A vampire reborn.  An ancient weapon, searching for her prey. An immortal avenger clad in the garb of a holy woman. A sibling lost, and another forgotten. Twin sisters, one damaged, the other resolute but helpless. That is the stage that has been set on this moonlit night.

Within a modest Japanese town named Misaki, the world is much like the one you originally came from during the mid-1990s - students go to school, ordinary people go to work and live out their day to day lives - they all live in a routine, unaware of or unwilling to acknowledge their mortality as the years go by and they age to the tune of everyday banality. But hidden in the shadows and emerging in the moonlight are creatures from ancient history and legend, from a long-lost age  - immortal monsters called ‘vampires’, or by their preferred designation, Dead Apostles. Already several corpses drained of blood have found their way into the morning news, and the body count only grows with time. This is a world of hidden dangers, where it is never safe should you wander alone at night - or perhaps, it is a world that is not safe from you, as you hold a bloodied dagger to the heart of a beast or a man alike?

A month after your arrival, Tohno Shiki will leave his second adoptive family to join what he thinks is his blood family to reunite with his sister, who he has not seen in years. You will be spending ten years in this world of darkness. Whatever path you choose, know this - this is a world where death and mortality hang like a curtain over the stage. Even the immortal may experience the bitter and cold taste of death here. Be cautious.

For your trouble, and hope you may live to see another moonlit night, you receive 1000 choice points to make your stay comfortable - or a danger you can navigate.

Your age is 14+1d8.
Your gender is the same as it was last jump.
For 50 CP you can select your age and gender as you will.

Backgrounds:

Wandering Magus - ...who are you, actually? It’s as if you appeared from somewhere else, stepping out of a larger world into this smaller one. Or maybe it’s all part of the same world, and you’re the only one from a different one? It’s hard to say. Either way, your bizarre nature and free spirit has given you both moxie and a talent for magecraft, perhaps even enough to make a Dead Apostle think twice before crossing paths with you. You’ve no friends here, no family, no connections...but no enemies, either. Whether under a soft sunrise or the full moon above, this road is yours.

Ordinary High School Student - There’s nothing special about you, on the surface. You attend high school and are likely thinking about what you’ll be doing with your life...or maybe you just take life as it comes, living each day as though it were your last, appreciating what you have but never clinging too tightly or reaching too far ahead of you. Is there happiness in such a carefree existence? Who knows. Maybe your life isn’t as simple as it seems - you’ve likely encountered death in some form, up close and personal, and it may have left a mark on you. That mark will follow you into this world and the grim shadows that follow it at night...you will be going to the same high school as one Tohno Shiki.

Church Executioner - This world is full of death and darkness, hidden from the eyes of the unenlightened and the unwary. Magi practice their foul witchcraft at the expense of themselves and others, vampires stalk the night and prey upon the living, and the flock that is humanity is without a shepherd to guide them. You are no shepherd - rather, you are an executioner, a living instrument of God’s will on Earth. Whether you were a monster yourself ‘redeemed’ by the Church’s tender mercies or simply a pious believer with fervor in your heart, you are a trained agent and assassin of the Holy Church. Your mission is simple: Kill heretical and unholy beings wherever you encounter them. And that is likely why you’re here...or perhaps, you’re simply trying to live a simple, everyday life despite your ‘holy’ mission? It’s hard to say. No matter what, there is no shortage of darkness in this city - and you are the torch-bearer.



Demon-Blooded - Blood is thicker than water, indeed. Your family is one of several who intermingled with the demonic Oni in an ancient past - perhaps a lost sibling of the Tohno Family, or even the Kishima family. Maybe even a different one entirely, lost to the records of history and the attentions of those who care to see it? Either way, these families usually end in tragedy as such monstrous bloodlines usually create incredibly bloody results...or simply mundane disappointments. The family you’re part of is respected and likely fairly wealthy, even if that luxury likely came at the loss of a normal life or childhood. It’s also likely you’re one of the more ‘fruitful’ results of your bloodline, giving you all the benefits of a human body and a monstrous ability...and all the downsides of both together.

Servant - You have lived your life in the shadow of someone else. Always in the background, always unseen and simply tending to your duties. Perhaps it’s just a job you take pride in. Perhaps it’s all you’ve known. Maybe you have nowhere else to go or be. Either way, the one thing that a caretaker, a janitor, and a maid all have in common is that it is your duty to keep things nice and tidy and to ensure your employer is able to face the next day. That’s all. And perhaps the most surprising and interesting thing is the sort of impact a person like that can have on someone’s life...or how it ends, entirely in your hands.

Alchemist - Atlas Institute. Named for the titan who dutifully (or unwillingly) holds up the heavens from the Earth, the alchemists of Atlas occupy a strange role in this world. Said to have descended from Egyptian magi of mythology, they are the odd ducks of the Mage’s Association - a collection of magi dedicated to the study and development of modern magecraft. They have a distant relationship to their peers and work closely with the Holy Church, all while making and keeping their research a tightly-held secret. Very few of them actually practice Magecraft proper, focusing on the study of both the human body and the world around them, as well as Alchemy - which is based less around the transformation of matter and more around ‘events’, creating calculated outcomes in both others and their own bodies to generate results. In addition, they are creators of many inventions and supernatural tools - relying less on prana and more on the advancement of both science and technology. You are one such Alchemist - it has been predicted that the phenomenon known as ‘TATARI’ is very likely to manifest in Misaki. Whether or not you’re aware of this or care about it, it is something of interest to your organization...should you pursue it, you will find no shortage of danger and conflicting interests. But of course, that’s all within your calculations.

Dead Apostle [400] - You were human, once. Maybe it was just a few nights ago. Maybe it was more nights can you care to remember. But then you died. Your throat was torn out, your body hacked to pieces, or simply every last drop of blood you had to spare was drained out of your veins as the cold embrace of death swept over you...and then you woke up as something else. You are a vampire, descended from one of the original Twenty-Seven Dead Apostle Ancestors - whether or not you went through the ‘normal’ evolution process of your kind or miraculously skipped the bestial Ghoul stage of your predecessors in the past year or so is a matter of backstory. What matters now is what you do with your unlife on this moonlit night.

