Servant to the Unlife - A Warhammer Fantasy Quest
- Thread starter Prospalz
- Start date
Character sheet and miscellania
Character sheet.
Core Statistics.
Core Statistics.
Martial:10 – you are not a general or an experienced leader. You know the bare basics.
Diplomacy: 5 – You are a scholar and a servant of the gods, not a socialite. You have a horrifying apparition of death to whisper secrets in your ear, if needs be.
Stewardship:7 – you skills at resource management starts and end at making demands. Sometimes, politely.
Intrigue:10 - You expect the worst from people.
Faith:16 - You know gods of Nehekhara. You felt their touch.
Learning: 20 - The mysteries of death are laid bare.
For these stats and any further statistics - excessively low stats do not necessarily mean inability. Sometimes, they stand-in for a complete unwillingness to engage with the subject, or utter disrespect for the field.
Traits
Dutiful – for whatever personal reason, you care about your duty to the mortuary cult, and, by extension, your mission in Vampire's court. Narrative bonuses to the relevant actions.Necrotecture – you know how souls and matter interact, and how to imbue one with the other. More, you know how to do so in useful ways and in useful shapes.
Curse Of Eternity – for whatever reason, you find that you time-aspected magics are stronger.
Night Parade – for whatever reason, you have an immensely easier time than normal maintaining ghostly servants around you. Your ghostly retinue tends to supplement you strong skills and shore up your weaknesses.
Isolated Mortuary Cultist – your outpost haven't been in contact with Nehekhara for actual aeons.
Bitter – your experiences with the world left you expecting the worst from anyone but your closest family and companions.
Kingdom of the Lost - you a child of a kingdom that is nowhere to be found.
Mutations, Arcane Marks And Other Bodily Changes
Touch of Usirian, minor – you grow feathers in your hair. Trivial to conceal. Ow, ow, ow.Immortal Flesh – you drunk an incomplete version of the elixir that imbued Liche Priests with eternal life. You flesh is resistant to death.
Contacts
Mikhail – an idiot and a boor who bothers people late in the evening. Deals with the matters of intrigue, supposedly.Yulia – a ghoul woman who takes care of "whatever beasties Ferdinand picks up." Commands a small pack of ghouls... Her control is tenuous.
Albert – Another servant. Supposedly, takes care about material necessities. Second-hand impressions that leaves much to be desired.
Ferdinand – an ambitious, immortal thing in shape of the man. Loves to posture. Seemingly incapable of acquiring good servants.
Alwin - a faint wisp of a ghost, responsible for reconstruction of the keep, and bullied into many other things besides.
Miscellaneous mortal servants - you can't be bothered.
Belongings
A small, fluctuating number of miscellaneous ghosts; intimidated, obedient. Not worth remembering.
One Banshee, somewhat mysterious. Calls herself Lathain, clearly a false name. Uses her voice and ethereal instruments to control minds andwinds of magic. Found herself whispering advice in your ear when you are dealing with the other people. Her keening wail is deadly.
One Sylvanian Noble, slightly scuffed. Goes by Helmut Von Drak, is allegedly knowledgeable about local affairs. Possess skills typical of warrior-nobility, but is somewhat unused to his form.
Small pile worth of corpses, unused. Some might have previously belonged to someone of note.
Miscellaneous ritualistic tools. Stone carving tools. Wards against scrying. Your work clothes, your traveling clothes, you best fancy robe.
One dungeon, unfurnished. This should be its own category, but alas.
Money:
…No.
Spellbook:
Yes.
Because this is not a quest about pig herders exploding when you breath wrong, spells are separated into those that do not hurt you very bad on bad rolls, and those that do. The former are minor magic. The latter are Major magic. Perhaps, eventually, you shall learn Cataclysmic magic.
Your magic is a mix of elemental manipulation of Shyish and Nehekharan divine chants. Almost always you can do without one element or the other, although potency and reliability of your spells suffers.
Minor magic.
Minor prestidigitations - Make people feel the cold of death, kill grievously injured and those who given up on life, manifest minor omens of death, etcetera. Minor effects as appropriate.Usurian's incantation of Awareness – allows spellcaster to see through the eyes of the undead they control.
Usurian's incantation of Knowledge – You are allowed to ask the dead questions. As many as you'd like. Only works on spirits and corpses in the vicinity.
