Revision as of 09:01, 3 April 2010

Ikselam's Level Five Artifacts

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Compass of the Heart's True Desire</i>

Artifact •••••
Starmetal compass
Commitment: 4 (starmetal)

[#MuteRequiem] <i>Mute Requiem

Artifact •••••
Soulsteel grand daiklave
Speed -3 Accuracy +3 Damage +11L Defense +0 (including material bonus)
Speed +10 Accuracy +2 Damage +12L Defense -1 Rate 3 (PowerCombat, excluding material bonus)
Commitment: 8 (soulsteel), plus hearthstone

This soulsteel grand daiklave is an ultimate weapon created by the Pharaoh Who Dreams of Unbroken Silence. It is currently wielded by Hollow Elegy, a powerful Abyssal Exalted in the Pharaoh's service. Both daiklave and deathknight have been known for less than a year, but their infamy has already spread far and wide, and many heroes have been struck down by the frigid black blade and its eerily silent wielder.

The Mute Requiem has the same specifications as a normal grand daiklave. Its surface is matte-black, rimed with delicate traceries of frost. Unlike most soulsteel weapons, it absorbs sound rather than emitting it. A sphere of total silence, twenty yards in radius, extends from the blade at all times. Within this zone, the air is totally still; vibrations of any kind are completely muffled, and even the fiercest of winds are snuffed out instantly as they reach the perimeter. No sound made outside the sphere can penetrate into it, and nothing inside the sphere produces sound of any kind. This extends to sounds and vibrations transmitted through the earth or other materials (taut strings and the like), and even magical spells or Charms. The penalty for fighting blind doubles within the sphere of silence, and Charms or other abilities which work by sensing or producing sound or air movement will not function.

Sound is not the only thing absorbed by the daiklave. To a being with the ability to sense Essence flows, the Mute Requiem is surrounded by a huge whirlpool of Essence, spiralling into the black blade and vanishing like water down a drain. Anyone within the zone of silence will feel this effect, as the very life-force is drawn out of their bodies. Characters lose one mote from their Essence pools for each turn spent inside the zone (peripheral goes first), and suffer +1 to the difficulty of all actions as numbing lethargy spreads through their limbs. In addition, any being with an Essence score reduces it by one while they are within twenty yards of Mute Requiem. This is a true reduction, and affects the victim's Essence pool, their ability to use and withstand Charms, and anything else for which the permanent Essence score is used.

Curiously, the Mute Requiem seems to affect death Essence even more strongly; ghosts and the undead lose two motes per turn, take all actions at +2 difficulty, and lose two points of permanent Essence while inside the area of effect. These increased penalties do not apply to Abyssal Exalted, although Deathlords are affected.

If Mute Requiem reduces a character's Essence to zero or below, that character immediately begins losing points of Stamina at a rate of one per turn. When their Stamina reaches zero, they die, their soul completely consumed by the frigid blade. The only way to stop the Stamina drain is to move outside the zone of silence; lost Stamina dots return at the rate of one per turn as long as the character's Essence is above zero. If Essence has been reduced to zero, Stamina loss will continue at a slower rate: one point per day rather than per turn.

Essence dots lost to Mute Requiem are harder to reclaim. They do not immediately reappear after exiting the sword's sphere of influence; rather, victims may roll their remaining permanent Essence once each day (starting the day after they exited the zone of silence), keeping a running tally of the successes. Willpower and/or Virtues may be used on this roll as normal. Raising one's Essence back to its normal level requires a number of successes equal to twice the character's normal Essence score. Thus, raising Essence from one back to two would require four successes, while regaining one's fifth dot would require a total of ten successes. On a botch, the Essence reduction becomes permanent and may only be remedied through the expenditure of experience points.

None of the penalties detailed above apply to the Mute Requiem's wielder, except for the silence effect.

Mute Requiem drains motes from a target on a successful hit, just as a normal soulsteel weapon does. All such motes are consumed by the blade. Anyone killed by Mute Requiem will not leave a ghost behind. Spirits and ghosts killed by it are permanently dead.

