Kain in the World of Darkness.

[Murazor]

Inspired by the many recent threads about vampires and the name similarity between Kain and Caine, I would want to ask what would happen if the greatest vampire of Nosgoth appeared after the end of Defiance somewhere in the World of Darkness?

Note: He has the Soul Reaver, all the abilities and spells that he used during all the games and the removal of the Heart of Darkness has removed all his vampiric vulnerabilities.

[Vain]

Inspired by the many recent threads about vampires and the name similarity between Kain and Caine, I would want to ask what would happen if the greatest vampire of Nosgoth appeared after the end of Defiance somewhere in the World of Darkness?

Note: He has the Soul Reaver, all the abilities and spells that he used during all the games and the removal of the Heart of Darkness has removed all his vampiric vulnerabilities.

I'm not familiar with Kain, but WoD Caine at least is cursed by God and the Archangels to keep his shitty half-life until the end of the world. This is one of the core tenets of Vampire: The Masquerade, and is addressed in some of the FAQs for crossing over the various WoD games. Can you cure the Curse of Vampirism? Can you kill Caine? No, because God handed down the Curse, and you < God. Caine cannot die until God allows him to. The worst possible outcome of any combat between Caine and some other boojum who lacks the blessing of the Divine is a draw.

Note that some of the latter game supplements muddy the waters somewhat, and the cosmologies of the various WoD games don't mesh as well as some people would have you believe. So you sort of have to pick and choose what you consider 'canon' or the true metaphysic of the WoD you're using. My thought is that if you're looking at it from a Vampire stand point, no, Caine cannot be defeated, he is invincible because that's his Curse. From a Mage standpoint? Maybe. The answer to everything in Mage is maybe.

Now if you take all of this navel gazing away and say 'Fuck the Caine and Abel angle, what kind of shit can Caine *do*? If you take away God, how much ass can he kick?' Well... I cannot provide a cite for this, but once long ago I saw a stat block for Caine that some White Wolf people had drawn up for a game they were running. What Kewl Powerz did Caine have? Just one. Caine's discipline lets him make up disciplines. He can manifest whatever abilities are appropriate to the situation. You could make the argument that no cite == irrelevant, and I would not say you're wrong in that. So, what can I give you page numbers for? In the Book of Nod (apocryphal, I know, but it's the best you'll get) he's stated as having Animalism, Auspex, Celerity, Dominate, Fortitude, Obfuscate, Potence, Presence and Protean. Since Caine is as old as humanity and has no generational limits upon his power, we can assume that he'd have most of these at least at level 10 (or higher, if you buy the argument that the Antediluvians are lesser than Caine). In second edition Vampire, the level ten disciplines were statted, but more plot device powers than directly useful in combat. In third edition, the level ten disciplines are statted to do whatever is appropriate to the story. If the storyteller wants an NPC vampire with Potence 10 to kick a mountain over, that's his perogative. We do have examples of the deeds of one Antediluvian in canon, though, and that's Ravnos, and we have a pretty good idea of what Fortitude 10 gets you.

In the Week of Nightmares plotline, Ravnos is awakened early (before Gehenna is really in fully swing) by the blood of his childer being spilled. The Ravnos clan started mass Embracing neonates and using them as canon-fodder because they were losing their war with the Eastern Vampires, the Kuei-jin. The deaths of large numbers of his childer at once caused him to stir from slumber, and he got up and started laying waste to parts of India. Three Bodhisattvas (Kuei-jin Methuselahs. As ancient as they come) come forth to meet him and they fight for three days in the middle of a raging hurricane that one of the Bodhisattvas had called to block out the sun. Their battle is felt around the world and the Technocracy initiates their Project Ragnarok. (Project Ragnarok is the Technoc's 'oh shit!' plan. In the event of a global threat to humanity as a species, they're allowed to use any resource and accept total losses to end the threat). The Technocs proceed by dropping special neutron bombs designed to do the most damage to supernatural creatures (spirit nukes). After a SERIES (I think the number was four) of nuclear attacks on the fighting vampires, the Kuei-jin are pretty much down for the count, and the Ravnos antediluvian is shambling around looking for blood (he's pretty weak at this point). Fortunately for the Technocracy (who had expended pretty much their entire payload) and everyone else, the death of one of the Bodhisattvas causes the hurricane that he had summoned to dissipate, and the Sunflower Satellites that the Technocs had in orbit (giant solar mirrors) focus many times the light of the noonday sun on the wounded Antediluvian and he finally succumbs to the damage and burns up like an ant under a cosmic magnifying glass.