Your newfound vampirism comes with several benefits. Your body is an unliving vessel frozen in time, and no longer knows the ravages of age, hunger, or disease. Your wounds heal quickly, not from cellular regeneration, but from your body reversing its personal time back to an unwounded state, letting you ignore all damage that cannot keep up with your body’s own limits. Your reflexes and physical strength outpace those of a normal human by leaps and bounds, letting you crush and bend steel and tear through humans like wet tissue paper, as well as easily perceive and dodge a bullet as it was fired from a gun. Your hands are able to change into razor-sharp claws that can tear into flesh, and your senses are keen enough to see a pitch black night as though it were high noon, and your other senses becoming just as sharp. As the years go on, experimentation will allow your body to develop new magical abilities with time and training, such as shapeshifting or reincarnation through Magecraft, perhaps even manifesting a Reality Marble after centuries of work.

However, this is a double-edged sword. The body of a Dead Apostle requires the blood of humans (or animals, in a pinch) in order to restore itself, for the corpse begins to decay and return to its ‘proper’ state as power and time are exhausted without it. As you grow older, your hunger will increase with your strength and prowess as a Dead Apostle, and though there may yet be ways to mitigate or even overcome these limitations, you will find yourself going from needing the blood of a single victim in your youth to needing meals of ‘hundreds’ of fresh meat in ancient age. The decay of your body will greatly intensify in sunlight, making the morning light and the daytime hours your bane, and you will be unable to bring yourself to cross running water. As the years go on, these weaknesses may eventually be overcome, turning into mere annoyances or distant memories...though whether or not that night comes is up to you.

True Ancestor [1200] - A long time ago, there was a race of vampiric creatures known as the True Ancestors. Born as part of a pact between Gaia and Crimson Moon Brunestud, this race would exist as an extension of nature and the will of the planet itself, designed to return the planet to its ‘default’ state before the growth and advancement of humanity began to fester on its surface like a malignant tumor, obliviously killing the spirit of the world they lived on. However, not only were they detached from their original mission, but as they were based upon Crimson Moon itself, they suffered from a vampiric desire for blood despite their lack of need for such a thing. They would eventually become feral beasts, little more than living disasters akin to a living force of extinction. It was this flaw that would result in the creation of the Dead Apostles and the strongest of the True Ancestors - a weapon by the name of Arcueid Brunestud, the ‘Princess’ of the True Ancestors. And she would be the one who would slay every single one of them, leaving her the last of her kind.

Except for you.

Somehow, you are an anomaly - a True Ancestor who sealed themselves away before Arcueid’s purge of her own kind, or perhaps one brought to life in the modern era against all odds. You and her are the only ones of your race left on the entire planet, and likely the only ones there will ever be. As such, you are both one of the most dangerous and most interesting beings left in this world of dying Mysteries. I hope you don’t mind - The Dead Apostles are likely to either fear you, covet you, or outright try to slay you themselves. And that’s before factoring in the many humans interested in your existence…

You are a creature, or rather a flesh-given spirit, that exists above what others would call ‘Divine’. Being born of the will of the planet, you have a natural connection to both nature and the ‘rules’ set by Gaia. Your body possesses superhuman speed, endurance, and strength - even if you were absolutely exhausted, you could tear open a three-story building with a swipe of your hand, move far faster than the speed of sound, and withstand most mundane physical attacks like leaves gently brushing against you. You possess an incredible resistance to what this world calls Conceptual Weapons and modern magecraft, most being unable to even scratch you unless they were truly powerful or designed to be used against you specifically (or your regeneration, such as the Church’s Black Keys). Similar to a Dead Apostle but well beyond their norm, you are able to regenerate from even physical annihilation by your injuries ‘reversing’ back to your healthy state. In addition, you suffer no physical weakness from sunlight, nor do you require blood to sustain yourself - simply a few days of rest will suffice should you overextend your abilities.  In the daytime, you are physically tough. In the dead of night, exposed to the light of the Moon that your progenitor dwelled within, your already-considerable might increases greatly, making you able to swat aside most Dead Apostles like flies. This further increases with the phases of the moon, waxing and waning as it does. The concept of death itself flees from your body at night, and only in a state of extreme physical weakness or if your connection to the Earth is somehow severed are you vulnerable.

In addition, your connection to the world enables you to use a phenomena called the Marble Phantasm - tapping into the will of Gaia and re-shaping it according to your will, using your imagination to create changes in reality. An example of this is turning the atmosphere within a hallway into vacuums that would slice apart a target like a knife, but the hallway itself remaining untouched because your imagination didn’t factor it in. Empowered by Crimson Moon, Arcueid Brunestud could pull out a version of the moon itself from the distant future, though this is an extreme example and beyond what you begin with. It is also more difficult to use this ability within areas affected by the progress of human development and civilization, though the difference is slight - and while you cannot directly affect humans or things made by humans, you can easily do so indirectly, such as with the aforementioned vacuum blades. What you create with the Marble Phantasm must be something possible under the rules of the world - it could not make a creature or item made of dreams or magic, but it could create mundane animals and other results that were possible within the world - such as fire, villages, or even natural disasters. The Marble Phantasm allows you to create results that were possible according to the laws of the world, akin to reaching into a bag of marbles and pulling out a white one every time with only a 1% of drawing it normally in a bag of black marbles. So long as it is a naturally occuring phenomena, you can create it - so you could create unpurified ore from nothing, but not a car or an anvil. Finally, you do not age, untouched by the ravages of time.

All being said, you are not invincible. Your abilities are not tied to a pool of blood or magical energy like Dead Apostles or Magi, but instead directly to your personal stamina. The more you exert yourself, the weaker your abilities become - while you remain formidable, you become increasingly vulnerable if you recently had to do something like recreate your body from slabs of meat in the daytime, requiring you to rest for several days. While fighting Dead Apostles constantly or making uses of Marble Phantasm will not be enough to drain you, coming back from certain death or battling nonstop for hours at your full power will likely be a heavy toll. You are also not the same level as Arcueid Brunestud is at her full power - the strongest of your might is a third of her full power, and while this makes you equals in the modern era, should she ever succumb to her bloodlust or become the vessel for Crimson Moon, she would slay you as easily as she did the rest of your kin. Finally, while you have no need for blood, you do suffer from the vampiric impulses of your kin...though it is more of a peckish craving and an annoyance in your current state, indulging in it will turn you into one of the ‘Demon Lords’, a rampaging beast that is a threat to humans and vampires alike - and likely target number one for the Princess herself.

