Stranger Still

ADDITIONAL TALENTS FOR THE CHANGED

An infected SUPPLEMENT
By Levi Kornelsen And Pat Gamblin
 Changed Talent Trees
This supplement presents a significant number of new changed talents,
mainly organized into 'trees'. Each tree of talents starts with one or
more of those found in the main rules (though some are edited for this
purpose), and acts as a structure of prerequisites. Using the tree shown
below, you must take talent one before taking two or three, and must
have both two and three before taking talent four:

One Two Four

Three

What Am I Becoming?
Each talent tree, taken as a whole, is meant to reflect some function that
the plague-makers intend for their dead servitors, altered by contact
with humanity. A changed working through the handler tree, for
example, is manifesting warped alpha abilities. The resulting changed
aren't ever quite what they might want to be or what the makers want;
they're unintended collaborations.

Aside: Free Transformations

When any changed talent is taken, the player can (with Guide help) also
describe transformations to the physique of the character that don't have
a rules-bound effect. These can (and have, in the fiction) include changes
to sexual characteristics, appearance inside and outside the human
range, the appearance of bioluminescence, and odd metabolic quirks. So
long as the player doesn't aim to gain any rules-based advantage from
them, and the Guide doesn't feel that they grant any such, such
alterations can simply be attached as “freebies”.
 Handler
Carrion Slithercall Fleshcraft
Lord
Synergy Roilsmith

 Carrion Carrion outside of alpha control react to you in a

Lord friendly fashion. If you take care of one (only one at
a time), it'll bond to you; it won't understand
orders, but will follow you and attack only those
you fight (fighting as if affected with a sorcery
Binding). You can start play with such a companion.
 Slithercall Slithers are mildly attracted to you, if you come
within a few feet of them, and do not harm or infect
you. If your carrion companion is injured, you can
apply slithers to it to replace muscle tissues and
heal wounds.
 Synergy With a moment of effort, you can slip into a trance,
within which you experience the world from the
viewpoint of your carrion companion and can
direct its actions. When you do this, you can also
leave behind simple directives – two or three
sentences worth of general instructions your
companion will obey when you break the
connection. You can leave this trance as quickly as
you enter it, but are defenceless while in the trance.
If your companion is more than a mile away from
you, the trance can't be established and breaks if
ongoing.
 Fleshcraft You can augment your companion by having it meld
with the remains of other destroyed dead, giving it
some additional trait; see next page for details on
these traits. This talent can be taken repeatedly,
allowing you to add a further trait each time.
 Roilshimth You may add another trait to your companion, and
chitinous and roil-related features may now also be
added by synergizing with it and walking it into roil.
 Handler: Personal Monster
With each instance of fleshcraft, you can add one of the following traits to
your companion: Oversized, Tentacled, Winged, Wallowing. These operate
roughly as described in the threats section of the main rules, with the
following notes: Oversized increases its damage output by one for each
attack, and doubles its size in every direction (and multiplies its mass by
eight). Tentacled grants it to tentacles the length of its body, giving an
added strike for two damage, as well as the option to grab and climb
more easily, and so on. Winged allows it to fly under its own power, and
carry a burden of about an eighth its weight as it does so (which means
it'll likely need to be oversized twice to carry you). A wallowing
companion is one that has become amorphous; it will heal rapidly by
absorbing slithers departing the remains of other dead, but loses its
swiftness and becomes... Gooey.

Once you have roilsmith, you can add these traits: Weapons, Spewing,
Roilborne, Chitinous, Miasmic. To simplify these for handling: Weapons
improves damage by one on each attack, as the existing weapons of the
companion are enhanced. Chitinous reduces all damage it takes on each
fighting roll by one, to a minimum of one, and gives it a hard shell shaped
however you like. Spewing gives an acidic spray attack as the Maw talent
hell belly, usable once every few hours. Miasmic gives the companion a
personal cloud of roil that moves and floats around it in a pattern you
choose; Roilborne allows the companion to hover in roil clouds – or on
its own miasma. Notably, an oversized, miasmic, roilborne, chitinous,
companion is effectively a floating vehicle.

Monster Action And Rolls In Synergy

Outside of synergy, companions don't bother defending themselves,
instead just attacking anything that's attacking them (or threatening
you). This makes companion-on-threat fights pretty simple; everything
hits. When in synergy, however, the Guide may have the character make
rolls for their companion. Carrion can be treated as having a Quick of 4
and a Grim of 3 (with quick dropping to 2 if wallowy); they automatically
hit with one of their attacks, hit with an additional one per C spent, and
defend using B results. The Guide can (and should) refine these details
and make any needed rulings based on them in play.

