Glåugust Challenge 1: “Magic Amulets”

 

I’m doing a thing. It’s called “Glåugust” and from context, it seems to be about GLOG stuff. Being an incorrigible contrarian, I’m trying to do the challenge but with DCC RPG.

Soul-Binding Scarab
This rare antiquity appears as a fist-sized, red or green, semi-precious stone carving of a scarab with a skull in place of the thorax, often backed/mounted in silver; the chain, if any, may be of any material, but those aware of its power prefer materials that do not rot or corrode. It is said that in Ancient Khem, when Men where thirty-three feet tall and lived three-hundred thirty-three years, these scarabs were the settings of rings for the legendary princes of those days. These amulets can be great boons or terrible banes, for if the wearer dies, the soul remains tethered to the body, existing a near-adjacent reality, able to perceive everything within 3’ and experiencing anything that happens to the corpse. The tethered soul remains bound to its corpse as long as the amulet is in contact with any part of the body, but once contact is broken, it slowly marches to its final rest in 1d7 days. Tethered souls cannot communicate with mortal unless magic is employed. A soul keeps the Intelligence, Personality, and Luck scores it had in life, unless factors change it.

The tethered soul can be forced back into the body to restore it to life via a number of methods, none of which are truly safe for either the caster or the deceased. Note that a severely damaged body may result in an immediate death again, or worse yet, an un-dead existence, and that none of the methods described below heal the body; that requires more magic or technology. Also note that in the case of clerics, deities will be EXTREMELY picky about whom is revived using their divinely-apportioned gifts, possibly annihilating a cleric in same cases (such as a priestess of Justicia reviving a chaotic bandit lord, or a priest of Ahriman reviving anyone BUT a someone with outrageous skill to kill lots of people). A brief sampling of possible spell applications follows:
- Find Familiar: Cast at -1d, a 20+ result forces the soul back into the body. Unfortunately, the revived loses 2d3 Personality (to a minimum of 1) and all but 1 point of Luck, while also becoming a random familiar type (determined by the revived’s alignment) bound to the caster who restored them. The revived can no longer gain levels and has all the drawbacks common to other familiars (such as total loyalty to the caster).
- Forget: Cast at -1d, a 22+ result can make the deceased’s soul forget they’ve died. Unfortunately, they also forget other things too. The revived loses 1 point of Luck, 1 point of Stamina, and then roll 1d7 to see what else is lost: (1) a whole character level, going down to the minimum XP for the previous character level; (2) a language; (3) their occupation; (4) how to shout; (5) how to whisper; (6) how to write if literate, or how to eat with utensils if illiterate; (7)
- Breathe Life: Cast at -1d, a 27+ result forces the soul to rejoin the body. This causes a loss of 1d3 points of Luck, and due to mythopoeic resonances causes an immediate re-roll of Birth Augur using the revived’s current Luck modifiers to determine the bonus or penalty.
- Command: Cast at -1d, a 28+ result using “LIVE!”, “REVIVE!”, etc. restores the deceased to life. However, their face is branded with the god’s holy symbol, and they suffer the effects of divine disapproval on any roll of a natural 1.
- Binding: Cast at -1d, a 26+ result restores the deceased to life. However, the revived’s life force is bound to the caster’s, and if either dies, they both die.
- Animate Dead: Cast at -2d (as a reversed animate living), 20+ result fully restores the deceased to life, with no apparent ill-effects.

 

As previously stated, the tethered soul can “see” its own corpse and feel anything done to it. This can be an exceedingly terrible thing, for it is one thing to be eaten by rats, but it is an entirely more excruciating thing to watch one’s own body be eaten by rats. Or to be drawn and quartered, then mutilated. There are many dark legends of souls tortured for trespasses both real or imagined. The first incident of torture/pain/suffering (judge’s discretion on what unit an incident is), the soul loses 1d3 points of Personality and must make a DC 10 + cumulative Personality lost to this form of harm (judge’s discretion) Will save; a success means that the soul has become desensitized, and the next incidence of the same only causes the loss of 1 point of Personality, with another Will save: Success on that means the soul has become numb to that form of suffering. Revival into a damaged body that cannot sustain life causes the loss of 2d3 Personality, and intentionally doing or repeating this to a victim is so wicked that gods and patrons may smite their servants who do so (unless they themselves are similarly wicked). A soul reduced to 0 or less Personality is irrevocably insane.