The daiklave has settings for four hearthstones, but only three of them provide any benefit to the wielder. The fourth feeds Essence directly into the daiklave. Mute Requiem will immediately become dormant if no hearthstones are connected to it. In this state, it is no more than a large, unwieldy chunk of what appears to be wrought iron.

Mute Requiem requires a commitment of 8 motes.

Scarab of Unparalleled Health

Artifact •••••
Orichalcum scarab
Commitment: 8 (orichalcum)

The Solar physician Jora Sen-Sera was renowned throughout Creation for his knowledge of medicine and the many different scarab-shaped artifacts he created, all of them designed to promote good health. The Scarab of Unparalleled Health was his greatest invention, created for his only child, Juna Sai-Sera. When the girl was born, she was sickly and weak; Jora's diagnosis revealed that she had less than a year to live. Both he and his wife, the Lunar Exalted Perspicacious Owl, were desperate to save the child, and immediately turned their tremendous wisdom and learning to finding a method to extend the infant's life.

Finally, after twelve months of intensive research and construction, Jora was forced to test a prototype artifact on his daughter, who was at death's door. Happily, the Scarab of Unparalleled Health proved even more effective than he had hoped, and Juna became completely healthy overnight. As the years passed, she grew up into a vivacious, intelligent woman, eventually Exalting into the Waxing Moon Caste and bringing much honor and happiness to her parents with her numerous deeds of bravery and kindness.

The Scarab of Unparalleled Health is a large orichalcum scarab, roughly the size of an average woman's palm. Its legs are each tipped with inch-long needles. When activated with the commitment of 8 motes and placed on a person's sternum, the scarab's belly immediately sinks through the skin and melds with the breastbone, anchoring itself securely to the wearer. The needles then plunge into the wearer's body, piercing into the aorta and five auspicious essence centers.

At this point, the scarab's effects begin to be felt. The first needle begins introducing tiny golden motes into the wearer's bloodstream, while the other five bring the essence flows of her body into harmony. The motes quickly circulate throughout her veins, and allow the scarab to instantaneously diagnose any illness or injury she may suffer. The scarab can then command the motes to move to the place they are most needed and begin repairing the damage and stimulating the wearer's body to heal with the maximum possible efficiency. The essence-balancing effect aids in this, as well as granting significant protection against disease, poisoning, and various harmful energies.

In game terms, the scarab's wearer heals lethal and bashing damage at ten times the normal rate, and aggravated damage at twice the normal rate; these multipliers apply in full to magical effects which erase damage, but not to those which simply convert damage of type to another (so a Lunar with Wound-Knitting Power would heal 10L per turn instead of 1L, but could not use Mother's Touch to convert 10L to 10B for only 3 motes). She also becomes totally immune to disease, up to and including the Great Contagion, and receives three automatic successes on any roll to resist poison. The duration of any poison-inflicted dice pool penalty is also halved.

The scarab also fortifies the character's body, insuring that she remains in good condition. While wearing the scarab, none of the character's Physical Attributes can be permanently reduced below two. If she normally has a ranking below two, the scarab increases it to two. Furthermore, the essence-balancing effect also increases the difficulty of any attempt to drain the wearer's essence, or magically reduce her Attributes, by +1.

Finally, some of the scarab's powers can be briefly conferred upon others. If a character drinks a small amount of the wearer's blood, the golden motes will enter his own bloodstream and retain their curative effects as long as his skin is touching hers. Characters receiving this treatment heal lethal and bashing damage at five times the normal rate (again, this muliplier applies to magic healing), and receive a single automatic success on any roll to resist poison or disease.

Wearing the Scarab of Unparalleled health is permanent; it cannot be removed without killing the wearer, and if the eight motes powering it ever become decommitted, the golden motes will swiftly accumulate in the heart, clogging it up and killing her within minutes. The person to whom the scarab is attuned need not be the one who wears it; transferring attunement from one person to another will not cause the wearer to die.

