[Minor Template] Murderer!

[amechra]

Murderers

One crow sorrow
Two crows mirth
three, a wedding
four, a birth
five brings silver
six takes wealth
seven crows a secret
More I can nae tell.

You can hear them. The crows, I mean - there's always crows around you. Always - you could be miles underground, and there would be one perched at the edge of your lamp-light. But yes - you can hear them. They tell you things.

Such... terrible things.

---

The Curse of Crows
You are the core of a murder of preternatural crows - at some point during any Scene where you lost a dot of Integrity due to a Breaking Point, a crow hops out of the shadows (quickly joined by a second if it was a Dramatic Failure). These crows are considered to be your "murder" - they will always be within the same scene as you unless someone acts to prevent them from being there. You do not have direct control of these birds, though they will be seemingly friendly towards you - they will attack people who mean you harm, and will sometimes leave you gifts.

Regaining a dot of Integrity banishes a single crow from your murder - they simply drop dead on the spot, quickly decaying to ashes and feathers.

Flockflesh
Your bond to your murder is strong and strange - each crow grants you an additional Health Level. These Health Levels are tied to the health of the crows themselves - they are actually the right-most health level of the crow in question. This means, among other things, that the health level will be filled with the same kind of damage as the crow's rightmost health level, and vice-versa. A curious side effect of this is that the health level is subject to the natural healing of both you and the crow - otherwise dead crows will come back from death once the health level is cleared of Aggravated damage, for one thing.

Counting and Eating Crows
Your murder is always whispering into your head. Their number is important - truly important. Each crow grants you a single dot in a Mental or Supernatural merit related to knowledge, information, or death - dead crows temporarily suppress those dots. As a side effect, you can gain a deep benefit from eating crow (literally) - consuming a member of your murder inflicts a level of Aggravated damage on you (since you have to kill the crow), but either resolves the Guilty condition immediately or grants you an Occult Clue related to a single Investigation you are undergoing.

---

Starting Murderers have an Integrity of 6, a single crow as part of their murder, and three additional merit dots. Other characters can become Murderers through failing breaking points caused by supernatural events.

[amechra]

Yes, the crow you ate comes back.

Nothing short of regaining your lost Integrity (or you dying) will stop them from coming back.

[Fumus]

I love flockflesh. Flat out amazing mechanic. Are the crows always around though? Like, would you be able to trap one of your murder, stick it in a well sealed (but survivable) room somewhere and then go wherever you want while it is stuck in the room still granting benefits to you (would make flockflesh rather broken, making it impossible to kill a murderer so long as that crow is alive in it's containment). Or do the crows mystically escape from their containment at some point after the murderer leaves?

[Master Aquatosic]

There going to be any explanation for this tying it to some gameline? Or just general CoD weirdness, like Horrors?

[21C Hermit]

As always, a brilliant Micro-Template you have written! I espcially liked the Serpent-blooded, and now this (apparently I favor creepy animal shapechangers )

EDIT:

There going to be any explanation for this tying it to some gameline? Or just general CoD weirdness, like Horrors?

Ooh, lemme try

Vampire: Birds. Doom. Put those two together, and you can see vampires suddenly develop a phobia of Owls.
Werewolf: The Crow Hosts!
Mage: Some sort of a Stygian phenomenon. Even if it's not from Stygia, studying its symbols would definietely say that they resonate heavily with Stygia, or maybe Pandemonium as well.
Promethean: Remnants of Grandfather Crow's Pilgrimage and his secret experiments.
Changeling: The scheme of a faery being and its personal stories that reverberate through out the world. What type of fae? Who could say for certain?
Geist: They're a pseudo-Bound created by some crow-motif Chthonian being (or beings) from the Underworld.
Mummy: Related to the Nameless Falcon, who demands people to face what they've done or seen in defiance of their own cowardice.
Demon: Infrastructure designed to pinpoint people with affinity to Corvidae and guilt. But what for? Inquisitors are probing into it.
Beast: The crows are echoes of Primordial power left by an Incarnate, whose Horror took the form of a crow that peers into your deepest guilts.