So after that huge block of spam, the question is, can Kain survive being repeatedly nuked? It is inferred that Caine can, even discounting his divine invulnerability.

[SirNitram]

The Technocratic Union's assault on Ravnos is not quite as 'Balls to the walls' as SAMAS puts it. I pull straight from the Mage books here. Three 'Spirit Nukes'... Called 'Polydimensional Neutron Devices' by the Union... were deployed against Ravnos. These bombs aren't even that devastating in a conventional sense; their thermal pulse is tiny enough to cover up from the world governments. Their neutron radiation is pumped into the spiritual world, however.. To ensure the destruction of the vampiric God they were up against, they redirected the blasts into the realms of the Dead themselves.

By the way, no evidence exists, at the Time of Judgement, for Ravnos to have survived. 'Gehenna' has him in the list of where the Antedeluvians will rise as 'Sorry, he's gone' or something similar. 'Apocalypse' lists his total obliteration at the hands of the Technocratic bombs as the first unstoppable portion of the End Of Days, as the Eater-Of-Souls was killed by a Destroyer-Of-Souls(Thus freeing one of the Wyrm's mad personalities into the Near Universe). And Mage has always been clear that the Union's assault destroyed him.

Kain is unlikely to be Antedeluvian in scope, though he is pretty powerful stacked against a Neonate in WoD. That being said, the WoD tends to hit people who don't fit like. With huge, fucking, hammers.

[SecondStorm]

What can Kain do ?

[LadyTevar]

What can Kain do ?

IIRC, Kain has the following powers
-can drain blood from mortals at a distance
-can assume wolf or bat-form
-has supernatural strength.
-can fly

Any I'm forgetting folks?

[Imperial Overlord]

He's got some more, but his power level is really that of an elder vampire with a good array of disciplines, several thaumaturgic paths, and a powerful magic weapon (rare, but not unheard off). The Soul Reaver is extremely powerful, but when it comes down to it, he's just an elder vampire with a nifty sword. If he keeps his head down, he'll fit in just fine. If he starts breaking the masquerade (he does have some stealth powers) he's just as toast as any other vampire.

[Connor MacLeod]

The Technocratic Union's assault on Ravnos is not quite as 'Balls to the walls' as SAMAS puts it. I pull straight from the Mage books here. Three 'Spirit Nukes'... Called 'Polydimensional Neutron Devices' by the Union... were deployed against Ravnos. These bombs aren't even that devastating in a conventional sense; their thermal pulse is tiny enough to cover up from the world governments. Their neutron radiation is pumped into the spiritual world, however.. To ensure the destruction of the vampiric God they were up against, they redirected the blasts into the realms of the Dead themselves.

They were destructive enough to outright vaporize human/garou from kilometers away, though. And burn Ravnos pretty badly.

Insofar as "limts" this imposed on the Technocracy, it was about the most firepower they could bring to bear on a partticular area and still get away with. They probably can bring greater forces to bear, but doing so would be vastly more difficult to "cover up" - as it was, they were just barely able to cover up the nuking of India thing.

Which brings up another question - if they CAN'T cover something up, does Paradox become an issue?

