Jumble

By dkomlos@mechanical.watstar.uwaterloo.ca, for the Razor Children bloodline.

Simply speaking, this discipline centers around sensory confusion. It is the Razor Children's single most formidable weapon and defense.

* Flicker

With this power, the Razor Child may cause a target's senses to "flicker", producing an effect similar to reception of a scrambled television signal. The effect is very short lived, lasting only a turn or two. The Flicker costs one blood point to create, and the user must roll her Int+Subterfuge vs. the target's Wits+Alertness.

** The Spins

Activation of this power causes the liquid in a target's inner ear to move unnaturally, temporarily ruining his sense of balance and co-ordination, even inducing serious vertigo in situations where the victim might be standing on solid ground. The effects are triggered with a Willpower vs. Willpower roll. The spins last for one scene.

*** Snow

This power masks any specific sensory stimulus with a confusing mess of similar stimuli. For example, an individual trying to listen in on a conversation would suddenly find herself overcome by a cacophany of unintelligable voices, or someone looking at the activator of the power might find himself suddenly seeing a person whose features are shifting so rapidly that any coherent recognition is impossible. The power requires one blood point to activate. The effects are instantaneous and last only as long as the masked stimulus is present.

**** Discord

A victim of this power finds that her spatial depth perception has become horribly warped. She is completely unable to judge relative distances properly, usually gravely miscalculating them. Anyone who succumbs to Discord has trouble with seemingly the simplest of tasks, such as climbing stairs, pushing buttons, picking up objects and the like. She would have little or no hope of firing a ranged weapon or throwing an object with any accuracy whatsoever. Activation of the power requires a Willpower roll against a difficulty of the target's Wits+3, and the target must be in line-of-sight. The effects last one scene.

***** Garble

The user of this power reaches directly into the mind of the victim, scrambling all conscious neural pathways connecting the mind and body. While the individual remains completely lucid, he loses the ability to talk, or even move as he wishes. When attempting to speak, an uncontrollable torrent of gibberish comes out of his mouth. When attempting to walk, he finds his legs responding erratically to his mental commands, making such motion very difficult, if not impossible. At best, any action taken by a victim of "garble" is at 'crippled' level on the damage chart. To activate this power, the user must roll Willpower against the target's Int+3 and touch the target. The number of successes determines the duration of the effect.

1 success	10 minutes
2 successes	one hour
3 successes	one day
4 successes	one week
5 successes	one month

Note: The user may revoke the Garble at any time by touching the affected victim again and spending a Willpower point. Successes are cumulative, so the Garble may be lumped upon itself to last several months, or even years.

****** The Jar Trick

Through the use of this discipline, a vampire may "steal" any one of the five senses of an individual (sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell), placing "it" in a jar, where it remains forever until the jar is found and smashed to bits. When the power is used, the victim experiences a peculiar sensation related to the target sense (eg. a low, barely distinguishable sound, or a slight, irritating tickle). When she attempts to concentrate on identifying the stimulus, she suddenly loses the ability to use the related sense. At that moment, the vampire exercising the power must stop up a jar, sealing it tightly. Until the jar is destroyed, the victim will be permanently blind, deaf, numb to touch, or unable to taste or smell anything. Activation of the power requires expenditure of three blood points, and a roll of Willpower against the target's Wits+3. Note that the target must also be in the line of sight of the user.

Note: This power becomes harder and harder to use on a single individual more than once. For some reason, someone who has been affected by it in the past can intuitively sense when she is being targeted again, making her resistance to the trigger stimulus a little better. Each consecutive time the power is attempted on the same individual, the difficulty number is raised by one, to a maximum of 10.

******* Garble Deluxe

This is essentially the same power as Garble, except that it also affects the autonomous functions of the mind. Those who fall victim to it suffer immediate severe heart arrhythmia, respiratory irregularity, kidney failure, digestive malfunction, and an entire host of other problems. To engage the power, the user rolls Willpower vs. a difficulty of the victim's Stamina+3. The power only lasts one turn, but in mortal cases the damage is irreversible, and generally fatal. The affected individual takes damage levels equal to the number of successes rolled X 3. The damage is critical, and the only hope of repair lies in intensive medical treatment. For supernatural creatures, the wounds inflicted are considered to be aggravated, but since most of the autonomous functions of the Kindred are superfluous or nonexistent, vampires take only the number of successes X 1 in damage levels.

******* Memory Crash

One of the most utterly debilitating and tortuous powers available to the masters of Jumble, this causes the mental pathways associated with memory to become completely confused in a victim. This results in a crippling inability to correctly identify objects in a person's surroundings. One who falls victim to this power may find himself gazing at an object that he has been familiar with for years, unable to name it or its purpose. If pressed, the individual will guess at its name and function, but will invariably be wrong in both respects. For example, one such affected individual is shown a gun. When asked to identify it and its function, he responds: "It is a sailboat," and "You speak into it, and it amplifies your voice.". His ability to recognize people and recall events is unaffected, just his object identifiers are ruined. "Who am I," would be answered with "You are (whatever your name is)" correctly. "What am I," however, is something the target will be unable to respond to. The requirements for activation of this power are a Willpower roll against the target's Int+3 and the user must touch the victim. The duration of the effect is determined in the same manner as "Garble", and like "Garble", the user may choose to revoke the power early if he/she wishes, at the expense of a Willpower point.