Bark of the Iron
- Cost
- 1 Strain
- Tempo
- Weapon Base
- TN
- 9
"Your gun speaks first. Words come later."
358 talents
Every talent in the game. Psionic powers earned with sacrifice; mundane techniques honed with practice. Filter by what you're hunting.
"Your gun speaks first. Words come later."
"You hum a low note, and the metal remembers what it was made for."
"Your next shot leaves a mark that won't wash off."
"The bullet kicks up a wall of grit and fury."
"Your bullet phases through the material world."
"The gun tells you where to point. You just have to listen."
"You press your hand to the barrel and feel its history."
"You feed the bullet your pain, and it comes out meaner."
"You quiet the tremors in your soul and steel your aim."
"Your hand twitches. Their gun jams."
"The bullet leaves a glowing trail that marks your prey."
"You ignite the round with cold, consuming psychic flame."
"What you throw, I take."
"The Current arcs from the barrel like a bolt of tamed lightning."
"You let go of your body and let the Current pull the trigger."
"The bullet waits. The bullet decides."
"Your weapon cannot be taken. It knows its master."
"You shoot the pain away. It shouldn't work. It does."
"They keep their heads down because the bullets know where to go."
"You bless the ammunition. Every round becomes a sermon."
"Your gun clears leather before conscious thought."
"You see the angles that physics forgot."
"The bullet sings as it bounces, mapping the room in echoes."
"You compress a bubble of telekinetic force around a bullet."
"The bullet nails them to the here and now."
"You know where the target will be before they do."
"Your gun remembers the last shot it made. And makes it again."
"One bullet. One prayer. One certainty."
"Your bullet carries the weight of a cannon."
"The bullet doesn't ask permission. It delivers it."
"You load bullets that don't exist into a gun that shouldn't work."
"The bullet carries a piece of the Veil with it. Whatever it hits hears the sound between worlds."
"The bullet finds its mark because you hate them enough."
"You see through the skin of reality."
"Six souls. Six bullets. One heartbeat."
"You fire so fast the world can't keep up."
"You bet everything on one shot. The Current deals the hand."
"Your shots arrive from impossible angles, as if fired by a ghost standing in a place that doesn't exist."
"Six shots. Six memories. Six pieces of who you were, loaded and spent."
"Your gun exists between worlds."
"You have killed before. The bullets remember. They know the way home."
"Your bullet carries the force of a cannon battery."
"This bullet severs the connection between a Psionic and the Current."
"The bullet waits in the wound. When the target moves, it detonates."
"You load the gun with your name. The name you'll never remember."
"Your body is the weapon. The weapon is your body."
"You fire a shot into the sky. For a moment — one terrible, sacred moment — no weapon on the Frontier can kill."
"Time stops. The world turns gray. Only you and death are dancing."
"You fire. Time forgets the bullet. It hangs in the air, waiting for you to choose when it lands."
"Your final bullet is a promise made to the sky. When it lands, the world holds its breath."
"Where I walk, the ground remembers how to be solid."
"I hold their soul in place. The Veil cannot claim them yet."
"I silence the whisper between worlds."
"I reach into the Current and yank."
"They scream at the dark. I close the shutters."
"My mind is a fortress with no doors."
"I catch the bullet with my will."
"My hands forget the Current. Anything I hold does too."
"The Current recoils from my hand."
"The Current cannot take what I hold."
"The darkness has a texture. I can feel it pressing."
"I teach the iron to remember what the Veil forgets."
"The blow hits me. I take it. The energy goes nowhere."
"Their weight becomes my weight. I can carry it."
"Where I bleed, the Veil retreats."
"I plant my feet. The world tries to move me. The world fails."
"What was built can be unbuilt."
"Even standing near me hurts them."
"I bind their power to my fist. When I pull, it chokes."
"I break their echo before it solidifies."
"Stand behind me."
"I become invisible to the Current. Not to eyes — to the Veil itself."
"The Current cannot lift what I hold down."
"I anchor their past to the present. The Veil cannot erase what I protect."
"Inside this space, power unmakes itself."
"You will not move until I allow it."
"I wrap my allies in the same silence that protects me."
"I don't catch the bullets. I make them stop wanting to fly."
"I knot the threads of power shut. Their gift becomes their cage."
"Your strength becomes my shield."
