The Circle
Of Obsidian
The Circle of Obsidian was discovered only
after the fall of the First Age — before the rise of the Deathlords,
there were none to wield it. The necromancy of the
Abyssal Aegis
Cost: 20 motes
Until the next sunrise, the necromancer
gains extra bashing and lethal soak equal to his permanent Essence. In
addition, the character is completely immune to all magic specifically designed
to cause extra damage or trauma to Abyssal Exalted, Deathlords
or denizens of the Underworld. This protection does not make the Exalt immune
to an attack augmented with such an effect, although the effect itself is
negated. Thus, blasts from the Zenith Caste anima power vanish in a swirl of
shadow before they touch the necromancer, but a Blazing Solar Bolt still hits,
albeit for lethal damage only.
Anguished Shade
Harvest
Cost: 60 motes
This potent spell consecrates a stretch of
land to the Underworld so that all who suffer violent death within its borders
arise as hungry ghosts. The necromancer must begin this spell as the sun dips
beneath the horizon and spend the required Essence. He then journeys as quickly
as possible, physically pacing the intended boundary of the effect. He cannot
fly or transport himself magically, although he may use a mount to aid his
travel. If he keeps moving without recrossing his
path and arrives at his original location before midnight, the spell takes
effect. Malignant black clouds grow in the sky to cover the entire area,
casting the earth into murky gloom even after daybreak. Any mortal who suffers
a violent or painful demise in the afflicted area before dusk thereafter arises
as a hungry ghost when the last rays of sunlight leave the sky. These ghosts
will not attack the necromancer, but they are not under his control in any way.
Hungry ghosts created with this spell have normal statistics but are always
considered extras.
Birth Of Sanity’s
Sorrow
Cost: 10 motes, 1 permanent Willpower
Target: Caster
For the chthonic entities who slumber beneath
the fruitless soil of the Underworld, their two most singularly defining
characteristics are the silent and permanent horror of death and the sizzling
fury of revenge. Without life, they hate all life. This spell embodies both
concepts. It can only be cast once in the lifetime of the caster and only in
the instant before death and with a purity of malice. The ability to cast this
spell is the sign of a personal blessing from an individual Malfean,
for only communion with one of the gods of Oblivion can endow a necromancer
with this power.
Birth of Sanity’s Sorrow takes a month to
learn. The necromancer must sit in prayer, inside the tomb of the Malfean who has chosen to teach her, while the lord of
nothingness guides her through the process. The result is a creature crafted
from the most brilliant creativity of a powerful death-blessed necromancer and
an insanely malefic dead god.
The basic statistics for this creature are
as follows:
Calculate the Attributes for the hungry
ghost that would rise from the necromancer’s corpse and add the necromancer’s
Essence to her Strength and Stamina. The form has (the necromancer’s Essence x
5) -0 health levels and a single Incapacitated level. While in this form, the
necromancer can use any of her Charms for a cost of 1 mote and can spend a
single mote in place of Willpower.
A necromancer’s form should also include
three unique powers. These should cost between 5 and 10 motes to invoke and be
vastly impressive — they can either imitate existing spells or be devised between
a player and Storyteller.
Birth of Sanity’s Sorrow can only be cast,
if known, at the instant in which the necromancer is reduced beyond
Incapacitated. The spell can be cast whether or not she has already used a
Charm in that turn and does not require the normal three turns of preparation.
If the necromancer wearing her Birth of Sanity’s Sorrow form is destroyed, she
dies remarkably and irrevocably, her soul immediately devoured by the Void,
without exception. If the necromancer survives the ordeal, the form and spell
are immediately scoured from her memory, and she is left with only her
Incapacitated health level, gasping for life. The spell, once cast, is active
only for one scene.
Black Faith
Cost: 30 motes, 1 lethal health level
Target: Caster
Screaming obscenities that glorify the Malfeans, the sole fathers of Oblivion, the necromancer
cuts himself across his belly and lets his blood spill before leaping into the
Mouth of the Void. This act is preceded by half an hour of silent worship and
prayer, which follows immediately the sacrifice of one ghost’s pain and corpus
to the Abyss.
