Gravehound

Gravehound

The necropoles of Sijan and nearby shadowlands spawn gravehounds: lanky, emaciated canines with short, ash gray fur, mottled with bone-white spots. Sad-eyed and melancholy, they wander lonely roads and dusty crypts, seeking spirits whose unfinished business they might lay to rest. Grim as it seems to many, Sijanese morticians let these deathly — though living — hounds feed upon corpseflesh, that they may take on the voice and mind of the dead for a time and seek restitution for buried wrongs. Fearless in the face of eerie ghosts and walking cadavers, gravehounds make choice companions for the Abyssal and Liminal Exalted, and anyone else who trucks often with death.

Essence: 2; Willpower: 4; Join Battle: 4 dice
Health Levels: −0/−1x2/−2x2/−4/Incap.
Actions: Threaten: 5 dice; Read Intentions: 6 dice; Senses: 8 dice (see Keen Nose); Stealth: 4 dice; Tracking: 9 dice (see Keen Nose)
Appearance 2, Resolve 3 (5 vs. fear), Guile 2

COMBAT
Attack (Bite): 9 dice (Damage 9)
Attack (Grapple): 6 dice (5 dice to control)
Combat Movement: 8 dice
Evasion 4, Parry 3
Soak/Hardness: 4/0

SPECIAL ABILITIES
Consume the Fallen: By eating a significant portion of meat from a corpse, a gravehound gains the voice, memories, and personality of the deceased. It speaks any language the dead person knew, and gains additional dice pools based on the Abilities she had in life, including social pools such as Bargain, Persuade, and Threaten. It still can’t do anything it couldn’t physically do before, so although it consumes the corpse of a renowned sculptor, it cannot hold a chisel.
The gravehound takes on the deceased’s Intimacies, as well. This drives it to complete tasks on her behalf: sending word to family, getting revenge on a killer, etc. The gravehound retains these memories for days equal to the departed’s permanent Willpower rating, and can only maintain one such personality at a time. As a magical ability, a master may commit eight motes to allow the gravehound to retain the dead person’s memories indefinitely instead. Gravehounds are immune to any diseases a body carried or infections it would otherwise suffer from eating decayed flesh.
Snarling Guardian Attack (Latent): Whenever an enemy attacks the gravehound’s master while it protects her with a defend other action, it may respond with a decisive counterattack, which it may use for a disarm or distract gambit.

MERITS
Deathsense: Gravehounds sense dematerialized ghosts with all five senses, including touch, and can attack them.
Fearless Companion: Where other dogs turn tail and flee or whine and balk when ordered to enter a shadowland or battle the undead, gravehounds know no such terror. They are immune to any fear effect a deathly source inflicts.
Keen Nose: Double 9s on all scent-based Perception rolls.
Loyal Guardian (Latent): Ignore the usual flurry penalties on a defend other action flurried with any other action.
Wary Watchdog Vigilance (Latent): Add one automatic success to rolls to notice hidden characters. Upon success, the gravehound barks loudly enough to wake its master from sleep, if needed.