Visceratika

Visceratika
Clans	None
Bloodlines	Gargoyles
Sects	Camarilla
Rituals	None
Combination Disciplines	Visceratika Combination Disciplines
Rarity	Rare

Visceratika is the unique ability to meld with buildings, stonework, and even natural surroundings, allowing its users to find out more about the area as well as giving them the ability to protect it with their own lifeforce. Intruders who enter the domain of a vampire with Visceratika often find themselves dogged by misfortune, haunted by terrifying events, or even being attacked by the very building they are trying to infiltrate.

Vampires with Visceratika are extremely few (and vanishingly rare outside of the Gargoyle bloodline), and often fly under the radar because their powers are invisible when they are not actively and directly using them. Nevertheless, those with enough knowledge of the secrets of vampiric powers know that, at any moment, there is always a chance that wherever they are standing, someone has been watching them since they arrived.

Basic Powers

Skin of the Chameleon

You may cause your skin to ripple and change, matching the patterns of the area around you. Inside buildings, this often looks like becoming a similar stone pattern to the bricks around you or taking on the qualities of the massive carpet beneath you, while outside it might look more like matching the pattern of stalks in a field or disappearing into a general camouflaged distance.

Whispers of the Chamber

When you are in an enclosed area no larger than a small house or apartment, you may sense all other beings, living or otherwise, that are in the space with you. You may not necessarily get many details about who they are or why they're here, but you are able to tell if others are in the space with you, how many there are, and approximately how large they are.

Scry the Hearthstone

You can now tell exactly where others are within a structure no larger than a small house or apartment, even in rooms you are not in; it is as easy for you to instinctively know that there is a human being in the bathroom and another vampire upstairs in the study as it is for you to recognize anything right in front of you. This still does not tell you who they are or what exactly they are doing, but you can now keep track of their movements with ease.

Intermediate Powers

Bond with the Mountain

You may sink into stone, cement, or a suitably similar material, becoming fused and one with the structure to a limited degree. Vampires using this power are still visible and mostly outside of the stone; they are usually mistaken for statues or gargoyles, since their obvious immobility (and usual inhuman appearance) causes others to assume that they must be inanimate. You are not able to freely move around while fused with stone, but you can still perceive and use supernatural powers, and others cannot remove you without killing you or destroying the entire stone structure to which you are attached.

Voices of the Castle

You may now instinctively be aware of and easily track other beings that are in the same building with you, whether it's a tiny one-room shack or a massive, sprawling palace with a thousand rooms. The building itself relays messages to you, causing you to feel the movements of other beings and hear the whispers of their passing.

Armor of Terra

You may harden your skin until it is almost stone in consistency, retaining barely enough elasticity to allow you to move around. In this state, it is much more difficult to cause you serious injury, and most incidental bumps, bruises, or baseball bats simply bounce harmlessly off of you.

Bond with Terra

You may now sink your entire body into stone or similar substances, becoming able to sense from within the stone as if you were standing in the room. While in this state, you cannot move or use any powers that require movement, but you can perceive throughout the area near your stone, and others are extremely unlikely to notice you without supernatural powers such as Auspex. (And even if they do, they are unlikely to be able to get you out without bringing the entire building down on top of them.)

Advanced Powers

Flow Within the Mountain

You may swim through stone or similar substances as if it were sluggish water, allowing you to pass through walls, sink through floors, or create your own secret passages whenever needed. You may not take others through stone with you, but you can remain within for as long as you wish to while in the middle of traveling.

Stone Strength

You have become almost as impervious as stone, often needing no effort whatsoever to protect yourself. Your flesh and skin become hard and difficult to penetrate, and even when you are injured, you feel far less pain. If a vampire with this power is injured by fire or sunlight, they suffer only half of the trauma that it would normally inflict on them.

Elder Powers

Dark Statue

You are physically unaffected by sunlight as long as you remain unmoving, allowing you to survive an entire day in the blazing sun if you so choose. This power still requires you to roll to avoid entering Rötschreck, cannot help you stay awake if you fail to fight off the daytime slumber, and ceases to function immediately if you move for any reason, but when these conditions are met it provides an impressive ability to keep watch even during the daytime.

