After Undertow — Blade's Search
The Promise of Power
© 2004 Chris Butz
Steel Flame / Steel Heart
I even have a new power proposal for you: the Steel Flame. The Steel Flame would be a power based upon survival. It would be a personal power (like shapeshifting, not having a center of power), and would grant advantages to its initiates in surviving various conditions and attacks (offering protection against the other powers, increased effective levels of Strength, Psyche, and Endurance for purposes of resisting attacks or shaking off damage, etc.). It would have no travel,
communication, or attack abilities associated with it. Best of all, I have an avatar for you: Phoenix, the mythical creature that can never be permanently put down because it always comes back--the ultimate survivor!Anyway, that came to me this week and I figured I'd offer it up as a suggestion for a new power since we seem to be in the process of creating those. Hey, I just thought of something: the power could have an advanced level (Master of the Steel Flame?) that grants an ability similar to the Phoenix, allowing spontaneous resurrection after a certain period of time, based upon some cost (perhaps a loss of points?).
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Blade has this belief that there is a Primal Essence of Survival. He calls it the Steelheart. He has decided to go out on a sort of visionquest to discover it, planning to travel to the harshest and most hostile environments in the multiverse, placing himself constantly in desperate situations, so that his very will to survive is put to the ultimate test. Only thereby, he believes, can he awaken the Primal Survivor he knows he is destined to be. Since this is something that must be done alone, he would leave without warning and would refuse any Trump contacts (traveling, as much as possible, in shadows where Trump was difficult or impossible to begin with).
This way, he has nothing to do with the events of Undertow 2005, but he can return later (if he survives his visionquest). Course, if he doesn't survive, then he was simply wrong about being the Primal Survivor.
He'd leave a general letter to the others (explaining his absence) with Gerard, asking him to read it aloud or pass it around to interested parties and would leave specific letters (which I ll send to the appropriate players with your permission) for Bleys, Gerard, and Rio. Let me know if this is all kosher and will fit in OK with what you have planned for 2005.
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other writings: Background, Quiz, Blade and Rio, Undertow log, "Blade and not Rio", "Blade and Corwin", "The Promise of Power", "An Open Letter to the Family"