"I bind their soul to their body. Nothing can tear it loose."
"In this place, the Veil holds."
"I stitch the wound in reality shut."
"I carry the weight of everyone who trusted me and died. Their faith is my armor."
"Everything you built, I tear down."
"I reach into their connection to the Current and tear it out."
"I fold space around us. What enters, ages. What ages, dies."
"What touches me, breaks."
"I nail the world in place. Nothing changes. Nothing shifts. Nothing bends."
"Return to sender."
"I don't seal the wound. I cauterize it. The Veil remembers the pain and stays shut."
"I stop being a person. I become the wall."
"I turn the river backward. The Current feeds the Veil instead of tearing it."
"I build a fortress in the space between souls, and nothing can breach it."
"I give them back what was taken. Not the memory — the capacity to have one."
"I close the door between worlds. What I lock stays locked."
"I look at the shattered thing and remember what it was before it broke."
"I am the last line. I do not break."
"You see where they were a moment ago, overlaid on where they are now."
"Heads or tails. You always know which."
"Your spine knows before your eyes do."
"You've been here before. You remember what happens next."
"You hear the thought before the action."
"You sneeze at exactly the right moment, and the bullet misses."
"You stutter forward in time by a heartbeat."
"You see the blow a split-second before it lands."
"What happened here? The walls remember, even if the people don't."
"You look at them, and they feel the weight of what's coming."
"The signs are everywhere, if you know how to look."
"You cast the bones and listen to where they fall."
"You steal seconds from the future. The future will collect."
"What happens next depends on what I decide already happened."
"The universe owes you. Time to collect."
"Their next swing won't be unlucky."
"Bad luck follows them like a stray dog."
"You see the trap before the trap sees you."
"Their next swing hits harder than it should."
"You cast your sight across the miles."
"I'll show you what I've seen."
"I link your timing to mine. We move as one."
"You skip them forward in time. They lose a heartbeat — and a heartbeat is everything."
"You speak their death, and they believe you."
"You freeze a moment around a single point, and time forgets to move it."
"You've seen every card in the deck before it's dealt."
"You read the balance sheet of someone's life."
"You grant them the terrible gift of seeing everything at once."
"Everything remembers. I just ask."
"You act on information from a future that hasn't happened yet — and in doing so, prevent it."
"I've already seen this fight. You lose."
"You twist fate until it screams."
"I mark this moment. If things go wrong, we return here."
"I trace the silver threads of causality."
"One thing goes wrong. Then everything goes wrong."
"You call every possible future into one place and let them collide."
"You see every thread of causality in the fight, and you pull exactly the right ones."
"You set the hour. When it strikes, they die."
"You cut the thread. Their luck dies screaming."
"I have seen your end. Let me show you."
"I decide which future is real."
"You show them every version of this fight where they die. There are so many."
"I step between seconds."
"You borrow a version of yourself from a timeline where you made a different choice."
"You speak, and the universe rearranges itself to make your words true."
"You step outside the river and watch it flow."
"You die. You choose how."
"You speak a truth so absolute that the universe must obey."
"No. That's not how this ends."
"You see everything. Every possibility. Every timeline. Every version of this moment that ever could be."
"You taste the air and follow the copper trail."
"You reach through the skin and pop the joint back into place. They scream. Then they thank you."
"You burn the wound shut with a touch that smells of copper."
"Your body tells me everything."
"You touch them and feel what they feel. Every ache. Every break."
"You sew the wound with threads of will. No needle required."
"Your touch stitches torn tissue with threads of will."
"I turn off the nerve. Just for a moment."
"I teach your nerves to lie."
"You adjust your body chemistry. Animals notice. People don't — consciously."
"Your saliva becomes a message. The recipient just has to drink."
"Their pulse tells me everything their mouth won't."
"I teach your lungs to breathe poison. Your skin to ignore fire. Your blood to filter acid."
"I flood your system with the chemistry of survival."
"You flush the fear chemicals out of their blood. What's left is cold, clear focus."
"You kick-start a dying body with a jolt of raw vitality."
"The dead still have stories in their tissues. I read the last chapter."
"I convince your cells to remember what armor feels like."
"I seize their skeleton and hold it still."
"I fix the tool by growing it back together."
"What doesn't belong, I remove."
"I change their chemical signature. Now everything with a nose knows where they are."
