Challenges |
Hardening |
1. |
Get attacked with a weapon. |
13 |
Pretty normal. |
2. |
Witness torture or a vampire drinking blood. Knock someone out
in a fight. |
45 |
Your attitude shows when it comes up in conversation
you may turn grim, or intense, or nervous. |
3. |
Get shot at random; be tortured briefly. Knock someone out from
stealth. |
67 |
Youre used to it, and show little reaction to the prospect. |
4. |
Kill someone in a fight. Witness brutal murder, such as a
Garou eviscerating someone. |
89 |
Your callousness is obvious in casual conversation. |
5. |
Be present at a battle involving massive carnage.
Kill someone whom you are sure is corrupt. Witness grisly
murder. Be involved in a pitched battle where only one side is left
standing at the end. |
10 |
Your matter-of-fact attitude toward torture and brutality is
obvious, or you work so hard to hide it you come off as guarded all
the time. Life and death are not important; you may want to stay
alive, but thats just a matter of aesthetics. |
6. |
Torture someone, or kill them in a grisly manner. Transform
an unwilling person into a vampire. |
Failure |
7. |
Kill a helpless target. |
1 |
Youre a little edgy around the prospect of violence. |
8. |
Be tortured for an hour or more. |
2 |
Youre very aware of violence in the world, and consider
people who think Hollywood depictions are accurate childish or fools.
You are alert to the dangers. |
9. |
Witness mass execution. |
3 |
You become alert or uneasy at the sight or blood or a reasonable
facsimile thereof. You get nightmares. |
10. |
Watch as someone you love is tortured to death. Travel through
combat as a lord of destruction, killing all who stand in your path
and shrugging off all attacks because they cause negligible
damage. |
4 |
You instinctively prepare for trouble whenever you hear a loud
noise or raised voice. Your nightmares are frequent, and you
constantly perform threat estimates on everyone around you. |
The Unnatural |
Challenges |
Hardening |
1. |
Feelings of strong deja vu, confrontation with the supernatural
behind a veil (Thatt cant be a vampire, thats
just another Goth...), witness a person under the effects of a
blessing or hex, or perform coincidental magick.
|
13 |
Pretty normal, though you may treat many New Age topics with derision
either as skepticism or elitism. |
2. |
See a vampire, werewolf, wraith, or demon. You might explain it as
special effects or tricks of the light later, but it sure seemed real
at the time. Experience scrying, aura reading, or shamanic travel. |
45 |
You pay close attention to matters paranormal and supernatural,
seeking to sort out the truth from the hype. |
3. |
Realize that a vision you had of the future has come true.
|
67 |
You know beyond the shadow of a doubt that the world is a larger
and stranger place than you were raised to believe, and you find it
odd that people are unaware of the vast forces that manipulate them. |
4. |
Witness obvious shapeshifting or teleportation. Realize that
you have produced a blatant nonphysical effect (lit a candle by
focussing your will). |
89 |
You can see the fundamental interconnectedness of many things, and
may acquire a reputation for amused or thoughtful reactions to what
others consider meaningless coincidences. |
5. |
Be successfully attacked with magic. |
10 |
You now expect the unexpected, and have to make a concerted effort
to react as if anything unusual surprises you. |
6. |
See someone you know killed by magic, with no sane way to
rationalize it. |
Failure |
7. |
Have a conversation with a loved one you know is dead. |
1 |
Youve turned a bit superstitious. |
8. |
See an animal with human features. |
2 |
You have a few nightmares, and have developed a suspicion of or
fascination with the occult. |
9. |
See the dead rise. |
3 |
You frequently feel like youre being watched, and have begun
to perceive patterns in what was formerly noise the noise of
water splashing in a fountain becoming voices, or faces in the clouds. |
10. |
Realize that someone who has been close to you for years is an
inhuman supernatural being, so totally other that your
relationship cannot have been anything but a sham.. |
4 |
You often feel as if there are presences around you, but they
arent there when you swing around at a hint of perceived motion in
your peripheral vision. You get frequent nightmares, and often cannot tell
them as such until you awaken. |
Challenges |
Hardening |
1. |
Spend a day without seeing a familiar face. |
13 |
Pretty normal. You may be a bit standoffish or curt. |
2. |
Spend five hours in a sensory deprivation tank. Conceal your
nature as an Innerwalker or supernatural being from a loved one. |
45 |
You can be unthinkingly rude at times. |
3. |
Spend three days without talking to another human being.
Spend one day lost in the Netherworld (if you dont know
what the place is). |
67 |
You lack patience with people who dont understand what
youre trying to tell them, which you find obvious. (You need
to think about it to remember to explain things.) |
4. |
Be institutionalized by someone you love and trust.