However, whether from your youth or the unusual circumstances of your condition, you will find that your vampiric impulses can be suppressed by an act of will alone, needing none of your power to do so...and while your impulses will grow as you age, so will your power. And maybe even that vice tied to your body can be overcome. Perhaps with years or even centuries, you may yet obtain and surpass the full might of the Princess herself...but that night is not tonight.

Such a curious creature, one that has no place in this era, a living relic of what was...what will you do, I wonder?


Perks:
All discounts are 50% off. Discounts do not stack, 100 point perks are free for their background.

Wandering Magus:

Sensei [100 - Free Wandering Magus] - You’re probably not the shining example of humanity, a paragon of virtue, or anything like that...you may be more of a wandering hurricane, if anything. But somehow, you manage to run into very unique or important individuals during a turning point in their lives, whether in their youth or during a moment of great change. And in that moment, you will have an opportunity to either teach them a valuable life lesson that they will keep, along with the memory of you, close to their hearts...or perhaps terrify them to their core. What do you with these moments, and what you choose to teach, is your own will. Just be prepared for any consequences that follow.

Redshift Jumper [100 - Free Wandering Magus] - The greatest expression of power isn’t anything as subtle as presence or a mere sense of having moved forward somehow - it’s bright and flashy colors that show you’re not someone to mess with! When you achieve or use any supernatural power of your choosing, you may have your body change in appearance somehow to match it - whether a different hair color, longer hair, a change in skin tone or eye color, or other ‘minor’ changes in appearance. This is purely aesthetic and doesn’t allow full-blown shapeshifting, but you can freely customize when and how these forms appear, as well as change the appearance of similar transformations that don’t change your body very much freely. This can be toggled and adjusted at will.

Starmine and Starbow [200 - Discount Wandering Magus] - Some Magecraft works through things like the manipulation of one’s time, thoughts, or other esoteric methods designed to eventually form the path to the Root. You just charge up magical energy and use it as bullets by using a system of processing, converting, and then making output of prana through numerology. In less complicated terms, you direct magical energy towards creating a desired mental image or interference into reality - usually things like magical bullets or things that otherwise act as destructive spells based on what you enjoy visualizing most. In addition, you can root yourself into the ground to absorb a high amount of magical energy, or lock onto targets for your bullets with concentration, guiding the shots. It’s a straightforward magecraft, capable of little beyond offense and disruption - but sometimes that’s all you need, isn’t it? With enough speed and magical energy, someone using this art could act as a living human-sized force of destruction and disaster - though it does little else on its own. You’re an expert at this particular, simple magecraft, able to lock and fire shots with great accuracy and a good amount of offensive power, as simple as firing a gun you’ve known for an entire lifetime.

Simple Is Best [200 - Discount Wandering Magus] - Many magi dedicate their lives to chasing the Root - the elusive source of all magic and wisdom. In that, they live by complicated formulas and great sacrifices, by complex strategies and abuse of loopholes. You don’t. You just cut the proverbial Gordian knot and are done with it. In complicated situations with no easy answers, you’re good at finding a ‘third option’ that is both simple and effective, able to think outside the box as easily as breathing and come out with something useful. As a bonus, you’re very good at fighting or otherwise competing against those who live and die by these particularly roundabout methods - often baffling or defeating them where they’d otherwise be strongest. Do note - this won’t let you accomplish something impossible, simply things no one thought would be an issue at face value. Other simple-minded or practical individuals are a bit more resistant to this, but even they can be surprised, you know.

True To Myself [400 - Discount Wandering Magus] - It doesn’t matter what others think of you. The Clock Tower, your own family, or even sane and rational individuals who balk at your actions. All that matters is that you’re true to what you want to be and what you want to do. Nothing can make you betray your nature unwillingly - mind control, persuasion, and more simply cannot touch your personality and your decision-making process. Also, so long as you don’t make the choice to betray what you see as your true nature or what you see as right, consequences for your decisions simply...roll off of you. Causing trouble and death in a city by trying to claim a familiar? Water under the bridge. Drastically shorten humanity’s already-declining time on this Earth to save someone’s life? No one thinks to bring it up after the act. This won’t stop those you wrong or harm from personally retaliating, but the long-term consequences...far away in the future you won’t be present for, out of sight and out of mind.

I’m Gonna Kick You [400 - Discount Wandering Magus] - Alright, alright. Maybe you’re not actually that good at magecraft. Maybe even some redhead the next city over can beat you when it comes to specialization in the simplest of magic. But really, who cares? Problems are like broken televisions...you just punch your arm through them and forget all about it! You’ll find that no matter the beast you battle or the problem you deal with, violence is always an option. Magical barrier? Punch it as hard as you can and it’ll break eventually. Vampire made of thousands of souls about to make you their lunch? You’ll find your fists are surprisingly effective against the weird shapeshifting flesh they’re made of. In short, just beating the hell out of tricky problems or opponents with brute force and fisticuffs is always an option. You’re pretty good at it, too. Do note this doesn’t guarantee victory or a perfect gap-closer against a superior opponent - just that you’ll have something to fall back on when you don’t have the time or the brains for planning, magic, or some other specific ability.

Magic Gunner [600 - Discount Wandering Magus] - A thousand kilometers on a single liter of gasoline. A vehicle like that is fairly amazing, isn’t it? When it comes to magic, you’re the same way - even if you’re cursed with a total lack of talent in magic or even a tiny handful of magical circuits, you know how to get the best result out of it sheerly through efficiency that defies all expectations. To put it more simply, a single ‘drop’ of prana can generate a result that would normally require one-hundred, greatly enhancing simple spells and letting you easily pay for more expensive ones without draining your body completely. This doesn’t change what a human body can safely output, but when you have reserves to spare and destructive power to give weight to even the simplest spells and curses, what can stop you? You’re a living artillery platform, loaded and ready to fire.

