Merits and Flaws

These are Merits and Flaws that are available only to Solicitors, or at least those who use Intimation on a regular basis.


Very Useful Client: 1 - 3 pt Merit

Through airtight blackmail and the occasional use of Intimation, your Solicitor's gotten a hook into someone very well-placed. The Client might be influential, or provide a moderate service (1 pt.) very influential, or provide a rare service (2 pt.) or extremely influential, or provide a unique service (3 pt.). Such a person will behave as any other major Client: in addition, the Difficulty of the roll to succeed is one less.

This Merit may be taken several times during Character Creation, but dots in the Client background must be taken to represent these Clients. The Player and Storyteller should work together to determine who the Solicitor has hooked, and how.

 

Manchurian Candidate: 2 pt. Merit

Your Solicitor's been smart enough to program someone with a failsafe of sorts. As a result, you have a "sleeper" who can, with one word from you, spring into action and do something to help you, and then forget all about it.

The Solicitor's player should come up a low-ranking individual in an other group who, unbeknownst to that individual, has been programmed to aid the character in some fashion if she desires it. The player must state a specific, short program for such a person to follow: "let me out of the jail cell and forget you did so" and "argue with the nearest Legionaire about the Dictum Mortuum" would be acceptable, whereas "follow me forever and be my slave" or "do whatever I instruct whenever I need it" would not.

This Merit may be taken several times during Character Creation. It can only be taken by Solicitors who have a high enough Intimation to have accomplished such a feat.

 

Creeping Color: 4 pt Merit

A curious condition that affects perhaps one out of three hundred Solicitors who've undergone the Induction Ritual, the Creeping Color is when both of the Intimation-user's eyes turn a bright, poisonous green instead of just the left one. It usually starts out with just a few flecks of green in the right eye, and then the condition spreads and that eye catches up with the left within days.

The good news is that this makes for an effective disguise for moving about in public, given that Shapesense will reveal no Moliation in either eye. The bad news is that, even with this condition, the Solicitors' left eye will still blaze green from within the eye when she uses Intimation. Still, until she does, she just looks like someone with really bright, green eyes.

 

Desire's Blessing: 6 pt Merit

Desire has blessed your Solicitor with Hir favors, making it easier to work Hir desires. Once per game session, she may reroll any one failed or botched Intimation roll, but this may only be done if the Solicitor is using that Arcanos in the interests of the Cabal, or in keeping with orders that came from The Center of the Wheel Hirself. Mere self-preservation and self-aggrandization does not count.

 

Found Out: -2 or -4 Flaw

Somewhere along the line, your Solicitor goofed up. Right now, out there, a Wraith knows who she is, and that she's a Solicitor. In the -2 version of the Flaw, that someone is scared to death and running for her unlife at knowing such a thing. In the -4 version, that person is not scared at all, and considers your Solicitor her personal nemesis - one she's looking forward to taking down sometime soon.

The Player and Storyteller should work together to create this witness. Sooner or later she will come back to haunt the Solicitor, either as a spreader of her legend - which will increase her Notoriety - or someone dedicated to stamping her into a coin.

 

Apostate/Atheist: -3 pt Flaw

Your Solicitor believes that the true story of the Cabal's origins, or the true nature of Desire, or Hir children, is not quite as true as many believe. She might not even believe in the existence of Desire at all. Having such a belief makes one a dangerous element in the eyes of the Cabal's leadership, and if they ever find out that she disagrees with them, she'll be told she wants to go submit to a Gardener for "questioning" - a session she won't be leaving in one piece.

The player should come up with what her Solicitor believes, why, and if she tries to get others to see the light or keeps it to herself. Such Solicitors have to be very, very careful.

 

Desire's Disfavor: 4 pt Flaw

In some cases, the Creeping Color doesn't stop when both eyes are as green as a poison apple. Some unfortunates' eyes start to degenerate, turning into large, bulging and evil-looking things that start from their sockets and drip chunky, lime-green slime almost constantly. The effect will follow the slime down the face and neck, turning the Solicitor's Corpus puffy and pustulent as it goes. The malady usually stops somewhere around the shoulders, though tales are told of a case whose whole body was affected over time.

Besides being disgusting to look at, this deformity seems to radiate an atmosphere of dread and pure malice, making those who value their health and sanity want to flee. Worse still, this obvious deformity cannot be covered up with Moliate, which means that no matter what she does she will always be marked by Desire's ill-favor. It's not a good thing at all, and is thankfully very rare.

Any Solicitor who has Desire's mark of disfavor upon her has her Appearance score set at zero, and it can never get any higher via Moliation. Only the Alternate Art Cupid's Bow can mask the effects. Anyone outside of the Solicitors who sees such an individual must make a Willpower roll at difficulty 7 - or spend a point of Temporary Willpower - to avoid running in fear. All Social Rolls made with outsiders who can see her for what she really looks like fail. (These social problems do not apply to beings such as Spectres, or the insane)

In addition, anyone who manifests this Flaw is considered cursed by the Solicitors, who assume that Desire must have found this one lacking in some way. In some of the more strict Chapters she'll be smelted down into something useful once the Flaw can no longer be denied. In those that are more "civilized," but no less faithful, she'll be at a +2 Difficulty on all social rolls within the Cabal.

 

Lashed: 5 pt Flaw

The Solicitor needs to slow down and be more careful, lest she forget that Desire cuts both ways. She begins the game with five points of Desire's Whiplash, and therefore has a Whiplash Disorder of her players' choosing. This Disorder must be roleplayed out.


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