"I twitch a tendon they didn't know they had."
"I tell the muscle to forget what it's for."
"I reshape living tissue with the precision of a master sculptor."
"I excite the fluids in your veins until they cook you from within."
"I grow your ribs around my fist."
"I reshape living tissue like clay."
"I tell the tissue to die. It listens."
"I grow what you need from what you have."
"Your muscles forget how to move."
"I introduce a thought to your immune system. It disagrees with the rest of you."
"I accelerate healing to a speed that shouldn't be possible. The body pays later."
"I don't control the mind. I control the meat."
"I rewrite their biology in real time. They become something new."
"I don't become a monster. I become the thing monsters are afraid of."
"Their heart belongs to me now. When I squeeze, they dance."
"I stop pretending to be human."
"I plant seeds in the soil of their body. The harvest is mine."
"Every nervous system in range becomes an extension of mine."
"What you have, I take. What I need, I claim."
"I reshape their skeleton into a weapon. From the inside."
"I reach into every wound in the room and pull them shut at once."
"One touch, and the sickness walks on its own legs."
"I transcend the human form. What I become, I cannot describe."
"I create life from nothing."
"Death is just a door. I have the key."
"I grow a second self inside my chest. It breathes with me. It thinks with me. It dies with me."
"I remake you. All of you. Every cell. Every flaw. Every weakness."
"I take their dying breath and make it everyone's medicine."
"You scramble the words between their brain and their mouth."
"You feel the rhythm of every heart in the room."
"You plant a thought that blooms while they sleep."
"Your face slides out of their memory like water off glass."
"They see what they expect to see."
"You press your thumb against the scale of their emotions."
"You make their trigger finger twitch a heartbeat too early."
"You read the room the way a sailor reads the wind."
"You fill their head with white noise."
"Their thoughts float up like oil on water."
"A whisper in the back of their mind that feels like their own thought."
"Your voice arrives without traveling."
"Their pain becomes your weapon."
"They trust you. They shouldn't."
"You find the thing they dread and make it real."
"You turn their group loyalty into a leash."
"You wear a different mind like a coat."
"Your voice comes from their mouth."
"I know where your mind is. I will always find you."
"You compress a psychic scream into a point and let it go."
"You speak, and reality rearranges itself to accommodate your words."
"What you feel, they feel."
"You trap them inside their own thoughts."
"You wrap yourself in the world's inattention."
"You open their mouth and their secrets pour out."
"One hundred minds, one suggestion."
"You enter the sleeping mind and walk its corridors."
"You convince their sense of self to take a nap."
"I give you something that never happened, and you will cherish it."
"Reality is what I tell you it is."
"Two thoughts, one circuit."
"You convince their brain that they are dying."
"I leave a barb in their mind that festers."
"You paint a lie on the world and dare it to argue."
"Everyone in the room forgets the last five minutes."
"I don't pretend to be you. I become you. And you become nothing."
"One fear becomes everyone's fear."
"You don't break down the door. You set fire to the house."
"I build a wall inside their mind. When they try to think a forbidden thought, it hurts."
"Their body obeys me now."
"You crack their mind in two. Both halves are screaming."
"You strip away every lie they've ever told themselves."
"You become a switchboard for every mind in range."
"I play back their life, and I choose which parts they watch."
"I reach into your mind and take what I want."
"Two become one. Neither survives unchanged."
"Every voice in range is your voice. Every thought in range is your thought."
"You reach into the empty place where their soul used to be, and you fill it with yourself."
"You don't erase their past. You give them a new one."
"You unmake the thought that makes them real."
"The fight is won before the first shot is fired."
"The closer to death, the harder you bite."
"They left you for dead once. It didn't take."
"You were never here. You were already gone."
"When you connect, they feel it."
"You keep their heads down."
"You've learned to make every shot count."
"I don't fight buildings. I remove them."
"Eyes, throat, groin. The Frontier doesn't have referees."
"You've faced enough guns to know when one's about to be drawn."
"Empty the cylinder. Sort it out later."
"You see the pattern in the chaos."
"Once I've got you, you're not going anywhere."
"You've survived things that should have ended you."
"You shoot from the saddle like you were born there."
"You've learned to take a hit without flinching."
"In close, a knife is faster than a thought."
"They've got you surrounded. Poor bastards."
"Two guns means two problems for the other man."