Gaze of Ulatep – gain awareness of corpses in close vicinity. Works on undead.
Soul Jar – extract and imprison a soul in a specially prepared contained.
Binding of Usurian – imbue an object with a previously captured soul.
Spell of Immortality – after casting, the target does not die regardless of injuries inflicted for the duration of the current scene.
Ptra's nostalgic gaze – allows one to see the events that transpired in a location of casting. Works better in places of death or endings.
Bargain of Death – you can summon the spirits of the recently deceased to serve you. Should they attempt to betray you, dire fate shall befall them.
Ptra's willful negligence - you freeze the target in time for several hours to a day. Could be extended or empowered with set-up. Interacts unfavourably with immense raw forces.
Faint Embers rebirth - After casting, the target appears to die to all but most through examinations. To the target, it appears as if they are stuck in some sort of liminal realm while experiencing confusing visions, occasionally experiencing strange visitations. After several days, they rise - their appearance changes, and all of their wounds are healed. Does not cure arcane marks. Does not reverse age, although somewhat mitigates age-related infirmities. Does not work if majority of the body is missing. Inconvenient to cast in combat.
Death and Sky Bargain - Designate a target; a living being, phenomena, organization. After casting, receive a bonus on all actions meant to facilitate the target's end. Become strongly compelled to seek the target's end for a month. Requires a long ritual.
Major Magic.
Incantation of Beckoning – you summon as many of your ghostly servants as desired to you, regardless of distance. Takes several hours. Works everywhere.
Djdra incantation of summoning – You re-unite souls of your dead servants with suitable bodies. Could be cast as a minor spell.
Horekhah's incantation of smiting – You briefly but dramatically boost speed of a chosen group of friendly targets.
Curse of Eternities – Large group of enemies swiftly ages to dust. Affects terrain.
All major magics can be cast as Minor for reduced effect. All spells on the list are safe to cast in safe environment. What constitutes a "safe" environment varies, but your base of operations/home/etc always qualifies. Unless it is under attack.
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Omegahugger
Inattentive Idiot
[X] Plan: No rest for the dead
I like tesing Rebirth on the Ghouls, I think that could give quite the illuminating results.
It is a bit early to deem him incompetent just because Nefertari is his greatest Servant.
I like tesing Rebirth on the Ghouls, I think that could give quite the illuminating results.
The Vampire Quest shinies went "elsewhere". Non-zero chance Ferdinand is rocking something like Vlad's Ring of Not-Dying-When-Killed or similar.
It is a bit early to deem him incompetent just because Nefertari is his greatest Servant.
- Location
- Belgium
[X] Plan: Funerary Goods
She's pretty devout and has that as part of her charecter.
A good reputation matters.
I like her relationship with the Banshee.
Assuming people worship Chaos is messed up, dude is not good at his job.
Just the situation for her skillset.
She's a scary good spellcaster with impressive minons.
So he's likely hard invested into personal skills and artifacts good to know.
That's fair given that Cult names make sense.
So she's competent in Martial and Intrigue but not good, can't be bothered to be Diplomatic and knows enough Stewardship to scrap by. Well good news is that lower stats should hopefully be easier to raise.
She's a Faith and Learning monster which is fitting for the build we gave her.
Ah good to know.
The traits are defining parts of her.
Getting more beneficial things like this would be good.
Love the shady thrown at everyone.
We should get some more.
She's a mage build and that maters.
A pretty impressive arsenal.
Having some big guns is useful.
That's my read on things to.
[X] Plan: Funerary Goods
This feels like the best idea this is adapting to the local area and job, as well as doing the job and helping our Mortuary Cult.
[X] Plan: No rest for the dead
This isn't that terrible. I mean OK we probably have a better set of advisors than the vampire, but finding a sane ghoul isn't easy and the northerner could be good with people, it's just that Nefertari is a atrocious at social matters and used to thinking of people from the north as barbarians. Don't judge him by how he deals with us.
I do like the idea of using the spell on the ghouls, maybe we'll get something useful.
This isn't that terrible. I mean OK we probably have a better set of advisors than the vampire, but finding a sane ghoul isn't easy and the northerner could be good with people, it's just that Nefertari is a atrocious at social matters and used to thinking of people from the north as barbarians. Don't judge him by how he deals with us.
