THE NIGHTMARE WAR (d20 System)
Classes
A nightwalker is a fusion of a human host and an alien entity. For reasons the nightwalkers do not fully understand, they glimpse terrifying memories of an otherworldly life through nightmares.
As the ‘read this and save yourself’ pamphlet suggests – you could draw a line in your life, a clear division – the time before the nightmares and the time after.
Who and what a nightwalker is and what they do in these desperate times can be heavily dependant upon their life before the nightmares began.
Engram
Like all nightwalkers, Engrams are plagued by nightmares and the accompanying sense of unease and fear. This mental activity awakened something in their minds, giving them mental powers far beyond what normal humans possess.
They can look into the minds of others, sometimes to the point of seeming to exist more in other people’s consciousness than their own. Like the hypothetical protoplasm’s from which they take their name, Engrams can play a significant role in imprinting—or erasing—memory.
In many ways, Engrams exist in a waking dream. The enslavement nightmare all nightwalkers experience is never far from the surface of their mind, and they also regularly sense the dreams and nightmares of people around them. The world often seems surreal to Engrams, and they sometimes have trouble differentiating between reality and illusions.
Phobetor
While the new abilities of Engrams are concentrated in their minds, the Phobetor’s enhancements are in the muscles. If Samson really was a nightwalker, then he was a Phobetor.
Unlike Engrams, who come into their abilities very quickly and are often overwhelmed by their emergence, Phobetors realize their powers at a slower pace.
The nightmares, of course, begin immediately, but the accompanying increase in strength takes a bit longer to materialize. At first, Phobetors might just feel especially healthy—they climb stairs with an extra spring in their step, heavy bags or boxes seem lighter than they would expect them to be, and so on. They also might notice an increase in hand-eye coordination; for example, they may see their golf game (or their ability at any other sport) improve, they might feel smoother on the dance floor, or they might just feel a little more graceful in their everyday movements.
Psychometabolic
The mind-body connection has been investigated for centuries by cultures across the globe, but no cultures have ever reached the heights that nightwalkers have scaled. Not only can Psychometabolics heal their own bodies, but they can also change their shapes and the shapes of other organic beings. From making themselves look like their enemies to animating plants and having them entangle other’s feet, psychometabolics are masters at changing the environment and keeping themselves and everything around them very unpredictable.
No one, not even the Psychometabolics themselves, can adequately explain the physics of how their abilities work. Somehow they are able to reach out with their minds and bend organic matter to their will. To them, the action is much like catching a ball—instead of doing a lot of math calculating acceleration, drag, and the effect of gravity, your mind just tells you to catch it there. The work of psychometabolics is more complicated but just as instinctual.
Telemechanic
When more than one Telemechanic manages to get together, they invariably have a laugh over mentalists who make vociferous claims about their ability to bend spoons with their minds.
Any Telemechanic who did so little with their ability, they say, would deserve all the tortures the phages will inevitably inflict upon them. Telemechanics display the abilities mentalists have been craving for centuries—in fact, those that survive more than a few years exceed those mentalists’ wildest dreams.
Interestingly enough, when asked how they discovered their abilities, most Telemechanics tell amazingly similar tales. Usually it involves a lost object—keys, for example, or a vidbox remote control—and a great deal of frustration on the part of the nightwalker. The stories usually end when the budding Telemechanic, wondering just where the hell the missing object is, suddenly sees it flying into their hand.
Vagrant
Unlike the other groups of nightwalkers, vagrants do not demonstrate a coherent set of powers. They have a few abilities in common, but these are also abilities that other groups of nightwalkers have manifested from time to time; similarly, vagrants tend to manifest some of the abilities typically seen in one or more of the other nightwalker categories.
Part of the reason for grouping vagrants together is that they simply do not fit into any other category. There is, however, more to it than that—while they do not share similar talents, vagrants often have similar experiences after they start experiencing the enslavement dream. Something about the dream, or about whatever is causing the dream, sends vagrants off balance. They may make a token effort at continuing their old life after the dream starts, but their heart isn’t in it. They no longer feel like they belong in their own life, and it usually does not take them long to leave it. They become rootless, wandering from place to place without any sure destination or purpose. They always seem to be looking for something, but they couldn’t say what it is.
