissue, overload organs, or tear muscle through directed biological force. This gives a clue as to your location, similar to that of any sniping attack. This does not work against unliving things, or against creatures such as robots or elementals.

Sanguine Sovereignty

Control flora and fauna.

You can control tiny flora and fauna in an Area (p. 221), manipulating the environment. This turns plants and tiny vermin such as mice and insects from nuisances into distractions, snaring limbs, or opening or closing paths through undergrowth. Things affected can only do what they normally do, but they do so with purpose.

Sanguine Surge

Cause a surge of blood.

Sanguine Strike turned into a Fine and Potent grenade. This allows you to fight many creatures at once, but carries a risk of collateral damage to living creatures, structures, and terrain.

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Prowl

Agile Adaptation

Hide among the living.

You can hide in a crowd or herd as if you were a typical creature in that group, even if you look nothing like them. Crowded streets, pens, and herds of animals are good hiding places for you. Position depends on how dangerous it is to be spotted, but also on the attitude of the creatures you are trying to hide among. You can even hide in a group of enemies, but this is a Desperate situation.

Agile Athletics

Empower your own movement.

You empower your own body, enhancing agility to elite levels. This does not allow anything that would normally be impossible, but within that limit you increase the Effect of Prowl actions to move.

Agile Assembly

Crew Prowling.

You can bring allies along when you use Agile Adaptation and Agile Athletics. Allies still use their own Prowl action. This often ends up being a Group Action.

Agile Approach

Teleport home.

You and your allies can teleport to any place in the same region where you have slept. This can be an old campsite, bedroom, or even the interior of a vehicle that might have moved on to a new location, as long as it is in the region where you currently are. This takes some time to use making it dangerous when under immediate threat.

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Skirmish

Life Leverage

Resist Life Harm.

Resist Harm from Life powers, Death powers, poison, disease, and similar effects. You increase the effect of Skirmish rolls for endurance in such environments. Roll Skirmish to resist such Harm. 1-3: No reduction. 4-6: Reduce Harm by 1 level. Critical: Reduce Harm by 2 levels.

As a Master power, you can protect an ally for a score; as an Apex Power, you can protect your crew. Allies roll their own Skirmish dice.

Life Lance

Skirmish attack.

You can use the power as a Fine and Potent close-range attack, similar in effect to a melee weapon or pistol. This can be the use of a normal weapon with enhanced strength and accuracy, or a touch that opens wounds on the target. You can only cause wounds to living creatures, not to things, robots, or elementals.

Life Lash

Gain Scale.

Your power strikes out in all directions, giving you Scale (p. 221) with a Life Lance attack.

Life Lockstep

Group Action.

Enable a Group Action when allies are wounded, exhausted, poisoned, or otherwise physically compromised — ignore penalties from Harm in this Group Action. You may do this even when some participants would not normally be able to contribute meaningfully due to physical limitation, Scale, or environmental constraint.

You lead the Group Action and roll Skirmish. Choose the Action most appropriate to the shared physical task. Each participant other than you rolls that Action. Stress to the leader is resolved as normal for a Group Action.

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Study

Study and analyze living and formerly living creatures and objects to gain insight and knowledge.

The outcome required depends on range.

• Limited outcome for touch.
• Standard outcome for line-of-sight.
• Great outcome to reach a target you know of or have a link to, but which is out of line-of-sight.

Position depends on the situation. Safely in your base, the position is Controlled. In the middle of a fight or when pinned down, the position is Desperate. Sometimes the thing you are researching is dangerous in itself, worsening position. Consequences may give you knowledge that lacks crucial details.

Wise Watcher

Identify Life.

You can identify living and formerly living creatures and objects and any ailments they suffer from. This gives mundane information, including physical strengths and weaknesses in narrative terms. It does not identify Powers or specific rules.

Wise Word

Analyze Life.

Learn the powers and abilities of something you analyze. Not restricted to mundane information, you also learn of any powers and rules in game terms.

Wise Witness

Life history.

You can read past events from living and formerly living things. You can use this on living and formerly living things that are not creatures, such as wood, bone, and leather, as well as fossils and processed fossil products. This includes previous owners, how the object has been moved around, and significant scenes in its history.

Wise Weave

Area analysis.