I do like the idea of using the spell on the ghouls, maybe we'll get something useful.
- Location
- United States
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Plan: Funerary Goods
[X] A lonely monstrosity.
Edit: Adding in a name vote.
[X] Verona Mina Harkon
[X] A lonely monstrosity.
Edit: Adding in a name vote.
[X] Verona Mina Harkon
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[X] Plan: Funerary Goods
I require more resources for swanky statuary. Also I am kind of surprised by how chill the Nehekharan Pantheon is with necromancy. Granted I don't know much of Nehekharan magic prior to Nagash inventing necromancy and using it to lay waste to his nation, so maybe they were conjuring ghosts willy-nilly back then.
I require more resources for swanky statuary. Also I am kind of surprised by how chill the Nehekharan Pantheon is with necromancy. Granted I don't know much of Nehekharan magic prior to Nagash inventing necromancy and using it to lay waste to his nation, so maybe they were conjuring ghosts willy-nilly back then.
- Location
- Hollister
[X] Plan: No rest for the dead
The premise of the story is that out Greatgrandfather was willing to work with the vampires, that inherently implies an acceptance of necromancy since they are animated by it. I suspect our little outpost was founded by people with rather more fringe opinions on the use of Dhar and the adaptation of foreign magic, hence why they were out here at the end of the world as far as they Nehekarans were concerned. That or they adapted in the meantime to keep the lights on without support from back home.
Avoiding the pertinent question as to why exactly The Outpost is in the middle of nowhere even by standards of rather-expansive territories of Nehekhara shortly after Settra's death - the whole carousel started with Liche Priests.
When they figured out how to bind their souls to their bodies to "live" forever, the rest of the tradition was irrevocably shaped by knowledge acquired in that process. Then they promised that and better to their Kings, eventually, as a part of their foundational mythos. The research never stopped.
When Nagash was born, he came into an empire who was obsessed with death, and very busy trying to cheat it - which resulted in a lot of knowledge about how to ask Usirian for... various divine favours. After his first defeat, for... various reasons... the tilt toward seeking powers of death got even worse.
In short we are the last representatives of a decadent mageocracy just one step shy of ultimate heresy. Nagash was particularly evil, and particularly brilliant, but the path he walked was one others opened.
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I've seen Dice Roller • Orokos.com used on this site before.
[X] Plan: Funerary Goods
this plan appears to lack a companion vote. The masterful thief will likely help us acquire artifacts and resources, the investigator will help with finding magic practitioners (i.e. assist in our main duty to the cult) and avoid attention/stay beneath the radar, and the monstrosity will likely serve as a bodyguard role and help with deterrence, intimidation, and general muscle.
[X] A jaded investigator
[X] Verona Mina Harkon
My vote for the pseudonym is Verona Mina Harkon. Because I like the multiple references, I think the name sounds sufficiently aristocratic, is vaguely local, and slightly pious due to Verena being the goddess of knowledge.
this plan appears to lack a companion vote. The masterful thief will likely help us acquire artifacts and resources, the investigator will help with finding magic practitioners (i.e. assist in our main duty to the cult) and avoid attention/stay beneath the radar, and the monstrosity will likely serve as a bodyguard role and help with deterrence, intimidation, and general muscle.
[X] A jaded investigator
[X] Verona Mina Harkon
My vote for the pseudonym is Verona Mina Harkon. Because I like the multiple references, I think the name sounds sufficiently aristocratic, is vaguely local, and slightly pious due to Verena being the goddess of knowledge.
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[X] Plan: Funerary Goods
[X] A lonely monstrosity.
[X] A lonely monstrosity.
Reaction Post
It's been a while since I did one of these, but there is so much fun stuff in the last update that I felt the urge to
It would help to learn what the deal is with the servants. They have to know something funny is going on with all the ghosts and ghouls, but how much precisely and how do they see the lord of the manor? Are they loyal? Resentful? Do we have to worry about someone poisoning Nefertari's lunch one day? These are the questions that could use some kind of mortal touch.
This raises metaphysical questions. The elf ghost certainly would not have had a reason to be bound into the service of Usurian the human God, did he just put up a call for willing powerful ghosts to help his faithful servant in her hour of need, or is he the same as one of the elven death gods? Neru, Ereth Khial and Morai Heg are all potential candidates, not that I imagine she would tell us even if she knows. That is the kind of thing that might upset a god and especially if it is the Pale Queen it would be most unwise to piss them off as a ghost.
