24 XP
Torpor is cruel, and often unexpected. A vampire is cast into the deathly sleep with little warning, and can do nothing to ensure protection for her body, her allies, her childer. But what if that wasn’t true? What if she could, for a time, stave off torpor long enough to accomplish what needs to be accomplished?
Cost: 1 Vitae
Dice Pool: Stamina + Survival + Resilience
Action: Reflexive
Use of this Devotion allows the vampire to put off torpor for a number of nights equal to the vampire’s dots in Resolve. Any effect that would normally send the vampire into torpor — rightmost Health box filled with lethal damage, a stake in the heart, starvation — does not do so. The vampire may continue to operate until either she’s reached the number of nights equal to her Resolve score or until she takes one more point of lethal or aggravated damage. During this time forestalling torpor, the vampire appears sickly (often with jaundiced skin and a faint crust of blood around the nose, mouth, eyes and ears) and trembles. What she does with this time is up to her — orchestrate revenge on enemies? Get affairs in order? Ensure that her body will be protected during torpor’s duration?
Triggering this Devotion is not without its downsides.
A vampire who enters torpor due to a stake or to starvation cannot then remove the stake or fill up on blood to avoid torpor entirely. Use of this Devotion means that torpor is now inevitable, even if the stake is pried from the breastbone (although without the stake in her heart, at least she knows she’ll wake up!). In addition, the vampire spends time in torpor as if her Blood Potency were one higher (so, a vampire of Humanity 5, Blood Potency 7 would normally spend seven months in torpor, but using this Discipline, she’ll spend eight months lost to that ancient sleep).