Liminal Knacks
Liminal Knacks at the mortal level grant you the power to send messages, to ease your travels, and to draw upon the silence at the edges of mortal perception. Liminal Knacks are driven by the concepts of boundary and distance.
Liminal Knacks that involve retroactively changing themselves, their circumstances, or their interactions with others should generally be interpreted in ways that are favorable to the character using the Knack. If the Storyguide thinks a retroactive change may have negative consequences that the player is unaware of, they should notify the player before they make the action
Liminal Knacks Master
Liminal Heroic
• Always a Backdoor
• Always a Backdoor
With this Knack, you are impossible to fully defend against. No matter how unlikely, difficult, or dangerous, you can always find a possible means of entry or escape. This doesn’t mean you automatically manage to get in, but you find some method you could theoretically succeed at, given enough time and perhaps luck.
• Anonymous Wandering
• Anonymous Wandering
You’re a vagabond, free as the wind. So long as you don’t sleep in the same place twice — whether crashing with different friends or traveling from town to town — you and your companions get +2 Enhancement to avoid pursuers, and mundane authorities can’t track you down at all without supernatural help. Even mystical scrying struggles, suffering a level 2 Complication; if not bought off, all results are from (your Legend) days ago.
• Beyond Memory
• Beyond Memory
You bend the boundaries of cognition, fading from memory after an interaction. Anyone trying to describe you or recall the details of your interaction must make an Occult + Composure roll at Difficulty 2 to remember anything at all, with a 1-point Complication. If they fail to meet this Complication, your identity is safe, though the details of their interaction are not. If this is magically contested, make a Clash of Wills. You may spend Momentum and double successes on any Liminal Skill rolls to avoid passive detection, notice, or stealth otherwise; this does not work against active searching.
• Closed-Door Policy
• Closed-Door Policy
You can use this Knack to make an entrance to a location unable to be found. Anyone of an equal or lower Tier cannot locate the entrance. Doors blend into walls and forest paths seem to fade into overgrowth. This effect is automatic against anyone two Tiers beneath you. For a character of equal Tier or one lower, they must succeed in a Clash of Wills. You gain +2 Enhancements to the Clash of Wills. The Size of an entrance which can be concealed can be no greater than half the Scion’s Legend, rounded up. A nascent Hero can hide a door or window, but only a powerful God could hide a valley which leads to a Terra Incognita. A character can simultaneously hide a number of entrances equal to their dots in the Liminal Calling.
• Complete Privacy
• Complete Privacy
By reinforcing the importance of your personal boundaries, any interactions you take cannot be listened in on, your lips cannot be read, your phone can’t be tapped, etc. by use of mundane means. Add +2 difficulty to attempts to tail you. This protects only against covert attempts to invade your privacy and offers no protection against airport security going through your luggage or rivals breaking into your apartment.
• Experienced Traveler
• Experienced Traveler
When you travel to a new place, no matter how remote, you quickly pick up the social mores and behaviors, along with enough of the language to get by. Add +1 Enhancement to any applicable rolls to blend into the culture, if the Storyguide feels a need to call for a roll at all. This bonus applies before you roll. Additionally, when you attend a social ritual (such as a wedding or a funeral or a birthday party) you always know exactly the right social mores to follow, and how to appropriately dress. Even if you were not invited, you will not read as out of place.
• Familiar Kind of Face
• Familiar Kind of Face
Unless you choose to suppress it, your presence feels familiar to all who encounter you. Trivial characters will treat you as an old, fond friend, while other characters meeting you for the first time develop a positive Attitude 2 of “Pleasantly familiar.”
• Feel the Rush
• Feel the Rush
Distance is trivial for you, and you move effortlessly between places. In a chase scene, reduce any terrain related Complications by 1. Once per scene when you make a disengage or rush action against a lower Tier target, they cannot contest the action. In addition, when you spend 1 Momentum you can disengage, rush, or utilize cover as a reflexive action.
• Flatlander
• Flatlander
When you make a close combat, thrown, or ranged attack, you gain access and 1 Enhancement to apply any of the following Stunts to your action, in addition to the default set:
- Glimpse the Other Side (any successes above Defense): Make a Clash of Wills. If the target fails, they are removed from reality (leaving play entirely) until the start of their next turn. They roll initiative as normal and reappear where they were standing on their action. An opponent removed from reality in this way cannot be targeted by any actions until they reappear.