You use Wise Word on everything in an Area (p. 221). You can then use Wise Weave on three of these targets.

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Survey

Perceive and locate manifestations of Life powers and living creatures. The outcome you need depends on the target’s concealment.

• Limited Outcome finds those hiding behind cover and in far places you can only barely see.
• Standard Outcome can look behind walls and into hard cover.
• Great Outcome can look into far-away places and spots you had no idea existed, as long as life is present.

Savage Sight

Sense things of Life.

You can sense living and formerly living things and Life powers at a distance and understand their general nature. This is a basic spotting power, selectively sensing things related to Life.

Savage Senses

See through Life.

Choose a creature familiar to you or one you possess a link to, such as a body part or an item emotionally important to them. You move your point of perception and sense as if you were that creature as long as you maintain concentration. You perceive only the creature’s senses, not its thoughts or emotions. It is safest to choose a minor creature as a target; a powerful creature may sense the effect.

Savage Scrying

Spy through Life.

Choose a creature familiar to you or one you possess a link to, such as a body part or an item emotionally important to them. You see through the eyes of the closest living creature, which is often close enough to perceive the target.

This works like Savage Senses, but you get to select a creature or location you know of or have a link to.

Savage Savant

Wide Life Survey.

Enhances your senses impossibly, akin to using Sensory Symbiosis on each living creature within Range (p. 221). Creates a comprehensive mental image of the area, revealing numerous details simultaneously. It's challenging for targets to hide unless they are aware of the need to conceal themselves against every living thing.

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Sway

You play on positive emotions such as joy, happiness, enthusiasm, and love, either reinforcing or diminishing them. Sway is most effective on targets who are already socially, emotionally, or situationally exposed to you. This is not mind control; rather, it induces moods and hormonal reactions. You do not plant ideas or guide thoughts, but if you know what is on a person’s mind, you can improve their reaction to such thoughts. You cannot remove negative emotions. If you create a positive emotion where there already is a negative emotion, you create ambivalence and tension.

• Limited Outcome works if it follows the target’s existing impulses.
• Standard Outcome can convince a target with no particular stake in the matter.
• Great Outcome will convince a reluctant target, but not a passionate one.

Outcome in excess of what’s needed allows you to affect a number of targets appropriate for Scale at your tier (p. 221), as long as they are in a group. A possible Consequence is that people fall in love or otherwise overreact.

Sway Life powers allow Set Up actions of increasing power and complexity, but you need other powers or mundane interactions to direct the emotions you create.

Empathic Echo

Read motivations.

You can learn a living creature’s mood and immediate motivations. You can sense strong emotions of creatures you cannot see, especially if those emotions are directed at you. Limited outcome suffices against a nearby creature you can clearly see. You need greater outcome against a creature that is hidden or far away (Standard outcome) or behind a wall (Great outcome).

Empathic Charm

Project affection.

This projects positive emotions in relation to you, such as trust and friendship. You cannot give targets specific orders, but you can make them react positively and become more likely to follow your further suggestions.

Empathic Endearment

Project positive emotions.

Create a positive emotion and decide who or what it is directed at. Less intelligent creatures have simple emotions, along the lines of fight, flight, or mating. Intelligent and especially Sapient creatures have more complex emotions. Targets keep their own thoughts, colored by the emotions you give them. If the emotion is appropriate to the situation, it is likely to be acted upon. If acting on the emotion would contradict the target’s values or goals, it may only create a moment of confusion, which might still give you a brief opening.

Empathic Enlist

Change emotional setup.

Change the target’s emotions on a fundamental level, making them more positive overall without removing specific antipathies. You can create different emotions in different subjects, but to do so the subject must be brought up, either by something physically present or in conversation. This change fades over the next few days, but depending on further events and how other people react to this change of heart, it may influence the target’s attitudes long term.

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Tinker

You cannot create new life, but you can slowly modify it through the Master ability Bio-Builder. You can also tinker with materials governed by Life.

You can craft formerly living matter and other Life-related materials such as wood, bone, leather, hide, peat, rich dung, bird droppings, and guano (phosphates), substances deeply tied to life and fertility.

