Wednesday, 8 January 2020

253 - Inner Flames

Artifact: Inner Flames

Power: Significant.

Description: An elaborate child’s diorama displaying a cross-sectioned view of an apartment fire. The exact nature of the scenes shown are in flux, they change when nobody is looking as the fire slowly becomes more severe. Looking closely at them reveal incongruities that aren’t apparent at a glance: one man is sitting on a couch watching television as his apartment burns, a woman is looking wistfully out of the window smoking a cigarette while the fire licks her heels, a family eats around a dinner table, half of them ablaze and melting. No one is reacting to the flames, no matter how horrifying their situation.

Effect: Inner Flames feeds off the energy of neglected passions - the longer its owner forgoes those emotional touchstones the more energy it gathers and the worse the depicted tableau becomes. Each time its owner denies a passion or obsession it gains a minor charge as things get worse for the tiny painted-clay-and-cardboard people. Oddly, the owner will not take stress checks for acting against their core beliefs and traits. At the end of each session roll a number of d10s equal to their number of expended passions for the session.

If the result is lower than the number of minor charges Inner Flames has accrued it explodes in an unquenchable conflagration. The fire deals the equivalent of 1d10 wounds of damage to people and/or property per charge it had, resisting all attempts to extinguish it until this amount of damage has been done. After that any remaining fire can be put out normally but continues to burn if there is fuel. It is accompanied by a sensation of intense relief and exhaustion (in addition to however the fire makes them feel).

During the next session none of that character’s passions are available. They return at a rate of one per subsequent session, determined randomly.

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