High Speed Magus [600 - Discount Wandering Magus] - High-Speed Incantation. The ability to perform otherwise-complicated magecraft that would require time and ritual in mere seconds. Whether through intense training or a natural talent, you are an expert at this Incantation, able to cast and rotate your magic within an instant. Your multitasking and mental calculations are good enough that you could pass off as a fledgling Alchemist of Atlas, able to perfectly cycle through spells in mere seconds and shorten the time of complicated magical formulas incantations’ from minutes into seconds, or hours into a short few minutes. In addition, this mental processing lets you easily juggle both hand-to-hand combat and constantly using magecraft alongside it, letting you easily use magecraft alongside any other physical abilities or powers you may have - so long as your body can handle the output of both at once, of course.

Ordinary High School Student:

Model Student [100 CP - Free for Ordinary High School Student] - If you find yourself regularly skipping class to go on nighttime hunts for vampires or just general adventure, then it pays to be a good student on paper if nothing else. You're a model student, soaking up what teachers say like a dry sponge and speed reading your required studies in but an hour. You learn about twice as quickly as other top students, absorbing academic and mundane skills with very little trouble, even on a time crunch. Supernatural teachings or things like complicated science take more time, but you’re still an excellent learner as long as you have a good teacher - whether an actual mentor or a very informative book.

Even Tonight, The Moon is Beautiful [100 - Free for Ordinary High School Student] - Everyone dies eventually. Maybe it’ll be of old age in a bed, maybe it’ll be from anemia, maybe it will be because you got your head torn off by an angry vampire. And that’s alright. You’ll find that while your self-preservation instincts are intact and as sharp as ever, as is your will to live, you will find that fear of your own mortality holds no power over you. While you may still fear pain or other things you naturally would, you will find you won’t freeze up in shock or frantically run away like a scared animal when staring down imminent doom...you will remain composed and be able to take a chance to escape, should the chance exist. You also have an odd talent to be able to appreciate mundane sights and sounds, like a full moon or a soft breeze, even in stressful situations like a fight to the death or panicking over the idea you may have murdered someone.

I Am Not A Killer [200 - Discount Ordinary High School Student] - There may be bloodlust burning within you - a craving for battle, an unnatural talent for violence. But is that really all you are? Can you truly forsake the things that make you human, that let you smile at simple, everyday life? You will find that neither the negative effects of trauma or unnatural impulses hold any power over you or your personality - you may live life with a clear conscience, suffer no temptation or post-traumatic reflexes, being in both speech and body language an ordinary person. It is only when you are directly confronted with such trauma or when you are locked in a life-or-death battle does this illusion fall away, and even then, you are in control of yourself.

A Cat Is Fine, Too [200 - Discount Ordinary High School Student] - I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that. But, you seem to have a very peculiar talent now. You will find that you are strangely capable of holding a functional relationship with both people with difficult personalities and incredibly dangerous individuals who would otherwise tear your head off immediately for speaking out of line. So long as the feeling was reciprocated, you could maintain a century-long relationship with a vampire five times your age and power without them being abusive or controlling about it, nor feeling awkward about dating someone like you. Just note that while this will usually lead to you getting special treatment in a relationship, it won’t change their personalities very much - if anything, they’re likely to be twice as vicious to anyone they see as coming between you two. For the less romantically inclined, you have a talent for assembling a small group of different supernatural individuals and maintaining a functional friendship or team with all of them.

Tohno Gland [400 - Discount Ordinary High School Student] - Weird things are attracted to weird things, so why are they so attracted to an ordinary person like you? Those of your preferred gender find you have a certain ‘je ne sais quoi’ about you and are inexplicably drawn towards you, even those who should be your enemies, forming a crush or becoming outright smitten with you over the course of a day or two - give or take, depending on where you stand in a conflict. It will only take hold on individuals you would find attractive, or would at least have some interest in.  The harem route is quite possible for you if you put in the effort. Beware, though; if you treat them poorly or spurn their affections they will react as a normal person would. Or rather how a normal person with supernatural abilities would. It’s also hard to say who this will affect and when - but make no mistake, your love life will never be boring ever again. This can be toggled on and off, but removing the effect won’t remove any attractions that have had time to grow from this perk. There is no escape.

Instinct [400 - Discount Ordinary High School Student] - With reflexes like that, how could you be anything but a monster? You’re surprisingly in tune with your instincts, your body reacting near-instantly to danger and moving almost autonomously in response to it. You are quick enough to catch a young vampire off guard and predict their attacks and movements mid-swing, as well as having sharp enough spatial awareness to know what your surroundings are without even a glance. With a bit of time and training, you could be completely blind and deaf and still be able to fight as though it were high noon and all of your opponents were embarrassingly slow on the uptake. This does not necessarily make you equal to monsters such as ancient Dead Apostles or such, however - stamina is still a concern, and pushing yourself too hard may tire you out quickly. Be careful.

Perfectly Ordinary Assassin [600 - Discount Ordinary High School Student] - Whether or not you are a member of the near-extinct Nananya family, you’ve inherited their ability to strike quickly and unexpectedly. You have the ability to blend in as a ‘perfectly normal’ person, adjusting your posture and body language enough that even supernatural senses could be fooled, all who look upon you seeing you as little more than fodder or a background character all the way until the moment you demonstrate otherwise. This lets you catch even the likes of a True Ancestor off-guard with an appropriately timed strike. You can even use this in battle, your movements appearing lazy and slow to your opponent, making them hesitate to take you seriously as a foe, making their own attacks and tactics half-hearted up until you fully establish yourself as a threat, and letting you duck and weave in and out of sight even in a closed space. Even if your opponent was leagues above you, you’ve honed your skills at surprise attacks enough that you may perhaps even catch a Dead Apostle with centuries of experience off guard.