• Limited Outcome solves an immediate problem, then ends. Any effect achieved will last, such as a repair made with temporary tools.
• Standard Outcome construction, repair, or item lasts for the duration of a score.
• Great Outcome is semi-permanent. This does not make permanent kit, but it can make permanent effects to the setting, such as repairing a large construction like a bridge or wall.

Something larger than you are, very complex, or of higher Quality Level than your Tier increases the needed Outcome.

Position depends on the tranquility of your workspace and if you are working on something that is dangerous in itself.

For long-term projects, Tinker powers can substitute for missing tools, but that is all they do until you use the Apex ability.

Bio-Binder

Emulate bio-tools.

This substitutes for a biochemical tool kit. You can work organic materials and their derivatives as if you had appropriate tools and protective equipment.

Bio-Blender

Emulate a bio-workshop.

You can handle organic materials and derivatives as if they were clay. Liquids and gases briefly retain the shape and flow you impose on them. This substitutes for a biochemical workshop.

Bio-Builder

Emulate a bio-lab.

This substitutes for a biochemical laboratory. You can create complex items, including Fine and Potent equipment. You can create non-living but Life-related materials out of nothing, or transform one material into another material associated with a Form you know.

You can change living creatures while they are alive through a slow, dangerous long-term project with permanent effects. Anything more than a cosmetic change requires a Tinker roll when the project is completed to determine how well it holds. Any Consequences affect the target directly, are permanent, and cannot be healed. Bio-Builder may be used again to attempt to improve the result, at further risk.

Bio-Braid

Emulate a bio-factory.

You become your own biochemical factory. You can manufacture many and varied items as if using Bio-Blender, or create a large building, vehicle, or other construction.

In long-term projects involving construction or crafting, Bio-Braid produces many dozens of items with the effort of one item, at the usual Stress cost. Such creatures can breed true.

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Wreck

You can wreck living creatures and recently dead organic matter such as wood, bone, leather, hide, peat, rich dung, bird droppings, and guano (phosphates), substances deeply tied to life and fertility. You can also harm Undead by channeling Life power.

The Outcome required depends on the size and structural strength of the target.

• Limited Outcome: Create a car-sized hole in weak organic materials such as cadavers, hides, or flimsy wood.
• Standard Outcome: Create a car-sized breach in a structure made primarily of organic materials.
• Great Outcome: Affect something larger or stronger, such as large organic constructions or densely packed living matter.

Creating a smaller hole is not easier.

Position depends on the situation. A quiet workspace is Controlled. The general bustle of adventure is Risky. Direct attacks, massive crowds, or dangerous destruction are Desperate.

You can also attack in close combat or disrupt nerve function, deadening sensation and pain. Such effects may occasionally be beneficial, but are primarily a way to frame Harm rather than provide care.

Disfigure and Digest

Smash living matter.

You violently break living creatures, Undead, and Life-connected materials. In combat, this functions as a sledgehammer, enhancing raw physical force and causing concussive trauma. This is loud and destructive, leaving twisted remains and obvious damage.

You can instead disrupt nerves, disrupting sense of touch.

Deteriorate and Digest

Rot Life materials.

You destroy materials governed by Life as though they were degraded and brittle. This allows you to pulp organic matter, weaken structures, and collapse constructions made primarily from Life substances. In combat, this works as a Fine and Potent sledgehammer.

You can disrupt neural connections more deeply, paralyzing limbs or impairing bodily coordination.

Disintegrate and Digest

Silent rot.

As Digest Dissolve, but destruction is subtle and quiet. Targets are reduced to fine ash or dust without loud impact, vibration, or debris.

This leaves few clues and little trace of violence.

Neural disruption at this level can cause full-body paralysis.

Devastate and Digest

Wide-range rot.

Apply Digest Dissolve over a wide area. You abandon subtlety in favor of massive, violent destruction. You can level forests, pulverize wooden cities, rot camps of bone-and-hide yurts, and cause similar large-scale devastation.

Even if some materials cannot be fully destroyed, the collapse of surrounding organic matter often renders structures unstable or unusable. Buildings of stone often rely on wooden doors, floors, beams, and roofs, which can be razed to catastrophic effect.

You may also focus this power on a single living target, overwhelming neural activity and inducing a deep coma. The body is sustained at a minimal level, preventing immediate degradation, but the state is traumatic, dangerous, and beyond most aid.

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