Plague-Bearer's Masque

Kicking it off.

Plague-Bearer's Masque

Cost: 15m, 1wp; Mins: Medicine 5, Essence 4; Type: Simple (Dramatic)

Keywords: Compulsion, Sickness

Duration: Indefinite

Prerequisite Charms: Pestilence-Bearing Touch

There are times when introducing a disease to a community and allowing it to run its course is enough.  Other times it's preferable to draw a crowd and contaminate them all at once.  Activating this Charm the Abyssal dons a caricature of a disease she has imbibed through Plague-Eating Kiss, taking a 10 minute dramatic action and requiring an (Intelligence + Medicine) roll at a difficulty one lower than the disease's Virulence.  From that point on, everyone who sees the Abyssal who's DMDV is lower than the successes she rolled gains a Compulsion to follow her.  It costs (1 + Circle of the Disease) willpower to resist this unnatural mental influence.  Characters who succumb follow until the scene ends or the Abyssal flares her anima totemic.

Upon flaring her anima, everyone bathed in its dark majesty must roll (Stamina + Resistance).  Garnering more successes than the Abyssal's original roll saves them from the effects of the chosen disease, failure results with infection.  Targets that fail the roll by the diseases Virulence or more skip the incubation period and must immediately check against its Untreated Morbidity, while characters who botch automatically fail this roll.  Knowledgeable Abyssals with grand libraries of stored diseases have been known to take out entire cities in a matter of days through use of this Charm, leaving only rotting corpses and funeral pyres - failed attempts at halting her enfeebling attack.