- Stutter Time (any successes above Defense): You force the target of your attack to suffer a penalty to their Initiative equal to the successes you spend on this Stunt. This pushes a fast opponent further down the initiative roster. If you are targeting an opponent who has already gone, they take this penalty at the start of the next turn.
- Bend Space (any successes above Defense): Reduce the target’s Range by 1 for each success spent on this Stunt, to a minimum of Close, which lasts until the end of the target’s next action.
• Neither the Minute nor the Hour
• Neither the Minute nor the Hour
You make a prediction about the details of your target’s inevitable death (which does not have to be true) and make an opposed Knack Skill roll. If successful, the target suffers a +1 Difficulty to all actions for the rest of the scene.
• Never There
• Never There
In any scene where you haven’t harmed anyone, you may simply leave. You weren’t there, and any evidence that you were quickly disappears. Trivial and lower Tier characters cannot prevent you from leaving, while equal or higher-Tier characters must succeed at a Clash of Wills if they haven’t already clapped you in chains, magically paralyzed you, or similarly restrained when you use this power.
• The Gate and Key
• The Gate and Key
You may spend a Momentum to open a portal from one location to another as long as it is through a literal portal (a door, window, manhole, etc.) to anywhere else of your choosing, including Terra Incognitae. You must have visited the location you are moving to for the portal to work.
• Unerring Delivery
• Unerring Delivery
Send a message via another person — a stranger you choose on the street, a spirit or ghost of your pantheon, etc. — to someone in an instant, which can be done even if you are not present in the World, or somewhere else where a simple text or email might not reach.
• Unobtrusive Visitor
• Unobtrusive Visitor
When you would observe or infiltrate a location where you do not belong, spend a Momentum and blur the line between what is expected and unexpected. You take on the aspect of someone unassuming and invisible: a janitor, gardener, housekeeper, etc. So long as you collect information or remain an observer and do not take hostile action, anyone in the same Field as you overlooks your presence. This lasts until you take violent action, or until you leave the Field, whichever comes first.
Liminal Immortal
•• Always Available
•• Always Available
Characters who wish to speak to you can do so from anywhere. You are always aware when a character wishes to speak to you, and know what they wish to convey. Spend Momentum to instantly appear at their side, as long as you’re within the same realm. You are also aware of any divine or other interference if it prevents someone from reaching you.
•• Among the Stars
•• Among the Stars
Roll your Knack Skill and spend a Momentum. For a number of turns equal to successes, take on the form of star stuff, adopting the bleak void of space and the pinpricks of light from distant stars. In doing so, you become intangible, but extremely dense. Matter bends around you, allowing you to pass through the smallest of crack or shore up the largest of spaces. Weapon attacks bend away from you, metal wraps around the density of your shape, and attackers find their fists slowed to nothing as they enter your radius. When the effect ends, your body reverts to normal, but the matter you twisted remains as you moved it.
•• Enforcing the Boundary
•• Enforcing the Boundary
Make a Knack Skill roll — on a success, create a barrier of force that protects you and all allies within short range of you. It moves with you, but you may not take the Rush or Disengage actions. The force field lasts until the end of a fight scene, until you are Taken Out, or until you choose to end the effect — whichever comes first. While enforcing this boundary, characters under its protection may not be targeted by attacks by weapons or abilities with the Firearms or Arcing tags. It adds your Legend in Enhancement to any rolls you make to resist the Rush action. This applies before you roll.
•• Everybody’s Trail
•• Everybody’s Trail
Your peregrinations blaze paths between peoples and worlds. Your refusal to be limited to any one context provides a path and template for those that would follow you. Imbue Legend to consecrate a path, literal or figurative, between any two places or away from any single place. Those that follow the path benefit from additional appropriate Scale to overcome obstacles for following it to its conclusion. This may create a Realm Condition that reduces the cost for Darkness, Journey, or Stars Divine Rule actions taken through it by 1.
