Obtenebration

Obtenebration
Clans	Lasombra, Lasombra Antitribu, Lëpweokàn, Maxinkwelësëwakàn, Xi Dundu
Bloodlines	Angellis Ater, Azaneali, Khaibit, Kiasyd, Ramanga
Sects	Camarilla, Independents, Laibon, Quiet Nations, Sabbat
Rituals	Abyss Mysticism
Combination Disciplines	Obtenebration Combination Disciplines
Rarity	Uncommon

The ancient aristocratic Lasombra are the traditional wielders of Obtenebration, which grants them the ability to shape and control shadows and darkness itself as if it were a solid and living thing. The eldest of the clan claim that the great Abyss, into which all light will eventually be swallowed, is manifest in their powers, slowly making them one with it, so that one day they will dissolve completely into the primordial darkness before all things. This seems unreasonably dramatic to most younger Kindred, but there's no denying that the shadows of those Kindred who master Obtenebration tend to behave oddly, occasionally seeming to move on their own, caress passersby as if alive, or pool in their owners' deep, stygian eyes...

Kindred with the powers of Obtenebration cannot strictly see through darkness (created by themselves or otherwise), but they can sense where things are in it and generally operate as if they could see in spite of the blackness around them.

Basic Powers

Shadow Play

You may move and shape the natural shadows around you, warping their shapes to show messages or images that should not be there, or extending their reach to shroud someone or something in darkness that by rights should have been well-lit. There must already be shadows in the vicinity for this power to function, and if an intensely strong light removes shadows from the area, you can no longer manipulate them.

Nocturne

You may create a cloud of unnatural darkness that obscures light, muffles sound, and twists and misdirects the senses of those within it. It does not actually manage to fully extinguish lights or prevent people from receiving some perceptions, but it causes visibility to drop to only a few inches and frightens and disorients people affected. You must do nothing but concentrate on the cloud in order to maintain it; it dissipates as soon as you do anything else, and can be moved if you choose but only slowly and only to somewhere you can currently perceive yourself.

Shroud of Night

You may cover the area immediately around you for a few yards in a sudden, impenetrable shroud of blackness, in spite of any lights that should be brightening it. Within that zone, not only sight but also hearing and temperature are obscured, all retreating into a muffled, silent emptiness. Anyone within the zone is blind and unable to get their bearings, although if they lurch far enough in any one direction they may be able to accidentally escape; anyone with the Auspex Discipline may be able to use some of its powers to get additional information, but even they still won't be able to see well. You also cannot see, but can find your way in the zone of darkness as easily as if you could.

Intermediate Powers

Arms of the Abyss

You may create tentacles of darkness that reach out of the shadows to do your bidding. They are not intelligent and cannot do anything that requires a great deal of finesse, but they can carry or move items, flip switches and break things, or attack enemies with as much strength as you yourself could do (potentially allowing you to attack someone twice, once yourself and once with the Arms). The tentacles are very difficult to dodge, since they're difficult to see at all, and they can also be used to wrap around and restrain others that aren't quick enough to avoid them.

Black Metamorphosis

You may cover yourself in living shadow, creating functional armor that cushions any blows that might strike you, your touch begins to inflict deadening cold on all living and unliving things, and you grow shadow tentacles from your body that you carry with you regardless of whether or not there are other shadows or light sources nearby. These tentacles may do anything that you could have done with Arms of the Abyss, but cannot be dispelled by using light to drive away the shadows they grow from.

Nightshades

You may create small, temporary items out of solid shadow; they last for the rest of the scene, and work for you just like the real thing, although anyone else trying to use them will probably fail due to their difficult-to-see and impossible-to-manipulate nature. You can only create simple items and tools (so no smartphones or intricate moving parts), but they remain regardless of changes to the light level around you.

Advanced Powers

Tenebrous Form

You may transform yourself completely into a shadow, slipping away into the darkness as if part of its very substance. You can travel anywhere a shadow could - through keyholes and cracks, up into the corners of ceilings, beneath someone's footsteps, or anywhere else you think might be advantageous. You cannot touch or manipulate anyone or anything in this form, but you can wrap your shadowy self around someone to affect them with darkness and disorientation; and similarly, no one can touch you, and you are immune to all attacks and forms of damage except for fire and sunlight, which hurt you even more than they normally would.