[ManusDomine]

There going to be any explanation for this tying it to some gameline? Or just general CoD weirdness, like Horrors?

WelcomeToAmechra.png

[Almarck]

Don't PUN-ish us!
I thought we were talking about murderers. Not murders!


Okay, seriously. I like crows. So this automatically gets a thumbs up.

[Raistlin]

Not sure if it would work better for slashers.

[amechra]

I love flockflesh. Flat out amazing mechanic. Are the crows always around though? Like, would you be able to trap one of your murder, stick it in a well sealed (but survivable) room somewhere and then go wherever you want while it is stuck in the room still granting benefits to you (would make flockflesh rather broken, making it impossible to kill a murderer so long as that crow is alive in it's containment). Or do the crows mystically escape from their containment at some point after the murderer leaves?

There's a bit of a misunderstanding here - let's say you're Tony Average, a murderer with a Stamina of 2 and a single crow in your Murder.

If you get knifed for 1L while at full health, your left-most HL is filled with Lethal - that also fills the crow's right-most HL with Lethal, making it suffer the appropriate effects. So Tony can still die even if you hide away all of your crows - they'll just start dropping dead at the same time you do.

Master Aquatosic There is a very specific way I like my horror:

[Charlaquin]

There's a bit of a misunderstanding here - let's say you're Tony Average, a murderer with a Stamina of 2 and a single crow in your Murder.

If you get knifed for 1L while at full health, your left-most HL is filled with Lethal - that also fills the crow's right-most HL with Lethal, making it suffer the appropriate effects. So Tony can still die even if you hide away all of your crows - they'll just start dropping dead at the same time you do.

Query: does this skip over the crow's intervening health boxes, or fill them with damage as well?

[amechra]

Query: does this skip over the crow's intervening health boxes, or fill them with damage as well?

Whichever leads to less shenanigans.

[Charlaquin]

Whichever leads to less shenanigans.

Filling them all would be more easily compatible with the normal rules for damage and healing, though it would also make the crows more vulnerable.

[Vent0]

Well, the average crow only has 4 health.

So, Joe Average again.
Joe Health: { }[ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ], Crow Health: [ ][ ][ ]{ }
Joe takes 1 Lethal
Joe Health: {L}[ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ], Crow Health: [ ][ ][ ]{L} (or [L][L][L]{L}?)
Crow takes 1 Lethal
Joe Health: { }[ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ], Crow Health: [L][ ][ ]{ }

To prevent confusion, would it make sense to reword Flockflesh so that the left-most Health boxes are linked? Killing/Eating a Crow is still going to give you 1 Aggravated, since the leftmost box would have Aggravated damage as well.

Then it would be
Joe takes 1 Lethal
Joe Health: {L}[ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ], Crow Health: {L}[ ][ ][ ]
Crow takes 1 Lethal
Joe Health: {L}[ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ], Crow Health: {L}[ ][ ][ ]

[amechra]

True... It would also make the crows a vulnerability, which is cool.

[Vent0]

Might sync better with crow resurrection too - dead crows aren't very well healing their left Health box. Though, healing that agg would be a good timer for when the crow comes back.

otherwise dead crows will come back from death once the health level is cleared of Aggravated damage, for one thing.

And what is wrong with that? Sounds delightfully creepy.

Another thought on Flockflesh: maybe stipulate that crows always take damage first? That way, a fireball or grenade that catches you and them in the blast fills the linked health boxes, then you take damage. Or not, if you want to up toughness at the cost of crows.

As a minor template, what about supporting Merits? Like

Last Words ••
Prerequisites: 2+ crows
Effect: When one of your Murder eats the tongue of the deceased, you can learn what the dead person said up to one hour before their demise.

Nevermore • to •••••
Prerequisites: 1+ crows, Animal Speech ••
Effect: You can bid your Murder to haunt another target, whispering their crimes and dark secrets into their ears. You may assign a number of your Murder up to the dots in this merit to a target, and the target makes a Breaking Point check penalized by the number of crows taunting them.
[Comments: Should this require a Willpower point, or limit to once per target, per scene?]

And things of that nature?