This spell represents the final effort of
a desperate necromancer. His actions prior to his leap are meant to endear
himself as much as possible to the sleeping gods of nothingness and to cause
them to dream of him as he dives. His fall is nothing to be taken lightly — as
the necromancer plummets toward the certainty of the Void, he slowly dies. His
accoutrements are burned off by the sheer lack of flame, and his skin and bone
peel away into shreds smaller than dust, as even dust dies. The last thing that
remains is the corpus of his falling spirit; it boils slowly away as it blurs
past the entrances to the Malfeans’ tombs, Oblivion
excruciatingly digging into the necromancer’s soul until he is no more.
There is a single moment between the final
loss of the spiritual vessel and the final dissolution. This is the time of
judgment. If his actions have pleased the Malfeans
and if his mission benefits them and if they are not angered to have their
slumber disturbed so greatly, they revoke his dissolution. The act of being
destroyed, too, is a thing which, if cast into the Void, can never have been.
The necromancer who dared call so loudly into the nightmares appears, having never
been destroyed. He is most likely in whatever place he needed so desperately to
be, the Malfeans hearing his plea and letting it be
so. Sometimes, the Malfeans decide that the
necromancer would better serve them in another place, and he unexpectedly arrives
there.
This rarely used form of transportation
facilitates the necromancer’s appearance anywhere, from the Labyrinth
and the Underworld to the wide, bright world of Creation, spirit sanctums,
Yu-Shan or Malfeas itself. Wards have no effect on
his ability to arrive in any given location, since before being there he was,
literally, nowhere.
Should the Malfeans
fail to be impressed by the necromancer’s performance before his dive, he has
committed a rather inspired and complete suicide, and he is irrevocably dead.
Use of this spell is very much a Storyteller device, and it is recommended that
players discuss its use with their Storyteller before enacting it.
Blood Monsoon
Cost: 50 motes (committed) + one lethal health level
The necromancer cuts his palm and flings a
spray of blood into the air. These droplets never fall to the earth. Instead,
they rise and multiply until a column of beaded crimson ascends in an obscene
geyser into the sky. When this pillar reaches a height of one mile, it blossoms
outward, growing into a disk-shaped cloud that eventually covers a radius in
miles equal to its creator’s permanent Essence. This entire process takes one
hour. Although the necromancer can take other actions during this time, the
Essence powering the spell remains committed until it completely runs its
course. After the cloud reaches its full size, a torrential downpour of blood
drenches the earth below in gore for a number of hours equal to the
necromancer’s Stamina. Ghosts and other creatures of the Underworld can glut
themselves on this rain, although they gain no Essence from it. Blood summoned
with this spell rapidly mixes with dirt and clots into a stinking, sticky
morass of polluted gore, wreaking havoc on the local environment. Most plants and
smaller animals in the area of effect die outright, while humans and other
larger creatures must succeed in an hourly Stamina + Endurance check to avoid
becoming violently ill and suffering a 1 die penalty to all actions. This spell
— and its commiserate scent of death — also attracts hungry ghosts and other
malevolent creatures for dozens of miles.
The Clay Of
Warped Dreams
Cost: 60 motes (committed)
Target: Area of effect
The necromancer stands in the Labyrinth
with a minimum of three sacrificial ghosts behind him. As a 10- minute prayer
to the Malfeans comes to a close, the caster’s black
will envelops the sacrifices and destroys them utterly, devoting the Oblivion
of each to the dead gods whose slow nightmares define the place where the
caster stands. Temporarily appeased, the unthinkables
that rest in tombs above the edge of the Void gift the caster with control over
that small portion of their restless slumbers.
With the completion of the Clay of Warped
Dreams, the necromancer gains total control over 10 square miles of the
Labyrinth, in any configuration he desires. The landscape shapes itself to his
waking dreams instead of the tortured malice-borne thoughts of the Malfeans. He can, with a successful Perception + Occult
roll made by his player, be totally aware of any space within his power that he
could not normally see. His ability to shape the Labyrinth can manifest as
physical attacks — swarms of tarnished silver moths fly at his whim, stabbing
stalagmites of bone and gouts of boiling brains. Such an attack is made with a
Wits + Melee, Archery or Thrown (as appropriate) roll, with additional
successes equal to the necromancer’s Occult score. Additional effects, such as
the creation of poisonous gases or dangerous beasts or imprisoning a victim, are
possible at the Storyteller’s discretion. Vastly dangerous creatures can be
created by borrowing the Malfeans’ nightmares, but it
is time consuming, and such creatures are highly likely to be swallowed by
entropy when those dreams are reclaimed.