Return from the Netherworld to find that your personal history
as far as your loved ones understand it has changed. |
89 |
Unless youre concentrating, youre completely lacking
in conversational skills, and social conventions such as shaving, dressing,
and bathing begin to seem meaningless to you. |
5. |
Spend a week in solitary confinement. Discover your home era has
changed to a different juncture. (First time only.) Realize that
knowledge of your nature would horrify most normal people. |
10 |
You dont care what people think about you, and you cant
imagine why anybody would care. |
6. |
See someone you thought you knew extremely well acting completely
out of character. Experience lateral reincarnation. |
Failure |
7. |
Spend a month in a country where no one speaks your language and
you cant make yourself understood, no matter what. |
1 |
You can get along in normal society, though you may be a bit shy,
and feel a kind of gratitude whenever a new acquaintance doesnt
reject you. |
8. |
Be deeply, painfully, and violently betrayed by someone you love. |
2 |
Youre a bit nervous around new people, and may become
a chatterbox or very shy as you try to make a good impression or at least
not make a bad one. |
9. |
Be treated like a stranger by your closest friends. |
3 |
You are uncomfortable with silence, and can have insomnia when
sleeping alone. Sometimes you talk to yourself or think out loud
when youre not paying attention. |
10. |
Spend a month in a sensory deprivation tank. |
4 |
Sometimes you have panic attacks when youre all alone or
surrounded by strangers. |
Challenges |
Hardening |
1. |
Unintentionally humiliate yourself in public. |
13 |
Youre a tad pessimistic or fatalistic; Shit happens
or the equivalent is prominent in your vocabulary. |
2. |
Get fired from a job you love. Be swallowed whole by a horrific
creature, or encased in its secretions. |
46 |
When things are going wrong in a big way or trouble just
came out of left field, you handle it remarkably well. (This is
not incompatible with two failed notches: you can be upset over small
things and placid about big ones.) |
3. |
Fail at something when its imperative that you succeed. |
4. |
Get dumped into a pit of maggots. Be forcibly transformed into a
bloodsucking fiend. |
79 |
You have a boundless faith in the perversity of the universe, and
may easily mistake conspiracy for the usual effects of Murphys Law. |
5. |
Spend a month in jail. |
10 |
Youve lost sight of the distinction between incident and accident.
You may believe that everything is predestined or random; free will is a
bad joke. |
6. |
Watch a videotape of your spouse committing adultery. Experience
blackmail on the order of do this or Ill kill/torture your friends,
and it will be your fault. |
Failure |
7. |
Be placed in a situation where you have to cut off one of your own
limbs or die. |
1 |
Pretty normal. You may be a bit finicky or meticulous in your
attempts to head off Murphy at the pass. |
8. |
Watch someone you love die. |
2 |
You get nervous, upset, or pessimistic when small things go wrong. |
9. |
Watch someone you love die because you tried to save them and failed. |
3 |
You have an intense dislike for surprises, even good ones. |
10. |
Be possessed, yet aware, as your body commits unspeakable acts
against your will. |
4 |
You find it very difficult to trust anything; you perceive your tools,
your friends, even yourself as intrinsically unreliable. You have a
tendency toward compulsive behaviors such as regularly rechecking to make
sure your door is locked when you leave the house. |
Self |
Challenges |
Hardening |
1. |
Break a minor promise. |
13 |
People may find you to be a bit brittle or phony. |
2. |
Be confronted with proof that your self-image is inaccurate. |
45 |
Even when youre telling the truth, people often think youre
lying, unless you make a particular effort to act natural. |
3. |
Secretly gratify an urge that is unacceptable to your upbringing
and background. |
67 |
Youve lost a sense of connection to those who were previously
close to you. You may be able to predict their actions, but you no longer
know exactly what you feel about them. |
4. |
Lie to conceal some aspect of your personality from a person close
to you who trusts you implicitly. Kill someone who is just doing
their job without understanding that theyre supporting something
morally wrong. |
89 |
Half the time, you only know that youre telling the truth
if you take a minute to think about it. Truth and lies arent
nearly as important as they used to be, back before you quit lying
to yourself... |
5. |
Decide not to act on one of your better impulses because its
too dangerous. |
10 |
Life has been pared down to the essentials for you; you have no
aesthetic opinions, and you have lost the ability to enjoy or dislike
things, because theres so little you there to interact. |
6. |
Deliberately deceive someone you love in a way that is certain to
cause them anguish if they find out. |
Failure |
7. |
Discover that you have inadvertantly committed an act of cannibalism,
murdered innocents under the impression they were corrupt, or killed
an innocent you thought you had only rendered unconscious. |
1 |
Occasionally, you have a sense of dissociation, where you feel
dissociated from your own self. |
8. |
Deliberately act completely contrary to your own moral system. |
2 |
You question yourself regularly, and tend to become introspective
when someone mentions matters such as truth, lies,
and promises. |
9. |
Kill someone you love. |
3 |
Half the time, you feel like youre an actor playing a role,
your actions rehearsed, forced, or fake. |
10. |
Deliberately destroy everything youve risked your life to
support. |
4 |
You frequently feel as if youre just along for the ride in
your own life. |