The Beast Fears Fire - Kappha

Kappha [Ignorance 3]
Impulse - Reveal and Conceal. The brave souls who collect information on ghouls have a consensus that when ghouls appear in the world of the living, they are acting with purpose, following an agenda. Ghouls, when they bother to speak with humans reference this as if it is a fact, though they do not speak of what that purpose or agenda is, nor anything about the identity of its architect, lest ghasts show up to silence them for it. Whatever this agenda is, there are aspects of it about which no one has yet been able to even make a plausible guess. Kappha sit right in the middle of one of the murkier areas of the ghoulish unknown.

Kappha are amphibious, with webbed hands and feet, gills and coloration that allows them to go fairly well hidden in the water. Kappha are perfectly capable of operating on land, but lose a lot of their unique abilities. Kappha possess a power that is a close relative of some of the things that water witchcraft can do, but it is more limited and weirder. A kappha's presence in a body of water alters the properties of the water (a certain volume around the kappha, about the size of a small pond, in most cases), making it into a rather unsecured and unpredictable scrying pool.

Harm - 3/Drowning, Shaken. When they need to defend themselves or neutralize someone who has seen something they shouldn't have, Kappha use their environment to their advantage, seeking to drag air breathing opponents into the water and drown them. Their venom is not as potent as that of other ghouls, nor is it quite the paralytic. Those who have survived kappha bites describe the venom as burning and really painful Kappha aren't primarily fighters, though. They generally only attack to defend themselves or when someone has seen the wrong thing in their pool.

Peer into the Abyss
When you look into the water that is affected by a kappha, face Ignorance.
On a Hit, ask a question. You get an answer to that question which is disjointed or cryptic and also very disturbing. Suffer Peril (Shaken).
On a Hard Hit, you get a clear and contextualized answer, and do not suffer.
On a Miss, you see something you shouldn't have, and while you are fascinated by it, the kappha attacks you. Suffer Harm as stated.


You leave me breathing like the drowning man.
If you take water from a kappha's pool, it loses its scrying capabilities, though some water witches claim that it makes especially good scrying water for their workings. Not good enough to be worth a lot of money to them, or anything, but enough of a thing to sweeten any deals you wish to make with one.

Water witches tend to dislike and distrust kappha more than most, and hold that the visions you get from looking into a kappha pool are fairly transparent manipulation covered up with the appearance of prophecy. A lot of people say that about water witches, too.

Kappha are a little more negotiable than most ghouls; it would seem that their remit gives them a little more latitude for dealing with others than most ghouls get. They are willing to accept bribes, and particularly like cucumbers of any type and smoked or dried meat that was made wrong and has spoiled. With offerings, the penalty for a Miss in viewing the kappha pool is 1 harm from psychic backlash and Peril (Shaken).