Hierophant

X. The Hierophant

“Chill man. Listen to your heart and shit.”

Fonts of spiritual power, the Hierophant Arcana is the Arcana of the ordered mind: logical, empowered, mystical. Capable of plumbing the depths of mysteries and making them clear to the world, most Hierophants are scientists, preachers and gurus to an increasingly jaded world.

Well, they used to be. Nowadays they’re the dregs. Hierophant Cards are traditionally the inheritors of forbidden knowledge. They were the keepers of the flame, warriors of knowledge who ransacked both Heaven and Hell for celestial science and art. Today however, not much is forbidden---save knowledge kept shrouded in the Fog, or lost to the Dark Hour.

As a result, most Hierophants find themselves in the Dark Hour, frantically searching for the little gems of wisdom and human insight often locked there by Shadows or even more nefarious personages. If not there, they’re wading through the Fog, hoping to record a new Persona or charting the various weaknesses of Shadows. It is not an easy life.

It is not rare for a Hierophant to get so afflicted by Apathy that he remains in the Fog or stops keeping the Dark Hour. He becomes his own worst enemy, a shade sending nightmares of his own design back to the waking world. Many Hierophants have turned to the bad. It’s a topic that Hierophants vociferously deny but deny just a little bit too much.

Hierophants are chosen when their deaths are the result of forbidden knowledge. They can be the target of spells, curses or what not. They could have stumbled on classified government information that no one alive could keep. While Magicians search for the information to find out what they don’t know, Hierophants live again to make sure that such information never falls into the wrong hands---aside from their own, of course.

The Dealer of the Hierophant Arcana is simply called Mentor, Odysseus’ teacher and the form Athena took to guide Telemacchus on his own voyage to find his father. It is a role reserved for the most thoughtful of the Hierophants.

Unfortunately, the current Mentor is so addled by Apathy that he’s taken to distributing drugs and getting high whenever he can. He is numb from his experiences in the Fog but he still feels quite keenly the call of duty and service he signed up for the day he was designated Mentor to the Arcana. His forced forays into the waking world to help new Hierophants tax his sanity and patience, requiring more and more drugs for him calm down afterwards. His fellow senior Hierophants have begun to talk quietly of finding a replacement---at least, that’s what his paranoid thinking tells him.

In truth, it might be some time before a new Mentor is chosen. The current Dealer is a crafty and powerful Persona-user who completed many Social Links in his time. Eliminating him and making space for a new successor will be a tricky endeavor indeed.

The Power of the Hierophant

The current Mentor prefers Servitors who are trustworthy, silent and stay out of his way. He brooks no criticism from his Servitors. He blithely sends them along on dangerous missions to the Fog with nary a twinge of guilt. This behavior causes many of his Servitors to hate him, while the rest worry. Luckily, the remaining experienced Hierophants have taken up the slack to train their younger brethren.

Hierophant 1: Psychometry
Roll: Intelligence + Academics or Occult + Numina.
Hierophants use this ability to see into the past by reading the psychic imprints left on an object.

Exceptional Failure: The power fails to function. The Persona-user is inundated with so many images that he is overwhelmed and cannot use the power for another day.

Failure: The power fails to function.

Success: The Persona-user sees in his mind an event (at the Storyteller’s discretion) that is charged with powerful psychic energy. It could be an intense emotion, or the expenditure of Numina.

Exceptional Success: The Persona-user can “scan” the object’s past and read key events in the object’s history for up to a number of days equal to his Arcana rank.

Hierophant 2: Steal Memories
Roll: Intelligence + Wits + Numina vs. Resolve + Numina. 1 Numina.
Hierophants use this ability to rifle through the memories of their targets.

Exceptional Failure: The power backfires, sending thoughts and memories to the target. The target gets the benefits of the ability while the Hierophant suffers the effects.

Failure: The power fails to function.

Success: For every success that the Hierophant scores, he is allowed to absorb the recent memories of his target for a duration of up to 1 day per Arcana Rank. He can select a number of memories equal to his Arcana Rank and retain those for himself. The rest of the memories flow back into his target. The target will know he’s forgotten something, but will not have any emotional attachment to the memory if informed of what he’s lost. The lost memory returns, along with the emotions attached to them, after a number of days equal the Hierophant Arcana Rank.

Exceptional Success: As Success.

Hierophant 3: Information Overload
Roll: Intelligence + Academic + Numina vs Intelligence + Numina. 1 Numina.
Sometimes a lot of knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

Exceptional Failure: The power fails to function, and cannot be used for another day.

Failure: The power fails to function.

Success: The Hierophant adds his Intelligence or Academic rating (whatever is higher) to his opponent’s corresponding rating. The power affects the target if he does not have the ability to raise his Intelligence or Academics past the cap of 5. If the target’s Intelligence or Academics is boosted beyond 5, for every point beyond 5 he is assaulted by all the sudden knowledge he’s acquired. He is left gibbering for an hour for every point boosted beyond 5.

Exceptional Success: He is left gibbering for a day for every point boosted beyond 5.

Hierophant 4: Tower of Will
Roll: None. Passive.
Hierophants with this power double add 50% of their Numina rating to their dice pool when resisting powers that affect the mind.

Hierophant 5: Dominate Mind
Roll: Intelligence + Presence + Numina vs. Resolve + Numina. 2 Numina per turn contested.
The Hierophant takes control of another being’s actions.

Exceptional Failure: The power fails to function, and drains away more energy than needed, forcing the Hierophant to lose 2 more Numina.

Failure: The power fails to function.

Success: The Hierophant controls the actions of his target. He cannot let the target go out of his sight. In addition, while he can control the target, he cannot force the target to use his skills; he must provide his own expertise. All Physical and Social Skills are used at -1 penalty. The power lasts for as along as the Hierophant wins contested actions.

Exceptional Success: The Hierophant’s domination is so total that the power lasts for the rest of the sce