Darkness Powers (FiD)

Starfox's Blades in the Dark fan page

Main Page is Powers Darkness is linked to both physical and mental darkness. Darkness is opposed to light. Darkness is associated with our psychological shadow, base drives, primal instinct, evil, and the subconscious. In physics, darkness is merely the absence of light, and many claim that spiritual evil and darkness is the absence of enlightenment and control. Darkness powers deal with moral and physical darkness, base carnality, indulgence, and deception.

Dark attacks are made up of bolts and weapons of dark energy that drain life and energy from targets to cause horrible wounds similar to burn, causing necrosis. This is less effective against nonliving targets but extra effective against creatures of spirit and energy.

Dark creatures are shades, devils, and creatures of the night. They are usually more interested in corrupting people than in killing them. Learning who to summon may require study or be a a score in itself. Giving the single order you get from summoning a creature of darkness is rarely very useful. These subtle creatures need time to use their full powers of deception and coercion. This means you often have to bargain with them, which they of course use to corrupt you.

Darkness Power Effects Table

Action	Basic No minimum 3 Stress	Advanced Minimum 2 Dice 5 Stress	Master Minimum 4 Dice 7 Stress	Apex Minimum 6 Dice 13 Stress
Attune	Perceive You can detect creatures of darkness.	Dismiss You can force any creature that is native to another plane of existence to return to that plane, or to end the operation of an ability of any power.	Summon You can call a creature from a plane of darkness. This is generally an unwilling servant. It will obey one simple command from you and this can be extended.	Gate You can create a portal that allows travel to and from the planes of darkness for a limited time.
Command	Command You can communicate speak to creatures of darkness even if normally couldn't, allowing you to use the command action normally on them. You cannot understand them.	Corrupt You and allies can communicate with creatures of darkness. You can communicate with normal folk to tempt them to commit evil deeds.	Authority You can give commands to darkness creatures, as if you were their superior. This does not remove existing loyalties, which can lead to conflicts.	Enslave You can permanently bind creatures to service. Unless affected by other powers, they will stay in one location and act according to your instructions, like very loyal and literal-minded goons.
Consort	Dark Mask You can invoke darkness and envy in your appearance, such as luxury clothes, jewelry, and personal beauty.	Devil Form You assume the form of a creature of darkness. Add 1d to one action and subtract 1d from all actions covered by an attribute except if you just raised one of them.	Devil Possession You can shapechange a willing or helpless creature into a darkness creature. This can be a curse, it can be broken but it is not easy. You can easily break the effect.	Infernal Infusion You can transform a large number of willing or non-sentient creatures and give them a simple instruction, typically someone for them to hunt.
Finesse	Ride the Dark You can ride darkness creatures as if they were trained mounts and vehicles as if you had a key.	Fine Dark Control You can use darkness as a fine and potent close-range attack, similar in effect to a fine potent dueling sword or pistol.	Master Darkness You can do fine manipulation of darkness, allowing you to play with shadows. You can use this to suppress sensors.	Dark Storm Your can create a storm of blades of darkness, suppressing the effect of multiple opponents and acting as a fine potent weapon.
Hunt	Dark Scout You can see perfectly in the dark.	Fine Ranged Attack You can use darkness to attack, similar in effect to a fine and potent rifle.	Area Attack You can use darkness to attack similar to a fine and potent grenade. This allows you to fight many creatures in the same area very effectively, but there is a risk of collateral damage.	Dark Barrage You call down the equivalent of a fine potent artillery barrage, attacking everything and everyone in a wide area. This can raze buildings but leaves little rubble. Usually enough to provide cover for any escape.
Prowl	Dark Cloak You can make yourself appear as a shadow. This allows you to hide in impossible places as long as the environment is dark.	Dark Step You can move on and through darkness. This allows you to climb on shadows, walk through walls as long as both sides are dark and so on.	Dark Team You can bring allies along when you use Dark Cloak and Dark Step.	Void Walk You and allies can teleport from one location in darkness to another. This is regional travel, you stay within the same city or region, but it is generally sufficient to enter or escape just about any situation or location.
Skirmish	Dark Melee You can use darkness as a close-range attack, similar in effect to a melee weapon or pistol.	Fine Dark Melee Same as skirmish attack, except the weapon is fine and potent.	Umbral Trick Darkness can create distractions and obstructions that prevents the enemy from benefiting from numbers and otherwise works as a fine potent weapon.	Umbral Explosion Darkness strikes out in all directions, attacking all enemies in a wide area.
Study	Dark Name You can identify objects and creatures that manifest physical or moral darkness and see the use of dark power abilities.	Dark Lore You know the powers and abilities of something you identify with Dark lore.	Dark Past You can read the past events of something you analyze. This includes previous owners and how the object or person has been moved around as well as significant scenes.	World of Darkness You research everything in a wide area. This is easy to do where you are, more difficult at range. You can then use hindsight on some of these targets.
Survey	Eye of the Bat You can see perfectly in the dark.	Gift of the Bat You can give the ability to see in darkness to allies.	Eyes of the Dark Choose a location or creature. If the target is in darkness, you can se as if you were there.	Dark World You perceive from every dark place at once over a wide area.
Sway	Dark Empathy You can understand darkness creatures speech and motivations.	Dark Words You and allies can communicate with dark creatures. You can tempt normal folk to commit evil deeds, even across language barriers.	Hypnosis You can post suggestions in the mind of dark creatures and in the minds of folk to corrupt them. This will trigger under conditions you specify. Common suggestions are to steal something, attack someone, or ignore some event. This is a subtle power, but easier to spot once triggered.	Indoctrination You change the personality and motivations of creatures you mesmerize. This power is permanent, but blatant. The target remember their past, but regard it as unimportant compared to their new motivations.
Tinker	Mold Darkness You can mold darkness like soft black clay, and it maintains it form for a few minutes.	Shape Darkness As Mold Darkness, and the darkness can form simple useable objects that will retain its new shape and function for hours or even days.	Craft Darkness You can create darkness out of nothing, or transform an object from darkness into another material as long as you know the power required for both the starting and final form. You can create complex tools, such as fine and potent items of solid darkness.	Master Darkness This is similar to Craft Darkness, above, but you mass produce objects, even a set of different objects. You can also make something large, such as a vehicle or building.
Wreck	Dark Corrosion Darkness withers and corrodes, this is a powerful but slow process that leaves twisted remains in place. Can attack like a dark torch in combat.	Dark Smash Similar to jimmy but faster. Works as a fine potent torch in combat.	Dark Disintegrate Similar to smash, but destroyed targets disappear or are reduced to a fine dust.	Obliterate Dark Similar to smash, but over a large area. This can level a city block, empty a canal system of water, raze a city wall, and similar massive destruction.

