Ancestral Vessel

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The Lodge of Voices possesses secret rites allowing them to tap into the wisdom of the Ancestor-Shadow. This Merit does not allow a character to channel a specific ancestor. The accumulated knowledge of departed Uratha, however, allows a character with this Merit to accentuate his own experience with theirs. A character with this Merit may attempt to channel the knowledge of an ancestor-spirit as a reflexive action. Spend one Essence and roll a number of dice equal to your character’s Ancestral Vessel dots. Each success allows you to add one die to the dice pool of a specific Skill. That Skill may change with each application of the Merit. The Storyteller has final say on what Skill may be augmented. Ancestral knowledge isn’t likely to be useful with the Drive or Computer Skills, for example, while it could be with Medicine, Crafts (using older materials), Intimidation, Brawl or even Firearms (especially with bows). A character can attempt to boost a Skill he does not possess, but lacking a good frame of reference for the knowledge he suddenly gains, the unskilled penalty still applies.

Example: Jon’s character runs afoul of an odd spirit. The Storyteller tells Jon to roll his character’s Intelligence (3) plus Occult (0) to identify it. Jon decides to use his character’s Ancestral Vessel Merit to channel some of the ancestors’ knowledge on spirits, and manages one success. His dice pool for the roll is now 4, but because the character has no dots in Occult, the unskilled penalty still applies (–3 for a Mental Skill). This means, though, that Jon has 1 die remaining the pool, whereas without the help from the ancestors he would be rolling only a chance die.

Bonus dice last for the remainder of the scene. Ancestral Vessel can be invoked only once per game session, whether it succeeds or fails. If the effort fails, no other attempts can be made in that chapter.

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