[Darkening Skits] The Savaan

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For centuries, the Twilight Caste have drunk the blood of their Vampiric masters. Now, that power flows in their veins. No Twilight Caste is fully human anymore, being stronger, faster, tougher, healthier. Not only that, but some are born with a weak analogue of the Vampire's own powerful Sorcery. As such, one is born Twilight Caste, from Twilight Caste parents, to a family going back centuries in service to the Citadel.


The Savaan are literate and educated, trained and disciplined. They are the citizen-soldiers and warrior-priests of Kroms. As such, they enjoy grandiose homes, excellent food, and personal staff. With this comes responsibility - the protection and spiritual guidance of the Ker Viteur, service to the Priesthood, obligation to family. For the Twilight Caste, life is tightrope walk through a banquet, balancing familial obligations against religious convictions, duty, and personal ambition.


There are two kinds of Savaan. The Twilight Guard are the most common: At birth, the placenta is taken away to the Iron Tower where the Priesthood enact strange rituals. In the meantime, the child is raised in luxury, but with a firm hand. At 8, when they are expected to be literate, they begin their martial and philosophical education. At sixteen, they are presented with the biomagical symbiote armour that has grown from their placenta. They will rarely ever remove it. At twenty-one, they are considered to be adults and given their first major responsibilities. They may have been groomed for specific postings, too - Capital Protection, missionary work, Chattel-wrangling...


Twilight Surgeons are those who have inherited vestigial sorceries from their family's connection to the Priesthood. Innately capable of understanding biology and with a limited power to shape and craft flesh, these highly honoured members of Savaan society are responsible for maintaining, designing, and sometimes even making the biomagical devices on which the Savaan rely. They are not fitted with armour, in order to allow more freedom of motion and room to experiment.


The Shades of the Divine are a secretive branch of elder Savaan who forego their family name to serve as the secret police of the Iron Tower. The Venerable Guard are those severely wounded Guards who are entombed in massively enlarged and armoured life-support suits.


Few Twilight Caste are unchanged by their service. Many accept the Gifts of the Living God, organic augmentions created by the Priests and implanted by the Surgeons. These range from extra limbs to better eyes, to special organs or integrated weaponry. While using these for personal amusement is considered frivolous, it does happen.


In their leisure time, Savaan enjoy philosophical and theological debate, literature, music, and martial artistry.


The Savaan must, however, imbibe a small amount of blood from their masters once every two months. They suffer terribly from withdrawal, should they be cut off from


supplies.


Armour


1st Rank


The flesh and bone armour provides protection equal to chainmail for the entire body, with no mobility penalties. It requires regular daily maintenance by Twilight Surgeons, and repairs after combat.


2nd Rank


The Armour is prepared to be integrated with Gifts such as Enhanced Form Compensation, One


With Weapon, or the Efficacious Disguise Graft.


3rd Rank


The Armour now provides protection as per Half-plate, but without mobility penalties. It also contains nutrient sacs, airfilters, chemical injectors, low-light vision enhancement, and a blood reservoir of capacity 5 with a wrist-mounted siphon spike for refilling. It can also be equipped with Gifts such as the Shardcannon or Cunning Infiltator Configuration


4th Rank


The armour provides the protection of full plate. The blood reservoir is now capacity 10.


5th Rank


Venerable Armour fully integrates the Guard, often because they were mortally wounded. They and the armour are one, until death. They become a twelve foot tall nightmare of muscle and bone, often outfitted with Gifts such as the Heavy Shardcannon or Scale Servitor Plating. They are, however, rather slow and clumsy, suffering -2 Dexterity and -3 Speed.


The Venerable Guard has a Condition of 30 and a blood reservoir of 15.

 

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Twilight Surgeon Perks


Toxins


Each rank of Toxins provides access to a new Potency of Toxin, and a new Toxin from the list below. Toxins are... rendered from any available biological ingredients.


Slackjaw: Degrades Guile and Charisma by 1 per Potency, for a number of hours up to Potency.


Bonespite: Degrades Dexterity by 1 per Potency, for a number of hours up to Potency


Blight Essence: Degrades Health by 1 per hour, up to a number of hours equal to Potency


Atroph: Degrades Strength and Fitness by 1 per Potency, for a number of hours up to Potency


Cloudgel: Degrades Intuition and Intelligence by 1 per Potency, for a number of hours up to Potency.


Surgery


The Surgery dicepool is Dex + Medicine + Surgery. Each rank of Surgery reduces the difficulty of Implantation or Maintence rolls by 1 from a fixed value of 10. Surgery can also be used to augment standard Medicine actions.

 

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Gifts of the Living God


Rank 1


Additional Heart:


Halves the XP cost for raising Strength & Fitness, but damaging the heart causes a -2 to both Strength & Fitness until healed. Incompatible with Auxillary Heart.


Auxillary Heart:


A dormant, second heart that begins beating when the existing heart sustains severe damage, allowing a wounded Savaan to continue function. Incompatible with Additional Heart.


Reinforced Ribcage:


Provides +1 Soak to the torso.


Lungfilters:


Gill-like slits at the bottom of the throat, which filter out harmful substances – like smoke.


Rank 2


Additional Limbs:


Pre-requisite: Additional Heart


Additional Limbs typically take the form of arms, though prehensile tails and similar enhancements are feasible. Additional arms or other manipulators increase Combat Pool by +2 on an action using one of those limbs and are capped at four limbs. Removes the XP break provided by Additional Heart


Expanded Form Compensators:


Adjustments to Armour to allow for more limbs or other additions to function.


Weapon Integration:


Replaces a hand, or tips an additional limb with an organic weapon, such as a bone blade, mace, or fanged mouth. 15XP integrates the weapon into the body, making it hidden and allowing it to be extruded at will for use, without impairing ordinary function.