This control endures as long as the
necromancer commits the Essence or (at the Storyteller’s discretion) until a
dead god stirs enough to actively reclaim it.
Deathlords make use of this spell in their rare
convocations of peers, creating vast and affluent palaces beneath the Manses
they keep in Stygia. Often, only a grudging respect
for the vast power a Deathlord’s tentative allies
have, the certainty that each has planned contingency and the expenditure of
motes necessary to invoke the spell prevent the host at such a gathering from
abusing his power.
Dimming Of The
Light
Cost: 80 motes
With this terrible spell, a necromancer
can taint the divine Essence of a willing Solar, transforming her into one of
the Abyssal Exalted. This spell requires a ritual lasting from sunset to
midnight and may only be cast within a shadowland or
the Underworld. The Solar must physically enter a Monstrance of Celestial
Portion willingly, renounce her god and defile her Caste Mark by painting it
with the blood of a murdered innocent. She then renounces her powers one by
one, cursing and forsaking each Charm she knows. Lastly, she renounces her very
name.
Powerless, nameless and empty, the broken
Solar kneels and pledges her life and soul to the Malfeans
and the Void. The necromancer stands by through this litany, silently praying
for the dead Primordials to hear and affirm each
renouncement in turn. At the final moment, on the stroke of midnight, the
necromancer lays one hand on the forehead of the kneeling Solar and spends the
required Essence.
The animas of both characters immediately
burst into full iconic splendor, shadow and light pressing fiercely against one
another. Then, the Solar’s anima begins to darken
like a guttering candle, at last dying as shadows swallow it for all time. When
the necromancer withdraws his hand, his palm is slick with blood from the new Abyssal’s Caste Mark.
A Solar Exalted transformed in this manner
gains a number of Abyssal Charms equal to the number of Solar Charms she knew
before the change. She remembers all her spells, if any, though she can never
again call on the magic of the Solar Circle. All magical items attuned to her
lose their attunement, but they may be subsequently reattuned.
Her new caste follows her original caste — Dawn to Dusk, Zenith to Midnight,
etc. Her Virtue Flaw vanishes, replaced with the Abyssal Curse. She is
thereafter in all ways a deathknight and must contend
with the advantages and disadvantages of her state.
Forsaken Life
Engine
Cost: 50+ motes
Target: Area of effect
With a simple wave of her hand, the
necromancer conjures into being a vast engine, with cogs and levers of bone,
pulleys strung with iron-reinforced spinal cords, oiled with blood and bile and
emitting voluminous clouds of black soot. The engine, twice as high and wide as
a yeddim, stands several dozen yards in the air,
supported by heavy iron beams. In the bottom of the machine is a wide, dark
hole. When this mysterious orifice is empty, only a pathetic trickle of smoke
drips upward from the large and soiled pipes on the top. When a living creature
is put in place beneath it, the engine roars into life. Great blackiron claws grab the creature and shovel it into the
engine’s gaping maw, the gears turn, the levers creak, and the smokestacks
belch thick black clouds. The creature, of course, is irrevocably killed, its
life and soul used to fuel the creation of a shadowland
in Creation.
The spell will create a shadowland centered around the Forsaken Life Engine with a
radius of 50 miles, plus 50 miles for every additional 10 motes spent in the
casting. A shadowland created by this spell is rarely
a perfect circle; the shape of the shadowland is
determined by the local dragon lines as the engine taints them with the death
Essence released by the mass slaughter it requires to function.
When the spell is cast, the outermost
boundaries of what will become a shadowland darken.
The engine must then be fed a series of living creatures with a total permanent
Essence of no less than 10 times the Essence spent creating the Forsaken Life
Engine. With each life it devours, the engine becomes a little bit transparent
and a little bit less real. Simultaneously, the outer borders marked by the
spell expand inward. Once it has annihilated the final required life, the
engine disappears entirely, and the shadowland closes
beneath it, complete. If the engine is destroyed or if the process is not
completed by the time the sun reaches its zenith, the spell fails, and the shadowland fades completely, as though it had never been.