•• Future History Self
•• Future History Self
You can shift between ages at will, though without other magic Fate may still claim you when you’ve reached the end of your natural span. Once per scene, gain 2 Enhancement for a roll aided by becoming a younger or older self; if you become younger, you may spend Momentum to remove an Injury condition; if you become older, you may raise or lower an Attitude you hold by 1.
•• Lapse
•• Lapse
Spend Momentum to cease existing for up to a scene. Lower-tier characters cannot recall you existed, other characters must use supernatural means and a Clash of Will if they wish to affect you at all, pulling you back into existence if they defeat you. At any point before the duration runs out, you may choose to return to existence anywhere within Long range. In combat, this allows you to immediately take your action if you haven’t yet for a turn, and you gain your Legend in Enhancement to your first action.
•• Nobody’s Path
•• Nobody’s Path
Where you say there is no path, only fools attempt travel. When sealing off a travel route on an epic Scale, such as the border between two nations or a well-trod pathway between worlds, imbue a point of Legend, rather than spending it, to invoke your Legendary Title as a Feat of Scale.
•• Outsider’s Immunity
•• Outsider’s Immunity
You may ignore local laws or customs when abroad. Relatively universal laws, like “don’t murder people” will still apply, but the unique rules of specific foreign countries, terrae incognitae, or Underworlds just don’t apply to you. Boons or Knacks involving the law do not see these actions as criminal, nor can a being of Lower Tier hassle you about them.
•• Pierce the Veil
•• Pierce the Veil
When you cross boundaries on an epic Scale (descending into the afterlife on foot, driving your way across the globe), imbue a point of Legend, rather than spending, to invoke your Legendary Title as a Feat of Scale.
•• Rise From Your Grave
•• Rise From Your Grave
Once per story, you can choose to be killed in combat, returning from the grave unharmed at a dramatically appropriate moment (usually within the same session, but the choice is yours). Your current longterm Deed is considered “unfinished business,” and all rolls toward finishing it gain a +1 Enhancement.
•• Step Sideways
•• Step Sideways
When you take a Move action, cross the distance instantly. This movement ignores hazardous and difficult terrain and crosses distance where there may not be a safe place to walk — such as across a chasm. So long as you can see your destination and it is within a distance you can Move, you appear there unharmed. This may only be used to augment the reflexive Move action, and does not apply to Rush or Disengage.
•• The Long Road to Anywhere
•• The Long Road to Anywhere
You make an extended journey without stopping but must rest upon arrival. When you arrive, you can ask hospitality of anyone of a lower Tier than you, and if they refuse you have the option to make the target suffer +2 Difficulty to all actions until you choose to remove the penalty.
•• The Watcher of the Road
•• The Watcher of the Road
You may declare one route (a road, a doorway, a magical portal, a sea route between two cities) to be under your watch. Wherever you are, you automatically know everything and everyone passing through: their name, their cargo, what they do along the way. Magical or divine disguises require a Clash of Wills to see through.
•• Timewise Presence
•• Timewise Presence
Spend Momentum and roll Knack skill to retroactively insert yourself into a target’s past. On a success, against trivial or lower tier targets, you can make material changes to their circumstances, changing declaring a facts about them for each success as you explain how your presence altered their major life events. Against targets of equal or higher-tier, you can instead spend successes to perform the Q&A Investigation stunt as you rifle through their past.
•• Trailblaze
•• Trailblaze
Imbue for Scale when creating a path, doorway, or passage that others can cross. This might be a road that leads to another realm, a literal door through an impenetrable wall, or a gate big enough for a Titan. Divine Mediator: As an outsider, you are able to see both sides of even the bitterest feuds. When you enter an antagonistic conversation, even beings who have made war since the creation of the cosmos start to see from the oth- ers’ perspective. When you do this, Imbue for Scale to bring those conflicts to peaceful resolution.
•• Universal Conductor
•• Universal Conductor
You help folks set off on their own, marking needful paths across the face of the World. When you help someone embark on a meaningful and important journey, you may give them your blessing. Characters of lower Tier are protected from any harm or serious inconvenience short of a character defeating you in a Clash of Wills, while characters of the same or higher Tier benefit from your Liminal rating in Enhancement to overcome any travel related problems or dangers. When performing Procedural tasks, you may describe how a character you helped undertake a journey changed the World in a way that aids your project, counting that as a completed Milestone once per Procedural action
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