Replace And Respec

It's possible to remove and replace traits on your companion, given “raw
materials” to do it with. If your companion is destroyed, you can make a
new one, and build it up with additional traits as well.
 Maw
Rotgut Hell Belly Black Breath

Third Lung
Barrel Chest

 Rotgut You can eat foulness and drink slime. You can substitute
any uninfected organic matter that you can chew
(including ground-up things you couldn't, like wood
pulp) for food. You can drink dirty water without
issues. When you eat a meal (whatever you eat), you can
mark the box next to this trait if unmarked (this only
matters if you have further talents from this tree).
 Hell When you rest for more than a minute or two, if the box
Belly for Rotgut is marked, you may clear it to instead mark
the box next to this trait. Any time you wish, you may
empty this box to vomit up a wide spray of caustic acid,
which coats everything within ten feet in front of you
(imagine this as a cone ten feet long, ten feet wide at
the far end, from your mouth). This acid does a total of
three damage to a struck subject over the course of the
next minute; it doesn't usually require a shoot roll
unless you might hit allies or your targets are
intelligent enough to dodge.
 Third Any time you would mark infection from breathing roil,
Lung you may mark this trait instead. You can then empty it
again any time as a fit of vomiting, incapacitating you
for a full minute – or, if you have Hell Belly, spew it out
when you use that ability, which makes the acid
infectious. You can also clear the box for Rotgut to mark
this one, with a minute of rest, if desired.
 Black When you have the boxes for both Hell Belly and Third
Breath Lung marked, you can clear both to mark this trait. You
may then clear the box for this trait to vomit up Black
Breath (see next page).
 Barrel The box next to this talent can be treated as an extra
Chest trait box for Black Breath, allowing you to store
multiple uses of it. You may take this talent repeatedly.
 Maw: Black Breath
Each use of black breath generates a cloud of black fog with the
approximate volume of the user, which dissipates over the course of the
next several minutes. This fog is a variant of roil that works under the
control of the creator. Black breath is not infectious, but it is caustic.
Things the black breath rolls over take damage as if hit by the bile
spewed by use of Hell Belly, a total of three damage over the course of
about a minute.

A few basic things that its creator can have it do:

Move The cloud moves where the creator wishes, proceeding at

about the speed of a leisurely walk if there is no wind.
Moving with wind can double this speed; moving against it
can halve or halt it.
Spread The cloud spreads out into an area; things in or passing
Out through the area are coated with the caustic substance. The
largest area it can cover without dissipating immediately is a
wispy lens shape about ten feet across and a foot thick in the
middle.
Assault The cloud wraps around a single target, lathering it in caustic
goop. The subject of this attack can dodge away fairly easily if
they have room to move; if they don't, they'll take a total of
nine damage over the next minute (and the cloud will be used
up doing this).
Take The cloud can be 'thought' into a rude shape, such as a crude
Shape pointing arrow or single letter, and left hanging in the air (or
moved skywards) until it dissipates, as a signalling method or
for other reasons.

Miasma And Sorcery

Black breath and actual roil conflict aggressively; if black breath is sent
to assault (or just spewed directly at) a normal-sized miasmic dead, then
the breath will burn out the miasma and itself, and leave that dead thing
coated caustically. If moved through a roil cloud, black breath will
destroy about three to five times it's volume in roil before burning out.

Black breath is roil for the purposes of sorcery; if used for sorcery,
replace the danger of infection with that of taking acid burns.
 Synapse
Whispers Receptor Capacitor