Nanaya [600 - Discount Ordinary High School Student] - ...or maybe you ARE part of that cursed family after all? The Nanaya Family was a clan of assassins under the Demon Hunter organization made to hunt monsters and Demon Blooded who inverted or gave into their inhuman instincts. They were wiped out completely a few years prior, save for yourself and one other. Whether you lived as an orphan or were also ‘adopted’ into a new family, you have a considerable advantage over your sibling/cousin Shiki - you’ve both remembered and honed the skills ingrained in you since birth. Your body has become an almost perfect killing machine, able to push yourself to your peak without suffering any significant loss in stamina or difficulty from strain, your muscles and movements always using just the right amount of force in all things. This working in tandem with your instincts and your combat abilities lets you gracefully dodge attacks that would normally tear an ordinary human into pieces before they could realize what happened - and your body instinctively guides your attacks to strike the most vulnerable part of a target’s body, moving almost independently of your own thoughts. Your almost godlike footwork and skills with a knife work in synergy with this, letting you slice apart a human-sized target into seventeen pieces in a blink, and letting you move quicker than the human eye can follow. You could feasibly fight and even kill a supernatural opponent among the likes of a Dead Apostle or the True Ancestor Princess if her true power were still suppressed with the right timing and luck. Now if only you had some way to make sure they stayed dead…

Optionally, purchasing this perk may allow you to take ‘The Killer In Me’ companion option for free.

Church Executioner:

Curry Chef [100 - Free for Church Executioner] - Even a holy executioner needs a hobby - and a favorite food. Choose a particular mundane dish you can find in the modern era. You are now an expert in preparing that sort of food, and can make it just as easily as any other professional chef you could find on planet Earth. You’re even good at adapting it for breakfast, lunch, or dinner or combining it with other meals, and it will miraculously find a way to mesh well. Well, for you, at least. Others may have a different opinion on the over-abundance of curry.

Senpai [100 - Free for Church Executioner] - Reliable upperclassman Jumper, that’s who you are! Certainly not someone on a holy mission who showed up about a week ago. Nope. Not you. That aside, you have the air and demeanor of someone who is both ‘older’ and ‘wiser’ - whether just as an older student or a wise sage. Those junior to you in apparent age or rank will usually look up to you and ask you for advice - though it’s largely up to you to create a bond that goes further than senpai and kouhai. You’re also good at masking any darker parts of your personality, letting you appear affable and friendly even if you’re a hardened killer.

Strange Friendship [200 - Discount for Church Executioner] - What? No. You’re not friends at all. You’re sworn enemies - a holy executioner and an unholy monster could never be allies under any circumstance. Even if you both keep passing up opportunities to kill each other and have chances to talk cordially, perhaps even becoming allies during your hour of need...it’s ridiculous, simply ridiculous. But either way, you’ll find that the longer you have someone as a rival or adversary, the more you are able to bond with them on an emotional level even if your alignments are diametrically opposed - they will come to respect you, perhaps even see you as an equal even if the gap between you both is a mile wide. If this went on long enough, you could even become fire-forged and loyal friends to each other. However, the feeling must be mutual - this bond will only be forged if you pass up opportunities to otherwise kill or dispose of them, and avoid doing serious or personally significant damage to them. Should you cross a ‘line’ in that rivalry, no amount of friendship will stop them from trying to remove your head in vengeance.

Necessary Blasphemy [200 - Discount for Church Executioner] - The Holy Church is no stranger to certain...compromises. After all, sometimes it is necessary for a sinner to be the one to put other sinners to the sword. You will find that breaching a code of conduct or the normal ‘rules’ of an organization or group will usually be ignored or given a slap on the wrist at most, so long as you continued to act within the spirit of said group or did so in order to further fulfill their mission. Only acting against them directly and damaging said group in the long-term without any sort of gain on their part will make them bring a fiery wrath upon you.

Iron Plate Effect [400 - Discount for Church Executioner] - Throwing your sword always works, right? A particular combat martial art of the Church, involving the use of thrown projectiles and said projectiles striking with much greater force. You are able to toss objects with almost pinpoint accuracy and reflexes, and when they land against their target, the force of the impact is much stronger than if you had thrown it normally...a well-placed Black Key could be tossed through concrete, or completely blast back a Dead Apostle with the force of an explosion. So long as you can lift and toss an object with finesse, you can use this effect on whatever you wish.

Rites and Sacrament [400 - Discount Church Executioner] - Where did you find such knowledge, Jumper? From a past life, perhaps…? It’s unusual for the Church to make use of spells, but you’ve managed to utilize a few inspired by an unknown source. These spells include the Cremation Rite, which will cause a weapon so enchanted with it to make a target burst into flames upon impact, the Internment Rite which causes a target to change to stone, the Mummification Rite which desiccates the target once they are pierced, and for some odd reason, an Excarnation Rite that summons a horde of angry crows to attack the target. In addition, this knowledge comes with the basics of how to make similar one-use enchantments for weapons, letting you perhaps create similar effects of your own after some practice.

Holy Sacrament [600 - Discount Church Executioner] - You do not simply wield holy weapons - you ARE a holy weapon. Whether as a side effect of a past curse or a quirk of your lineage, you are a bit beyond the average human being - your body alone qualifies as a holy weapon, able to strike spirits and monsters as though you were the living blade of a saint. You can sense the presence of supernatural monsters or great evil within a city block-sized area, and track them with all the skill of an expert hunter. Your physical abilities are likewise enhanced - your strength is enough to bend steel, your speed is enough to keep up with a car moving at full speed, and your durability allows you to survive bullets and piercing wounds with a fair amount of ease, though removal of limbs or vital organs still can’t be shrugged off with this alone. Finally, in your hands, any already-enchanted items or weapons designed as ‘holy’ are twice as effective, letting you tear through Dead Apostles with ‘common’ instruments like Black Keys and cutting a bloody swath through dozens of them with something like the Seventh Scripture. You are the one who hunts heretics and monsters in the night - and now, you embody that purpose.

