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Thursday 10 June 2010

More Selentine magic

Some more Tamorian magic today. This is typical of many such spells in that you don’t need to whip up a storm of magic points to use it, you just need to know what freaky procedure to follow. Bear in mind that if a Tamorian scholar today found a book containing a spell like this one, he would be highly unlikely to tell anyone else about it. We’re presenting it here for the GM to use in creating a uniquely horrible NPC villain rather than as a resource that should be allowed to get out among the gen-pop of player characters:

Process by which one may obtain a familiar servant, or fetch
being notes from the journal of Septimus Delectus Lambo, master arcanalist of Selentium

“First obtain a mole or other small burrowing creature that has died of natural causes. Place it within a lead box, filled with the caster's own blood and spittle. Seal the box with corpse wax and wind about with the hair of a condemned criminal cut while yet hanging upon the gallows. Next take the box to a sepulchral place and bury it in the rib-cage of a man dead at least forty years. Do this at the dark of the moon. Sleep upon this spot until the time when the moon is full, when the fetch will visit you in a dream. Then the box may be disinterred and the fetch released. Each day the fetch must be allowed to suck blood from its master, whereupon it renders him service. Retain the box as its abode.”
Evidently a loathsome procedure which would most certainly get you burned at the stake in any civilized country in the 10th century A.S.. Squeamish player-characters can console themselves with the thought of Lambo’s historical fate (torn in four parts by a quartet of devils to whom he had each promised his soul) while those who have no scruple at all will merely demand to know the fetch’s specifics, as follows.

The fetch appears as a sort of large maggot with its creator’s face. It is part of him, having 1 of his Health Points. It cannot fight, but is difficult to hit (DEFENCE and EVADE both 17). It resists spells with the MAGICAL DEFENCE of its creator and, if he is a sorcerer, warlock or elementalist, it also has Magic Points equal to his rank (taken from his own total) with which it can cast the spells known to him. It sees in darkness and can travel through wood or earth (but not stone or metal) at 10m a round, leaving almost no visible trace. When it returns to its box and the lid is closed, the caster knows all that it has seen while absent from him. If the fetch is slain, the caster immediately takes a wound of 1-10 HP, and the fetch’s 1 HP (but not its Magic Points) is forever lost to him.

6 comments:

  1. Thematic, mysterious, decadent, with a bit of creepy, in short, I like it!

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  2. Thank you - and I'd like that to be the inscription on my tombstone btw :)

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  3. If we add this with the inspiration for Sambahsa (indeed from Angaté, the language of Selentine and Ferromaine), you gonna have a huge tombstone !

    (You'd rather have a mausoleum, with secret chambers full of undead gamebooks !)

    Olivier

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  4. Hi Olivier, yes, a mausoleum would be nice. Something tasteful, though, not like Halicarnassus or the tomb of Al Jolson. It will quickly be plundered for its library by Jamie, who has long coveted my books - though he will have to learn Sambahsa in order to decipher the clues that enable him to survive all the traps!

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  5. For the moment, you can rest in peace; I have to rewrite the Sambahsa grammar because its English version lacks clarity ! (See the assessment by the Australian writer Robert Winter: http://joyoflanguages.blogspot.com/2010/05/final-five-and-then-there-were-two.html )

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  6. "Thank you - and I'd like that to be the inscription on my tombstone btw :) "

    Well, if you promise not to die too soon, you are free to use it. Personally, I'd b honoured!

    And I was just wondering why some people believe I have a macabre sense of humour, when I reread my first reaction, above;)!

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