Broadcast Discharge Siphon

 Whispers You can hear the dead all the time. Mark one stress
to use this talent; for about ten minutes, you can feel
the position and activity of all dead in twenty feet,
and sense what Alpha dead there 'say' to their
underlings.
 Receptor When you activate whispers, your sensory range
extends to almost a full mile. Additionally, you can
'feel' electricity inside that range, hear radio and
other broadcasts using any kind of electromagnetic
energy, and can scan through various bands rapidly
to 'tune in' to whatever you wish.
 Capacitor You lay hands on any active electrical conductor and
draw off power to recover fatigue. Healing one
fatigue requires that you absorb about as much
electricity as it would take to keep a house light bulb
lit for an hour. You can absorb this power more
quickly – as fast as five minutes per fatigue healed.
 Siphon If you are within arm's reach of an active dead
creature, you can inflict one wound on it – and, if
fatigued, heal one of your fatigue, by spending a C in
any fight, juke, shoot, or similar roll.
 Discharge You develop small, heavy callus-like pads on various
parts of your body (wherever you like), and can
electrify these. By marking one fatigue, you can
treat all your unarmed attacks as shock weapon
attacks for the scene.
 Broadcast When you have whispers active, you can also
broadcast speech as radio, your sight as video, along
whatever bandwidth you like (including ones that
human technology can't easily access). In addition,
you can 'counter-sing' against balesong, cancelling it
out in your broadcast range.
 Beast
Weapon Reach Plated

Armour Carrier Handfeet

 Weapon You have grown natural weapons; claws, a splayed

arm, a short point-tipped tail, something else. Name a
weapon. If unarmed, you count as having it. You can
take this talent repeatedly.
 Armour You have natural armour in the form of chitin or fur.
You can convert one damage to fatigue per conflict,
marking this talent when you do (and erasing the
marks after the scene). If using other armour, you can
instead mark this talent after you convert damage to
fatigue using that, to block the fatigue; this means
your armour is torn up, and heals as if it were a point
of damage.
 Reach Your natural weapons (or arms or tail or...) grow
longer, allowing you to effectively attack at 'short
range' with them as well as fighting in melee as usual.
This can allow you a round of dealing damage with
greatly reduced danger before an opponent closes the
gap.
 Carrier Your body grows wider and lower, and able to bear an
extremely heavy load without concern, so long as it is
properly situated and balanced. You can carry a
single very heavy item (such as a refrigerator, trunk of
equipment, or the like) on your back, but it must be
secured in place and carefully balanced. You could
also carry a rider, if fitted with a saddle that keeps
them properly centred.
 Plated Your armour grows thicker and heavier; this functions
just as armour, above, but can be taken in addition to
it, and can be taken repeatedly.
 Hand- Your body shape lowers further, and your hands and
Feet arm-joints thicken. If your hands are empty, you can
now run on all fours at double human speed (and
make long jumps twice as long with a running start).
 Mutatis Mutandis
Each changed talent tree is the result of a push-and-pull collaboration
between the changed and the intent of the plague-makers. However, the
intent and psychic force of the plague-makers differs from one region to
another. This means that in some regions, these talent trees ought to be
altered to better reflect the personality of the local maker, reskinning or
swapping out a talent here and there to better match the tone you want
the local apocalypse to develop as that maker arrives. This might even
extend to adding a new basic change or two and an entire talent tree
running off of those, specifically to reflect the kind of changed beings that
maker wants.

Which leads us neatly to....