Beautiful Blood [600 - Discount Church Executioner] - You’re not a Dead Apostle, but that doesn’t seem to matter anymore, does it? The World itself cannot seem to process the idea of the Jumper dying...and is quick to correct that error. Through an act of paradox or supreme blasphemy, your body has achieved physical immortality that puts even vampires to shame. Your body will almost instantly heal from injuries - cuts disappears in seconds, missing limbs replaced in minutes. Even if you were reduced to a puddle of meat, you would still be good as new just a few minutes later...though you would be fully conscious throughout the pain and the regeneration. It isn’t so much that your cells are repairing themselves, but that your injuries are ‘rewound’ back to their original shape as though nothing happened. Though you can survive just about any sort of physical destruction this way, your mind and soul do not share this eternity, and can still be damaged by other means. It is also possible for someone to force the concept of ‘death’ onto your body, though the list of people capable of that here...well, it’s just one, really.

Demon-Blooded:

Stop Being Stupid [100 - Free for Demon-Blooded] - Good God, you’re a grouch, aren’t you? With your arms folded and such a disdainful look on your face...hmm, what do those people who watch anime all day call it? Soon-there? Whatever. You’ll find that others tend to take any grumpiness or hostility you have towards them on the chin, forgiving insults and accepting any chastising you give them with glum acceptance, like a child being scolded for raiding the kitchen. True hostility or strong wills may ignore you, however, but your friends and those who rightly earned such an attitude? They’ll just accept it with due amounts of shame or fear, depending on whether you want to come off as an upset guardian or just angry, and not hold it against you.

More Like An Animal [100 - Free for Demon-Blooded] - With your origin in mind, you may not enjoy the company of humans as much as you used to...or perhaps that how you’ve always been? You’ll find you can easily live and survive outside of civilization, adapting to new environments in a very short amount of time - forests, deserts, and similar places untouched by the hand of humanity are like a back yard to you. Note this only applies to mundane survival - this won’t let you survive in a tornado or the surface of the sun or what-have-you. Animals also like you more - wild beasts without reason to hate you leave you alone, or are easily tamed by you should you work towards it.

Nothing Unusual [200 - Discount for Demon-Blooded] - You seemed like such a normal person, you know? Just a run-of-the-mill person from a secluded family on a hill. How could you have possibly been such a monster? You can easily blend in with ordinary humans, suppressing your supernatural and monstrous powers to what other humans would consider ‘normal’, removing all tells and even signs of supernatural hunger or cravings you suffer from. You could be an absolutely insane and bloodthirsty maniac and appear to all around you as a perfectly normal and delightful person to be around. You won’t abuse this, right…?

In My Heart [200 - Discount for Demon-Blooded] - They mean too much to you. Your loved ones, your principles, or even your property? It doesn’t matter - you can’t let yourself be reduced to a rampaging beast when their lives are on the line. You have increased willpower, strong enough to let you resist homicidal urges or resist mental torture within and without, and this willpower increases threefold when you act on it in the name of those you care about, whatever they may be.

Life Thief [400 - Discount for Demon-Blooded] - It looks like you’re burning someone alive. Like you’re setting them aflame, from the inside out. But it’s a bit more complicated than that. Using the strands of your hair and a spiritual extension of it, you are able to ‘plunder’ the life force of a living person, stealing it for yourself and making them endure the pain of being burned alive in the process, though no actual burning takes place - you merely drain them dry of their life force, leaving them lifeless and empty should it be allowed to complete itself. This process is invisible and virtually unstoppable by someone with no spiritual awareness, such as an ordinary human being, leaving them to only be caught and die helplessly by this. Your hair is also now a living weapon, able to move accordingly to your will and absorb the life from whatever it touches. However, against the spiritually aware, such as magi or a Dead Apostle, this is merely a grapple or a mild nuisance, and these beings will take more time and effort to capture and kill with this method.

As a side effect, you are also capable of ‘giving’ stolen life force or your own to others, extending their lifespans rather than draining it. Optionally, your hair is now longer. With time and effort, this could be improved to drain life more quickly and effectively, even against the spiritually aware, but this will take a good amount of practice.

Don’t Leave Me [400 - Discount for Demon-Blooded] - Why do people try to steal your loved ones away? It’s been so long since you’ve been able to be near them, and now they’re just running off on their own into danger or into the arms of others? How stupid. How foolish. Those rivals for their attention have never met someone like you. When you desire it, romantic rivals or those who act as what you’d consider as a ‘bad influence’ on the lives of those you’re close to will just...float off. Not out of existence, but out of focus - meetups are delayed, gatherings are interrupted, and dangerous missions suddenly kick off before your loved one has a chance to volunteer and join them. You’re not a control freak, you’re just...concerned, that’s all.

For those a bit less controlling or insecure, this also causes others to defer to your judgement first in a situation or problem, consulting you before anyone else and considering your advice first - even if a superior or someone more popular normally has the final word. They can still point out or object to obviously terrible ideas, however.

The Beast [600 - Discount for Demon-Blooded] - A monster. That’s what you are. Your strength alone is enough to put most human beings to shame - you can crush trees with your bare hand, remove a human head with a lazy swipe, and move faster than the human eye can follow. Your endurance is similar, letting you withstand similar blows with ease, even surviving vicious attacks from a Dead Apostle or a skilled assassin that would normally tear a human being apart. In addition, your fighting style is both feral and graceful, letting you channel a monstrous berserker rage through yourself yet remain completely lucid no matter how overwhelming your bloodlust became, changing it into pure strength that adds to your already considerable might. Finally, you possess a muscled and athletic frame to match your newfound strength, which likely adds a considerable intimidation factor...or just a show that you’re not to be angered needlessly.

Crimson Red Vermillion [600 - Discount for Demon-Blooded] - You are what your family and many others have struggled to achieve for generations - a perfectly realized demon within human flesh. And unlike others, you are not at risk of being victim to the Inversion Impulse or losing yourself completely - your human and demonic blood exist together in almost symbiotic harmony, though you may be a tiny bit more sadistic or vicious in this form. Your eyes change to an icy blue, your hair a fiery red, your body having become a living Mystery, giving you resistance to magecraft, magic, and other forms of supernatural influence or damage, as well as letting you damage or influence them in turn. All powers you wield that are blatantly supernatural in nature and originate from your body increase greatly in potency in this form, letting you become a terror and a reminder of why mankind knew to hide from the ferocious Oni.

