Some Thing

By Timothy Toner (thanatos@interaccess.com), for the Mumblers camp.

Level 2 Gift

Description

This seems to be the opposite of Thing. Any attempt to understand the babble, or even to hide a coherent message, is fruitless. What is important is the inflections. Although the target will not understand what the hell is being said, she will be able to infer an emotional state, and respond accordingly.

After spending a point of Gnosis, the user rolls Wits + Empathy (diff 7) to see to what degree the effect manifested. Most of the time, this is just empathic projection, useful in controlling reactions, especially animals. However, the more successes scored, the greater control the user has over the target.

Successes Effect
1 Simple emotions (Fear, anger, hunger) are passed and understood.
2 More complex emotions, or combinations of emotions are passed and understood. Connections can be made between objects. Rather than target feeling anger at whatever she is looking at, user can direct anger from or to any object in sight.
3 Complete thoughts composed of images, but not words, can be conveyed, laced with emotional triggers. Thus, out of sight objects can be influenced, as the target has an image of the object in her mind.
4 Most of the previous effects have to do with passive control of emotions. At this level, the user takes an active, albeit minor, level of control over the target. Before, the target had irrational thoughts enter her mind. Now the thoughts, although new, seem to become a rational part of the thought processes, almost as if a "brain storm" came across the target. This merely implies that the target wants to act on the feeling. She still has free will.
5 The user gains active control over the target. The new emotions and thoughts will seem completely natural, and, if asked, the target's mind will make every attempt to rationalize the implanted action.

Keep in mind, however, that the user must decide to what extent the power is to manifest beforehand, and must describe precisely beforehand how he wants the target to react. Thus, if a user wants the target just to be happy, it only requires 1 success. If he wants the target to be happy with a gun, that requires 3 successes. However, if he needs three successes to manifest the effect, and only gets one, then the target will just be happy, which might not be the effect desired. Extra successes have no effect.

Successes	Effect
1	Simple emotions (Fear, anger, hunger) are passed and understood.
2	More complex emotions, or combinations of emotions are passed and understood. Connections can be made between objects. Rather than target feeling anger at whatever she is looking at, user can direct anger from or to any object in sight.
3	Complete thoughts composed of images, but not words, can be conveyed, laced with emotional triggers. Thus, out of sight objects can be influenced, as the target has an image of the object in her mind.
4	Most of the previous effects have to do with passive control of emotions. At this level, the user takes an active, albeit minor, level of control over the target. Before, the target had irrational thoughts enter her mind. Now the thoughts, although new, seem to become a rational part of the thought processes, almost as if a "brain storm" came across the target. This merely implies that the target wants to act on the feeling. She still has free will.
5	The user gains active control over the target. The new emotions and thoughts will seem completely natural, and, if asked, the target's mind will make every attempt to rationalize the implanted action.