[#KeeningEdge] Transcendent Glory of Dawn, the Keening Edge</i>

Artifact •••••
Orichalcum and glass daiklave
Speed +5 Accuracy +3 Damage +7L Defense +3 (excluding material bonus)
Speed +9 Accuracy +3 Damage +9L Defense +3 Rate 5 (PowerCombat, excluding material bonus)
Commitment: 5, orichalcum

It's a horrifying power, all right, but it's a horrifying power which <i>has no in-game effect. The horrifying powers which do have mechanical effects are pretty badass, but I wouldn't say they're N/A level. The Essence-reducing thing is the only big one (unless you happen to be an Air-Aspected DB, in which case virtually all of your powers stop functioning within the zone of silence), and that can be gotten around pretty easily by just not closing to under 20 yards of the sword. The weapon is a nightmare for close-range fighters, due to all the penalties it slaps on them, but doesn't really do anything to inconvenience ranged attackers.

In my little fantasy world, this drawback is largely compensated for by the fact that Mute Requiem is wielded by an Essence 6 Abyssal (see the Pharaoh's writeup). But in the hands of the average player, I don't think it would be totally overpowering. In certain situations, it would be dramatically more effective than Soul Mirror, but its powers are also less broadly-applicable than Soul Mirror's. _Ikselam

Sorry, I think I was unclear. I was saying that if you have Mute Requiem revoke Exaltations, maybe then it should be an artifact N/A.
Also, perhaps I misunderstood the description, but doesn't it say that all beings with an Essence score have 1 taken away (and if this brings it to 0, they start dying)? So, since mortals have an Essence score of 1, doesn't it kill all mortals within its range fairly quickly? And since it subtracts 2 from ghosts and then starts killing them, doesn't it also kill most ghosts? That's a really nasty in-game effect ...
I'm also a firm believer in making artifacts with the potential to do really powerful things high-level -- thus, since Mute Requiem has the potential to permanently reduce the Essence of say, Mask of Winters, I'd call it level 5 just for that. But that's probably just a difference of opinion.
~ Shataina

It doesn't look like it can revoke Exaltations, though it's certainly capable, through repeated encounters, of eroding an Exalted soul away; it's just a strong soul-eating effect. Frightening, and worth Artifact 5.

As for the mook-killing effect, that's what that is. It kills anyone who's not important. It's approximately as nasty as Glorious Carnage Typhoon or that Solar Archery bit. Who gives a {whatever}?
- willows

Mortals and beings with Essence 1 aren't always stupid and unimportant, though. Like that magical race in Creatures of the Wyld -- umm, apheliotropes maybe? And it does the same thing to death-aspected creatures with Essence 2. I wouldn't call these things necessarily mere "mooks".
The description of the artifact doesn't say it can revoke Exaltations, you're right. But Ikselam mentioned that he might decide that it could, so I suggested that if he does decide that it can, then in that case, it should perhaps become N/A.
~ Shataina

It wouldn't "revoke" Exaltation, it would just destroy the Exalted soul of anyone it slew (along with all other parts of their soul). So there'd be an empty drawer in Lytek's cabinet, and no one would ever Exalt with that particular spark again; a huge deal in the game world, but not so much from an OOC perspective.

Yes, it's pretty murderous against any Essence 1 creatures (or Essence 2 ghosts) caught within its area of effect. You wouldn't even have to go through the extra step where it consumes the ghosts of people it's killed, since people it kills don't leave ghosts. So swarming its wielder with extras would be even less effective than usual. Not really all that worse than the Crown of Thunder's effects, in my eyes.

I don't think the permanent Essence reduction thing is worth worrying about. The reduction is only permanent on a botched recovery roll, a roll on which Willpower expenditure is explicitly allowed. Only a total nimrod would fail to spend Willpower on this roll, unless he happened to have zero temporary Willpower at the time -- which is very unlikely, since the rolls start the day after you leave the area of effect (meaning you'll probably get to rest and regain wp in the interim, even if you don't do any 2+ stunts or use wacky Charms or whatever to recharge your wp). Even then, it only occurs on a botch, the chances of which are pretty low (especially for high-Essence people like Mask of Winters). _Ikselam

(cross-edited with roger) To your first point: No, not always, but it's a convention of the game and a consequence of the system that positions of power and influence flow to Essence-manipulating beings, as a result of their clearly superior abilities! Any exception to this tendency is this: an exception. Its ghost-eating power isn't that scary to me; ghosts have pretty good access to Essence 2, and Abyssals are generally unafraid of them (thay have many beating-on-ghosts abilities); it seems like a natural extension of the weapon's abilities.

