Sythan

These hunched creatures have a greyish, leathery skin and one large eye in the center of their face. Although intelligent, they live a primitive life, typically subsiding off of small animals and fish.

Barbaric Intellectuals. Sythan can be found skulking around any place with both a complex ecosystem and a place to hide. They are drawn to these complex ecosystems due to their inherent interest in learning what makes living beings tick. The more diverse the location, the more there is for the sythan to break down and analyze. While the sythan loves to learn about life, it prefers to do it from the shadows. This is why it is atypical (although not unheard of) to find a sythan in a city or village. If discovered and approached by intelligent life, the sythan will cautiously interact. A little known fact about the sythan is that they can become fluent in most languages simply by interacting briefly with someone who speaks it.

Mysterious Origin. An absolute history around how and why the sythan came about does not exist, however there are stories and rumors surrounding their appearance. The most common tale is that a powerful wizard created the sythan as a means of spying on their subjects and enemies. Some rumors state that there are sythan that can shapeshift to blend in, but this has never been confirmed. Other rumors say that sythan used to be human until transformed violently by the mage as punishment.

Sythan

Aspects

Mind reader • One large eye • Creepy crawly

Skills

• +4 Mental fortitude (Will)
• +4 Empath (Empathy)
• +3 Quick learner (Lore)
• +2 Invade mind (Shoot)
• +2 Skulk (Stealth)

Health

Physical stress

[1] • [2]

Mental stress

[1] • [2] • [3]

Stunts

Empath

The sythan can use Empath (Empathy) in place of Notice checks to notice conscious living beings. Once alerted to someone’s presence, the sythan can automatically discern their surface level mood.

Read minds

The sythan can attempt to delve into and read someone’s thoughts. To do this, the sythan rolls an Empath (Empathy) attack opposed by the target’s Will. If the attack would hit, no shifts of damage are dealt, but the sythan begins reading the target’s thoughts. A good way to facilitate this is for it to learn pieces of information tossed around in a player’s OOC planning. This effect lasts until the scene ends or the target succeeds in a +4 (Great) difficulty Will check to overcome it.

Invade mind

The sythan’s Invade mind (Shoot) attack involves mentally probing the target’s mind, causing a searing pain. When the sythan hits with an Invade mind (Shoot) attack, it inflicts mental stress instead of physical. The sythan still uses this Shoot skill in places it would use a regular Shoot check, which manifests as a mild telekinetic effect.