Water Spirt

PERSISTENT CONDITION: WATER SPIRIT

While water spirits from different parts of the World look different, all are roughly humanoid. Some look perfectly human except for a persistent dampness in their touch or on the clothes, while others may be covered in fish scales, or have features from various aquatic animals like frogs or turtles. Regardless of their appearance, all of them can breathe water as easily as they can breathe air, ignore underwater obstacles, and swim as fast as they can run. However, all water spirits are also tied to water. At least once a day, a water spirit must immerse herself in a sufficient amount of relatively clean and pure water and remain in it for at least half an hour. A very large bathtub (think the big claw-footed kind) or hot-tub-sized body of water will do, but most ordinary tubs are too small. Failing to do so results in the Drowning in Air Condition.

HEROIC KNACKS

• Breathe With Me: While underwater, you may provide air to up to your Legend in other characters who cannot breathe water. Doing so is always a valid opportunity to form or reinforce a Bond.
• False Face: While underwater, you have absolute control over how you appear to those above the surface. You may use this as a disguise (a dolphin, for example), but you may also use this to mimic a particular person who you have seen before. In both cases, this imposes a Complication equal to your successes on a Knack Skill roll. If not bought off, observers who succeed will know that something uncanny or strange is happening, but they’ll still believe that you’re whatever you appear to be.
• Swift: You increase your Scale speed by 1 when swimming. You can breach the surface in acrobatic displays — treat this as a vertical jump from a solid surface and apply Scale. Underwater, gain access to the following stunt, which may be purchased on Athletics rolls:
  • Slipstream (variable): By swimming past a target at high speed, you catch them in your slipstream and drag them with you, forcing them to move along with you for the turn. To resist, they must succeed on an Athletics roll, difficulty equal to successes spent.

IMMORTAL KNACKS

• Ride the Flow: You are one with the water, and so have learned to travel through it in novel ways. Spend 1 Momentum to immediately travel from one body of water to another body of water that you could not otherwise reach, so long as they’re connected in some way. For example, you could swim from one sink to another in the same building, or up the channels of a dam. You may also use Ride the Flow to instantly relocate yourself in the same body of water, up to medium range.
• Undertow: When you are in or close to the water, your grip becomes stronger. Add Enhancement equal to the Size Scale of the body of water in question — a stream you could wade across grants Scale 1, while the Pacific Ocean would grant Scale 5. The water in question need not be natural.
• Whisper From the Deep: Your hearing is inhumanly sharp. You never suffer penalties due to darkness (though you can’t do tasks that require vision, such as identifying wires by color, through hearing). You can focus on conversations up to long range; underwater, you can pinpoint sounds at extreme range. You can also transmit sounds underwater, up to long range, even making them audible above the surface.