Until the spell’s conclusion, the engine
is susceptible to attack. The Forsaken Life Engine is a robust creation; it
soaks 22L/30B and must be dealt raw damage greater than its soak to inflict any
damage at all. Damage that surpasses soak must be rolled. A full 60 health levels
of damage must be inflicted to damage the machine enough that it cannot
function. Obsidian Countermagic will destroy the
engine instantly, while Adamant Countermagic will
inflict 10 health levels of damage upon the machine per invocation. The engine
can fight back; the two claws that shovel sacrifices into its body can be
turned against attackers. If the engine is under attack and has no victims to
attend, it will fight back. If there are sacrifices to process, the engine will
only neglect its duty at the command of its creator.
Treat the machine as a Strength ••••••,
Dexterity ••••, Stamina ••••••, Perception ••, Intelligence ••, Wits ••••
creature with a relevant combat Ability of •••. Treat the claws as weapons.
If the Forsaken Life Engine is destroyed,
it self-destructs in a series of fiery explosions that can launch fragments of
bone and iron up to 500 yards and boiling blood up to 50. Storytellers are
recommended to simulate these using attacks at the engine’s Dexterity and
Ability until the important targets have escaped the dangerous region. After
the engine’s destruction, the burgeoning shadowland
recedes outward, fading entirely by the next sunrise.
Up to five properly cowed creatures can be
processed by the Forsaken Life Engine in one minute, or one every four turns.
Resistance will slow the process, subject to Storyteller discretion. This spell
has no effect when cast in the Underworld.
Grandmother Void
Cost: 40 motes, 1 lethal health level
Target: Several spectres
As the caster’s silent entreaties to her
masters end, she speaks two words in Old Realm: a brief summons. Once spoken,
her mouth blackens to the color of the darkest starless nights. In a slow
instant, the color spreads throughout the necromancer’s body, clothing and
equipment until her entire figure is little more than a silhouette. Then, to
all who watch, she flattens. To all points of view, she has lost any depth she
once possessed and is now an empty doorway into Oblivion. Then, the spectres come.
Skin shining obsidian in the ambient
light, the specters gather, entering the world of life through the caster’s
empty frame. Their claws drip red blood, and their teeth bear tatters of the
flesh of men and ghosts. Each spectre is prepared to
wreak havoc in the name of the Malfeans under the
necromancer’s command. While they fight, they whisper in the voices of the dead
gods that they hear constantly in the back of their heads.
Once the spell has been successfully cast,
the necromancer remains a flat and empty figure for a number of turns equal to
her Essence. Each turn she is in such a state, two spectres
are spawned forth from her being into the world. The spectres
produced by this spell are fully material and have full Essence pools and
health levels. The necromancer may dictate the statistics and advantages of
each individually as it is spawned as though each were created as a starting
ghost with additional experience equal to (the caster’s Essence x 7). These spectres should never be treated as extras. The whispering
words that the specters constantly repeat are dangerous to ghosts — the players
of any who hear them must roll Willpower + Essence against a difficulty of 5 to
avoid their characters becoming tainted.
While the caster is filled with infinite
nothingness, she is immune to physical and mental assaults. Obsidian or Adamant
Countermagic cast during this period return the
necromancer to herself and end the spell, but they will not dispel any spectres that have already been brought forth.
Inauspicious
Citadel
Cost: 60 motes
Through this spell, a necromancer can
raise a fortress of gleaming obsidian and black basalt from the earth. Prior to
casting the spell, the Exalt must oversee the excavation of a deep pit in the
heart of a shadowland. This pit must be as wide as a
man can reach with both arms outstretch and deep enough that a man holding a
torch could not see the bottom if he peered into its depths. The Exalt must
then sacrifice at least 100 mortals, either one by one or in a great massacre.
Great care must be taken so that not even a single drop of blood falls anywhere
but in the pit. After all the corpses have been thrown into the lightless
shaft, the necromancer leans over the rim, spends the required Essence and cuts
his hand. After one full health level has dripped into the dark, the ground
shakes as the earth beneath the pit falls away to the depths of the Labyrinth
and the dead gods reach slowly upward for the sacrifice. The necromancer and
any bystanders have only a few minutes to flee the area before a castle of
stone grinds up from beneath the pit. Although each citadel is unique, all
emerge hollowed and defensible, with polished towers like jutting fingers of
black stone inlaid with the meaningless mazy marks of the Labyrinth. At the
bottommost room of every citadel, lower than all its dungeons, a gleaming
sanctuary of jet serves as a chapel to the Malfeans.