Expanded Darkness Powers

This is the pattern that most powers follow. You can refer to this when interpreting how powers should work. TLDR, this list is too long to read it all every time, its here to look up in to resolve specific situations. It is good to have skimmed it at least once.

Attune

Harness the power of Attune to perceive and manipulate supernatural energies, allowing you to detect and interact with beings and phenomena from other planes of existence.

Perceive: You can detect creatures and power use tied to your power.

This is usually done to spot a disguised summoned creature. However, it can also help identify a creature's connection to powers, providing valuable insights into their nature. Naturally, this gets more difficult as the creature is more heavily obscured. This reduces effect. The position usually starts controlled, with the usual consequence that you cannot try again.

Dismiss: You can force a creature based on this power that is native to another plane of existence to return to that plane, or to end the operation of an ability of the power you use.

Dismissing a creature is hard, and might require the creature to be weakened, either by previous attempts to dismiss it, or by other attacks, interactions, or by being set up. The consequences of this depends entirely on what happens around you when you do it. If a powerful creature resists being dispelled, its obviously dangerous. Having helpers and bodyguards reduces the consequences, and sometimes a creature wants to be dismissed and the consequence might be that it loses control of itself, or that other creatures appear to intervene.

Dispelling is usually easier, but not always. Most powers only dispel effects of their own power. Read this generously. As an example, the fire power can dispel any fire power, but also powers that affect flames and heat sources, as well as powers that affect fire creatures. It can be used as a defense against others' use of power, or it can be used to break the continuing effects of powers.

Dispelling is often used as a setup action to help another character in a situation when the opposition is using powers. The position is controlled, possibly risky if there are a lot of other dangers around. Limited effect creates an opening that makes the supported action potent. Normal effect improves the position of the supported action. Great effect improves both position and effect of the supported power.

When used directly, the effect is usually limited unless the opponent is relying on powers for their safety. Against an opponent that uses power to fly or even breathe you can have a better effect.

When dramatically appropriate that a power is hard to dispel, often because it is the crux of the situation, this will simply not work, but will instead give you a clue to what you need to do to resolve the situation.

Summon: You can call a creature from a place of your power. This is generally an unwilling servant. It will obey one command from you and this can be extended. Learning who to summon may require study or be a score in itself.

What a "place of your power" means depends on the setting, but is always a different place that you normally cannot interact with. This is usually a parallel world or plane of existence, dominated by your power. So fire summons creatures from a very fiery place, air summons from a very airy place and so on. These places can be unique to each power, or one big place where different places are dominated by different powers. It might also be from other places in your own world, exotic regions of your own world or distant planets like Pluto or starts like Aldebaran. This is the usual explanation in the cosmic horror genre. In a science-fiction setting with powers this is usually related to faster-than-light travel, so if ships travel through hyperspace, this is also where summons come from. If travel is by gate, the medium the gate stretches through is where summons come from, and so on. The Gate power of Attune is the usual way to get to these places.