[Connor MacLeod]

He's got some more, but his power level is really that of an elder vampire with a good array of disciplines, several thaumaturgic paths, and a powerful magic weapon (rare, but not unheard off). The Soul Reaver is extremely powerful, but when it comes down to it, he's just an elder vampire with a nifty sword. If he keeps his head down, he'll fit in just fine. If he starts breaking the masquerade (he does have some stealth powers) he's just as toast as any other vampire.

Except Alucard from Hellising.

[LadyTevar]

Which brings up another question - if they CAN'T cover something up, does Paradox become an issue?

Yes, Paradox would manifest. Nit will quote the Mage book when he gets home, since he's making it too complicated for me to understand, much less type.

[Imperial Overlord]

Technocratic magic suffers from Paradox, just like all the rest. But people are more accepting of it, so it is less of a problem. If we see Terminator esque cyborgs, we know we are seeing something unreal and paradox takes its toll. Ditto for evil satellite battlestations of death. That's one of the reasons why the technocracy went to such lengths to cover up the Bangladesh incident (besides not wanting people to know about supernaturals).

If you cyborg up, you are carrying permenent paradox with those implants. It can get pretty ugly. That's one reason why Iteration X makes sure not to unleash their toys in public and likes to spend time in their own research labs and the Umbra where such things are accepted and not paradox magnets.

[Spiritbw]

Well, in WoD Kain could probably hide pretty well. He just has to hang around with the Nosferatu and no one would blink an eye. The Garou would have a bitch of a time trying to figure him out. He sucks souls and is a self admited leech. But yet when he's killed he basicly crosses the gauntlet and can do so at will though not if he's hurt and prefers to try and kill every vamp he lays hands on. Beat him up on the other side and he vanishes only to come back form 'somewhere else'.

[SirNitram]

Which brings up another question - if they CAN'T cover something up, does Paradox become an issue?

Hard question. A nuke goes off... That's not Paradox inducing(And to normal human senses, a Spirit Nuke is just a Nuke with a low yield). It'll start wars, but it won't start Paradox.

A HIT Mark V goes Vulgar in front of a crowd? He suffers Paradox as his components backfire.

A 'Vader' Umbral Cruiser is forced to shift into the physical world where there are witnesses? It's core could go critical.

[Vain]

This isn't really relevant to the OP, but one of my big pet peeves with White Wolf is how much they cross over the various games in the metaplot, but how it's pretty much impossible to cross them over metaphysically or mechanically. Mage and Werewolf probably fit together the closest, and even they have big differences in cosmology and the very fundaments of how reality works.

Even the published 'official' crossover rules are full of maybes and 'up to you' statements. Generally the way I run things is to start with the base game (say Vampire) and assume that that game is 'right' and then shoehorn appropriate other boojums into the setting. In a Vampire game, the vampires would be the sinister group running everything, and most of the umbrood would be ditched in favor of a more Judeo-christian cosmology. In a Mage setting, Vampires would be marginalized, the Umbra and its denizens would play a much larger role, but the Wyld/Weaver/Wyrm Triat would be less anthropomorphized demi-gods and more abstract concepts/forces.

There are plenty of examples in the canon of character's belonging to more than one type of supernatural, or of more than one group having absolute control over an organization. Mixing your core games can be tricky, and you really have to pick and choose what you want to accept as valid. Houserules alone are a nightmare, if you've got a large game with mixed PC types, but reconciling the metaplot is also a pain.

[NeoGoomba]

Heres a list of most of Kain's abilities that he has used in all the games off the top of my head.

-teleportation (distance limitations unknown)
-wolf/fog/bat metamorph abilities
-can turn invisible in fog
-command of lightning
-inspire hate among people
-project a magic barrier that renders him invulnerable
-slow/stop time
-cause spontaneous combustion
-modest telekinetic powers (can bring down stone buildings/structures
-generic magic blasts
-render someone "stunned"
-forcibly pull the blood from any living creature within a certain radius
-high resistance to telepathy
-create a fair semblance of himself
-ontrol the minds of people
-control animated objects
-"freeze" people
-generate magic light
-berserker rage

-Artifact-based powers-
-melt people into acid
-hurl energy-based blades
-implode people
-explode people

How all this stacks up in the WoD isnt clear to me, as I dont know much about it.