I agree with Ikselam that abilities with no in-game effect shouldn't be figured into an artifact's cost, regardless of how frightening they are in the setting. - willows

I don't really have a problem with the Essence-1-being-killing-effect, honestly. I mean, it's a level 5, it should do things like that. I was just citing it because Ikselam said that Mute Requiem doesn't have any "big" powers except for the Essence-reducing one. Obviously, though, the question of whether almost automatically killing all Essence-1 beings in a 20-yard radius is a "big" power is just another matter of opinion. (Lots of those today ... :)
I wouldn't say that destroying an Essence permanently has "no in-game effect", considering that you could make Solars extinct after maybe 10 years of jihad if you had a powerful full Circle and your Deathlord's armies at your back. But I do get your point.
Many thanks to both of you, especially Ikselam, for answering my questions and having patience.  :)
~ Shataina

you could make Solars extinct after maybe 10 years of jihad
Well, yeah. If you read my writeup of the Deathlord associated with this item, it should be pretty clear that he intends to do something along these lines. Although since he's outgrown the "Enemy of All Who Live" stage, and is well into the "Enemy of All Which Exists" one, he probably wouldn't stop with just Solars. _Ikselam

I've heard that some games handle PC death by having the same shard reincarnated to create the player's new character. Mute Requiem would put some hurting on that approach. - Quendalon

A spiffy effect would be to have the shard flee in terror as the Exalt in question is brought down to essence 0. Flying off to save itself, and only having it re-incarnate in someone after a long time of nurturing up in Yu-Shan. And as a fun Side effect in game, have the player that receives the new shard have nightmares about the previous bearer's death, and no other dreams of a past life. -EndlessChase

Re: Scarab effects I'm not quite up on my Medicine-fu, but I'll take a shot at a suggestion or two. As a disclaimer, I'm unsure if you want to streamline/improve the mechanics or the "effect" so I'll offer a bit of both.

I realize this might be a bit of a cop out, but you might consider mimicking/adapting Wound-Knitting Power or other health charms to fit the Scarab's effects. (You could have it heal "X"L/"Y"B a round or some such). I like the idea of accelerated healing, but stackable 10x Normal Rate seems slightly underpowered for Level Five. Perhaps you could have the Scarab gradually convert health levels from agg. to lethal to bashing, set a rate and a limit (say, the Scarab converts the only worst damage in the system before moving on to lesser injuries), and then have it insta-heal a number of health levels per period (probably a round or a minute) once all damage has been reduced to Bashing. Then again, that might be to complicated. Another option along this line might somehow involve the 8 golden motes in the body. Maybe the can temporarily be "used" to insta-heal a health level and their use returns after a certain period of time.

If you're looking for less mechanics (which I doubt, but I'm hedging my bets here), perhaps the Scarab prevents limbs from being fully severed, as thin golden insectoid legs slowly drag the lost appendage back into place. Or maybe the Scarab glows or hums as its bearer suffers damage. It'd be neat if the user's blood was speckled with gold, or if miniscule orichalcum filigree floated upon its surface or somesuch. - EJGRgunner

You might want to clarify whether the distraught singing sword -always- sings in its scabbard, or only if the wielder isn't fully attuned. To me at least the wording could indicate either.

--Darloth

Unless you happen to be its rightful owner, it sings all the time. Even full attunement won't make it shut up; it just lets you choose who is targeted by the mechanical effects of the song. If you want it to be quiet, you need special wards, heavy wrappings, and so forth. _Ikselam

So you could carry Mute Requiem in one hand and Trascendent Glory in the other? :P -LiOfOrchid

Well, MR is a grand daiklave, so probably not. And several of TG's powers wouldn't work, while its disadvantage would still apply. _Ikselam

I just want to say that I think Transcendent Glory of Dawn really, really rocks -Fade