Elder Powers

Aegis of Shadows

You may cover yourself for a scene with shadows that absorb and cushion impacts and even blades. The shadows protect you like armor, while those who strike into them feel as though something distressingly soft and sucking is trying to pull their fist or weapon away.

The Darkness Within

By opening your mouth (or some other even more horrifying orifice), you may extrude a horrifying lamprey-like shadow with a sucking maw, capable of surrounding your enemies and sucking the life from them. The shadow wraps around your enemies and sucks out their blood in a terrifying, hideous experience; any blood it takes this way does not go to you but is swallowed up by the darkness, never to be seen again. Mortals can be completely exsanguinated by this power, while even vampires are weakened and frightened.

Eyes of the Night

You are capable of seeing as if there were light for your eyes anywhere, no matter how dark or empty. You can see in the pitch darkness underground, the lightless reaches of outer space, and even through the use of Obtenebration itself. This power does not let you see through illusions or other kinds of supernatural obscurements, only through actual darkness. Vampires with this power who are normally blind or have low vision are able to ignore any effects from Obtenebration that might normally blunt their other senses as well.

Shadow Parasite

You may reach out to the darkness within your victims, the permanent shadows inside lungs or surrounding organs; when you do, they begin to grow in a writhing, wriggling tentacle of semi-sentient darkness. This is initially frightening and painful, but if you do not take pity and remove the tentacle before a full minute passes, it erupts out of your vicitm's body, inevitably killing any mortal creature and causing severe pain and horror to most supernatural ones.

Shadow Perspective

You may use this power to outsource your senses, removing them from your physical body and transferring them to a nearby shadow; once you do, you perceive everything as if you were located within that shadow. This power is useful for eavesdropping and observing those who think you are actually far away; even if you leave the area, your senses remain in the shadow until the sun rises or you withdraw them.

Shadowstep

You may use shadows as your own personal thoroughfare, traveling through them by simply stepping into one shadow and appearing again out of another one. You may go any distance this way, but you must be able to perceive the shadow you hope to emerge from in order to travel there; if there are no other shadows nearby for you to move to, you cannot travel (although you can probably aloways make your own). You may also reach through shadows with this power - for example, if there were an object on the other side of the room but near a shadow, you could reach your arm into a shadow on your side and grab it from twenty-five feet away.

Darksight

The realm of shadows is now yours to read; you may project your senses through any shadow in the world, allowing you to perceive anywhere on the planet as long as there is a little bit of darkness there. In fact, you can even perceive events happening during daylight, as long as they are on the other side of the planet while you are awake at night.

Death Shroud

You may manipulate a person's own shadow, taking it from them to answer to your commands instead. As long as there is enough light for your victim to cast a shadow, that shadow responds to your effortless mental commands for the rest of the scene, separating from its original owner, who now casts no shadow at all while you control it. The shadow can travel, carry messages, or even attack others on your commands, and is about half as powerful as your original victim was, making mortal shadows primarily useless for spying or messages but supernatural ones capable of frightening action. The shadow does not need to retain the shape of your victim, although it will generally do so when not doing something that requires it to change (such as oozing through a crack in the wall). While the shadow can be destroyed, it only takes half damage from any corporeal attacks made against it; if anyone successfully destroys it, your original victim loses half their Willpower and immediately rolls to see if they enter Rötschreck.

Fortify Against Ahura Mazda

The one weakness of shadow powers is that they can be easily dispelled by light... unless you have this power, which allows you to fortify any shadows you create or control with Obtenebration. They can no longer be dispelled by artificial light (which may result in some very distressing effects when onlookers realize that shadows are not behaving normally), and even sunlight only weakens them, making them slower and less effective but still capable of acting even at high noon.

Shadow Lair

When you enter a shadow with Shadow Step, you may now elect to stay there; while you do, you exist only in the realm of the shadow abyss, completely removed from the corporeal world. You cannot be found by anyone who does not also have enough Obtenebration (or a similar supernatural power) to enter the shadow realm to look for you, and even then their chances are not good. You may remain in the shadow realm for as long as you wish, but are ejected back to wherever you most recently physically were when the sun rises.

