Item Seed: Wirestrictors.

…Ick. And I wrote it.

Wirestrictors

Generally speaking, necromancers prefer to bind dead human souls into items, instead of animals; mostly because it’s easier to suppress a human soul’s innate intelligence and ability to understand language than it is to boost an animal’s.  In fact, it’s largely impossible to do that with animal souls at all. What you rip out of the body is what you get, and if what you got was something not capable of doing anything elaborate, you had better stick with simple.

Wirestrictors are pretty simple.  Take one constrictor snake, rip out the soul, then shove it into a long, strong metal wire (showing no care in either the ripping or shoving: you want the snake soul upset). Then set a secondary spell that will render the snake soul ‘unconscious’ until a pre-chosen triggering mechanism is activated.  Coat the wire in something that will hide the discoloration and reek of wrongness.  Attach the ends to a brooch or gem or whatnot (not too strongly).  

Continue reading Item Seed: Wirestrictors.

Item Seed: Spirit Infusion.

Blame this.

Spirit Infusion

Creating a Spirit Infusion is relatively easy, or at least not very involved: collect rainwater in a clean gallon container.   Wait for a ghost to drown in it.  They will, if you wait long enough, and maybe entice them with ghost-attracting smells or sounds (specific ghost attractions vary by culture and campaign).  You’ll know when you have a ghost drowned in your water when you look at your container using an Icelandic sunstone and see the distinctive greenish-purple glow.  
Continue reading Item Seed: Spirit Infusion.

Adventure Seed: Operation MIDNIGHT PUMPKIN.

Blame this.

Operation MIDNIGHT PUMPKIN

What they’re doing in the airports is a facade. A sham. A ruse, to keep our attention occupied. The TSA’s real focus is much, much more esoteric.  After all, who would think to look there for a secret coven of herbalists and natural alchemists?

Don’t think that such things exist in the modern world?  OK.  But consider the following herbal ingredients:

Continue reading Adventure Seed: Operation MIDNIGHT PUMPKIN.

Creature Seed: Textworms.

When writing this, I kept having the strangest feeling that I’ve written something like this before. But if I had, I couldn’t find it. Weird.

Textworms

These… things… are conceptual descendants of “printer’s devils” and the like; and pretty much everybody involved in, and aware of, the situation wants the devils back.  At least you could communicate with a printer’s devil.  The only language Textworms understand is the one spoken by a burning flame.

Continue reading Creature Seed: Textworms.

Item Seed: The New Zombie Cookbook: Simple Recipes For Busy Lives.

The New Zombie Cookbook: Simple Recipes For Busy Lives

Physical description: The New Zombie Cookbook is a 300 page book, profusely illustrated – very profusely illustrated – that offers a few chapters on ingredients (zombies), utensils (cleavers feature prominently), and, most importantly ,recipes. Needless to say, the author (Elizabeth Riley), publisher/editor (Vyhle Publishers, Pittsburgh), and illustrator/photographer (R.U. Pickman) are unknown to the American publishing industry – despite the fact that the book was supposedly written in 1982.

Continue reading Item Seed: The New Zombie Cookbook: Simple Recipes For Busy Lives.

Item seed: Liber Maledictionem Ingredientia.

Liber Maledictionem Ingredientia

Description: the core book itself dates anywhere from 1400 to 1925. It lists (in Latin) a variety of ‘recipes’ for curses that can be placed on objects, animals, and people. What makes every version of this book different from the others are the marginal notes: typically, a copy of the Liber Maledictionem Ingredientia will have most of its white spaces covered with notes, lists, scribbles, and in a few cases, arguments between competing sets of annotations. The book also typically reeks of evil, or at least poor life choices. Continue reading Item seed: Liber Maledictionem Ingredientia.

Gaming spell seed: noclip.

noclip

This particular spell is infamous for the sheer number of aspiring mages that it’s put into involuntary psychiatric care.  The basic effect is simple: invoke this spell, and for the next minute or so (technically, for as long as you can hold your breath) you can move through walls, float in the air, sink under the ground, that sort of thing.  It doesn’t give direct protection from injuries, but obviously being able to duck through a concrete wall is going to make it easier to not get shot.  If the spell ends while the subject is inside a solid object, the spell shoves the subject to the closest open area; if in a liquid, the subject is now immersed in it.  If the subject is merely suspended in mid-air, the subject falls.

So, why the psychiatric care? Because noclip hurts people’s brains, that’s why.  The more you know about either magic or physics, the more disturbing this spell gets. Repeated use of the spell – as in, more than once in a very long while – puts the subject at risk of entering a dementia spiral of increasing detachment followed by self-destructive behavior as his psyche unsuccessfully tries to process the spell’s effect on reality itself.  It would appear that only the gods themselves can safely handle God Mode…

Adventure seed: the Heuristic-Empathic Roving Database (H.E.R.D.)

Blame this.

Heuristic-Empathic Roving Database (H.E.R.D.)

Well… strictly speaking, the people behind H.E.R.D. didn’t deliberately genetically-engineer a bunch of sheep into something that could serve as a distributed computer network.  What they simply tried to do was genetically-engineer the sheep so that they would produce natural fiber optic cables. The logic seemed sound enough: while inorganic cables certainly work, you require an industrial infrastructure to make them. There are obvious advantages of being able to grow your own, particularly if it could be done without requiring expensively trained technicians. And it wouldn’t even hurt the sheep; after all, they get sheared every year anyway.

Fortunately, somebody didn’t carry the one when making the critical calculations, or something: the sheep didn’t come out quite as designed.  They got the fiber-optic wool, sure – but what they also got was sheep that are also the equivalent of an organic motherboard.  And do not think too hard on that.  Seriously, don’t: doing so has caused at least one biologist to be led out of the room in restraints while she screamed “STOP IT!!!!! Genetics doesn’t WORK like that!!!!!”

Continue reading Adventure seed: the Heuristic-Empathic Roving Database (H.E.R.D.)

Location seed: the Inn of the Woeful Dog.

Annnnd blame this.

The Inn of the Woeful Dog

Whether or not this place (typically found in the better sort of ‘where the walls of reality are thin’ neighborhoods) qualifies as a ‘refuge’ or ‘trap’ depends on your point of view. Some more-or-less involuntary residents think it’s both. But if it is a trap, at least it’s not one with active malice behind it. Continue reading Location seed: the Inn of the Woeful Dog.

Creature seed: Scorpibones.

And blame this.

Scorpibones

Because necromancers have to go to school like everybody else; and sometimes they get bored in the lab.  Admittedly, you have to be very bored indeed to make what looks like a very badly-designed skeletal scorpion out of fish bones and a mouse skull, but that’s modern education for you. At least they’re doing something involving their field of study, right?

Continue reading Creature seed: Scorpibones.