Índice 2: Aprendiz em Vida (••)

Body Control (Life ••)

Practice: Ruling
Primary Factor: Duration
Suggested Rote Skills: Athletics, Medicine, Survival

With this spell a mage can control her subject’s bodily functions to a degree that would make even the most inwardly-focused monks envious. She can do far more than slow heart rate; she can control her subject’s metabolism, heighten reflexes, and consume less oxygen. For the spell’s Duration, each level of Potency gives one rank in each of the following:

Breathing: Each rank slows down the subject’s breathing, halving the amount of oxygen she needs to function normally.

Heartbeat: By slowing down the subject’s heartbeat, she can double the interval at which a toxin affects her.

Metabolism: Regulating the subject’s metabolism allows her to subsist on half as much food, and doubles the amount of time between checks for deprivation or fatigue.

Reflexes: Add +1 to the subject’s Initiative.

Scent: The mage can change the subject’s scent to any that her body could naturally produce, eliminating (or increasing) body odors, controlling pheromone release.

Each level of Potency also halves the healing time of bashing wounds by controlling internal bleeding, preventing bruises or helping them to heal quickly. With Potency 3, for example, she would recover one bashing wound per minute.

+1 Reach: The subject also gains 1/0 armor for the spell’s Duration as her body becomes much more resistant to minor injuries.

+2 Reach: The subject also halves the healing time for lethal damage for each level of Potency.

Control Instincts (Life ••)

Practice: Ruling
Primary Factor: Duration
Withstand: Composure
Suggested Rote Skills: Animal Ken, Intimidation, Persuasion

For all their intellectual powers, humans are animals, too, and animals are governed by instincts. An Apprentice of Life can control these instinctual responses like a puppeteer pulling strings. In so doing she can make any animal or plant behave in any fashion natural to its type. She need not do so in the presence of circumstances that would provoke such behavior normally. A raging bear can be made to flee by manipulating its fight-or-flight response, a fish to leap, a rat to feast on something, or a snake made to secrete venom from its fangs, even in the absence of prey. A human may be made tired, hungry, or pumped with adrenaline. This spell works on any mundane life-form the mage can perceive. Humans with Supernatural Merits count as “mundane” enough for this spell to affect them.

Subjects suffer a Condition appropriate to the desired instinctive response. Use the guidelines for creating a Condition in the section on Creative Thaumaturgy (p. 126) and the Storytelling chapter (p.289).

+1 Reach: Control Instincts can affect living supernatural creatures.

Lure and Repel (Life ••)

Practice: Ruling
Primary Factor: Duration
Withstand: Resolve
Suggested Rote Skills: Animal Ken, Persuasion, Survival

The mage can create a magical lure or repellant for specific types of organisms. While the mage could in theory specify any type of organism, she is likely to be quickly overwhelmed by numbers. When casting this spell as a lure, a smart mage will specify only certain types of organisms (not microscopic ones, if she’s smarter still) to draw to her. Plants and microorganisms have Resolve 0 for purposes of Withstanding the spell. Organisms drawn in are not necessarily friendly and will remain cautious or even hostile if it is within their nature to do so, but will not openly attack the subject unless cornered. People affected by the spell find the subject irresistible or repugnant, but can’t pinpoint just what it is that provokes the reaction.

Repelling a type of organism means that such creatures must Withstand the spell’s effect to enter the area of effect Scale factor. The spell doesn’t so much physically repel the creature as trigger an instinctive aversion to the area, like animals fleeing a region before disaster strikes.

+1 Reach: The lured creatures prove benign toward the subject and will offer food or small favors as appropriate.

+1 Reach: Lured intelligent creatures treat the subject as having a good (lure) or bad (repel) first impression for purposes of Social maneuvering.

Mutable Mask (Life ••)

Practice: Veiling
Primary Factor: Duration
Withstand: Stamina
Suggested Rote Skills: Medicine, Stealth, Subterfuge

The mage may alter her subject’s apparent features, albeit only cosmetically and temporarily. She can change skin pigments, phenotypical features, apparent sex, or hair color and texture; add or subtract small fat deposits; or change the sound of the subject’s voice. Distinguishing features like scars and moles can be added or removed. Even at its most extreme, the changes wrought by this spell still leave the subject somewhat resembling her original form. If someone were to compare the masked and regular appearances side by side, they might notice an almost familial resemblance (even if the two are of obviously different races), but the changes are enough to fool facial recognition devices, sketch artists, or even change the subject’s scent enough to throw off tracking animals. Some biometric devices, such as fingerprint scanners, will still detect the difference. She cannot mimic specific people with this basic spell.

The changes brought on by this spell are illusionary, and some supernatural powers (including Life Mage Sight) may see through them with a successful Clash of Wills.

+2 Reach: The mage can duplicate the appearance of a specific person, including scars and fingerprints.

Purge Illness (Life ••)

Practice: Ruling
Primary Factor: Potency
Suggested Rote Skills: Athletics, Medicine, Survival

A mage with this spell can purge her subject’s body of diseases. Compare Potency to the severity level of the infirmity (p.
223). If Potency is less than the illness’ rating, reduce it by the
difference, and if greater, the spell eliminates the illness from
the subject entirely.