[LordShaithis]

Kain: VAY VICTUS!

Cain: Actually, it should be "Vae."

Kain: *head explodes*

[Connor MacLeod]

Heres a list of most of Kain's abilities that he has used in all the games off the top of my head.

-teleportation (distance limitations unknown)
-wolf/fog/bat metamorph abilities
-can turn invisible in fog

Nothing really useful there quantitatively.

-command of lightning

What do you mean "command of lightning?" He can call it from an existing storm, call it from the sky, or does it like shoot from his fingers Palpatine-style?

In terms of energy this could be highly variable. Normal lightning can be up to low gigajoule range, but is not neccesarily so. It could be much lower (megajoule range.)

-inspire hate among people

Hate as in making your opponents attack one another in a blind rage, or what?

-project a magic barrier that renders him invulnerable

Which presumably is going to be a "double blind" effect.. since if people can't get "in" to him, he shouldn't be able to get out.

-slow/stop time

For how long? And how much can it be slowed by?

-cause spontaneous combustion

Depends on what this means. If it means completely reducing someone to ash (ie cremation) we'd be talking mid to high MJ range, maybe low gigajoule range (depending on efficiency and the effects on nearby people. Someone who can stand a few feet away and not get burned probably means its not in the GJ range, for example.) It also depends on how long it takes people to "combust"

-modest telekinetic powers (can bring down stone buildings/structures

Not really useful without knowing the dimensions of the buildings/structures in question, and how long it takes.

-generic magic blasts
-render someone "stunned"

Not very quantitatively useful.

-forcibly pull the blood from any living creature within a certain radius

as a telekinetic feat, depends on the quantity of blood and number of people affected (And how long it takes)

-high resistance to telepathy

I don't see how this can be quantitfied (excecpt maybe by knowing how many normal people a given enemy could control, and whether or not Kain can resist that kind of person.)

-create a fair semblance of himself

What?

-ontrol the minds of people

How many simultaneously?

-control animated objects

What?

-"freeze" people

Like time stop, or are we talking telekinetic immobility?

-generate magic light

What?

-berserker rage

Not really useful unless one knows what benefits it bestows.

-Artifact-based powers-
-melt people into acid

Do you mean "melt people by acid" or that their body mass is turned into acid?

-hurl energy-based blades

Not really useful unless one knows the effect of the blades on objects/people.

-implode people

What?

-explode people

Not sure how ot quantify this. A grenade could probably "explode" a person if they had it buried inside them.

[Connor MacLeod]

Which brings up another question - if they CAN'T cover something up, does Paradox become an issue?

Hard question. A nuke goes off... That's not Paradox inducing(And to normal human senses, a Spirit Nuke is just a Nuke with a low yield). It'll start wars, but it won't start Paradox.

Firstly, I have doubts the Technocracy could get away with setting off large-scale nuclear detonations - you really think noone would notice multi-gigaton detonation(s) (in terms of combined yield or individual - a single multi-gigaton yield would in fact be less believable) If an absurdly high-yield nuke went off (something an order of magnitude higher than the most powerful nuke ever theorized, ,for example)

Another example would be an absurdly high yield coming from an implausibly compact/portable device (lets say you had a 20 kg suitcase nuke creating a 100-200 kiloton explosion..)

[Connor MacLeod]

Oh, and I did want to address something here:

Three 'Spirit Nukes'... Called 'Polydimensional Neutron Devices' by the Union... were deployed against Ravnos. These bombs aren't even that devastating in a conventional sense; their thermal pulse is tiny enough to cover up from the world governments. Their neutron radiation is pumped into the spiritual world, however.. To ensure the destruction of the vampiric God they were up against, they redirected the blasts into the realms of the Dead themselves.

I have some qualms about the scientific validity of what you're describing, because I'm pretty damn sure that would violate both conservation of energy and the laws of symmetry (if an equal amount of mass/energy.

