Halcyon Gifts

Blood of the Wolf p. 84
Auspice, Lodges & Tribes
Storm Lords
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These weather-controlling Gifts call on the spirits of sky and wind to show mercy, appeasing them to quiet a storm or quell heat. Designed to keep the weather calm, placid, safe and, moreover, appropriate to wilderness travelers and survivalists, these Gifts are taught by sky-spirits or spirits that represent smaller species of birds.

The Storm Lords have affinity with this Gift list, but few are interested in its ways — most Iminirfeel a certain level of contempt for those who would seek to still the wind instead of standing proud amid the gales.

Gift List

• Scent of the Wind

Letting the air fill his nostrils, the werewolf tastes the condition of the local climate. He learns what the weather is like for miles around him and can safely predict what the weather will be in a short time.

• Cost: None
• Dice Pool: Perception + Survival Skill + Wisdom
• Action: Instant

Roll Results

• Dramatic Failure: The werewolf develops an incorrect picture of the local weather. Attempts to divine the weather automatically fail until one full day has passed.
• Failure: The weather is unknowable.
• Success: The werewolf knows the weather of the region around him. Within a radius of five miles per success, he knows if it is sunny, cloudy, raining, hailing, assailed by fierce storms, beset by tornadoes or any other sort of weather. If there is a wind blowing toward him, double the distance for that direction. He can predict the weather that will affect him directly in advance, by one half-hour per success.
• Exceptional Success: Nothing, apart from increased distance.

•• Cloud Cover

The local spirits of wind communicate with their more-distant brethren to find clouds within several miles, sometimes beyond the visible horizon. If the spirits succeed, they collaborate to blow the clouds over the werewolf’s current location. This can serve simply as shadow from the sun or as protection from detection by high-flying planes and satellites.

• Cost: 1 Essence
• Dice Pool: This power requires no roll.
• Action: Instant

Cloud Cover remains as long as it normally would in prevailing wind conditions, though the werewolf can use the Gift repeatedly to call the clouds back. The spirits only look so far for the werewolf’s clouds, however: if there are no clouds whatsoever within 20 miles per dot of Primal Urge, the spirits find none and the Gift is wasted.

If there are too few clouds to effectively cover the area surrounding the werewolf, the spirits bring what there is, and, if there are many clouds, the spirits bring only what is necessary. Use of this Gift can sometimes increase the chance of inclement weather in the region.

••• Raising Doldrums

No wind can continue moving when one of the Forsaken levels this Gift upon the local weather. All local winds cease, abruptly and completely; the region becomes a zone of dead air. This Gift stops tornadoes completely and takes much of the sting out of rainstorms or snowstorms. Chill due to wind disappears completely.

• Cost: 1 Essence
• Dice Pool: Resolve + Survival Skill
• Action: Extended (25 successes; one turn passes per roll)

Roll Results

• Dramatic Failure: The wind-spirits are incited to a frenzy instead of lulled into sleep. Local winds increase in strength immensely, becoming half again as fast as they were before.
• Failure: The winds do not change.
• Success: All wind within one mile of the werewolf immediately slows by half, and all winds within one half-mile stop dead. Winds that blow in from outside the mile boundary begin to slow down, and wind that breezes into the half-mile boundary also stops. Areas downwind of the affected region are treated, for the duration, as though they were on the leeward side of a large, immobile object; they are sheltered from the wind. This condition continues as long as the werewolf concentrates on the effect. When the werewolf stops focusing on holding the wind steady, new winds that enter the area cease to be affected, and the local winds slowly begin to move again. Some strong localized winds, such as tornadoes, never regain their old momentum. It takes one half-hour per dot of Primal Urge for the effect to completely dissipate; until then, the wind will be sluggish within what was originally the null zone.
• Exceptional Success: Nothing, apart from gaining more successes.

•••• Lightning Ward

The werewolf asks the spirits to provide respite from the danger of lightning strikes during a storm. Simply put, this Gift prevents lightning from striking anywhere within several dozen yards. Lightning Ward can also be learned as a Warding Gift from the spirits that teach those.

• Cost: 1 Essence
• Dice Pool: None
• Action: Instant

For five hours, the spirits of wind, storm and lightning bend the strikes away from a point chosen by the werewolf. No lightning will strike any closer to that point than 10 yards per dot of Primal Urge.

••••• The Will of the Winds

There are many times and many ways that the weather may be tampered with. This Gift empowers the local spirits to take charge of the winds and precipitation and restore them to the way they were before any supernatural powers came into play. The Will of the Winds causes all supernatural weather effects cease, and whatever weather pattern would have existed if not for their interference is put up in their place. Any being that has placed a supernatural weather effect on the region affected by this Gift makes a contested roll against the werewolf’s single roll; only the highest of his opponent’s rolls is considered.

• Cost: 1 Essence
• Dice Pool: Presence + Survival Skill + Purity versus Resolve + Primal Urge
• Action: Contestedwarning.png"Contested" is not in the list of possible values (Extended, Instant, Reflexive) for this property. ; resistance is reflexive

Roll Results

• Dramatic Failure: The weather-spirits rebuke the werewolf; he is unable to use Weather Gifts for one full day.
• Failure: If the user’s roll fails or the victim’s contested roll nets as many or more successes than the user’s, nothing changes. All present supernatural effects remain.
• Success: The most successes are rolled for the Gift user. All supernatural weather effects within one mile per point of Primal Urge cease immediately, replaced with the weather that would have been there if no one had interfered.
• Exceptional Success: The most successes are rolled for the Gift user, and five or more are achieved. The weather cannot be affected by supernatural means for a period of one hour per point of Primal Urge.