Taking this in combination with The Beast lets you intermingle your physical strength and Mystery seamlessly, increasing your already considerable might and letting you match even a Heroic Spirit blow-for-blow in hand to hand combat...and perhaps even emerge victorious. This form and its effects can be toggled on and off freely.

Servant:

Welcome Home, Jumper [100 - Free for Servant] - Home is where the heart is, and it’s where you are, too. You understand the importance of the time for others to put their weapons away, take off their shoes, and forget their worries. You embody that, able to keep a cheerful and warm demeanor that is welcoming to others, letting you quickly make friends and reduce the stress and worries of those around you. Similarly, you’re good at not letting stressful situations or a long work day bother you - it doesn’t matter, since you’ll be smiling all the same, right?

Maid to Serve [100 - Free for Servant] - What is a maid without maid-like duties!? You’re able to properly clean, organize, and maintain a large mansion or building all by your lonesome with maybe one other person to help you out in a pinch. In addition, you’re a fantastic cook, able to put most modern-day restaurants to shame with just some store-bought food.

Meido [200 - Discount for Servant] - Maids are actually becoming very popular in this day and age, you know? After all, having a young man or woman provide service with an adorable smile in their household is a dream of some people in this world! You’re good at acting the part - you know how to act the right mix of alluring and endearing, and know how to appeal to your desired gender with just a little bit of effort. You’re a bit of a looker, to boot! You have a mix of natural beauty and personal confidence that adds to your allure, looking either cute, handsome, or voluptuous without much effort - your choice. It’s good for all sorts of things. Cuddles, hugs, getting someone’s guard down as you slip a murderous drug into their drink - all kinds of things!

Someone Else’s Pain [200 - Discount for Servant] - It’s easy to bear physical trauma and pain when you think of it as belonging to someone else, isn’t it? As long as you can do that, you don’t have to feel or worry about anything. With just a moment of thought, you can completely shut off your ability to feel pain - whether physical, mental, or even emotional. It doesn’t change the fact you’re being hurt, but your mind simply doesn’t register it anymore than something gently poking you. This can be toggled on and off.

It Just Takes A Minute [400 - Discount for Servant] - You’ve come to see a doctor, but just look in the mirror, and you’ll find a healer...and the worst possible dealer. You’ve completed training as both a nurse and a pharmacist, able to identify the medicinal uses of herbs or plants on sight, and quickly learn what ones you don’t recognize can do in a matter of minutes. But that’s not all. In addition to being a fairly effective doctor and caretaker, you’re good at concocting drugs able to trigger supernatural stimuli - a homicidal urge here, a psychic link there - it needs to already exist for you to make drugs that can toy with it, but with a bit of study, there’s little you can’t push or pull with the right recipe. Paralysis, insanity, or even a good night’s sleep and a moment of sanity - you can do it all. Just swallow the pill and don’t worry about it~.

Synchronizer [400 - Discount for Servant] - I’d be careful about who you shared this ability with, friend. Your body has a unique quality - bodily fluids such as blood, saliva, sweat, and...other things have healing properties. Someone ingesting or making contact with it will quickly find their wounds healed, both physical and mental - it could bring someone reduced to maddening, gibbering insanity back into clarity so long as the source of said madness didn’t return. Unusually for this ability, it works both ways - your body will quickly heal wounds and restore itself upon being damaged - not enough to grow fresh limbs back or reverse death, but cuts vanish in minutes and vital organs are brought back to full functionality after a few days of rest. Your mind likewise repairs itself, madness and mental trauma slowly fading away as clarity is restored, able to lift you from catatonia back into almost perfect mental health after a peaceful day.

A Perfect Doll [600 - Discount for Servant] - The way people act...the way they laugh, they cry, they scream, feel love...it’s so strange, isn’t it? You understand it better than others - saying the right things at the right time can make them act in a way that benefits you, and that if you have the right expression and tone of voice, no one ever suspects it was you giving them those ideas. You’re a consummate actor and liar, able to adopt any sort of persona or expression with no involuntary muscle reactions or tics that give away your true intentions - it would take serious physical evidence to make others doubt you. You could even fool supernatural senses, or make those who rely on such doubt themselves. You are also a skilled manipulator as a result, able to carry out a murderous revenge plan with your victims oblivious to your scheme every step of the way. A liar, a schemer, someone who gets others to do what they want...that’s what a real person does, right?

Mad Science Jumper [600 - Discount for Servant] - ...wait, what? Huh?! How does any of this have to do with being a maid?! I guess the robots could look like them or something, but...anyways, against all logic, you are an engineering genius who could put certain inventors to shame, able to construct fighting androids with comically effective artificial intelligence that will be completely loyal to you unless mistreated. These robots, with enough time and resources invested in them, could individually lay low Dead Apostles or other creatures with some effort, and are able to hold the armory of a small tank in a humanoid body, or otherwise putting a large amount of weaponry compared to the size of the robot within its arsenal. Given enough time and privacy to work, you could even make a self-sustaining factory that churns out an army of these robotic avengers...you ARE doing this for maid work, right?


Alchemist:
Clear Mind [100 - Free for Alchemist] - The first step to being able to use your mind at full capacity is the ability to drown out all possible distractions while still focusing on the important details. Whether you are starting to lose yourself in your thoughts or have activated one too many partitions, you are able to ‘snap’ your mind into a brief period of silence, bringing yourself into total focus and immediately banishing both distractions and unnecessary emotions. This is very brief, being the mental equivalent of a ‘soft reset’, but can be done instantly and repeatedly if necessary. It could also be used to resist particular forms of mental control or manipulation, though only if you recognize it in time to activate this technique.

All Within My Calculations [100 - Free for Alchemist] - Complete confidence and faith within a desired end result. That is what is necessary to bring mathematics and intent together to create the future you desire. This helps build a foundation for this by giving you a lifetime’s worth of knowledge of mundane mathematics and photographic memory, and the intelligence necessary to use it in everyday occurrences without any serious difficulty. This doesn’t cross into the supernatural just yet...but it’s good to start with basics, isn’t it?

