10 XP
Prerequisite: Blood Potency •••+, Covenant Status: Invictus •+
Cost: 1 aggravated wound and at least 1 Vitae (all provided by the Kindred taking the Oath)
Dice Pool: No roll is necessary to activate this power.
Action: Instant
This strange power can be applied to an oath by either a lord or a vassal — only one of them must possess this power for it to take effect. The Kindred with this supernatural power makes the activation roll.
The Kindred swearing this Oath drives at least one Vitae into his fingertips and, and the conclusion of his promise, cuts his hand off to seal the oath. This causes an aggravated wound. The Kindred may choose the amount of Vitae to sacrifice, up to the total he currently has available. The Blood Oath may be sworn over a period long enough to allow the Kindred to use all of his Vitae.
If the activation roll succeeds, the Oath takes effect. A failed activation roll means the power fails completely, resulting in nothing but lost Vitae and a severed hand.
If the Oath successfully takes effect, the hand leaks no blood, although it appears a bright crimson. At any time, the Kindred who swore the Oath may spend any of the Vitae in the invested hand as if it were his own. He may do this in the same turn that he spends Vitae from his body, and such expenditure does not count against the amount of Vitae he can expend in single turn based on his Blood Potency. The blood can only be used on actions that contribute directly to fulfilling the Oath, however. Every time he does so, the color of the hand fades a little, becoming stark white when all the invested blood has been used.
Kindred who have sworn this Oath may heal the wound and restore their hands as normal. Most do. This does not cancel the Oath or destroy the invested hand.
If the sworn Kindred fails to perform his duties for one night, he suffers an amount of bashing damage equal to the Vitae initially invested in the Oath; his flesh bruises from within and his bones feel stretched and sore. Every night that sees the sworn subject take action that is directly contrary to the Oath causes the subject an amount of lethal damage equal to the Vitae initially invested in the Oath; his flesh splits and cracks, bloody blisters rise up and burst. This damage strikes the sworn immediately upon waking the following night.
If the subject falls into torpor before fulfilling his promise, the Oath is completely suspended until he awakens. Time spent in torpor does not cause the subject to suffer damage. The Vitae in an invested hand cannot be spent by a torpid subject.
An invested hand with no remaining Vitae draws blood from the subject unless the Oath is fulfilled or abandoned. The hand mystically steals one of the subject’s Vitae when the subject rises the next night, even if this would drive the subject to frenzy or torpor. This is the only way to reinvest Vitae into an oath-hand.
If the Kindred abandons the Oath, the hand immediately blackens and crumbles to dust, and the Kindred suffers a number of points of aggravated damage equal to the number of Vitae he invested in the Oath. Abandoning an Oath requires a conscious decision to break the promise — planning to do nothing for 100 years would garner a lot of nightly damage, but none of that damage would be aggravated.
When the Kindred fulfills his Oath, the hand becomes living flesh, and remains vital for one night for every Vitae that remained in it. A hand that come to life with no blood in it withers and rots during the following day. The life-like hand is nothing more than an inanimate, fleshy trophy, however, showing the lord that his vassal’s work is done.
A Kindred may only be subject to one Oath of the Bloody Hand at a time.