Shaping Gifts

Werewolf The Forsaken Sourcebook p. 137-139
Auspice, Lodges & Tribes
Iron Masters, Ithaeur, Lodge of Ruin
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It is with these Gifts that the Iron Masters first earned their name, as well as how Luna expresses her ever-changing nature through her Ithaeur. Werewolves use these powers to craft fetishes, perform repairs, embellish mundane objects or even sabotage the items of their enemies.

Straighten (•)

This Gift delivers what it promises, straightening out kinks, warps, folds or natural imperfections in a physical object. It could straighten a crooked walking staff into a long pole, uncoil a spring into a stiff wire, smooth out a crumpled piece of sheet metal, make a pitted chunk of concrete as smooth as a river stone, or flatten a bent and crooked blade to its original shape. Even a cast-off stick one finds on the ground could be shaped into a perfectly straight arrow shaft.

Ruin (••)

This Gift has the opposite effect of the preceding one. With a harsh bark and a flare of energy, the character causes an object to warp, twist and crumple up into a useless, gnarled mass. The Gift affects up to about one square yard of material, and the object must be single and discrete. A werewolf could ruin the radiator of a car or the car’s vacuum tube, for example, but he couldn’t ruin the entire engine with one use of the Gift. He could use Ruin to wreck a door, but he couldn’t use it to wreck a loadbearing wall. He could wreck a single ceiling beam, but he couldn’t ruin the entire ceiling.

A werewolf can use this Gift on an object on which Straighten has been used, but a werewolf cannot use Straighten to fix an object on which this Gift has been used.

Sculpt (•••)

With this Gift, a physical object becomes as malleable and workable as clay. A character can sculpt and re-form the object into any shape he desires, as long as he has the manual dexterity to do so, of course. He can perform quick, indelicate changes, such as snatching a gem out of its setting, or he can perform non-intuitive transformations such as flattening out a bowling ball and shaping it into a stout club.

The character can manipulate up to one cubic yard of material per use of this Gift, and he can continue to work and shape it for half an hour per Essence spent (as long as he continues to touch it). The Essence need not be spent up front; it can be spent throughout the process as it proves necessary. Also, a character can use a tool such as a knife to sculpt the object as long as some other part of his body is touching the substance.

Shatter (••••)

The character howls and breaks down an object just by touching it, more than likely destroying it. It might crumble to dust in his hands or fracture like desert hardpan. It might even explode, depending on what other stress it’s under at the time. For every success achieved on the Presence + Expression + Glory roll, the object loses one point of Structure; Durability is ignored. The object could then be repaired using a Crafts roll and the proper tools, or the character could use Sculpt to magically reassemble the pieces.

Condense or Expand (•••••)

This bizarre Gift either shrinks or enlarges an object while keeping its mass the same. Making an object larger causes it to become lighter and easier to break, for example, while making it smaller causes it to become heavier and much harder to break. The object maintains its original consistency — woven fibers, for instance, remain flexible — but both its Size and Durability change. If the character condenses an object, its Size decreases by one while its Durability increases by two. If the character expands the object, its Size increases by one while its Durability decreases by two. (Size and Durability combine to form an object’s Structure — effectively its Health — as shown on p. 135 of the World of Darkness Rulebook, so a change in either calls for a change in Structure.) The character must touch the object in question.