Thought Acceleration [200 - Discount for Alchemist] - Even a human brain operating at peak capacity has its limits - it is, after all, what amounts to biological hardware with set limitations. But what if those limitations could be surpassed? You are able to accelerate your thought processes to twice their normal speed, letting you quickly multitask and react faster than body and nervous system would normally allow, running calculations and strategies in a blink rather than a minute. In time, you could even accelerate this to three, or four or more times in speed. However, much like overclocking a computer, this is a stressful technique that is exhausting, and if overused, can burn your brain out like an overheated engine. Practice and careful moderation may let you overcome this, but for now, be cautious in how you use this.

Adorkable [200 - Discount for Alchemist] - You’re not anti-social, really. It’s just...difficult to talk to others when you’ve spent so much in time in study and isolation, that’s all. It’s not your fault you get so flustered and frustrated when dealing with other human beings. But somehow, your awkwardness comes off as endearing, and you’re able to get your point across even if you lack finesse or grace. Others will judge you by your actions and your intent instead of your charisma or stage presence, seeing you for who you are, and finding you easier to like so long as you mean them well. This makes things easier, not impossible, however...purposefully harming others isn’t terribly adorable, after all.

Heir of JUMPER [400 - Discount for Alchemist] - How often are individuals punished by the sins of their fathers? Or perhaps even rewarded for it? Wouldn’t it be great if you could reap all the benefits of their hard work…or just set yourself free? Skills and even supernatural abilities possessed by your parent can be inherited by you - not all at once, but little by little, with more coming to you with practice, skills manifesting as an inborn talent and powers as the results of self-reflection and discovery. However, the further back your bloodline goes, the more diluted this is - your gain is halved when you try to inherit things from your grandparents, halved again from your great-grandparents, until it becomes a barely noticeable trickle that you would have been better served gaining yourself, cutting off entirely after ten generations.

If you’d rather shun family ties altogether, you may forsake this inheritance and formally separate yourself from a bloodline - you no longer qualify as biologically related to said bloodline, and lose all benefits and downsides of being part of them, both legally and physically.

For the purposes of this perk, a vampiric sire and their ‘bloodline’, should they descend from one, count as family.

Bonds Across Time [400 - Discount for Alchemist] - Will you be friends no matter what? Will they love you no matter how far away you are? The answer is...yes. You will find that when you make honest friends or forge a strong bond with someone, neither time nor hardship can break it - loyalties remain firm, friends will defend you in your hour of need, and loved ones will support you until their dying breath. What’s more, the more these people care about you, the greater their abilities become when used to support you...they fight harder, their studies become more thorough, and maybe even one could manage a miracle and cheat death just long enough to save your life - though that is an extreme example. For your sake, they will strive to succeed, no matter what.

Make close friends that have absolutely unbreakable loyalty to you.

Artificer [600 - Discount for Alchemist] - Even among the everyday alchemists of Atlas, you have a talent for the creation of new and interesting items. Mystic Codes, modern Conceptual Weapons, even living Homunculi...with the time, study, and resources, you can create new and amazing items and magical beings that modern magi would happily chop off a limb just to possess. You also have the skill to reverse-engineer magical enchantments that others make, and with enough time, you may almost perfectly recreate them - though it takes a proportionate amount of resources and study to make something that departs from the norm, and something on par with a relic from the Age of Gods may take a king’s ransom and a near lifetime of work.

To explain, a Mystic Code is a ‘support’ item utilized by magi that come in two types. The first is an Amplifier, which can strengthen or support their magic by storing reserve energy for later use or directly amplifying a spell, as the name indicates. An example of this is the jewelry used in the magecraft utilized by the Tohsaka family. The second is a ‘Specialized’ Mystic Code, which can perform a given spell or function upon being activated by the user’s magical energy. This could even be utilized by those without magical circuits under certain conditions - for example, the Salamander Gloves used by Azaka Kokuto in a different world, which could generate flames using her ‘talent’ for spontaneous combustion alone.

A Conceptual Weapon, to contrast, is a weapon that has accumulated a history within it, and do more than simple physical damage or interference - it has a singular ‘concept’ embedded within it and is able to damage or disrupt things like physical laws or magical beings, or even formless things that normally couldn’t be damaged by mundane means. It does so by imposing its given concept onto the world, and inflicting it on those the user attacks with the Weapon. A common modern example are the Black Keys utilized by the Holy Church itself.

Finally, a homunculus is a magical being, an artificial lifeform created without the normal biological process of birth. The concept of ‘age’ is largely meaningless, as they begin with all of their required knowledge for whatever task they were made for upon being created, aging to adulthood in months instead of years. They also possess powerful Magic Circuits as a result of their artificial creation - though as a consequence, homunculi are usually physically frail, have mental defects, or short lifespans - some trade-off to their creation process. Perhaps in time you could eventually make one with a human lifespan or iron out some of these defects, but that will take years and resources you likely could have used a simpler creation for. For some reason, ones you create are guaranteed to be unshakeably loyal (or at least benign) to you in particular.

Precision and Memory [600 - Discount for Alchemist] - The body is simply a vessel, and one that can be honed and perfected into a weapon. The mind is no exception, and you’ve gained mastery of the calculations necessary to do so. First, you are capable of Thought Partitioning - separating your mind into different ‘sets’, each one running a different thought process independently of one another, letting you execute superb multitasking and even use multiple thought-intensive skills or abilities at the same time. You start off capable of running two thought partitions at the same time, and with practice, can increase this number further, with the difficulty increasing the more you divide your mind. This can be shut off or ‘cut’ at will, if the noise or split focus should become unbearable.

In addition to being able to partition your mind, your ability to calculate mathematics and probability has entered the realm of the supernatural, able to get the answer to an equation with only half of the necessary evidence and material to work with. You could calculate where someone will throw a stone, despite not knowing how hard they will toss it, and know how and when someone will move just by a passing observation of their muscle movements. You can also calculate the mathematics behind a situation with simply a glance, such as bullet trajectories or the speed someone is currently moving at. These two abilities combined also make you a fantastic lie detector, and probably leaves you walking away from poker tables with the entire betting pool.