Summoning can bring you allies to fight, but more commonly you summon a spirit to do some specific task related to your power. Summons can use most power effects and maintain power effects you have created. They can also give advice and information related to their power. In general, you can summon generic creatures one tier lower than yourself without having to do a flashback. Such a creature is similar to a gang member.

To summon a particular creature, similar to a cohort, you need its unique identity, often called true name in the mystical power traditions. For a technomancer this would be a type id number, a blueprint, or a block of data. Learning about the right creature to summon is a task in its own right, often requiring a flashback or downtime activity to use Command, Consort, Study, or Sway to gain information. Doin this kind of preparation also counts as a set-up action for your summoning, even if you are doing it in a flashback.

It might be worth the extra effort to summon a creature of higher tier, but this is also much more demanding, using the usual rules for tiers.

Spirits generally come in three types, elementals, spirits, and creatures with powers.

Elementals only exist for powers that have a direct physical manifestation, like the four classic elements of air, earth, fire, and water, but also the other forms that have a physical manifestation, electricity, ice, metal, and plant. An elemental is a simple creature totally dominated by its power. Most elementals have animal intelligence, and often take the shape of animals as well, tough animated chunks of matter and humanoid forms are also common.

Spirits are similar to elementals in that they are made out of the stuff of their power, but the powers that create spirits are less material. This makes spirits ephemeral, less physically oriented, and usually more intelligent than elementals. They can use sophisticated power effects and usually have an agenda of their own. Darkness, Death, Flux, Illusion, Order, and Space can summon spirits.

Creatures with powers resemble normal creatures, most having a biological body, metabolism, and functioning as ordinary living creatures but also some exceptional abilities related to their power. A fire dragon is impossibly large, flies, and breathes fire. An air turtle hovers and can grow to massive size, to the point where a city can be built on top of them. An undead creature is a corpse animated by the powers of Death. And so on. Not all creatures with powers are summonable or dismissible, many are native to this world and have no special vulnerability to Attune power effects.

Depending on your degree of effect the creature is willing to do different things. Limited effect allows you to ask questions of an intelligent creature or demand a short period of physical labor from a simple creature. The creature will not fight for you. If forced into a fight due to circumstances, it will resent it afterwards.

Standard effect allows you to ask for any service appropriate to the type of creature. A devil will do evil, a fire elemental will burn stuff, and so on. This includes dangerous tasks such as combat.

Great effect allows actions outside the creature's comfort zone, but not things it directly opposes. A devil will do most things except those associated with Light, a fire elemental will heat your forge or power your steam engine. Lengthy service also requires great effect, like summoning the creature to guard a treasure for as long as it can.

The position is usually risky. The creature is being forced to serve and might lash out. Typical consequences are: The creature strikes out at you once. A tightwire struggle to keep the creature under control The creature breaks things around you, demands concessions from you. Overly literal interpretations of your commands. The creature deliberately does its tasks poorly.

Offering a creature gifts or services appropriate to its nature can make the position controlled, with consequences like half-heated efforts, demanding not to be summoned again until some time or event has passed, or just general sulkiness.

Desperate position usually comes from trading position for effect, but it might come from a difference in ethos. If you are a priest of light and summon a demon, or if the summon is three or more tiers above you the position will be desperate. Consequences include the spirit demanding you sell your soul, become its agent in the world, that you come to its home plane to serve it there for a time (usually three scores), that you defeat the creature in a duel or similar dramatic story events.

Gate: You can create a portal that allows travel to and from the plane of your power for a limited time.

This is rarely useful, but can be under exceptional circumstances. As outlined under Summoning above most powers are linked to a different world where that power is dominant. There are also things that are possible to do on these planes that are not allowed in the regular world, most effects are reduced one step in difficulty, from advanced to basic, master to advanced, and apex to master. This opens the possibility of new super-apex powers that have to be negotiated with the game master. Such effects rarely reach outside the plane where you perform them, but if they affect creatures on that plane, the effect may remain when you return to the mundane world.

Gating can allow access to creatures too powerful to summon, so you instead ask for an audience. The creature may then use the gate to come to you, call you into its presence, or just communicate with you.

Using a gate is usually played out as a score, which means there is an engagement roll. Depending on how quickly the matter is resolved, the game master may require a separate game to return home again. However if you do this in a scene that is dangerous, such as asking for help against an enemy too powerful for you to defeat, the position is usually much worse. Once you have established a connection to a certain place or audience with a certain creature, you can usually do so again from a controlled position and without doing it as a score.