In its center of its floor yawns an open shaft that extends down to the
ultimate darkness and the whispering, dreaming gods that dwell there.
Lord Of The Dead
Cost: 25 motes
Upon casting this spell, the necromancer’s
Caste Mark emerges and glows a baleful vivid red for the next full day. While
this light persists, the character may command any ghost, walking dead or other
creature of death that has a lower permanent Essence than her own, and affected
creatures must obey to the best of their abilities and intelligence.
Commands can be as simple or complicated
as desired, although zombies have difficulty comprehending anything more
involved than a simple sentence. As a final benefit, no creature of death can
attack the Exalt. This spell cannot command or protect against Abyssal Exalted
or Deathlords.
Mouth Of The Void
Cost: 50 motes
Target: Area of effect
The necromancer intones dark words, and
thick, cold shadows flare about her like the lashing tails of a hundred preying
cats. As she speaks, her mouth yawns wide, and darkness pours out, pooling at
the necromancers feet like an oil. It slowly ripples outward, filling a 40-yard
radius over the casting of the spell. As the spell ends, the darkness becomes
perfectly still for an instant before falling into the sky like a silent
reverse waterfall, blotting out all light within its boundary.
To those within the inky blackness, it
feels alive, clawing softly and grasping, whispering and nibbling, loving,
smothering and always hating. A living creature in the seething shadow can feel
a throbbing and painful malice that seeps into his body and tears, rips and
removes parts of his innermost flesh and being.
After the shadow takes these things, it
leaves with them, departing for the Void and the end of all life. Each living
creature within its reach but the caster suffers 30 levels of aggravated
damage. The earth that fell under its devouring shadow is rotting and pitted
and strewn with large chunks of obsidian — the transformed remains of any
creature the spell killed.
Poisoning The
Well
Cost: 50 motes (committed)
Through this spell, an necromancer can
vastly speed the rate at which a Demesne changes its aspect to Abyssal. The
Exalt must remain at the heart of the Demesne, fasting and praying to the Malfeans for a number of days equal to its rating. The
Essence powering this spell must be spent at the beginning of this period and
remains committed for the full duration. A Demesne polluted with this spell
loses one point from its rating each month as the Underworld consumes its
Essence. When the Demesne reaches a rating of zero, it shifts to an Abyssal
aspect and begins to regain lost points every month until it returns to its
original strength. A sorcerer who knows the spell Adamant Countermagic
may arrest this decay by spending double the usual number of motes, but barring
sorcerous or necromantic countermagic,
no power short of an Incarna can halt the process.
Should the corrosion be averted before it runs its course, lost points of
strength return at the rate of one each year.
Pyre-Flame
Guardian
Cost: 50 motes
Target: Caster
As the casting is completed and the echoing
words of power and the bright black of death fade, the necromancer is struck in
a stark relief with his surroundings. He grows in dimension until he is twice
his height. A dozen random ghosts die as they are torn, shrieking, into
Oblivion, and their anguish crawls onto the caster’s skin and fuses there,
coating his entire body, face and hair with soulsteel.
Finally, the caster bursts into a roaring
green bonfire of deadly Essence-fueled pyre flame. The soulsteel
armor affords the necromancer +12L/+12B soak and ignores all attacks that do
less than 12 dice of raw damage. He gains a bonus to his Strength equal to his
Essence. The billowing sheath of pyre flame inflicts three dice of aggravated
damage upon any who dare attack this vision of harrowing death barehanded, and
any who attack armed using weapons not forged of stone or one of the Five
Magical Materials come away with armament that is slowly being consumed and
burning their hands. Even the powerful artifacts of the Exalted need to be
carefully treated, for while they will not be harmed, they will still carry the
flame. Any warrior who continues to wield a weapon once it has been struck with
flame takes one level of lethal damage each turn.
The necromancer can hurl great balls of
pyre flame up to 50 yards as a dice action using his Thrown + Dexterity pool.
