Pacts and Spirits: Giving Up Your Self for Power

 I'd been thinking about how I wanted to go about adding warlocks to Destination:Nowhere for a little while, because I wanted to base it on the kinds of pacts made in ChainsawMan, which doesn't lend itself to a four template class format very well.

And so, in favour of flavour, I've decided to go about it in a different way. Every game needs a way to get neat powers outside classes anyways, right?

First we need to reestablish some things about the world, and how spirits operate.

Spirits

Souls are the most common kinds of spirits, they drift around, doing whatever souls do, mostly invisible to humans. They are the spark that sets a forest ablaze, or the mote of wind whistling through the crags. By inhabiting a flesh sack, a soul can grant it sentience, it's own will and determination. It is through a common ritual imbuing that gibbering babies learn to form words. Humans, of course, are not the only species able to gain this sentience, but they most commonly possess it. It is also possible to lose your soul, and in turn lose what makes you unique, this is how men are driven to become like wild beasts, relinquishing their self.

In contrast, it is also possible to tether additional souls to your own, by doing this, you can send out these other souls to perform feats of magic. However, if you're not careful, you may allow another soul to domineer it's will over your body, altering your self along with it.

Artist

Guardians are the more rare spirits. They're more powerful, and choose to inhabit parts of the world, such as mountains, forest groves, or rivers. They manifest themselves from the land they inhabit, and gain followers from nearby souls. The will of a guardian spirit can manifest through the wills of their followers; thus, by garnering a large enough following, guardians can increase their power, influence, and domain, sometimes even putting themselves over other guardian spirits.

By choosing to imprint a larger part of a guardian spirit's will on your self, you can manifest aspects of that spirit. This is known as a pact. Any person may choose to accept a pact, though it is just as easy to be coerced or forced into taking one. If any person goes against the will established in a pact however, the consequences are often quite severe, often result in death or the loss of your soul.

Artist

There's one more class of spirits, known as angels. Angels inhabit celestial bodies, and thus rarely affect the goings on of those on Maamilla, both the name of the planet as well as the common name of it's angel. Angels imprint their will on entire celestial bodies, and thus it can be said that anything which comes from the earth, or rather all life, is a part of Maamilla. The natural instincts of this life are how Maamilla's will expresses itself, in order to keep its dwelling alive.

Pacts

A pact can be made with a guardian spirit or, more rarely, an angel. By letting the more powerful entity in on your Self, it influences aspects of your outward and inward appearance. Those imprinted by a spirit often show some physical trait of the spirit that controls them, and have parts of their personality affected by that spirits Will.

It is not uncommon to see entire villages which are under the influence of a guardian spirit, who may help protect them from attacks, as well as helping their livelihoods.

Cencayohtli

Domains: Cultivation, Burials, Vines.

Mark: shows as a hole peering into a hollow cavity in the forehead, looking inside it will show a weirdly distant rattling skull.

Gift: You don't require water to survive however, the longer you go without it, the more dried up you appear.
If you go a month without drinking water, you gain a permanently dried up appearance, and look not unalike to a hollow dried gourd in the shape of a man.

Imprint: You hate animals and they hate you. They'll either be violent towards you or give you a wide berth. If interrogated they will state that you smell like oppression, this is true and you are at least a little more tyrannical than you were before making this deal.

Atoyaatl-Cihuapille

Domains: Flowing Water, Smooth Stones, Farewells.

Mark: bright blue eyes which glow mildly in darkness.

Gift: You are incapable of drowning in water so long as it isn't stagnant.

Imprint: You forgo your name and Important belongings, no bond is permanent, and you can stay in no land forever.

Temazatl

Domains: Obsidian, Slumber, Dying Flames

Mark: Forearms that appear blackened and charred beginning from about halfway down the arm.

Gift: You are not harmed by reaching your arms into fire. The rest of your body and possessions are more than capable of burning up.

Imprint: After a significant achievement or victory, you must surrender an object of value to the fire. Apathy and inactivity is against your nature now.

Magic Item Ecology

     Magic items really just spells trapped in mundane objects. They don’t want to be trapped there, but there’s nothing they can do about it. If it’s a young magic item, it’ll probably want you to free it, it will also probably refuse to be used. There are some magic items that are fine with being magic items, those belong to the church though, and they would never let a heathen use them.

     Older magic items are either resigned to the fact that they are trapped, or are completely insane. No, seriously, if you intend for a magic item to be a particular spell, roll to see whether or not it’s an insane one, it’s probably mutated.

     You can talk to a magic item, but you need to coax it out first. Only once you’ve been able to successfully reason with it can you use its magical abilities.

     Magic items are generally some of the oldest spells to exist, mostly because they’ve been left untouched for so long, and if they’re not insane, they might have quite a bit of insight into the past. Don’t listen to the insane ones though, they’ll corrupt your mind, make you question why you’re even here.

How This Works In Your Game

     This doesn’t mean magic items are literally just items that cast spells, they basically have effects that make sense based on what the spell is combined with what they are. But you can't just have them use their effect on command unless you have some kind of agreement. Usually, you have to convince them to use their powers.

     Insane magic items are mutated spells, but they probably still think they work like they’re supposed to, If they tell you this, they are lying.

A List of Magic Items

These spells were taken from Skerples' 100 Orthodox Wizard Spells, and I plan on making a magic item for all of them in a separate post, but for now here's five:

Format:

[Spell Name][Item Type]

[Sanity][Personality]

[Ability]

1. Wending Bolt Shield

    Insane Bloodthirsty, will bash itself against creatures it sees

    Can fly out of your hand and bash itself into the nearest creature within ten feet, it can take any  

    path to do this.

2. Roaring Flames A Golden Bonsai

    Insane (obviously) an arsonist, it will always be muttering and distracting you.

    It can cover itself with fire, this fire is as bright as a torch, but will deal 1d6 damage to anyone   

    holding it.

3. Heroic Leap Dagger

    Sane Has an over-inflated sense of justice, naive, wants to slay a dragon.

    The dagger can jump 20' in any direction at high velocities and stab into creatures, make a strength 

    check to hang on.

4. Embroider Deed Tapestry

    Sane Very knowledgeable of the church's past, but impartial toward them, eager to tell stories.

    It reweave's its threads to tell tales told to it in the past, any story told to it will be remembered, 

    and it can play it on command, you can also ask it to tell a story, and it will happily do so.

5. Embed Memory Bottle

    Insane Hungry, it's always hungry... And it only wants that hunger to be satisfied.

    The bottle stores and mixes memories, and then give them back (If you can convince him). He 

    currently has a memory of some blasphemy, along with whatever other weird things you can come 

    up with, meaning you will have to pass the bad memories off to some poor peasant before using it.