Prowl

Sneak, move, and perhaps even fly or teleport with the stealth and agility granted by Prowl. Most powers use Prowl in ways that vary from the norm, so this is a more rough sketch than the power abilities of many other actions.

Reconnaissance: You can hide in environments linked to your power. This allows you to hide in impossible places as long as the environment manifests your power. You gain advantage when sneaking on creatures linked to your power.

This provides you cover to hide in places you ordinarily could not. Where you can use this is explained in each specific power. It otherwise works just like any other attempt to use Prowl to avoid notice. Note that only you can use this ability, your friends and allies cannot unless you use Travel, below.

Maneuver: You can move on and through environments composed of your environment. This allows you to climb on air, swim unhindered, walk through walls of the appropriate material and so on, depending on your exact power.

Again, each power will explain how it can use this mobility. Your friends and allies cannot use this unless you employ Travel, which is described later

Travel: You can bring allies along when you use Reconnaissance and Maneuver.

Now you and your allies can Prowl in places where your power is at home. They still use their own Prowl action.

Transport: You and allies can teleport from one location where your power is present to another. This is regional travel, you stay within the same city or region, but it is generally sufficient to enter or escape just about any situation or location.

How and where you use this is explained in each power. This takes you to places you are familiar with. Both effect and position is worse unless you know where you are going, which means it is great for escapes but less so for intrusion into an enemy's territory that you are likely to be much less familiar with.

Tinker

Manipulate, shape, and create objects imbued with your power to suit your needs. When used with long-term projects, powers can often substitute for missing resources such as tools or raw materials, but that is all it does until you can start using Fabricate.

Handle: You can handle materials that manifest your power as if you had the appropriate tools and protective devices.

This mainly substitutes for tools, up to a small workshop. You are also protected from any dangerous effects of working with the elements of your power.

Shape: You can shape materials that manifest your power as if they were of clay, and they will retain their new shape for some time even if they would normally not, such as water, sand, or smoke.

You can now do more than normal craft could do. You can work elements of your power that normally cannot be shaped, and it will remain in the shape you set it in. This has the effect of pipes and containers suited to the materials at hand, without any material containers or conduits. This may allow you to set up traps or devices that would normally require extensive equipment.

The position depends on how quiet your workplace is and how much time you have to work with. The effect determines the effectiveness of your construction, but also how long it will last. Devices that are more powerful are harder to contain, and thus wont last as long. Most shaping will only be good for a single scene, but if your effect surpasses that required for the effect you want, you can stretch the effect until the end of the score.

Create: You can create objects manifesting your power out of nothing or transform an object from one material to another as long as you know the power required for both the starting and final form. This can create complex tools, such as fine and potent items appropriate to the power(s) used.

This is two distinct effects. The first allows you to create matter related to your power out of nothing. This is raw matter (or energy, depending on the power used) and needs to be shaped and refined to be of much use.

The second can only be used if you know multiple powers. You transmute material connected to one of your powers into material connected to another power. The result will maintain its form as if affected by the Shape ability. The advantage of this is that you can transform a complex object and it will retain its form and function as far as its new material allows. This can transform something like a sword from metal to fire, and it would still be a functional sword. A door could be changed from wood to air, you then pass through ant the door reverts to wood. The transmutation usually

Fabricate: This is similar to Create, above, but you mass-produce objects, even a set of different objects. You can also make something large, such as a vehicle or building.

Pretty self-explanatory, this is Create on a larger scale. This is useful for equipping a large band or building something large out of nothing. When doing long-term projects that involve building or crafting, you can use Fabricate to gain great effect, even under what normally be poor conditions, but this has the usual stress cost.

Wreck

Destroy, dismantle, and obliterate objects made of stuff related to your power.

Jimmy: You can jimmy objects manifesting your power much like a sledgehammer. Noisy and leaves a twisted object in place.

Just as crude as it sounds. You destroy things related to your power, and strike with the force of a sledgehammer in combat. As usual, Wreck may be at an advantage or disadvantage compared to Finesse and Skirmish, depending on the situation.

Smash: Similar to jimmy. When smashing objects from your power, such as metallic objects for the metal power, you to affect hard objects as if they were wood. Works as a fine potent sledgehammer in combat.

This reduces the strength of strong materials, allowing you to break even the strongest barrier, as long as it of the proper material and not too thick. You can also use this as a sledgehammer to smash other things, and ads a fine, potent sledgehammer in combat.

Disintegrate: Similar to smash, but destroyed targets silently disappear or are reduced to a fine dust.

The real difference here is that wrecking things is now silent when you have the right power. You also leave less traces, as what you wreck disappears. This can also be used to get rid of evidence, as long as that evidence matches your power.

Obliterate: Similar to smash, but over a large area. This can level a city block, empty a canal system of water, raze a city wall, and similar massive destruction.

Rather straightforward, this just scales things up.