Obsidian Tide of the Heart

And the tide rose,
And the fire came as it would, with all of its heat and agony.
The screaming pain of a world's death throes rang out in her heart.
It hurt. It ached with the dull, throbbing pain of an ancient wound.
Of a life lived in exhausted heartache and cruelty borne.

It would kill her and the world.
She should weep.
It should make her cry.
But quietly,
So quietly,
she whispered,
"It was just a foolish dream."

And try as it might, the fire could not eat her heart.
Because it had already drowned a tide of glittering obsidian.

Obsidian Tide of the Heart
Type: Chthonic, Bleak

• 0MP - Invoke this power, 1/book.
• 4 MP - While at Hollow 0 or 1, invoke this power an additional time.
• 2 MP - While at Hollow 2+, invoke this power an additional time.

This bleak power makes you apart from the world. It separates you from yourself, from them, from the foolish dreams of the heart.

You gain a point of the Hollow issue whenever you use this power.

Whenever you are exposed to one of the following, you may invoke this power:

• A primarily magical, spiritual or metaphysical attack or danger.
• A sudden swell of emotions.
• A sudden recollection of a memory.

The offending threat faces an Obstacle and Auctoritas equal to your Hollow issue in order to affect you directly. If the issue is primarily an unthinking part of the world, it simply fails to affect you at all- you may take an Obstacle 0 action to simply avoid or quell it.

This protective ward lingers until the end of the scene, and can be applied to any broadly similar type of threat. Using the dark chill of the void to quash your feelings of angry jealousy could also oppose other angry, jealous or envious feelings, for example.

However, this power lingers in your soul. It inundates it. It becomes part of you. For the rest of the chapter, you are cursed with a hollowness in your heart. You suffer the same Obstacle and Auctoritas granted by this power on any attempt to:

• Feel good about the world or yourself.
• Feel love, joy, enthusiasm or any other positive feeling.
• Open up to others, or for others to read your feelings and connect to you.

If this power is invoked while at Hollow 2+, this negative  lasts instead until the Hollow issue is resolved.

If someone overcomes the lingering curse of this power by Making Answer to the Bleak, this may, depending on the desires of the character’s player, resolve the Hollow Issue or lower it to 1 or 2. But not always- sometimes the tide of night cannot be stymied by even the most heartfelt of efforts. There is no shame in the healing being long-fought and slow.

This perk is an appropriate miraculous perk for an Emptiness 3 or 4 quest. It could also be, in theory, the reward for a particularly long and awful Emptiness 2 quest.

 

Credit to @RoseMythos for her invaluable and insightful assistance in making this miraculous power.

Investigator of the Occult

Magical Skill
This skill is not healthy. It isn't good for you. It is an obsession that will drive you to uncover things that should not be known. It will drain you.

It will separate you from your life. It will hollow you out and fill you up with the ceaseless need to know- that will be the only fire of your life.

It is a suitable skill for tragic occult detectives, arrogant scholars or servants of the Ceaseless Watcher.

Non-Magical Techniques

0: Discover a relevant folktale, dreadful past event or local legend about some supernatural force or event, after a few days of research.
1: Identify and name a known supernatural force at play in a place or upon an object or person.

Magical techniques

0: Have recording devices or writing implements on hand.
1: Discover a relevant folktale, dreadful past event or local legend with a few hours of research.
1: Cause a willing witness to give you a clearer, more detailed and more truthful account of a supernatural event they witnessed.
1: Decipher something in an archaic text, difficult format or something that's been slightly ruined or destroyed- like shredded files.
1: Recall some piece of public record, such as a phone number or encyclopedia fact, without ever having learned it.
2: Endure long and grueling research sessions without your findings suffering.
2: Understand a language you do not speak.
3: Coerce, with terrible supernatural compulsion, someone to answer a question.

The following are traditional bonds associated with this magical skill:

• I am always wrestling with some question, enigma or mystery. Once I become attached to one, I dedicate all my time and energy to dragging it out into the light.
• I can always be drawn into a mystery by…
  • ...a blisteringly attractive person.
  • ...an old friend in need.
  • ...a member of a certain marginalized group.
  • …the memory of someone I failed.
• My enemies have plans and schemes, and I need to know what they are before it’s too late!
• I feed off of the terror of...
  • ...exposure or vulnerability.
  • ... revealed secrets.
  • ...observation, or the implication of having been observed.
  • ....the violation of trust.
• I am sustained by…
  • ...other's recounted tales of horror and pain.
  • …coffee and the hunt.
  • ...the satisfaction of being proved right.
• I make people feel like I know their secrets.
• I am repulsed and weakened by uncanniness, distortion and ambiguity.
• Regardless of their resolve, everyone speaks to me in due time.
• In my questioning, I am so blunt as to be cruel.
• I have very odd and distinctive eyes.

The following are some non-standard techniques associated with this magical skill. They are not inherent parts of it, but characters may pick them up as quest rewards.

0 - Manifest either viscerally physical or colorfully spectral extra eyes.
1 - Organize an archive such that anyone attempting to use it as the focal point of research spends hours instead of days, or minutes instead of hours, when performing research there. This fades after a chapter or two of you dropping the intention.
1 - Escape a complex maze, or lead a group out of the same.
2 - Escape a place that is supernaturally entrapping, alluring or inescapable.
2 - Cause a useful source or clue to some mystery you are studying to appear, after spending some time discussing theories and searching the records.
2 - Appear in a surreal and liminal spiritual space, or a dream, long enough to convey a message or observe something happening.
2 - Form a solid understanding of the underlying occult mechanics that govern a particular and specific type of supernatural power, being or place.
3 - Use a solid understanding of underlying occult mechanics to redirect powers, curses, influence or similar to another target, or ward an area against something that uses those mechanics.