"Your hands move without thought."
"You find reserves you didn't know you had."
"You step in front of the bullet. You always have."
"This iron has a name. It earned it."
"The world could be ending. Your hands don't care."
"They can hit me all day. I'm not moving."
"You see the battlefield three moves ahead."
"You've been hurt enough times to know when the next one is coming."
"Shoot the rope, not the man."
"Let them rush. Let them stumble. Then take what's yours."
"When they surround you, the weapon doesn't stop moving."
"The animals know things the land won't tell you."
"Everyone owes someone. You keep track."
"You always find the deal. Even when there isn't one."
"Grandmother's cure isn't in any medical text. It still works."
"A warm fire and a shared meal buys more loyalty than gold."
"A clean gun is a living gun."
"The posted price is a suggestion. My counteroffer is a threat."
"You've stared into the Veil. It blinked first."
"It'll hold. Probably. Don't look at it too hard."
"You draw what you see. What you draw, others can follow."
"The words that were spoken before the Rupture. The words the Veil still understands."
"Nobody reads you. Not even a Mindweaver."
"You pack light, but you pack right."
"They've heard of you. That's either very good or very bad."
"You know the old wards. The ones that work."
"Where you see wreckage, I see a hardware store."
"You've been told 'no' by better than the Frontier."
"You don't follow roads. Roads follow you."
"You've read the forbidden texts. You wish you hadn't."
"You read the land like it was written in dust and bone."
"You never forget a face on a wanted poster."
"The killing gets easier. That should worry you, but it doesn't anymore."
"You move like the bullet wants you to."
"You fight better from the saddle than most men fight with both feet on the ground."
"You've called your target. The Frontier will remember if you miss."
"You don't holster your iron until the job is done."
"You don't ride alone. And the people who ride with you fight harder for it."
"They saw the flash. They never saw the hand."
"Your authority is written in iron."
"You don't need to draw. Sometimes the look is enough."
"One for the body. One for the soul."
"You've survived enough ambushes to smell one coming."
"You've been swinging a hammer since before you could read. The hammer remembers, even when you don't."
"You've spent your life behind a wall of dirt. Might as well fight from behind one."
"You've been throwing sticks since the mines. The range isn't the hard part — it's the timing."
"Everything's a weapon if you're angry enough."
"Poison? I drink worse than that every morning."
"You carry what would break other men."
"You have a nose for value."
"You feel the mountain's mood in your boots."
"What's built can be unbuilt."
"They've tried to grind you down. They failed."
"You've worked alongside others your whole life. You know how to pull together when it counts."
"You've been beaten down, starved, frozen, and burned. You just keep swinging."
"You always save one card. The one they never see coming."
"The deck does what you tell it."
"You don't just remember debts. You create them."
"You become whoever they need you to be."
"The universe has a gambling problem. You're the house."
"Fortune favors the bold — or at least the charming."
"You never bet everything. You always have a way out."
"You know what everyone wants before they do."
"You could sell sand in the Scorchveil."
"You could convince a dying man his cough is a feature, not a bug."
"You don't play one hand. You play the whole evening."
"Everyone has one. You find it in the first thirty seconds."
"You know who can be saved and who can't."
"They tell you things they'd never say to anyone else. And you carry it."
"You've operated in conditions that would make a city doctor faint."
"You send them off properly. The ones you don't send off don't stay down."
"You know exactly how to hurt — and how not to."
"Sickness stops at your threshold."
"You've catalogued every venom the Frontier can spit at you."
"Where you pray, the darkness hesitates."
"Your words carry the weight of conviction."
"You sit with the dying. You hold their hand through the dark."
"Three wounded. One kit. You know who gets it."
"The scars tell the story. You speak their language."
"You worked their systems. You know their language."
"You always have a way to get a message out."
"If I go down, everything goes with me."
"The lock doesn't know you're there until it's open."
"If it has gears, you can talk to it. If it has a boiler, you can sweet-talk it."
"They think they have time. They don't."
"You fit through spaces that shouldn't be possible."
"The blast goes where I tell it, not where physics wants it."
"You're not invisible. You're just forgettable."
"Entry is the easy part. Exit is what separates the living from the caught."
"You've disarmed enough traps to build better ones."
"You walk the rail-line, the rooftop, the ledge. Heights don't scare you — the ground does."