This attack has an accuracy of the caster’s Essence and inflicts three health
levels of aggravated damage, plus one die for every extra success, and cannot
be parried without Charms. Where these balls of flame strike, they leave
circles and streaks of green-flaming scenery. Additionally, any successful
barehanded attacks automatically inflict an additional three levels of
aggravated damage, and where blows land, green fire blossoms.
Unless they are armored in one of the
Magical Materials, in stone or in an armor formed completely of Essence,
victims of the Pyre-Flame Guardian must scrape the flame off themselves or be
continually burned.
Those struck by the necromancer’s burning
fists must spend a full action doing so or suffer two levels of lethal damage
for each turn the flame persists. Those enveloped by a hurled ball of flame
suffer four levels of lethal damage each turn until the pyre flame is scraped
off.
Removing the pyre flame takes three turns
of dedicated actions, but assistance from companions can reduce this time.
Storytellers should consider allowing the obliviating
flames to kill most extras automatically without bothering to calculate damage,
unless the victims are extremely well armored or mystically protected against
such a terrible doom.
This spell ends when the caster cancels
it, when the Calendar of Setesh has marked out an
hour of time or when struck by Obsidian Countermagic.
Whatever the cause, when the spell ends, the necromancer’s soulsteel
skin explodes, shattering into a thousand pieces of screaming black shrapnel
being traced out by green flame. All creatures within 30 yards of the caster
suffer five levels of lethal damage and two levels of aggravated damage. Only a
perfect defense can evade this debris.
The pyre flame created by this spell is
normal pyre flame for all purposes. Pyre flame struck by sunlight in Creation
evaporates within minutes and ceases its burning. If never struck by sunlight,
the green flame burns itself out within a year. Within shadowlands,
pyre flame dies out with the dawning of the sun and sparks into flame again
after dusk. In the Underworld, the flame is permanent.
Name Accuracy
Dmg
Rate Rng
Pyre-Flame Ball +Essence +3A 5 30
Risen And Screaming
Cost: 40 motes
Target: Area of effect
Focusing the dark energy that he channels
inward, the Void Circle necromancer traces out a path around the fertile earth
of Creation. As he walks, the soil beneath his feet blackens and dries, as if
charred and salted. Once he rejoins his trail and completes the loop, the
spell’s effects seem to end. There are no further apparent effects.
In truth, the land within the circle has
been sown with a lasting undeath. The necromantic
energy poured into the spell hides just beneath the earth’s surface, waiting.
Triggered by the sudden rush of spirit that accompanies any death, when a
living creature breathes its final breath and falls within the boundary set by
the necromancer’s march, the ground crumbles beneath it. The creature sinks
into the dirt, and when it rises, scant minutes later at the earliest, rotting
skin hangs in tatters among bare patches of bone, the once-dead corpse animate
and deadly.
The zombies created by this spell are
under the control of the necromancer who cast it. If he is not there to command
them, they remain stationary unless a living creature becomes visible to their
dulled senses. Such unfortunates the zombies attempt to slay, propagating the undeath. The risen zombies cannot leave the circle within
which they were birthed. They will not try, and instantly become inanimate if
they are forced outside the boundary.
The zombies created by this spell scream
loudly when they see prey, and move at twice the speed of normal zombies. When
there are no victims in sight and they are under no commands, these zombies
bury themselves in the welcoming earth. A Perception + Awareness roll at
difficulty two is required to notice a buried zombie, but such a zombie is
perfectly aware of all creatures within 10 yards and can claw its way free as a
turn’s movement, assisted by the magic of the spell. The zombies are otherwise
identical to the zombies in Exalted and are always extras. Although the
path walked originally by the necromancer will never bear life again, the area
enclosed by his path returns to normal after one week per point of the
necromancer’s Essence.
Summon Hekatonkhire
Cost: 40 motes
Target: One hekatonkhire
The hekatonkhire
are vast. They are myriad in shape and form. They are the memories of the things
they once were, behemoths formed in any shape and of any whim the Primordials desired. These dead things retain something of
their previous form and function, though they bear the taint of their
destruction and subsequent passage into the sunless realm. These are the hekatonkhire.
As the Primordials
died and fell in flesh that spanned nations and encompassed the Wyld, their souls fell with them. Their souls became
different as they fell into the altogether new realm of the Underworld. Living
souls were forced to become dead souls; souls already slain reformed as things
dead. These, too, are called hekatonkhire.
