Category
Subcategory
thaumaturgy
Many Indian manuals of magic promise to teach Praapti, the power of instantaneous travel. The sadhus developed a path devoted to this power. At low levels, a socercer can travel only short distances, but at the higher levels of mastery a practitioner can move hundreds of miles. Some Cathayan vampires command a magical power to teleport long distances along lines of mystical force; Indian Kindred needed some way to match their mobility.
In legend, a master of Praapti could travel to the moon. Three centuries ago, the sorcerer Raivata devised an ancillary ritual that enabled him to perform this feat.... but Raivata was a better mystic than astronomer. He forgot that he could see his lunar destination because it was in sunlight. No sorcerer since then has performed Raivata's ritual.
The Indian Tremere helped their European colleagues develop a Hermetic version of this path, called the Path of Mercury.
System
Individual levels of the Praapti Path do not require special description. The chart below describes the path level needed to teleport a given range.
To use this path safely, the sadhu must see his destination or know it very well. She can use a telescope, but TV images or magazine pictures will not suffice. If the character can distinctly see the target location, a failed roll results in nothing worse than some wasted vitae (and a lost point of permanent Willpower, if the player rolls a botch). Likewise, a magician faces little risk in teleporting to the other side of a wall.
When performing a long-distance 'blind teleport,' however, rolling a botch means that the character succeeded in working the magic... but reappeared interpenetrating a solid object. This inflicts one health level of aggravated damage to the vampire for every '1' rolled. Losing three or more health levels indicates that so much of the sorcerer's body fused with other objects (usually the ground) that she can free herself only with great difficulty - if at all. Fortitude enables a vampire to soak damage from a botched blind teleport.
Blind teleports can modify a Praapti power's difficulty depending ont he thaumaturge's familiarity with the target location.
Familiarity/Difficulty ModifierIntimately familiar (own haven) -1Moderately familiar (visited regularly) +0Unseen, but understood spatial relationship ('On the other side of this wall') +0Not very familiar (visited a few times; hazy on spatial relationship) +1Unfamiliar (a point on a map) +2
Even if the Willpower roll succeeds, a blind teleport rarely lands a sorcerer exactly on target. Accuracy varies with the number of successes. Four to five successes means arriving exactly on target, while one success gives an error of 10 of the distance traveled, in any direction. For instance, a teleport of 400 miles could result in an error of up to 40 miles.
* Teleport up to 10 yards
** Teleport up to 50 yards
*** Teleport up to 500 yards
**** Teleport up to 5 miles
***** Teleport up to 500 miles
Prerequisites
Vampire, Thaumaturgy