Case in point with the faith. I like the dynamic between the two by the way. I wonder if we could get her a body so she can enjoy those mortal comforts once more, at least in part? Would she take a human corpse or would we have to find an elven one? That would be something of a large ask this far from the ocean or any of the wood elf realms. Then again there are supossed to be small settlements all over the place left from before the War of the Beard and as far back as we are there will be more of them and larger.
Interesting that she can assist in casting like this. I wonder how much magic Lathien can pull off on her own and how we might be able to enhance it.
That last bit is a plot hook if ever I heard it. It's probably vampires given where we are, though it could also be Chaos. Either way someone to kill and loot along the way as well as solidifying the loyalty of our bodyguard and barbarian interpreter.
So he was shot and then someone went out of their way to fuck up his soul... presumably because he knew something. Lahmians maybe? Could still be Chaos, but I can't think of why Chaos would have left his skull lying around instead of using it for something.
Hey, a member of the ruling family, useful. Also we might want to think about shoving him intoa body sooner rather than later so he can use his full skills. We do not really need him floating around etherially to do his job, either of his jobs really.
We are never going to be able to pass for a native no matter how well we improve our Reikspiel. I wonder where we could pretend to be from. 'The south' sounds natural, but they would be as alien to Nefertari as the northerners. We might want to go with a big lie and say something like 'Ind', that is what Vlad did when he claimed to be a Kislevite noble.
No! Bad Liche priest! No killing off the populace, or there won't be anyone to pay tax later.
Ah yes, getting the banshee to sing us to sleep, just Normal People Stuff (TM). We need some kind of non-spooky companion just to keep us grounded
This guy is interesting... on the one hand he apparently disproves of 'nastiness', but he seems resigned to catering to it. What hold does Ferdinand have on him I wonder? And why does he trust a northerner of all people to be the spymaster in Dark Magic central? If anyone could sneak a vampire hunter in while the master is sleeping... It has to be a pretty good hold is the point.
Nefertari at least knows enough about the Dark Gods to recognize their most common Norscan masks, that is useful. We should be able to spot most cults
That settles the question of if Morr is Usurian then. He's not and he probably likes us as much as we like him i.e. not at all. Still maybe we could replace his worship in time.
A sane ghoul... that is not common. She must have been uncommonly willful she can't just have drank from vampires, that gets you a stronger ghoul, but not necessary a saner one.
No, it is entirely reasonable, you two just have a terminal case of Sigmar-head in which wizard and priest are distinct roles. Most of the world does not think like that.
The temple of Morr is selling fresh corpses for ghoul fodder?
I mean on the one hand good for us they are not too pious, but also if they are that far off script I wonder if we could convince them to convert to a better death god. Enshrining our tradition as the local death cult could have large benefits.
I think this Albert is Ferdinand's diplomat. Given the nature of some of his other advisors I think he might be a tad overworked.
That was not for show given the circumstances. Our 'friend' here has some messure of genuine piety, again for the Northern pantheon. Good thing we do not have much beef with them.
Yulia is our best bet of an ally on the council, she is impressed with our magic and who knows maybe we could fix some of the issues of her ghoul-ness with our magic. I do not imagine she enjoys the bone spikes and green skin.
Already gave my thoughts on the vote. I think the investigator is most useful here since we need information more than we need muscle or treaures stolen. There is a reason why one of the options above is 'level the village'. We are pretty damn powerful by the standards of bumfuck!Sylvania.
[X] Plan: No rest for the dead
[X] A jaded investigator.
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Right. The discussion seems to be sufficiently dead, so I'll just start plinking away at the next update. Funerary Goods won.
So, home renovation, budget war, certain kind of investigation and Baron visitation. Leading plan didn't vote on companion, but overall people seems to want Jaded Investigator - do tell me if that isn't so.
EDIT - by which I mean, I am leaving that particular part of the vote open for now.
So, home renovation, budget war, certain kind of investigation and Baron visitation. Leading plan didn't vote on companion, but overall people seems to want Jaded Investigator - do tell me if that isn't so.
EDIT - by which I mean, I am leaving that particular part of the vote open for now.
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