The Dark Tower Breakers, Podreczniki RPG, The Dark Tower
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
Breakers
He had said it would be good—that
they would see to it. Well, she would
see to it. They better not start anything.
They just better not. She did not know if
her gift had come from the lord of light
or of darkness, and now, inally inding
that she did not care which, she was
overcome with an almost indescribable
relief, as if a huge weight, long carried,
had slipped from her shoulders.
Blooming
Using the Touch
She had gone in only ive minutes before,
after opening the gas main (it had been easy;
as soon as she pictured it lying there under the
street it had been easy), but it seemed like hours.
She had prayed long and deeply, sometimes
aloud, sometimes silently. Her heart thudded and
labored. The veins on her face and neck bulged.
Her mind was illed with the huge knowledge of
POWERS, and of an ABYSS. She prayed in front
of the altar, kneeling in her wet and torn and
bloody gown, her feet bare and dirty and bleed-
ing from a broken bottle she had stepped on. Her
breath sobbed in and out of her throat, and the
church was illed with groanings and swayings
and sunderings as psychic energy sprang from
her. Pews fell, hymnals lew, and a silver Com-
munion set cruised silently across the vaulted
darkness of the nave to crash into the far wall.
She prayed and there was no answer. No one was
there—or if there was, He/It was cowering from
her.
She had grown a little wary of the terriic strain
using the power seemed to put on her heart and lungs
and internal thermostat. She suspected it would be all
too possible for her heart to literally burst with the
strain. It was like being in another’s body and forcing
her to run and run and run. You would not pay the cost
yourself; the other body would. She was beginning to
realize that her power was perhaps not so different from
the powers of Indian fakirs, who stroll across hot coals,
run needles into their eyes, or blithely bury themselves
for periods up to six weeks. Mind over matter in any
form is a terriic drain on the body’s resources.
Every Breaker begins with a number of darks equal to
their Anima. Expending darks takes a lot out of a per-
son’s brain and body. If darks are emitted too rapidly or
too frequently, the Breaker will suffer worse and worse
physical symptoms. Death, usually by heart attack or
stroke, is the inevitable result.
For example, a Breaker with 10 darks uses 1 dark (10%
of her total). Three rounds later, she uses another dark
(now her total used within the last 10 rounds is 20% of
her maximum). At this point she suffers a headache. If
she uses another 2 darks within the next six rounds, she
will suffer a nosebleed in addition to the headache.
Once a Breaker realizes his or her potential, (s)he
gains a vague understanding of psionic powers
and concepts.
To use a power, a Breaker makes an Anima
percentage check against the Resistance number
listed on the matrix.
Darks
Symptom
used
20%
Headache (-2 Anima)
35%
Nosebleed (-1 Appearance, -1 Fortitude)
50%
Numbness (-3 Dexterity, -3 Strength)
Breakers may lose Sanity by using telepathic
powers. Every time a speciic power is used, the
Breaker must make a Sanity check or lose the
Sanity Points listed. Like any other Sanity loss,
no more than the maximum listed loss can be
reached.
75%
Hemorrhaging
90%+
Blackout / coma
Darks return at the rate of one every ten rounds. Break-
ers recover from numbness, nosebleed, and headache (in
that order) at the rate of one condition every ten rounds.
Hemmorrhaging Breakers must succeed in a Luck check
or lose 1d6 points from Strength and Dexterity. This
condition abates with 24 hours of rest.
If the Breaker expends 90% of her darks, she must suc-
ceed in a Luck check to merely black out. Failure means
a coma. A second Luck check is needed to stop her
Anima score from being permanantly lowered by one.
With a mind-link and enough patience, one
Breaker can teach another Breaker any power
besides Facilitation.
Psychic Death
Sue tried to pull away, to disengage her mind,
to allow Carrie at least the privacy of her dying, and
was unable to. She felt that she was dying herself and
did not want to see this preview of her own eventual
end.
(carrie let me GO)
(Momma Momma Momma
oooooooooooooo
OOOOOOOOOO
)
The mental screams reached a laring, un-
believable crescendo and then suddenly faded. For
a moment Sue felt as if she were watching a candle
lame disappear down a long, black tunnel at a tre-
mendous speed.
(she’s dying o my god i’m feeling her die)
And then the light was gone, and the last
conscious thought had been
(momma i’m sorry where)
and it broke up and Sue was tuned in only on the
blank, idiot frequency of the physical nerve endings
that would take hours to die.
Darks expended:
all remaining
Sanity Loss:
3/2d4+2
She began to run, breathing deep in her chest,
running from Tommy, from the ires and explosions,
from Carrie, but mostly from the inal horror—that
last lighted thought carried swiftly down into the
black tunnel of eternity, followed by the blank, idiot
hum of prosaic electricity.
The after-image began to fade reluctantly,
leaving a blessed, cool darkness in her mind that
knew nothing. She slowed, halted, and became aware
that something had begun to happen. She stood in
the middle of the great and misty ield, waiting for
realization.
Her rapid breathing slowed, slowed, caught
suddenly as if on a thorn—
And suddenly vented itself in one howling,
cheated scream.
As she felt the slow course of dark menstrual
blood down her thighs.
Learning to shine
A pleasure to Break
She opened her eyes. She looked at the hair-
brush on her bureau.
Flex
.
She was lifting the hairbrush. It was heavy.
It was like lifting a barbell with very weak arms. Oh.
Grunt.
The hairbrush slid to the edge of the bureau,
slid out past the point where gravity should have top-
pled it, and then dangled, as if on an invisible string.
Carrie’s eyes had closed to slits. Veins pulsed in her
temples. A doctor might have been interested in what
her body was doing at that instant; it made no ratio-
nal sense. Respiration had fallen to sixteen breaths
per minute. Blood pressure up to 190/100. Heartbeat
up to 140—higher than astronauts under the heavy g-
load of lift-off. Temperature down to 94.3
°.
Her body
was burning energy that seemed to be coming from
nowhere and seemed to be going nowhere. An electro-
encephalogram would have shown alpha waves that
were no longer waves at all, but great, jagged spikes.
She let the hairbrush down carefully. Good.
Last night she had dropped it.
“And because to Break is divine,” Dinky
said. He was also looking at Eddie. “The way the
half an hour after you shoot up can be divine. If you
know what I’m talking about.”
“They lost something else, too,” Ted told
them quietly. “There’s a novel by Ray Bradbury
called Fahrenheit 451. ‘It was a pleasure to burn’
is that novel’s irst line. Well, it was a pleasure to
Break, as well.”
Dinky was nodding. So were Worthington
and Dani Rostov.
Even Sheemie was nodding his head.
She opened her eyes.
Flex
.
The bureau rose into the air, trembled for a
moment, and then rose until it nearly touched the ceil-
ing. She lowered it. Lifted it. Lowered it. Now the bed,
complete with her weight. Up. Down. Up. Down. Just
like an elevator.
She was hardly tired at all. Well, a little. Not
much. The ability, almost lost two weeks ago, was in
full lower. It had progressed at a speed that was—
Well, almost terrifying.
Every game the Breaker succesfully uses his or her
powers, she makes a Sanity check. A successful check
means the Breaker gains 1d2 darks.
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]