(With apologies to a certain item found in the
online Warehouse 23 files)
The name of this relic is actually somewhat of a
misnomer, as it doesn't chase storms so much as it directs them, usually in a
fashion guaranteed to cause the most amount of difficulty to a specific
target. They are firmly Infernal
devices, as the Host doesn't usually go in much for psychological cruelty.
Storm-chasers are strictly one-shot items; they use
a variant of the Ethereal Song of Storms to alter the path of an existing storm
system. The larger the storm, the less
the fine control; seeding a hurricane with this relic will not make it turn on
a dime. A tornado is a completely different
story.
Activating a Storm-chaser requires two steps. Each relic comes in two parts: the control
unit and the homing beacon. Homing
beacons come attached to the control unit and must be broken off in order to be
used. The control unit is then physically
transported to the center of the target storm system and activated. As long as the control unit stays in the air
- they're usually only about half a pound in weight, and the activation of the
relic will keep it from hitting the ground as long as there are winds available
that could realistically keep it from falling - the storm will home in on the
homing beacon, until either the storm is exhausted, the homing beacon moves out
of range (about 100 miles) or the relic is used up (4 hours/level). Unfortunately, the homing beacon does not
itself register as an artifact.
As one might imagine, Dark Humor loves these toys,
especially ever since a feature of them was revealed. It was deemed necessary that the homing beacon not register as an
artifact, the better to keep victims from realizing that they had been marked
for a particularly baroque assassination/harassment method. Therefore, the control unit was designed to
metaphysically link itself to the homing beacon's chemical/physical composition
and trace that. The potential
flaw in this method was that any sufficiently large concentration of similar
compounds within five hundred yards would tend to temporarily spoof the control
unit, causing it to shift the course of the controlled storm to home in. When informed of this, Kobal smirked and
decreed that all future homing units were to be made out of a specific
combination of aluminum, steel, vinyl, fiberglass and cinderblock - all items
found in the construction of mobile homes.
Well, now at least why you know tornadoes seem to
love the damn things.
Storm-chasers
Relic/6 (variant of the Ethereal Song of Storms) 18
pt
Self-powered +0
pt
Extra Essence Capacity 2 (total 8) +4
pt
Use Restriction: must be physically placed in center
of storm -1 pt
Vulnerability: celestial artifact destroyed when
corporeal form destroyed -4 pt
Disturbance: continuous (1 pt) -1
pt
Charges: One use /4
Total Cost: 4
pt
Convenience and durability costs were determined to be worth zero points overall: Storm-Catchers are especially light and not especially somewhat fragile, but metaphysically toughened to survive being battered around by a natural storm. Also note that the duration for this item is four times what would be expected for the Ethereal Song of Storms (the major reason for the 'variant' tag): this would have increased the cost, except that it was deemed to be cancelled out by the fact that the item can only be used on an existing storm.