STEAMBLOODED The Pole of Steam is even harder to survive than the Pole of Lightning, inasmuch as most of it is filled with a boiling sea. However, there are also condensation engines that protrude into the Pole, in which the close proximity of industrial coolants keeps temperatures down to mere sauna levels. Small tribes of steamblooded dwell in these engine complexes, traveling by way of portal ducts that metaspatially connect the survivable archipelago of subsystems. Steamblooded appear mostly human, but with hairless skin that has an unnatural plastic smoothness to it. This is easily concealed with clothing. Additionally, all wounds that bleed foam and hiss with the sound of escaping pressure. The mutants are fonts of limitless vigor and quickly regenerate from scalding, at the tragic cost of halving their lifespan as overtaxed metabolisms burn out. Steamblooded tunnel folk use their secret knowledge of Autochthonia’s portal ducts to evade the Octet and maintain a limited black market between cities. To say that all steamblooded vagrants are thieves and capitalists is a stereotype, but the epithets apply more often than not. Mutations (0 points): Inhuman Skin (Pox; As Fur), Short Life (Deformity) Scald Regeneration (Affliction): Steamblooded subtract 2 levels from post-soak damage suffered in step 7 when injured by scalding. Prevented damage is cosmetically applied, but heals away in the span of an action. As a price, all bleeding foams and hisses inhumanly. Inexhaustible (Affliction): These mutants never suffer fatigue from any non-magical source. The steamblooded variant of this mutation also precludes the ability to sleep or need for such. They can only recover Willpower by other means. Cold Sensitivity (Deficiency): Steamblooded need warmth, adding +1 to the difficulty of Survival in cold climates and +2 to the difficulty to resist cold-based envi- ronmental hazards.
