Cheval (Loa Purveiw)

• Rada’s Eyes
Dice Pool: Perception + Empathy
Cost: 1 Legend
The Scion can experience another person’s perceptions as if they were her own. These perceptions include input from all five senses, though not the character’s subjective reactions to that input. To use this Boon, the Scion must have a picture of her victim, some genetic token of the victim’s (such as a lock of hair or several drops of blood) or something the victim created (from a printed-out email to an ice sculpture). By meditating on the item and relaxing her own perceptions – as well as spending a point of Legend after a successful (Perception + Empathy) roll on the part of her player – the Scion experiences the victim’s perceptions clearly and distinctly. The victim is unaware of the Scion’s attention, but the Scion remains semi-aware of her own surroundings. The Scion’s player is entitled to a (Perception + Awareness) roll to realize if something obvious is happening around her character, something obvious is happening around her character, something obvious is happening around her character, such as if a zombie comes shambling toward her with a sizzling stick of dynamite. If something less obvious happens around the Scion, though – for instance, anything that would require a (Perception + Awareness) roll to notice if she were paying full attention – the Scion doesn’t notice while her perceptions are distracted.
A Scion can experience the perceptions of a mortal human being without being noticed as long as she has at least one of the requisite items. The same goes for a fellow Scion who has fewer Legend dots than she does. If that fellow Scion has more dots of Legend, the character cannot experience his perceptions. If that fellow Scion has an equal number of Legend dots, the Voodoo Scion needs a genetic token that belonged to the victim. Also, the victim’s player is entitled to a (Perception + Awareness) roll. If that roll succeeds, his character gets the eerie, vague sensation of being watched. Should that character then spend a point of Willpower, the Voodoo Scion loses her connection and cannot experience remote perceptions for the remainder of the scene.

• • Petro’s Hands
Dice Pool: Intelligence + Control
Cost: 1 Willpower Point
The Scion can now exert some control over a victim whose senses she’s observing. The Scion must be actively experiencing her victim’s perceptions with Rada’s Eyes, and her player must spend a Willpower point to activate this Boon. If the Voodoo Scion’s victim is a mortal or a Scion with fewer dots of Legend than she has, activating this Boon takes only that Willpower expenditure. If the Scion’s victim has an equal number of Legend dots, the Voodoo Scion’s player must also succeed in a contested roll of her (Intelligence + Control) against the victim’s (Willpower + Integrity + Legend). Should she succeed, the Voodoo Scion can then perform one physical action through the victim’s body. She can do anything from simply forcing the victim to hold still and look intently at something the Scion wants to study to making the oblivious victim jump out of the way of a shinobi assassin’s leaping kick. The dice pool for the action the Scion forces the victim to take is based on the Voodoo Scion’s mundane traits. (Epic Attributes do not aid in the action.)
A Scion can exert this control over a victim only once per scene.

• • • Horse
Dice Pool: Intelligence + Control
Cost: 1 Willpower Point + 1 Legend Point
The Scion can now exert total control over her victim for a limited time. She must be using Rada’s Eyes to share the victim’s perceptions, and she must spend a point of Willpower and a point of Legend to assert full control. (The victim’s chance to resist is the same as for Petro’s Hands.) If the Scion succeeds in her possession attempt, she can “ride” around inside her victim’s body for one scene (or less if she chooses to end the effect early). She exerts all of her own mundane traits, except for Appearance, through the effectively empty husk, losing all sense of the situation around her own body. If the body she’s riding suffers damage as a result of her actions, she feels the pain and suffers the wound penalties, but it’s only a phantom psychosomatic pain. Her own body suffers no damage. Once the spirit horse body suffers enough damage to render it Incapacitated or to kill it (based on the host’s own traits, not the Scion’s), the Scion loses her connection with it and returns to her own body. If the Scion’s real body suffers damage as a result of something going on around it, the Scion remains unaware of it until her spirit returns home. If someone or some event destroys the Scion’s body while her spirit is away, her spirit simply winks out of existence.
A victim of possession has only dreamlike, half-glimpsed memories of what his body did when he was possessed. If the actions the Scion took were especially traumatic to the victim, the victim might block them out altogether.