Shadow Twin

You may separate your own shadow from yourself, creating an animated servant that can separate from you and perform separate actions, all commanded by your every thought. It possesses half as much Obtenebration as you do and is about half as powerful in all other ways, and is extremely difficult to perceive, catch, or injure. If anyone does manage to kill your shadow, you immediately lose half your Willpower and must roll to avoid Rötschreck, and you are unable to separate your shadow again for at least a month.

Dark Hunter

You may use this power to sculpt shadows into a dark shadow-copy of yourself, identical in every detail except for the fact that it is fashioned from pure darkness. This twin has a single purpose and set of skills: it is an assassin, and once you tell it what target you would like it to hunt, it begins to do so, relentlessly pursuing them everywhere they go. The hunter has all your Obtenebration powers and your usual physical capabilities, and will do its best to murder the victim you designate no matter where they go or what they do.

The only way to fully stave off the hunter is to remain in areas with too much light for it to properly operate, and even that may not save them if you have enough Obtenebration; it also cannot attack during the day, although it may use that time to track its target down if there is enough darkness to do so. Your shadowy double continues to hunt your victim until it successfully kills them or you call it off; if you do, it is seamlessly reabsorbed into shadow.

Inner Darkness

You may spiritually feed upon darkness itself, drawing shadows into your body so that they are absorbed into your very essence. You gain Willpower when you do so, as well as increasing your physical strength, speed, and stamina for the rest of the night. You also become visibly infused with shadow, with jet black eyes and crawling shadows that circle and move across your skin regardless of what form you appear in.

Oubliette

By physically grabbing someone, you may hurl them into the abyssal shadow realm, removing them from the physical world and immuring them in a black emptiness from which there is no mistake. They are trapped there unless they have enough Obtenebration themself to escape; to the rest of the world, they seem to have simply vanished into thin air. Your victim is only trapped for the rest of the night, after which they re-emerge into the real world where they left it, but the psychological scars of such a harrowing experience are usually more than significant.

Shadow Watchtower

You may use this power to make yourself temporarily one with the shadows around you, taking on their invulnerability; you cannot leave the immediate area of the scene, but while you are connected you are invulnerable to all sources of pain or injury, becoming completely impossible to harm with either physical or supernatural means. The only thing that can injure you is sunlight itself.

Ahriman's Demesne

You become the focal point of a terrifying flood of primordial darkness, rushing out of you to blanket the entire area. The blackness devours mortals and animals as if they had never been, and even unwary supernatural creatures may find themselves sucked dry or trapped in the void forever if they do not have skill with shadows themselves.

Czernobog

You may blot out the sun itself, temporarily making it possible for vampires to walk during the day and the powers of darkness to use the entire world as their playground. All supernatural creatures of the night, as well as nocturnal mortal animals, immediately awaken, and Obtenebration powers become almost effortless to use.

Enter the Abyss

You may walk the dark abyss at your leisure, traveling through it as if it were your native home; the entire world of shadows is yours to travel and perceive through, making you capable of learning anything and being anywhere you choose.

Banishment

You may touch someone to hurl them deep into the abyss, just as in the Oubliette power, except that there are no longer any time limits on how long you can keep them there. They are permanently trapped there unless they have enough Obtenebration themself to escape; to the rest of the world, they seem to have simply vanished into thin air. Since the abyss cannot easily sustain life, anyone left there for too long will likely starve to death, or else kill themself in the frenzied terror of the void.

Important Things to Keep in Mind

Most Camarilla vampires believe that Obtenebration traditionally belongs only to Sabbat vampires, so anyone else using it in a Camarilla city like DC will immediately be viewed with vast suspicion, if not outright kneejerk violence. The Prince and his childer do have and use Obtenebration, but they are possibly even more alert and unamused by the idea of Sabbat Lasombra in their midst than everyone else, and any Kindred who dares to have and use these powers should be prepared to either do so carefully in secret or spend a lot of time running for their life.