Or rather, what I mean is that if you cause this energgy to "disappear" into some alternate "dimension", I believe symmetry would dictate that an equal amount gets dumped back into "our" dimension. This is similar to the trekkie theories for Phaser NDFing as described on Mike's Phaser page (the "transition out of the continuum/disappearing into the zero-point domain" theories)

Rather, what I would propose is that the radiation of the nuke is "enchanted" to affect spiritual creatures or those with a "spirit" component (one might argue that the radiation generates a technobabble field that neutralizes any technobabble "phasing" effects that make spirits intangible. Or maybe the radiation has some sort of force field that reaches into other dimensions that might occupy spirits - energy effects might be transmitted via this field to affect intangibles as well as tangible creatures.)

As most neutron bombs are generally designed to have little blast/damage effects relative to the radiation's effects, there wouldn't really be much of a problem I think. Based on the vaporization/incineration of a garou, I'd figure the "spirit nukes" are probably in the high kiloton/low megaton range.

From what I remember of the descriptions of the nuke's operation, the Garou who were vaporized by the explosion felt it on both the spiritual AND physical planes simultaneously, so this explanation should work without violating any scientific principles.

[Imperial Overlord]

Good points Connor. The bombs probably work according to Technocracy technoscience paradigms. Like other examples of super science they would be considered vulgar magick.

[Tatterdemalion]

Firstly, I have doubts the Technocracy could get away with setting off large-scale nuclear detonations - you really think noone would notice multi-gigaton detonation(s) (in terms of combined yield or individual - a single multi-gigaton yield would in fact be less believable) If an absurdly high-yield nuke went off (something an order of magnitude higher than the most powerful nuke ever theorized, ,for example)

Another example would be an absurdly high yield coming from an implausibly compact/portable device (lets say you had a 20 kg suitcase nuke creating a 100-200 kiloton explosion..)

In the WoD, people are ignorant sheep that believe anything they're told. Those that aren't are homicidal maniacs. (personally I think they put way to much emphasis on this, but whatever), hence normally conspiricy-shattering pieces of supernatural hoo-hah can get brushed under a rug with a "move along people, nothing to see here. Swamp gas and weather baloon!"

I have some qualms about the scientific validity of what you're describing, because I'm pretty damn sure that would violate both conservation of energy and the laws of symmetry (if an equal amount of mass/energy.

In Mage, science is a form of magic. Seriously. The only reason the law of physics hold any meaning at all in Mage's corner of the WoD is because a large portion of humanity believe in them. If the technocracy wants to get the job done and don't care about the resulting paradox (project Ragnorak) they can pretty much invent new laws of physics on the fly.

[Connor MacLeod]

Good points Connor. The bombs probably work according to Technocracy technoscience paradigms. Like other examples of super science they would be considered vulgar magick.

I think they'd be vulgar only past a certain point. One might get away with, for example, setting off a 100 megaton nuke and not risk paradox simply because its not TOO far beyond plausibility.. the Tsar bomb was rumored to be scaled up to 100 megatons, and if the Technocracy played its cards right, they might be able to fool people into thinking it was something like that. The one real advantage they might have in this instance is the ignorance of the populace - some people might undoubtably know a 1 gigaton nuke is impossible, or represents a substantial portion of a major superpower's stockpile, but others may not know that, being more gullible. On the other hand, something on the gigaton range is going to be very noticable frfom something like satellites (duration of the fireball, blast radius, etc. can tell them much about the yield, and let people know something is up.)

But even if Paradox somehow is dodged, there are still some other potential problems. As I said, people will notice such drastic firepower, and it could trigger some nasty consequences - up to and including all-out nuclear wars (or even some fairly brutal conventional ones..) Powerful as the Technocracy is, could they really be expected to be able to avert a full-scale World War? And if they can, can they still remain as secret as they might hope?