• • • • Mind-Riding
Dice Pool: None
Cost: 1 Legend
While the Scion is using Rada’s Eyes to experience someone else’s senses, she can’t normally pick up on that person’s reactions to the things he’s sensing. With Mind-Riding, however, the Scion can listen in on the thoughts of the person whose senses she’s riding. These thoughts whisper in the rider’s mind, and the mental images they conjure play behind the rider’s eyes. Yet, while the rider has access to her victim’s conscious thoughts, she garners only what context those thoughts provide. She can’t snoop around in the victim’s memory to make sense of an enigmatic reaction.
While using Rada’s Eyes, the Scion need only spend an additional point of Legend in order to listen in on the host’s thoughts.

• • • • • Waking Zombie
Dice Pool: Manipulation + Cheval
Cost: 1 Willpower
When the Scion has a mortal victim completely under her control, she can temporarily pull the victim’s spirit out of his body and boss the body around as her mindless slave. The Scion must somehow incapacitate the victim – by tying him up, drugging him, beating him unconscious or whatever – then cover the victim’s mouth with her own and take a long, deep breath. The victim’s player then rolls (Willpower + Integrity + Legend) against the activation roll. If the activation roll wins, the Scion sucks out the victim’s spirit and swallows it down into the darkness within her. Once that happens, the victim maintains a dreamlike semi-awareness of what the Scion is doing, just as a victim of Horse does, but he can’t take any actions or exert his own will in any way.
When the spirit is out, the body wakes back up, and the Scion may talk to it in its own voice and give it commands that it must follow. The empty body tires its hardest to do anything the Scion tells it to do, using all of its original Attributes except Charisma, Manipulation, Intelligence or Wits. The body can’t speak, and all of its Abilities but its Athletics, Brawl and Fortitude are off limits.
The spirit remains trapped within the Scion for a number of hours equal to the threshold successes on the activation roll. While the body is empty of spirit, Scions of higher Legend than the one who used Walking Zombie on it can attempt to take control of it with other Cheval Boons. To do so, though, they must vie against the Scion’s player’s resistance rolls, rather than those of the victim himself.

• • • • • • Met Tet
Dice Pool: Intelligence + Control
Cost: 1 Willpower + 3 Legend
This Boon is very similar to Horse, in that it lets a Scion take total control of a mortal victim’s body for a limited time, manipulating it as if it were her own. As with Horse, the Scion must be using Rada’s Eyes on the victim first in order to use this Boon. Having done so, the Scion’s player makes the activation roll for this Boon (contested as per Horse) and spends the requisite Willpower and Legend. If this roll succeeds, the Scion’s body becomes entirely incorporeal and steps into the body of her victim like a ghost taking possession of it. Having done so, the Scion can either assert control as per Horse or simply continue to ride around within the unaware victim sharing his sensations. Either way, she can remain inside the victim’s body for a number of days equal to her Legend. When that time is up, or if the Scion ends the effect early, she rides the victim’s breath back out of his body and materializes before him.
Damage inflicted on the victim while the Scion is riding inside does not harm the Scion, but it can force her out prematurely. If the victim suffers a single level of aggravated damage or more levels of lethal damage from one attack than the Scion has dots of Stamina, the Scion is forcibly expelled from the victim’s body.

• • • • • • • Team
Dice Pool: Intelligence + Control
Cost: 1 Willpower + 5 Legend
The Scion can now use Horse on multiple mortal victims simultaneously. The Scion need not be using Rada’s Eyes first in order to use this Boon, but all of the victims must be in the Scion’s line of sight when she activates it. The player makes one activation roll and compares the results to the (Willpower + Integrity + Legend) rolls of all the victims. Any victim her roll beats becomes a spirit horse for her, up to a maximum number equal to her Legend. She can maintain this multiple possession for one scene, and her real body slumps insensate as per Horse.
For the most part, each body the Scion controls must perform roughly the same action – all of them acting based on the Scion’s player’s Join Battle roll. They must also be within line of sight of at least one other of their number. They arrange themselves minimally so as not to get in each other’s way, such as lining up single file to walk though a tight space, but they must either perform the same action, using the same dice pool, as their counterparts or perform no action. (They can perform the same action against different targets, though.) The Scion can make one team of horses perform a different action from what the rest are doing. She must split her action as per a standard multiple action, though, with the concomitant dice pool penalties. When the horses are performing the same action in combat against the same target, they are automatically assumed to be performing a coordinated assault.
When the Scion speaks through her various horses, different parts of what she’s saying come randomly from the different bodies’’ mouths. Damage inflicted on the bodies in combat has no effect on the Scion until only one horse remains. At that point, damage is applied to the Scion as per Horse.

