The Mistletoe

Your blood inspires abrupt, intense attraction between the people who have recently kissed you. Even your presence in a room can muddy the air with sexual tension, and people around you find themselves interlocked with one another until they pull apart, stunned and outraged. Your power will flex and flare out of your control, and obsessions between people - vampires included - that already exist are the most affected; your presence near such people inspires insatiable hunger for each other, be that in a misplaced sense of lust, positive affection or just outright blood hunger. It depends on the people involved, since you’re so unable to predict it, and you’ve been to blame throughout your life for hoodwinking and bewitching people out of their relationships and reserved, faithful lives.

Long Description: It began agreeably enough, people took you for a good luck charm or positive herald of romance - lovers always seemed to tie the knot around you. The will-they-won't-they friendships found their union at last, and people started wagging their eyebrows when you predicted who would end up with who. It always worked out how you thought it would, even the most casual, idle predictions.

You might have become something of a matchmaker, or you might have kept the weird occurrences around you tight to your chest. One thing is certain: nothing positive lasts.

The unions you acted (knowingly or unknowingly) as an omen for, turned dark, those once-blessed relationships ripening sour and rotten to the bone. Whirlwind romances began as blazing infernos soon turned stone cold, and within weeks months they loathed one another.

You were the common denominator. Everyone around you always has their libidos or romantic selves cranked to the maximum. What begins as platonic intimacy or well-meaning friendship soon has people kissing, rutting, fornicating - especially if you've cut loose and tried to relax, or even gotten drunk. What's worse, people started getting attached to you. Dangerous obsessions, stalkers and jealous strangers would slide their way into your life, then they wouldn't leave you alone. Toxic obsession became the name of your life, and you were blamed for all manner of things that were the fault for another person's failed marriage - whether you had any part to play in it or not.

What began as something so beautiful - you were so sure you were fated to bring people together, perhaps even a God-given gift through which people recognised their love for another - has become a nightmare. It's likely that by now someone has noticed the uncanny coincidence of your presence and the events around you; perhaps a powerful lord or patriarch of a family demanded you make his daughter fall in love with another, or someone has forced your participation in a matchmaking that shackled up an innocent to an abuser. Whatever has started to make your life spiral, it is certainly spiralling. Now, others know, and the witch trials are on.

It might have gotten worse because you're so stressed, frightened and trapped in your life, it might have happened anyway even were you not, but now: just being in a room for too long with people who have romantic history together - even if that history happens to be one person obsessing over another person, who is themselves uninterested - makes all the involved parties experience a sudden irresistible hunger for each other. It can manifest in multiple ways, but often it is through sexual intimacy. When it comes on strongly, really strongly and out of your control, it only lasts for a few minutes, but that's enough for most people to have their life turned upside down.

The only thing you seem able to control, with a force of will, is the following: two people can be connected by a kiss from you. If you kiss one, the next person who you kiss will experience a temporary, deep attraction to the person you previously kissed.

Mechanics: Kiss somebody (it can be on the back of a hand); or mime it with the player being aware of what you are doing. The next person you kiss after them you may tell them "Off-Game, Human Power: The Mistletoe" and then tell them who it was you last kissed. For however long they want to roleplay it (but up to a maximum of one night - the power always ends at dawn) their character is affected by an immense attraction or platonic obsession to the person you last kissed. They can let this affect their roleplay however they see appropriate.

You can chain this power: if a third person kisses you, you can activate the power again to have them fall with infatuation for the secon person, and so on. Or you can end it after the last victim and start fresh with a new unaffected first kisser and a charmed second person, who will become attracted to your new first. In this way you act as a lewd, twisted Cupid, spearheading people in the direction of a new flame.

It is recommended that if you do kiss anyone, pause roleplay before you part ways to check what their character's name is, so you can give it to your next victim.

As ever, all roleplay is opt-in and any roleplayer can choose not to have this power affect them if they would rather not have it in their gameplay. (Quite a lot of players pick stuffy, conservative vampires however who would cherish the option off-game for their character to be forced into situations they ordinarily would not ever touch!)

Otherwise, your blood naturally compels a greater amount of attraction, affection or attachment to you than is common even for these unusual humans.