[Connor MacLeod]

In the WoD, people are ignorant sheep that believe anything they're told. Those that aren't are homicidal maniacs. (personally I think they put way to much emphasis on this, but whatever), hence normally conspiricy-shattering pieces of supernatural hoo-hah can get brushed under a rug with a "move along people, nothing to see here. Swamp gas and weather baloon!"

Bull. If the Technocracy detonates a multi-gigaton fireball (which is going to persist for manyn minutes if not hours), I doubt noone is going to ignore it. Clearly, there are limits to what they can just dismiss out of hand. As it was, the Ravnos incident I believe was just barely "covered up".

In Mage, science is a form of magic. Seriously. The only reason the law of physics hold any meaning at all in Mage's corner of the WoD is because a large portion of humanity believe in them. If the technocracy wants to get the job done and don't care about the resulting paradox (project Ragnorak) they can pretty much invent new laws of physics on the fly.

Irrelevant insofar as SoD is concerned. You don't get to rewrite or ignore science just because your silly game plays somewhat loose with them. (in fact, anything which in fact violates scientific principles is probably going to be unquantifiable, if not inadmissible.) At most, you just end up making the game totally useless for any sort of reliable comparisons.

[Connor MacLeod]

Again, getting back to Ravnos's destruction - while I generally refer to this as an ante-benchmark in most debates, I do so only as a sort of "order of magnitude" or "off the cuff" estimate of what is needed to at least inflict damage.. more of a lower limit than anything else. Its worth noting that Ravnos was pretty deprived of blood at the time, was fighting during the daytime with several VERY powerful Kuei-Jin, and had been at this for hours, if not an entire day, and I don't think he was quite... sane... at the time either. And (although this is a more minor point) I don't think he was the most powerful of the Antes either (although I doubt he's orders of magnitude weaker either.) And most important of all, those "spirit nukes" would almost certainly have been aggravated damage, meaning that they would "ignore" most normal defenses rather readily.

What I remember happening was that the nukes themselves did not directly destroy Ravnos (though they did hurt him quite a bit IIRC) - but rather they wiped out the Kuei-Jin (one of which I believe who had been actively attempting to "block" the sunlight that the same Technocracy had been trying to redirect on said vampires - both Kuei-Jin and Kinj-jin.) And as I recall, those spriit nukes were a pretty desperate measure (at or close to the level of "force" they could use and still remain secret, in all probability.)

But what does it take in terms of energy to actually wipe them out? Well, we can establish an upper limit on Ante durability from the Transylvanian Chroniciles. In the fourth book, we learn that Nosferatu schemed to launch one or two nukes at (IIRC) the Toreador Antediluvian. As it turned out, one or two missiles were each targeted on Manhatten and Beijing (I believe Nosferatu was at the other one, and was inadvertantly targeted by his same plan.) The Nuclear detonations were supposedly powerful enough to destroy the entire city (suggesting low megaton range.. maybe 10-20 megatons or so?) placing a rather generous upper limit on Antediluvian durability. A rather high one, in fact, since one could realisitcally expect the Antes to absorb only a fraction of that nuclear energy - maybe 10% at best?

(While the ante probably only presents a very small area, remember that the energy release in the atmosphere is going to create a kilometer-plus wide fireball which can persist for many tens of seconds at the 20 megaton range or so, and the Ante would be exposed to this so long as the fireball persisted. Offhand I would guesstimate that the Ante might absorb somewhere between e11-e13 joules of energy realistically.

Of course, if an ante can be killed by a nuke, which seems rather likely, its definitely not beyond the Technocracy's ability to do this. However, as I pointed out, the ability to do so does not mean they can do so without serious repercussions. (Setting off a megaton-range n uclear warhead - something most world governments would almost certainly notice - is going to at best cause quite a serious stir, and at worst, it might trigger open warfare.)

[Murazor]

What can Kain do ?

In some things, I will be using web sources, but they seem to be quite reliable.

In Blood Omen 1, he could transform in several different things. At least the mist and bat forms were used in Defiance.