• • • • • • • • Met Tet’s Claim
Dice Pool: Charisma + Command
Cost: 10 Legend
When a Loa anems himself met tet over somebody, he takes on an unspoken responsibility to that person. Only peer pressure or the subtle jabs of Fate can make him actually act on that responsibility if he doesn’t want to, but not every Loa needs that sort of prodding. If he chooses to, he can take a special interest in a mortal and make her his won. Thereafter, anyone who wants to use Cheval Boons on that mortal must go through her met tet first.
To activate this Boon, the Loa lays hands on a willing subject and spends the required Legend as the player makes a (Charisma + Command) roll. If someone is using a Cheval Boon on the subject already and the character’s roll beats the power’s required activation roll, that Boon is disrupted. Thereafter (or if no one was using a Cheval Boon on that subject at that time), the Loa has laid claim to the subject. Anyone else who tries to use a Cheval Boon on the subject contends against the claiming Loa’s traits, the Loa is immediately aware that someone is messing with someone he’s claimed (as well as who that claimed person is). His player can automatically make another (Charisma + Command) roll, with no Legend cost, against the activation roll of the power in an attempt to override it. If that roll fails to override the power, the power has its normal effect.
The Loa can claim as many people as he wants. He can also disavow any claim later, but he must tell the subject so to her face and in no uncertain terms.

• • • • • • • • • Upside-Down Horse
Dice Pool: Manipulation + Cheval
Cost: (1 Willpower + 5 Legend) per person
Most Cheval Boons allow a Loa to override a mortal victim’s body and exert the power of his mind though it. This Boon inverts this principle, allowing him to subsume a victim’s body entirely into himself and us the power of its mind for his own purposes. To do so, the Loa must take complete contol of a mortal victim then cover his mouth with her own and take a long, deep breath (as with the Walking Zombie Boon). When she does so, not just the victim’s spirit, but the victim’s whole self disappears down the Loa’s gullet and remains locked away inside her. The victim’s player resists this effect with a (Willpower + Integrity + Legend) roll.
A Loa can keep within herself a number of victims equal to her Legend, and she can hold them within herself as long as she wants. While she has them, she can call on any specialized knowledge any one of the has and add the highest rating any one of them has in any Ability to her own rating in that same Ability. (Doing the later costs one Legend point per roll.) Even better, the Loa can shunt any damage inflicted on her onto the health levels of one of the people within her. This damage never heals while the victim remains subsumed. If the Loa shunts enough damage onto any one victim to kill that person, she automatically vomits up the corpse as a miscellaneous action.
During a victim’s stay within the Loa, his existence is one of ephemeral semidarkness. He has no idea what’s going on outside his won mind, and his thoughts are sluggish and dreamlike. He need never eat, drink, breath or sleep, and he suffers shunted damage without pain or impairment. If he’s ever set free, he emerges in exactly the same condition in which he was subsumed, and he won’t remember his time spent within the Loa. He will be able to recognize the faces of others who wer subsumed with him, though. He might not realize where he knows them from, but the sense of familiarity remains nonetheless.

• • • • • • • • • • Ugly Mule
Dice Pool: Varies
Cost: Varies
As Gods and Goddesses of the World, the Loa mostly have power over men and women of the World. They can exert some of their Cheval powers over Scions of lesser Legend, but those characters are still partly the World’s creatures. The spawn of the Titans, however, hatch from a primordial essence that transcends the physical and upsets the stability of the World. Younger Loa cannot gain sufficient control over these inimical beings to exert their Cheval Boons through them. Likewise, the supernatural creatures who were once lesser divinities are still too much creatures of the Overworld – if only in their genetic memory – to allow for complete domination by a Loa.
When a Loa reaches the pinnacle of the Cheval Purview, he gaisnt the necessary control and foce of will that lesser Loa lack. As such, he can exert any one- to nine-dot Cheval Boon on any titanspawn or other supernatural creature whose Legend score is less than his unless that victim is a God or Titan. The activation roll or condition remains the same, as do any resistance rolls the victim might be entitled to. The cost of any Cheval Boon used against a titanspawn or supernatural creature doubles, however.