The Malfeans
dream. When they shift in their tombs as a man turns in his sleep, their
nightmares come closer to the vague reality of the Underworld. The things they
fear, the hopes they no longer have and their hatreds all surface, from time to
time. Tearing at the dreamstuff and stone that binds
them, these unthinkable creatures rip free from their unwilling mothers and
become frighteningly real. They may also be called hekatonkhire.
This spell calls to the caster one of
these great and fearsome beasts. The spell requires a six-hour ritual,
involving the death of both a mortal and a ghost (or a single Ghost-Blooded),
that ends at dusk.
Once a hekatonkhire
is summoned, the necromancer and her would-be servant enter a contest of souls.
Roll Willpower + Essence for each in an opposed test. During the casting, the
necromancer may spend additional Essence in 7 mote increments to reduce the creature’s
dice pool; the hekatonkhire loses one die for each 7
motes spent. Roll the opposed test once each turn until either the necromancer
or the summoned creature accumulates three more successes than the other. If
the caster wins, the hekatonkhire will serve her
loyally for a year and a day, or the necromancer can set it to a single task of
indefinite duration. Should the beast win, it will most likely consume the body
and soul of its summoner and return, lumbering, to
the darkness it prefers to haunt.
Hekatonkhire are generally sleepy, like the dead gods
that long ago made them. Although they resent being bound, they usually take
joy in having motivation to wreak death and pain upon the world from which they
have been severed. Some hekatonkhire feel animosity
toward their summoners, but many even forget that
they were called.
Hekatonkhire are vastly varied in their might. The
weakest may be defeated by a single Solar warrior or a sworn brotherhood of
Dragon-Blooded, while the most powerful are able to stand toe-to-toe with some
of the most potent beings in Creation or Malfeas.
Whether a match for Ligier or only members of the
Dragon-Blooded Host, no hekatonkhire can truly die.
If slain, they reform in some manner in the Underworld. Some become less powerful
in the process. Others lose none of their power.
Sins Of The
Father
Cost: 50 motes, 1 permanent Willpower
Target: One living person
The mighty necromancer who knows this
spell can lay a curse of eternal servitude upon any living creature. As the
spell concludes, the caster lightly brushes the victim with her fingers, which
sear his face and form a scar that will never heal. With the aid of an arcane
link, the necromancer can curse her victim from afar. During the casting, the
chanting and burgeoning Essence about the caster become increasingly visible
until the climax of the spell, when the caster touches him through the link and
scars him. Using an arcane link for this purpose destroys the link.
The burn mark, most commonly placed on the
face, never goes away, despite any attempts at mundane or magical healing, and
identical scars appear on all of the victim’s descendants. The curse inflicts
no other miseries while one who bears the mark lives. Once a living creature so
cursed dies, he infallibly becomes a ghost, and the mark now glows softly on
the face of his corpus. Any person who becomes a ghost as a result of this
spell automatically possesses the Passion Obey She Who Cursed Me at a rating
equal to the new ghost’s Conviction. The scar also acts as the representation
of the Fetter Master of rating •••••. Finally, a ghost bearing this mark has
absolutely no choice but to seek out his new master immediately upon his death,
and he must thereafter obey every command given him by that master.
Even the death of the caster does not free
the cursed. They instead find themselves bound to the next incarnation of the
necromancer’s Essence, although they are free to take retribution on the
original caster should she rise as a ghost. Obsidian Countermagic
can free a single individual of the affliction — even if he is the son of the
son of the person originally cursed, none of his cousins or brothers receive
any benefit. But a victim cleansed is free of the necromancer at last, as are
his future children. Adamant Countermagic, like
Obsidian, will free a victim from this doom, but the target inevitably dies in
the process.
The souls of the Celestial Exalted cannot
be enslaved through the use of this spell. But they can be marked, and they
pass the curse on to their children. Only through a petition to the Unconquered
Sun assisted by a Zenith Caste priest and a Solar Circle sorcerer can free a
victim of the Sins of the Father without killing the subject or resorting to
the most powerful of dark magics.
Creatures without souls or creatures whose
souls never enter the Underworld, such as Dragon Kings or the Mountain Folk,
cannot be affected by this spell.