-Vampire (default state)
-Wolf (faster)
-Bat
-Illusion of being human
-Mist. There is an interesting in-game quote:

"When in mist form, I am invulnerable to physical weapons, blade and claw. I can seep through locked doors and cracks and move swiftly, like a shadow fleeing light."

He also had several spells.

-Sanctuary (teleports him back to his crypt)
-Light (illumination)
-Energy bolt. It doesn't seem to be particularly powerful
-Repel. Short lived shield that repels all enemy spells back to the caster.
-Inspire hate. All nearby enemies start to attack the closer being (Kain included if he gets too close).
-Stun. Stuns enemy.
-Incapacitate. Paralization spell. Although the ingame description suggests that the enemy is "frozen in time", although this seems unlikely.
-Blood gout. Kain fires a projectile against an enemy and if it hits the target, Kain can feed on its blood. Unknown range limits.
-Control mind. The soul of the human target is removed and it dies once the possesion ends. Kain's own body is protected by Repel in the meanwhile.
-Blood shower. Drains nearby enemies of their blood. Kain can feed from the blood of up to four targets. Other nearby enemies will just die.
-Spirit death. Rips the soul from the targets body. Instant kill against "most" enemies.
-Spirit wrack. Developed version of Control mind that allows Kain to control any enemy save "bosses" (how to translate the "boss" condition to WoD is a bit difficult, of course).
-Lightning. Only can be used in the outside and makes lightning rain down from the skies against all nearby enemies that are killed.

In addition to this, he also had several magic artifacts for combat, although it is unclear whether this artifacts were avalaible to him in later ages.

-Flay. It sounds like some kind of chakram that kills the target leaving only its skeleton. Relevant descrition and ingame quote:

"These curious devices hurl bolts of whirling energy and eviscerate my human enemies by stripping ragged flesh from bloodstained bone."

Flay artifacts were projectiles that homed in on an enemy, then ripped the flesh from its bones.

-Implode. Another strange magical weapon. As above.

"Of all the methods I employ, this is perhaps the cruellest, causing my victim's body to shrink on itself, crushing bones and rupturing organs 'til the pressure inside bursts the sac of fleshy skin, spraying its contents for all to see."

If these projectiles struck an enemy, their body rapidly compressed. The remains exploded when the internal pressure became too great to be contained.

-Slow time. This artifacts allow Kain to slow time for his enemies.

"At times, my magic extends into very exotic disciplines such as the manipulation of time. I am able to slow time down, so I can move about quick as a wolf, while all others move as though they were mired in mud."

Slow Time artifacts worked like a spell. All enemies and creatures in the area moved at a quarter of their normal speed for a limited time.

-Font of putrescence. If hit by one of these, the enemy becomes some kind of toxic acid.

"Should this object strike an enemy, rot and decay would instantly eat their flesh, and leave only a pool of blood and tissue. For a time after, the toxins are still active, and therefore lethal to the touch."

These artifacts were homing projectiles that caused enemies to decompose upon contact. The pool left by their dissolved bodies acted as a trap, promising the same fate to anyone that stood in it.

-Pentalich of Tarot. Some kind of magical cards that kill in several different ways.

"A medley of death and evisceration. Let fate choose my enemy's demise."

The Tarot randomly picked how Kain's enemies would die. There were five different outcomes that could be dealt, and it killed all assailants who were in close proximity to Kain. From observation, it appears that the five outcomes were as follows:

Flay
Dissolve (Font of Putrescence)
Implode
Explode into lots of tiny bits (like Flay, but with no skeleton left)
Exploding dismemberment (bigger bits left than 4, like when the Soul Reaver was used)

-Antitoxin. Allowed Kain to cure from any poison.
-Energy bank. This enabled him to mass magic energy for a brief time, but once its effect stoped, Kain had no magic at all.

[Spiritbw]

Whoops, mixed up Kain and Azriel last night. Someone want to delete my post in this thread?