Scepter of Peace and Order

Legendary Staff of the Domain of Stately Order

Type Speed Accuracy Damage Defense Rate Minimums Attune Tags
Attuned 5 +2 +16L/5 +0 2 Str ••, Dex •• 8 O, P, R

Attuning to the Scepter requires a commitment of eight motes. The artifact confers several powers on the Perfect:

  • The Scepter grants its owner 1 additional dot each of Stamina, Charisma, Manipulation, Perception, Intelligence and Wits as long as it is attuned
    • These increase in attributes is considered natural increase and thus raises any applicable dice pool cap
  • The Scepter’s owner becomes immune to all Emerald and Sapphire Circle sorcery, all Charms that affect perception and all forms of unnatural mental influence.
  • The owner soaks both lethal and aggravated damage with his full Stamina.
  • An enlightened mortal attuned to the Scepter can access his entire Essence pool without the necessity of spending Willpower.
  • All oaths a person makes while touching the Scepter become forever binding.
    • This only works on Mortals (and Exalted). It has no effect on fair folk, gods, elementals, demons, ghosts, etc.
    • A complex eye-shaped sigil appears on the palm of the oath-swearer, like a faintly scarlet tattoo. No power short of Adamant Circle Countermagic can remove the sigil. If the person hacks off the entire limb that bears the sigil, it reappears on her stump.
    • The Scepter does not remove a person’s free will, but it rigidly enforces the oath the person swore. Severe pains radiate from the sigil to wrack the person who broke any of the oaths she swore upon the Scepter.
    • These oath remains in place as long as the scepter is attuned. If, however, it is ever unattuned or the wielder dies, all sigils vanish within 24 hours, unless someone else attunes to the scepter during this time.
    • The Scepter’s master can calibrate the pain’s severity for different oaths and offenses.
      • For minor violations of the oath, the agony ends when the foresworn person confesses her crime to a designated, legitimate authority (in Paragon, a magistrate).
      • For the most serious oaths, however, a foresworn person suffers death. At the moment of the crime, the eye-sigil closes to show her and everyone else that she is doomed. The agony begins in moments, and does not relent until the person dies a few hours later.
      • To minimize social problems and disruptions of daily life, the Scepter’s punishments largely happen out of the public eye. All pain suffered by oath-breakers begins at sunset of the day of the offense. Also, oath-breakers who condemned themselves to death through their actions die only after dark while inside a building. A few oath-breakers try to stay outdoors every night to avoid their fate. Between the pain caused by the sigil and the stresses of life on the streets, these wretched individuals rarely last long. Paragon citizens who see them crouching in doorways and sleeping in gutters shun them.
    • The short-lived pain for a minor violation of an oath acts as a -1 wound penalty that lasts a few hours. The pain for severe violations inflicts a -2 wound penalty. The pain for a terminal violation inflicts a -4 wound penalty, while it lasts. The victim lives for a number of hours equal to his Stamina. These are Crippling effects. Charms that protect against Crippling effects can protect the person, but for Charm vs. Charm purposes, treat the Scepter enforced oath as backed by Essence 8 and a dice pool of 16. Punishment is only delayed, however, not cured.
  • While holding the Scepter, its master can borrow the senses of anyone marked with its sigil, located anywhere in Creation. This function has no Essence cost and requires no dice rolls. Sigil-bearers, even those who are Exalted, can neither sense nor resist this power. The Scepter’s bearer can experience all of a sigil-bearer’s senses without the sigil-bearer’s knowledge or consent.
  • For three motes of Essence, the Scepter’s bearer can strengthen this connection and actually take over the body of any mortal sigil-bearer, including enlightened mortals (but not Exalted), for up to a scene. The Perfect can possess or tap the senses of only one person at a time, but he can use this borrowed body as easily as his own. The subject of this possession has no memory or awareness of these events.
    • This includes taking over command of Mass Combat Units - though with the physical stats of the body and his mental and spiritual stats
  • While holding the Scepter, its owner can also spend one mote to induce severe pain in any single person who bears the sigil, including Exalted. Jagged black lines radiate from the sigil. This Crippling effect acts as a wound penalty of -2. It lasts a scene, or until the Scepter’s owner relents and cancels the effect.
  • As long as at least 200 people bear sigils
    • The person attuned to the Scepter becomes completely immune to all diseases
    • He also stops aging. Instead the staff ages those baring the sigil slightly faster and uses this to reverse the aging of the staff bearer.
    • He heals one level of lethal damage every three hours and one level of aggravated damage every day.

All of these powers are granted to any Essence-user attuned to the Scepter. A Celestial Exalt who attunes to the Scepter gains even greater powers

  • When a Celestial Exalt holds the scepter, it allows the bearer to have a general sense of everyone within 400 miles.
  • The bearer can sense general concentrations and movements of population, as well as being able to instantly identify any Exalts, gods, elementals or demons inside his domain.
  • The bearer can also broadcast messages to everyone inside the radius and can produce a scarlet eye-like sigil on the flesh of every adult or adolescent inside the domain.
  • The target must accept the sigil willingly, but the scepter allows a Celestial bearer to cause anyone who refuses the sigil to be overcome with the urge to leave he domain within the next week. This compulsion is impossible for anyone but another Exalted to resist. For the latter it takes 2wp and it grants them immunity from this compulsion for a week - though the wise should pack up if events progressed to this point.
  • The scepter also allows its bearer to automatically distinguish between individuals who have lived in the domain for more than a month and visitors or new arrivals.
    • Terrible Bloody Rose leaves visitors alone, but every month, she forces her sigil on anyone who has been in the domain longer.
  • Other than allowing the bearer to sense them, neither the Scepter or the Orb of Peace and Order has any effect on gods, elementals or demons.
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