Exalted – The Behemoth Cloak (Artifact ****)

OK, lets face it. The normal artifact armor in the basic Exalted book… sucks. The technomagic power armor is better, but quite a lot of players don’t want to be Iron Man or have to deal with the maintenance and repair of their armor even if they vary it’s looks. For them here’s a much more primal type of armor.

As the order of creation first rippled out into the pure chaos of the wyld, many creatures of chaos were entrapped by it. Some, sapient and bound up in their own narratives, crystalized, bound into changeless forms like tales preserved within the pages of a book; trapped seeds of consciousness tales that would, eventually become the Jadeborn. Others – things that spawned of chaos, existed for a time adapting to meet it’s changes, and then dissolved once more, with no narrative to lend them continuity, adapted as best they could.

Thus were spawned the Great Beasts – the first great Behemoths, singular creatures that were the bane of the first peoples of creation. Against them, in the Time of Glory, marched the legions of the Dragon Kings at their peak.

The Great Beasts were mostly slain, although a few were driven back beyond the borders of the world. Fragments of their chaotic essence were captured – undying flesh, adamant scales, and bones of jade – and were shaped into many wonders – the foundation of the crystal and vegetative technologies of the Dragon Kings. .

A Behemoth Cloak carries a shard of the essence of a Great Beast, and infuses its wearer with some small share of the powers of one of the ancient terrors. Their base form is that of a massive, fur cloak, suitable for your standard barbarian warlord – but the lingering echoes of the adaptive, shapeshifting, talents of the ancient Behemoths, allows the cloak, and it’s user, to take a variety of forms.

Physical Basis:

• Armor Basis: Superheavy Plate Armor, +12L/+12B, Mobility -4, Fatigue 3.
• Perfect: +13L/+13B, Mobility -2, Fatigue 2.
• Orichalcum: +15L/+15B, Mobility -2, Fatigue 2., +1L/+1B Hardness

Class-A Artifact Powers

• Adamantine Scales: The user’s effective Hardness rating equals one half the armors net soak, rounded up.
• Endless Endurance x3: The cloak provides three levels of Ox-Body Technique.
• Eyes of the Beast: The user gains Nightsight
• Harmonic Essence: Any wearer who attunes the armor gains the magical material bonuses.
• Heart of the Wyld: Self-Powered/reduces the attunement cost to one mote.
• Hearthstone Sockets x2 (for a total of three).
• Nose of the Beast: The user gains a sense of smell as keen as a wolfs.
• Unbounded Rage: +1 Valor.
• Warding. The armor can subtract three levels, to a minimum of zero, from the final damage the user takes from any effect up to three times per scene – albeit only once per effect. This will not, however, stack with similar defenses (Class-0 Fortune Effect).

Class-B Artifact Powers

• Adaptive Flow: Any Crippling, Desecration, Shaping, Sickness, or Poison effect which an attack or flurry would normally inflict may be converted to the loss of two motes – even if it would normally take effect more than once due to a flurry or involves more than one of those keywords.
• Breath of Peruza: The wearer is immune to general environmental damage, albeit not to directed effects. He or she can wade through lava, breathe underwater or in a vacuum, and otherwise endure extreme environmental conditions.
• Cloak of the Wyld Lands. This ability allows the user to assume temporary mutations. That’s Thaumaturgic Lifeweaving: Six tick casting time (+2D), Duration of up (2x Essence) Days or until dismissed (+3D), Single Target (+0D), Induces Temporary Mutations (+5D), Personal-Only (-2D). As a Class-B effect, this gets 20 automatic successes, providing 12 Mutation Points at a cost of two motes. As with all thaumaturgy, it does not stack with similar effects (Class-B).
• Creation’s Ward: Thaumaturgic Science Effect/Force Shield (+6L/+6B Soak, negates the first six dice of ping damage.
• Flesh of Bronze: -2 to the Armor Mobility Penalty. If both the mobility and fatigue penalties are reduced to zero, the armor no longer counts as wearing armor for the purposes of charms and abilities that will not function if the user wears armor.
• Form like Mist: The Behemoth Cloak can look like any kind of armor or clothing.
• Lesser Invulnerability: +4L/+4B Soak
• Skin of Iron: -2 to the Armor Fatigue Penalty. If both the mobility and fatigue penalties are reduced to zero, the armor no longer counts as wearing armor for the purposes of charms and abilities that will not function if the user wears armor.
• Tides of Life: The wearer regenerates one level of bashing damage every third action.
• Tireless Stride: The user gains double ground speed.
• That provides an overall soak bonus of +25L/+25B without penalties and not counting as armor. Now that’s relatively useful for the price.

Artifact Design

• Power 10 (10 x Class-B powers, 12 x Class-A powers), Usefulness 4 (extremely useful), Plot Impact 3 (major impact), and Script Immunity 1 = 18. The original versions were Troublesome (the user tended to absorb a few characteristics of the source Behemoth, -2). Charles’s versions usually just use exotic ingredients (-2). That gives a net artifact rating of 16/4 = 4.

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