=== Might of the Mountain ===

You may align yourself with stone, becoming barely animated yourself in order to temporarily increase your strength. When a vampire uses this power, they grow to a significantly larger size as more and more stone attaches itself to them, and they become accordingly much, much heavier, often cracking or destroying delicate objects and foundations below them. In this state, a vampire is extremely slow and unwieldy, but strikes with enough physical strength to mimic all but the most destructive of Potence powers.

Reconstruction

You may use stone and similar rocky structures to speed up and enhance the healing of your body. By absorbing stone into wounds that would otherwise take a long time to heal, the vampire with this power recovers more quickly (albeit with some interesting patchwork appearance that may remain visible for a while).

Rockheart

Your insides have become as calcified and impermeable as your outsides. Your organs and systems are now also made of quasi-stone, making it even more difficult to damage you and, most importantly to most vampires, making it nearly impossible to stake you.

Blood from a Stone

You may absorb blood directly from stone, letting the solid rock suck it within and transfer it immediately to you. You may absorb any blood that has been spilled on a stone or similar surface you make contact with as if you had drunk it. This power can allow vampires to feed at their leisure and seldom worry about the cleanup, but it cannot protect them from accidentally ingesting vitae or enchanted blood and suffering the consequences, so many are paranoid about using it outside of their own havens.

Renovation

Your bond with a structure you choose is now so strong that you can actually change its fundamental structure within reason. Altering the location of windows, switching walls and doors, and creating dead ends and trapdoors are all within the scope of this power, which can move anything that can be said to be part of the structure itself and which already exists. This power cannot create new things, nor can it affect belongings or living things inside the structure, but many vampires find it very useful (or at least very amusing) to trap invaders in endless mazes or drive their prey mad in corridors that seem to lead nowhere.

Viscous Vitae

With this power, your very vitae becomes stone-like, becoming a thick and gritty stew not unlike wet cement. This makes it much more difficult for a vampire with this power to suffer from blood loss from wounds, and makes it extremely difficult for others to try to drain their blood unless they spend a long, frustrated time working on it. While this thickened blood can still create ghouls and blood bonds, it is generally considered disgusting to drink, even by other vampires

Crawling Chamber

You may animate the stone around you, teaching it your fluidity as it has taught you its rigid strength. Up to ten cubic feet of stone or similar substance become capable of moving at your command, and the stone itself gains rudimentary sentience, enough to try to protect itself and you. Once you cease directing the stone (or the structure is totally destroyed), it returns to its normal quiescent state.

Perfected Form

With this power, you may now sculpt a stone vessel and fully inhabit it, abandoning your original body. While within the stone vessel, you are capable of feeling and interacting just as you normally would, and you have a normal range of movement for the vessel. A vampire within the vessel can feed as normal and is able to use all their usual powers; in essence, they have simply moved to a new body and will remain there indefinitely.

Some vampires (especially Gargoyles looking for an escape from their usual horrifying appearance) use this power to permanently create new bodies for themselves, leaving their original to remain suspended as if in torpor permanently; if they do, they must protect their original body, since it being fully destroyed would also kill them, but they need never actually inhabit it again if they don't wish to. Others find it useful to create several vessels and use them for different purposes or even identities, swapping between them and their original body as they choose, and those in the know find it mildly disquieting that there is no way to know with absolute certainty whether or not they're talking to an original.

Living Landscape

You may now use all the structures and stone in an area as though it were malleable, living, and sensitive to your command. Vampires with this power can cause cranes to bend down and strike their enemies, buildings to slam all their doors closed, hallways to bend and hurl enemies out of windows, dungeons to become comfortable and protected bolt-holes, and anything else that an angry sentient building might be able to do on their behalf. Structures that are fully destroyed, such as by wrecking ball or explosion, cannot become active, but all others bend to your command for as long as you remain in the area.

Important Things to Keep in Mind

Visceratika is a seldom-seen discipline, and its adherents claim that it is Masquerade-proof - that is, when used properly, no one should ever have any idea that something happened or that the gargoyle on the end of the roof is anything but a rain spout. This is true at lower levels, but powers wielded by elders are much more likely to cause widespread panic and destabilization if not used responsibly. It is also notable that Visceratika powers that permanently cause a vampire to become more physically inhuman, such as Stone Strength, may make it much more difficult to blend in with mortals (or even other vampires).