The Changer Pact

Cultists and sorcerers often attempt to make fairly fancy deals with the
makers, hoping to garner additional power. The changed don't really
have that option, but do have something similar. Anytime a character
rolls C C C on a withstand roll, the Guide may offer them a clear vision
drawn down from their fever; a smooth path of transformation the local
maker is content with seeing a changed progress on. This is represented
by a specific list of changed talents. If the character opts to commit to
that path of transformation, then from that point forward, they must take
those talents in that order, but may also spend C and B results to erase
infection on any withstand roll, so long as they first spend one from the
roll to black out a box and take the next such talent off the list.
 Spare Parts
Listed below are some further potential changed talents that the Guide
could make available as part of a new or modified talent tree, through the
local changed pact, or in whatever other context suits.
 Wings You have wings or some other wide membrane that
serves the same purpose, and can fly as fast as a
gaunt can run. This talent costs you one fatigue each
“takeoff”, and another each hour. You need room to
fly, a space at least twice as wide as you are tall.
When you first take this talent, you are a very poor
flier; it may be taken repeatedly (up to four times
total) to improve this. When flying in any 'cluttered'
environment (such as in city streets), the Guide may
roll to juke or even 'drive', with injuries and falls at
stake; on such rolls, you roll one die per copy of this
talent you have.
 Carnic You can heal extremely rapidly, but doing so leaves
you ravenous. Any time you have more than an hour
or to rest, you can replace one injury with one hunger.
In addition, you can clear one hunger from your
strain by consuming a portion of meat as large as
your fist. These benefits can be chained together,
eating and resting to heal yourself in only a few
hours.
 Perfect Your biochemistry as a whole has been refined from
Flesh the human baseline. Infections and sicknesses other
than the blight no longer affect you; ignore the risk of
infection when recuperating. You may purchase a
fifth dot of Vital (but must pay for it), breaking the
usual limit; if you do so, even your appearance and
skin will shift to being smoother, cleaner, and more
symmetrical – attractive, if somewhat alien.
 Perfect Your speed and nervous reactions have been elevated
Nerves from the human baseline. You can sprint at about
one-and-a-half times the unaltered human maximum
(about 42mph or 68kph). If you have other talents
that increase your speed, multiply that increased
speed by 1.5. You may make Juke rolls skilfully, and
may purchase a fifth dot of Vital (but must pay for it),
breaking the usual limit; if you do so, the speed
increase is changed from x1.5 to x2 and your
movement speed becomes clearly unnatural.
 Sensory You have a number of rounded encrustations, which
Cysts may appear as pearls, stones, etc, that can detach and
fly around under your control, each trailed by and
wrapped in a thin mist. Their speed is a leisurely
walking pace and their maximum range is a few
hundred metres (several hundred feet); they are
hard-shelled and uninteresting to the dead. Each is
also a sensory relay – an eye and ear, transmitting
sight and sound back to you. As might be expected,
this can grant bonus dice to some observe rolls while
obviating the need for others entirely – however, you
suffer a one-die penalty to all other actions for each
separate scene of action beyond your own that you
are observing.
 Schism You are able to split your consciousness into two
discrete portions, each operating at full capacity and
in complete communication with each other. This
enables you to concentrate fully on two things. You
could, for example, be in a Synergy trance (see the
handler tree) while also fully active, maintain a watch
on another location with sensory cysts without
penalty, or other tricks of divided focus.
 Spinner You can sweat out a silk-like substance from your
Skin pores, localized to any part of your body (often hands
and forearms are preferred). This doesn't “shoot”
from you, but can be attached by touch; it sticks to
objects and to itself with its full strength, and is
strong enough to suspend a vehicle. It sticks to or
does not stick to your skin to exactly the extent you
wish it to at any moment – which allows you to both
manipulate it and move on it with complete freedom.
You could, for example, climb a sheer wall by sweating
a film of this substance from your hands, sticking it to
surfaces, and leaving it behind as you move on. You
can also create webs by touching a surface, and then
continuing to sweat out more of the material while
pulling away. For each ten feet of this silk you spin,
you incur one fatigue.
 Lumen You have luminescent skin, glowing about as bright as
a small indoor lamp. If you wish to, you can exhale a
small amount of glowing fog (often into a jar or
bottle), which produces light similarly, and will do so
for a week. This inflicts one fatigue on you.
 Thermal You are capable of seeing long wavelengths of light,
Sight well into the infrared. Since all objects with
temperatures above absolute zero produce infrared
radiation to some extent, this effectively grants you
“heat vision”.
 Altered Your sinus cavity has expanded (which may give you a
Smell snout or muzzle), and your sense of smell has
improved immensely. The Guide will often pass
additional information by scent to you (and you can
remind them to do this by stating that you're sniffing
the air). You gain an added die and can roll skilfully
on observe rolls where this is a reasonable factor
(determining emotional states, catching people lying,
finding hidden things); you may gain either of those
benefits on other rolls where it applies as well.
Finally, you're capable of attempting to track people
and animals over short stretches, though rolls will
likely be required.
 Altered Your sense of hearing I much more sensitive than a
Hearing regular humans. You probably cannot be deafened. .
 Sin You can absorb infection from others through touch;
Eater mist rises from their skin and is drawn into yours.
This takes about a minute per point of infection, and
each point transferred from a target to yourself also
inflicts one fatigue on you.
 Sun You are photosynthetic, and can “eat” sunlight;
Eater replacing a meal requires a full hour of direct sunlight
over at least half of your body (multiple hours if more
covered up). Your skin has a green cast to it, but may
be mottled, hazel, or some other variation. You can
also eat food normally as desired.
 Serpent Your legs have fused together into a long tail; your
Body total 'length' is now twice your original height. While
this means that you have significant difficulty with
vehicles and many other spaces, you can still move
about at usual walking speeds. You can also swim at
walking speed with no special effort. In a vertical
environment with plenty of 'coiling space', such as
scaffolding, you can also climb at walking speed with
no roll required – though without such aides, it may
be more difficult or impossible. Finally, you can
bodyslam with your tail as an unarmed strike.