Powers
Skin Walkers have four, general categories of powers, one of which they almost always have in combination with another.
(They already have heightened strength and animal-like senses, but that doesn’t count as a power)
-Sensory/Cognitive/Perceptive:
These powers are most common and almost all Skin Walkers have a form of this on top of their other abilities. These powers strictly effect others and are generally used to deceive someone. They are relatively harmless, as they can’t cause any direct damage to a person, but they can certainly confuse them. They include projecting mild illusions, deceiving the senses, or altering mindsets to forget or alter details about the Walker on first sight. This skillset enhances their mystic sort of quality that cause humans to believe them to be spirits or tricksters, appearing to vanish, walk upon water, be in multiple places at once, or obscure themselves from memory. These powers are not strong though. Illusions can ‘t cause damage and memory of the Walker can’t be erased if it has been too long or if the person has seen the Walker too many times. The more familiar, the less memory alteration works. Walkers can either have stronger illusionary powers in one category or a milder form in all three.
-Physical Enhancement
These powers are very common and only effect the user itself. This category is for any power that enhances a Walker’s existing bodily strengths, senses, perception, or alters their physical form. For example, this would encompass super strength, super hearing/seeing, extra limb growth, or anything related to distortions in physical ability or form. There are limits to this, however, and most physical distortions have drawbacks as well. These physical enhancements don’t encompass everything at once though. Walkers have one set ability in this. For example, if a Walker can grow extra arms, it can’t also have super speed. One or the other.
-Environmental
These powers are less common, but not rare. This category fits anything that involves manipulating, controlling, or changing the environment around the Walker at all. That means any dark, light, or elemental manipulation fits here. There are restrictions in range and strength in this category. Most powers have a drawback or serious limitations. Powers are restricted to one element/environmental based ability per Walker.
-Spirit Summoning/Cursing/Distortion
These powers are extremely rare and complicated, requiring different explanation for each of the three brackets:
>If Spirit Summoning is their ability, a Skin Walker will be able to summon a familiar at any time that is, in fact, translucent and does glow the color of its master’s eyes. These creatures are always spirit-like versions of existing animals, not legendary beasts, but they are often MUCH larger than their actual counterparts. Each familiar is bound to its master and its master to it. Each Walker can only have one and it is not their choice which one they receive. It is decided by nature from birth. Familiars take energy to summon and sustain, but can’t actually die as long as their master lives. If it is destroyed, they merely must have time to recharge before being summoned again. All familiars have some sort of range restriction to the summoner, whether that be determined by a radius of distance, by sight, or by some other qualifier. There is, on occasion, a very rare occurrence of a Walker being born that can steal another’s familiar, but only if they murder the master first. Even then, the familiar is unstable, takes a lot more effort and energy to summon and sustain, and can even be destroyed and lost in the process of taking it in the first place. This can cause horrible backlash and even physical damage to the false master.
>If Cursing is their power, Walkers have a variety of options. They will often have one specific set or type of curses that they can execute, whether that be a helpful curse or a harmful one. Each curse has a range of distance, not able to curse from miles away at a time. They also tend to have time restrictions on some, where they will wear off if it is not merely a physical attack. Any physical damage will heal naturally, slower perhaps, but naturally nonetheless. Any effect curse, such as temporary blindness, pain, etc. will wear off in a certain timeframe and can only be cast within a certain radius of the caster, which varies with individuals and conditions. Curses that have to do with binding or restricting something, such as movement, of another person is non-permanent as well. Why it wears off varies, but can include time fading, proximity to the caster, or perpetually draining the mage of power faster and faster until it is voluntarily released. Whatever the case, curses aren’t forever. Curses also always require some sort of payment, something which is always the same for a Walker from birth and is usually different for every for every Walker. The payment can be items, blood, anything offered willingly, or it could be that the curse automatically harms or takes payment from the caster itself whenever used. Whatever the case, payment must be made. Curses require less payment if the curse is used without ill intent or without harming anything living. However, that goes both ways. A payment will be much steeper if used to harm anything living in any way.
>If Distorting Reality is their power, a Walker only gets one, set type of distortion. For example, an individual could have gravity manipulation, alchemy, or something like that, but never both. There will always be a backlash or drawback for manipulating reality, but those drawbacks vary among individuals. The more in depth or invasive the distortion is to reality, the more severe the drawback will be. On top of this, harming anything living (even plants) will dramatically increase the severity of drawbacks for using the power. For example, if Walker X has gravity powers and uses them to float harmlessly around, then his drawback might be that he gives a little energy up or gets tired if he does it too much. No big deal. But, say that same Walker uses gravity to break a tree branch or slam someone against a wall hard enough to hurt them. He may get injured himself or feel their same pain, probably an increased version of their pain as well. The more restrictions there are on a power, however, the less severe the drawback may be. For example, the gravity Walker may have no restrictions to how heavy or lite he can make things, but it tears up his muscles every time he uses his power. On the other hand, his friend who can use alchemy strictly on beans merely gets hungry with a craving for strictly beans as soon as he’s changed a bean into something else. He can’t do anything other than changing beans into other things, but less is required of him to do so.
As anyone may have noticed, Skin Walkers tend to be close range or limited range fighters. Their powers stick closer to home more often than not and they will usually be more likely to fight physically close to their opponent. This goes well with their natural, animal tendency to use their claws and teeth in battle, no matter what form.
Subject: Powers 
Thu Mar 09, 2017 12:16 am