Toxin Sacs


Small sacs that a Surgeon can fill with their Toxins, allowing them to spread venom through a bite or implanted weapons. It also provides immunity to Toxins.


Efficacious Disguise Graft


The Efficacious Disguise Graft employs blood from the reservoir to blend the armour or flesh of the Savaan into their surroundings. It costs 1 blood per use, and provides a flat +3 Stealth bonus when keeping still.


Rank 3


Shardcannon


The Shardcannon is an unusual, tubular weapon that must be integrated into Armour as per Weapon Integration. Using a violent peristaltic motion, it propels a sharp fang into targets at range, dealing 6 damage, full armour penetration. It can fire once per turn, using 1 point of blood from the reservoir. Shardcannons can have doses of Toxin injected to poison their projectiles.


Black Heart


A small organ implanted in the abdomen that provides +3 to Stealth in dark conditions, calling darkness to surround the Savaan. It can be somewhat conspicuous in bright light, as tendrils of eldritch shadow struggle feebly to envelop their body.


Divine Vision


A improvement to the eyes and brain of the Twilight Caste which affords them better nightvision, +2 Intuition, and a limited ability to see Magic use by rolling Intuition and concentrating for a turn.


Cunning Infiltrator Configuration


This Gift permanently resculpts the armour of a Guard, and bonds it to him much like 5th Rank Armour. The Armour value is decreased to that of chainmail. In exchange, the armour is outfitted with an advanced stealth and survival package, providing +2 Stealth, Survival, and Speed. It also comes equipped with the Guileful Imitation Graft, allowing the Guard to assume the shape of anyone they have seen. The disguise is imperfect, as emulated fabrics have a curious texture, and costs 1 blood per day to maintain. The armour also has a self-repair matrix, allowing it to regenerate 2 Con per 1 blood, and Retribution Core. It can only be further upgraded with Graceful Divinity Apotheosis.


Rank 4


Surgeon's Magnificent Panoply


Pre-requisites: Additional Heart


Four highly prehensile tentacles arranged around the spine of a Surgeon, tipped with a variable selection of organic medical and surgical tools. Provides +4 to Medical or Surgery rolls. They can also be used offensively, if necessary.


Keeper's Eye


This is a heavy modification to the brain of the Savaan, resulting in a third eye on their forehead. It is given to those Savaan intended to lead their brethren, as possession of the eye allows them to feel the presence and health of their allies within forty metres – and to allow their allies the same ability.


Bound Servitor


Pre-requisite: Keeper's Eye


There are two forms of Bound Servitor – Arm and Homunculous.


The Arm Servitor is a replacement arm that can detach itself, slithering away with a stinger-tipped tail. It has limited sensory capacity, and is normally used to kill a target.


The Homunculous is a small, round, humanoid creature about eight inches tall. It lies dormant in an abdominal cavity until used. It is utterly defenseless, but capable of relaying simple information back to the owner.


Retribution Core


Pre-Requisite: Self-Repair Matrix


This complex Gift is woven throughout the body. The Retribution Core is a terrifying Gift that activates post-mortem. It raises the corpse and bodyparts of the fallen Savaan as a monstrous unthinking killing machine that must be utterly destroyed to be stopped, dynamically reshaping itself to continue fighting using whatever CON remains.


Divinity Emulation Orb


The Divinity Emulation Orb is a small organ implanted near the heart. Each Orb is bound to one of the 12 Patterns of Magic, and allows a Savaan to use equivalent to Logos 2 (In the case of Diamond Soul, only magic negation can be used). Each time the Orb is employed, the player must roll a d12 – and on the ten, the Orb suffers burn out, dealing 1 Health damage to the Savaan, and must be replaced.


Scale Servitors


Pre-requisite: Venerable Armour


One foot long and half-foot wide, these oval scales cover the back of the Venerable Guard. In addition to deflecting projectiles handily, the scales can be awoken at a command from the Guard, becoming a chittering tide of fanged eating machines like huge, carnivorous woodlice.


Speed: 10


Offense: 5


Defence: 5


Condition: 8


Damage: 6 Piercing


Heavy Shardcannon


Pre-requisite: Venerable Armour


Much like its smaller cousin, except that the Heavy Shardcannon can fire twice in a round, and uses entire shards of bone as projectiles. It deals 10 irreducible damage.


Rank 5: Apotheosis


At Rank 5, three Apotheosis forms become available to Twilight Caste. These are divine expressions of Vasnok and his three aspects; The Creator, The Destroyer, and The Dark. These are also signs of rank with the Twilight Caste, rare and venerated as the first among equals.


Graceful Divinity Apotheosis


This form represents Vasnok as the Dark, the God of Hidden Knowledge, That Which Hunts The Unrighteous on Umbral Wings. It is an upgrade to Cunning Infiltrator Configuration, improving the armour to that of Half-plate without penalty, and providing a further +1 to Speed, and wings of shadowy essence that allow the Savaan to fly. They also are an automatic base Bearing 5.


Awakened Titan Apotheosis


Expressing Vasnok as the Destroyer, the God of Martial Excellence, That Which Scours The World-Canvas. It is a lighter, faster version of the Venerable Guard, with only 20 Condition, a Self-Repair Matrix, and does not suffer the mobility penalties of the Venerable Armour. It is also able to practice Awakened Titan Style.


Glorious Artist Apotheosis


This elevates a Surgeon to mimic Vasnok as the Creator, God of Artistry, She Whose Womb Bears Wonders. The Surgeon becomes a hermaphroditic colossus, rarely moving due their considerable bulk. They can distend their jaw to consume someone whole, and living. With a diet of fresh meat, over the course of a week, the Artist can reshape the being in their womb as they wish, and rebirth it with absolute loyalty to them superseded only by the priesthood.