Blood Forged Body Style
(Metal or Corrupt Internal)
"Blood is life. When it leaves your body, you die. But what of simply keeping it within the body? This is wasteful in the extreme. Chi, our breath, is the source of Kung-fu, our martial power. But Blood is the carrier of breath, of Chi. We do not waste it. We spill our blood so that it may become our strength." - Chief Kurokami
Where Sword Devil Histories makes the user's Body an extension of their weapon, making their skin as tough as iron and their muscles as strong as the strongest steel drawing upon tradition, Blood-Forged Body seeks for the fusion of weapon and body, a form where there is no difference between the two at any level. The user's very blood becomes mercury suffusing their entire body. Blood weeps from cuts and stabs at a crawl and yet from them swing crimson weapons rushing forth at the command of the mind, instead of the hand. As injuries mount, where other styles would begin to falter, the style only grows the stronger seeing only more openings from which to attack. It is a style dedicated to the ideal of victory regardless of personal cost, matching the ideals of the clan of Sword Devils that created it in the past.
While the style was first Corrupt, fitting with its use of poison, its body-altering nature and demonic appearance, over time and study the Sword Devils have developed a variant of the style which makes use of solely Metal Chi. The line between the two is thin, however, based largely on the practitioner’s intentions and philosophy. It can be easy to fall to corruption.
Upon learning this style, you must choose between the Metal or Corrupt variant.
Basic Techniques:
1. Gripping a Blade
Just as it is foolish to stop a blade by catching it in your hands, it is foolish to attack someone who can summon weapons from their very body. Luckily there is a fool born every minute.
You Laugh at Unarmed normal weapons. If you have at least a minor Blood Loss Injury Condition, this also applies to those for whom Unarmed is part of their Special Weapon.
Advanced Techniques:
2. Blood-filled Mold
An opening left in the body by an enemy is but a new path for weapons to flow through.
Choose any weapon type. Until the end of the round, your unarmed attacks add the characteristics of that weapon type to its own creating a temporary Special Weapon.
If you have at least a trivial Blood Loss Injury Condition, you may instead forgo being unarmed and choose two weapon types, creating a temporary Special Weapon as above.
2. Restoring the Iron Core
Breath is chi as is blood. A practitioner’s blood hungers for Chi from their own breath and the exertions of their foes.
Chi must be spent at the beginning of the round.
You gain a +10 bonus to Breathing Chi.
If you gain a ripple this round, you immediately gain a point of elemental chi of the appropriate type for this style.
2. Striking from Within
A body must move flawlessly, perfectly coordinated to strike perfectly. The body and blood move with perfect synchrony.
You gain a +10 bonus to Strike.
2. Striking from Without
Even the fallen drops of blood from the body can still prove useful as, with a charge of chi, they form spikes of blood trapping all those who try to flee.
Scene-long Duration.
The difficulty to leave the Zone you are in raises to the next level and if a foe tries to Cover Ground but fails for any reason, they gain a Ripple.
This technique may be used multiple times to raise the difficulty again, up to Legendary.
3. Forging the Body
Sometimes one has no choice but to suffer a blow. An injury that a practitioner cannot use is one to fear. That is why they do not take them.
If you would take an Injury Condition, you may change it to a Blood Loss Injury Condition. This does not alter its severity or the nature of its penalty.
3. Hurricane of Blades
When a master moves, an infinite number of blades move with him.
This attack is an area attack.
3. Cooling the Venomous Sword
After the forging of a weapon, it has to be cooled by plunging it into water. When surrounded by only enemies and armed with poisonous blood, however, one of them will do.
You have a +15 bonus to Strike.
If you are suffering from at least Minor Blood Loss Injury Condition, you can use the Poison effect as a Minor Action on your attack with a +5 bonus.
4. Roaring the Crimson Bellows
As bellows drive the heat of a forge, so too does the heart drive blood to stoke the life of the body. Through chi, the bellows of the body can force life to flow despite all but the greatest injuries and passions!
Round-long duration. You may spend one chi per round in order to extend this technique another round; you must spend the chi at the beginning of the round.
You may ignore any Weakness chi condition with a severity less than your most severe Injury Condition.
4. Vein-rupturing Strike
When struck with a weapon, the enemy expects a single stab or cut. Blood flows where it will, however, flooding through foreign arteries before bursting out in a crimson rain.
You gain a +20 bonus to Damage.
If you are suffering from a Major Blood Loss Injury Condition, a successful Strike always causes a Rippling Roll.
5. Blood-soaked Body, Rain of Destruction
The enemy chuckles as they walk towards a man soaked in his own blood, a man drenched in the stench of copper barely able to stand. At is in that moment that they seal their own defeat. Careless and heedless, they do not notice when the first blade rises to meet them only to be joined by its numberless brothers.
You must have a Major Blood Loss Injury Condition to use this technique
You gain a +25 bonus to Strike.
On making a Rippling Roll, you use the higher of either their Ripples or yours to decide how many dice to roll.
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