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Bond

Expression: Bond

AX.GHW.08.04.01

You know where they are. You will always know where they are.

Bond is the predatory apex of Blood Sense, the capacity to establish a tracking and awareness connection with a specific target that persists well beyond a scene's end. This is the bloodline's original hunting tool: the capacity to lock onto prey and not lose them. Formalized in Blood Sense, it becomes something more controlled than the instinctive version, and considerably more useful.

A Bond is not mind-reading or compulsion. The practitioner knows where the target is, roughly how they are (vital state, significant emotional register), and experiences a sharp awareness when the target's state changes significantly. That is all. The target, if they have any supernatural awareness, may know they have been Bonded, the sensation is distinctive. Most do not.

Bond- Applications

Establish Bond (Primary Action, Threshold 3)

The practitioner establishes a tracking and awareness connection with a specific target within Near range. The Bond persists for the current scene; additional successes extend it.

While Bonded, the practitioner always knows the target's approximate location (not exact position, but a reliable directional sense within the current general area and whether they are moving away). They receive an immediate awareness when the target is injured, significantly frightened, or uses supernatural power. They receive a general vital-state impression (healthy, stressed, injured, dying) on demand without a roll.

The Bond does not provide the target with any awareness of or access to the practitioner.

Scaling: Excess successes extend Bond duration: 1 excess = until next Long Rest; 3 excess = until the practitioner deliberately releases it or the target moves more than a day's travel away; 5 excess = persistent (scene, rest, and distance independent; this is the bloodline's full ancestral bond, which historically did not release without the practitioner's deliberate choice or the target's death).

Sever Bond (Primary Action, no roll required)

The practitioner deliberately releases an established Bond. This always succeeds. A Bond established through a backlash result (see below) may also be severed through an Extended Rest ritual, one hour of focused effort, Governing Attribute + Resolve vs Threshold 3.

Backlash:

  • Minor: The Bond establishes bidirectionally. The target is aware of the practitioner's approximate location and vital state on the same terms the practitioner has of them. This persists until the practitioner severs the Bond. If the target is a hostile entity, this is immediately dangerous.
  • Moderate: The Bond establishes but the directions are inverted. The practitioner receives the target's perceptual experience, not their thoughts, but what they sense: what they see, hear, feel, smell. The practitioner cannot control this; it overlays their own perception at random intervals for the remainder of the scene, with Disadvantage on any action taken while the overlay is active.
  • Severe: The Bond establishes without the intended range limitation. The practitioner is permanently Bonded to the target, and the Bond is bidirectional. The target knows the practitioner's location, vital state, and emotional register at all times. This does not resolve on rest; it requires the Extended Rest ritual above and a successful roll, or the target's death. Until it is resolved, the practitioner has Disadvantage on all Blood Sense rolls against any target other than the Bonded one, as the bloodline's attention keeps returning to the lock it has established.