{"id":"mage/power/rote/talons","type":"power","system":"rote","line":"mage","name":"Talons","sources":[{"source":"M20","page":610}],"entries":["(••• or •••• {@sphere Life|M20}; possibly with •• {@sphere Matter|M20}, •• {@sphere Prime|M20}, or both added)","Humans are such soft and fragile things, lacking the claws that distinguish other predators. Thanks to magick, however – or to cybernetic technomagick, anyway – a mage can grow claws (or, with {@sphere Life|M20} 4, install them on another character) that make up for that silly lapse in “intelligent design.”","In its simplest and most traditional form, this spell extends the bones within the subject’s fingers, and perhaps his toes as well. Strengthening them into practical talons, the mage charges them with personal Quintessence, granting those claws a paranormal sharpness. Other applications graft steel, bone, or other substances into the subject’s limbs. Cyborgs, shapechangers, war wizards, and other combative types make deadly use of such appendages, and although the spell’s roots are rather primordial, its effects never go out of style.",{"type":"header","text":"System","level":4},"{@sphere Life|M20} 3 grows the claws on the mage’s own hands, and {@sphere Life|M20} 4 allows him to grow them on – or attach them to – another character. {@sphere Matter|M20} 2 allows the claw-crafter to work other substances into those Talons… an essential element for cybernetic enhancement. {@sphere Prime|M20} toughens and charges the claws, often with a glowing nimbus of Quintessential power","if the mage wants to show off his handiwork. Normally, the claws inflict lethal damage; the {@sphere Prime|M20} 2 component makes this damage aggravated instead. In all cases, this rote allows the character to use the Claw maneuver described in Chapter Nine’s Combat section.","The fearsome powers of a furious witch manifest in this ancient war-spell. Crafting an elaborate poppet, painting, or other image of her victim, the spell caster mutters maledictions at that person, establishes a bond between the image and the real-life target, and then tears into the image, burns it, melts it, or does some other horrible thing to that stand-in for her victim. Meanwhile, the victim suffers crippling pains, catches fire, withers into a skeletal mass, watches as his skin peels off in strips, or otherwise endures a theatrically awful fate.","Despite its witchy name, this spell has many cultural variations: the curses of angry shamans, furious clergy, mystic assassins, Romani elders, techno-punks, bitter artists, and other folks who have a literal bone to pick with their victims. A frightening Data-based variant, Ticktock Man, allows a distant technomancer to age his victim from a distance. So long as he holds a bit of that target’s personal information and has the requisite amount of dots in Data ({@sphere Correspondence|M20}), the mage can input a number of years into his Trinary computer, get a fix on his target, and then use {@sphere Life|M20} and {@sphere Time|M20} to age his target from a distance.",{"type":"header","text":"System","level":4},"Different Spheres inflict different sorts of harm. {@sphere Entropy|M20} corrupts the victim with age or leprosy, {@sphere Life|M20} demolishes the victim’s body in any number of horrifying ways, and {@sphere Time|M20} (combined with {@sphere Life|M20}) lets the attacker age her target according to the Feats of {@sphere Time|M20} Magick chart. Unless the mage employs the {@sphere Correspondence|M20} Sphere (and has at least one dot for every dot in the damage-causing Sphere), she must touch the victim in order to set the curse in motion. All of these attacks, of course, are incredibly vulgar, but they can be alarming for really obvious reasons."],"_qa":{"flags":[],"parser":"headed_entries","confidence":0.9,"extracted":"2026-10-12","job":"m20-rotes"},"level":null,"_links":{"self":"/api/v1/records/mage/power/rote/talons","html":"/records/mage/power/rote/talons","parent":null,"children":"/api/v1/records/mage/power/rote/talons/children","sources":[{"abbr":"M20","page":610,"folio":610,"title":"Mage: The Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition"}]},"_db":{"title":"Talons","props":[["Duration","a theatrically awful fate"]],"parent_id":null,"level":null,"category":null,"summary":"(••• or •••• Life; possibly with •• Matter, •• Prime, or both added) Humans are such soft and fragile things, lacking the claws that distinguish other predators. Thanks to magick, however – or to cybernetic","tags":[],"children":[]}}