Soul Crafting Part 2: Soul Burning

Posted by: Jason Silverain / Category: , , ,

Fingertips dancing across her bare porcelain skin a relaxed sigh escaped the demoness lips as reclined across her throne holding the crystal to her breast, its crimson glow throbbing like a still beating heart each pulse signified yet another fragment of a mortals soul dedicated to her.
The throbbing quicken as did the demoness matching its pace until a surge of pure energy brought the moment to its climax, the final beat no mere fragment but the entire soul of one who had pledged themselves to the succubus.

Isolde slowly slipped to her feet cradling the crystal gingerly, a finger slowly caressing the rune that otherwise marred its smooth surface as she now strode towards her private chambers. she could have been enraged by the loss of the cult drawing the souls forth to inflict extricating torments upon them like her sire had done in the past but in honesty to herself she found the process to be wasteful at best and tedious at worst. The mayor had been loyal and reasonably successful to a point, while her colleagues would of shunned the animal sacrifices and most likely even the soul fragments of her worshippers as worthless they lacked her foresight and ingenuity.

Even now each fragment gave her a link to the souls as they entered their planes of afterlife, a dozen unwitting spies a number that would only grow with her collection and the animal fragments while not as valuable gave her the material to experiment. A self satisfied smile crossed her lips as she remember her first creation, an amalgamation of fragments the ghostly cockerel had acted and appeared not unlike its mortal counterpart a seeming whole creature to a casual onlooker who could not see the pure chaos and conflict as the fragments fought for control. It had been an exciting experiment to see just what made up the very essence of a creature and a step towards creating a new kind of creature whose creation would blaspheme towards the celestials and gods themselves.


This second method of soul crafting focuses on the use of an already captured soul that has come into the possession of the spell caster, the most common occurrence of how this could happen would be a casting of Trap the Soul or Soul Bind though rare materials such as Thinuan from Complete Warrior may also contain souls. In regards to the last article the Soul Gem created by Ritual Sacrifice is not suitable for the Soul Burning technique below as it only captures part of a soul.

Below is a formula I’ve used in some of my past games regarding the worth of a soul in crafting through a method I’ve called soul burning, the aim was to create a simple and balanced ruleset and so far it has worked well in play.

Soul Burning

Soul Burning is the method of transmuting the very soul into raw magic, due to the methods necromantic nature any item infused in this manner gains a necromantic aura of caster level equal to the creature whose soul is been used hit dice. On items with an existing necromantic aura this stacks with the magic aura in place.
As stated in the first article obtaining knowledge of this method should be difficult (DC30 Knowledge Arcane to discover through conventional means) and using this is an inherently evil act, it does hold the advantage that it can be used on items like a Lich phylactery with a contested Will save between the caster and Lich.

Determining the experience points value of a soul:
Base value: 100xp.
Level Adjustment:+10xp to base value per point of level adjustment.
Unique Bloodline: + 10xp to base value.
Arcane spellcaster: +30xp to base value.
Divine spellcaster: + 40xp to base value.
Final value: Base value X character level.

A unique bloodline bonus is applied to creatures with bloodline feats such as sorcerers or are descended from creatures such as outsiders or dragons, however this does not stack with the bonus for level adjustment. For example a tiefling would be considered to have a unique bloodline but already receives a bonus due to its level adjustment.   

So for an example:

For a gem contains the soul of a Level 10 Half Dragon Sorcerer the value of crafting experience would be:
100 + 30 (Level adjustment) + 30 (Arcane spellcaster) = Base value 160xp
160 x 10 (character level) for a final total of 1600 crafting experience.

To use this crafting experience to create items that do not normally require xp cost, the traditional exchange is 5GP per 1XP meaning that in the above example the Half Dragon Sorcerer soul would be worth 8000 gold pieces.
It goes without saying if the experience points are spent as crafting experience points the soul is destroyed and cannot be restored short of a wish or miracle spell. This particular rule set is still expanding so if anyone has any further ideas for determining the value of a soul feel free to leave comments.

Reluctantly releasing her grip upon the crystal she slotted it into the special grove she had prepared, a centrepiece to the small collection she already possessed she intended to fill many more over the next century. As her fingertips ran across its runic surface one last time she briefly lamented the loss of the Mayor of Pryham as a pawn, a strange sympathy for he would not be the first or last of her lovers to be failed by the incompetence of those who followed him. However it would be only a mere decade or two before another would call her either for a pact or her more physical properties giving her another foothold on the material plane. Or perhaps sooner it seemed as she felt a familiar pull upon her essence her, a sly smile crossing her lips as she recognised the ritual. It seemed the Mayor had passed his secrets onto another who was even now drawing her away from her sanctum towards the material plane, her surroundings fading she allowed herself one further moment of self satisfaction before nothing but hot ash remained where she once stood.


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Warhammer, Hobby shops and Cold Steel

Posted by: Jason Silverain / Category: , , , , ,


I must apologise first of all for posting this rather late in the day, my plans to update were rather up heaved by the sudden appearance of a few members of my old gaming group which has resulted into a weekend of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (3rd Edition) and Only War  the latest of Games Workshops stand alone systems.
For those of you unfamiliar with the systems there are some in-depth reviews available at RPG.net for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay or for a more personal review And She Games is a nice alternative view on the system.

I do rather enjoy it however my own personal annoyance with the system is that any race that is not human find themselves lagging behind in class progression, and that many of the expansions are horribly expensive and the game is designed for the maximum number of extra card sets to be required to purchase on top of the original game.

Only War on the other hand is much harder to find reviews for (as well as an actual copy of the game) but my main recommendation is that done by Simon at Fifty Shades Of Geek. In all honestly it mirrors most my own options on the game from my experience playing it but in the future I do hope to share some of the custom regiments that my group have invented.

In other news I want to give a little call out to a recently opened hobby shop in my local gaming area, there are far and few independent shops of this type anymore so I feel like I should do my part as its little off a beaten path.
 Beggarz Kanyon owned by a Mr Andy Vallely a Star Wars Collector himself stocks a variety of original pieces such as Action Men and Rock Em Sock Em Robots to modern toys like Minecraft Papercraft and Adventure Time books and figures.
The website is available Here
While a Google Street View and address is Here

Regarding progress on Encumbrance things have been slow this month as I have recently have been enquiring about taking further training course or education, however once I have a work pattern once more progress with increase as I can better plan my time spent upon it.

Finally as the day approach to me been another year older and hopefully wiser, I am trying to decide to what to spend my short lived income increase upon. While I no longer do medieval reenactment as a hobby I do enjoy still performing my sword training for exercise. However after my bastard sword was damage due to a weakness in the hilt cause by a forge error I have been force to use Bokkens which don't feel right when using a European fighting style.   

However I recently discovered this which are apparently training blades made of the heaviest grade polypropylene (The stuff plastic chairs are made of). So hopefully I'll get my hands on one soon and give some feedback.


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