[RPM] Sacrificial Abomination

[Varyon]

Over in the "Weird RPM" thread, I suggested the idea of fusing multiple sentient beings into one for the purpose of having some sort of super-sacrifice to power a spell. This is, as per Stacking Spells, RAW illegal, but I'm willing to suspend that rule for this particular instance. I've opted to make a new thread for it so as not to clutter the original, as that seems to be looking at things from a purely RAW perspective.

My original thought was a single spell to do it all, but with 4 Greater Effects this would be prohibitively expensive. Let's go with multiple spells. Further, I'm thinking there should be an efficiency loss, such that if we have, say, 1200 energy worth of sacrifices (60 bog-standard humans), we'll only get at best 600 energy out of them. The spells themselves I'll write out later in this post. What you do is first off, tussle up all your sacrifices and cram them into a circle (I think you can typically stuff up to 3 SM 0 characters into a hex, but I could be mistaken) where you've set up a nice pentagram or the like, using it to cast Trap the Soul. You'll follow this up with Prepare the Vessel on the largest, strongest fellow of the bunch (possibly requiring multiple attempts for him to fail his resistance roll) and Prepare the Sacrifice on the rest of the group. Next up is Sever the Soul on the group to eliminate the Body/Soul connection. Finally, you Infuse the Vessel with all the liberated souls, allowing you to sacrifice him for your actual spell. For this description, I'm assuming you managed to fit 61 people in a 3-yard circle - 60 rubes with IQ 10, HP 10, and 1 brute with IQ 9, HP 14.

Trap the Soul: Lesser Control Spirit (5) + Area of Effect, 3 yards (2) + Duration, 1 hour (3). 10 energy (10x1).

Prepare the Vessel: Greater Strengthen Body (3) + Altered Traits, IT:DR 1/50 (50) + Duration, 1 hour (3) + Subject Weight, 300 lb (3). 177 energy (59x3).
My original version had this with Altered Traits, HP, but I felt it wouldn't be too far off to use IT:DR (which is essentially a cheaper way of buying HP) instead. For it, I assumed the particular kind of "damage" it applies against (having your body ripped apart by trying to contain the souls of 60 angry victims) would qualify as Rare. The calculation is based on how much HP our brute would need to be a 1225 energy sacrifice himself (680).

Prepare the Sacrifice: Lesser Destroy Spirit/Body (5) + Bestows a Penalty, -5 to resist Sever the Soul (16) + Area of Effect, 3 yards (2) + Duration, 1 hour (3) + Subject Weight, 300 lb (3). 29 energy (29x1).
Spirit/Body means it's a single effect (and thus is priced as such), but uses the lesser of Path of Spirit and Path of Body. If this isn't legal, it would be Lesser Destroy Spirit and Lesser Destroy Body. Cost would instead be 34 energy (+5 for an additional Lesser Destroy effect).
As for Bestows a Penalty, I felt that a penalty to reduce resistance to a single ritual qualified as Rare... but would this be a case of magic improving magic? If so, we'll have to leave Prepare the Sacrifice out, and maybe end up casting Sever the Soul a few times before we've killed everyone - which is unfortunate, as that's the most expensive ritual we're casting!

Sever the Soul: Greater Destroy Spirit/Body (5) + Affliction, Heart Attack (60) + Area of Effect, 3 yards (2) + Subject Weight, 300 lb (3). 210 energy (70x3).
Again, this combines Path of Spirit and Path of Body, so if that's not legal it's instead Greater Destroy Spirit and Lesser Destroy Body (the effect is focused more on the soul than body) and 225 energy (+15 for Lesser Destroy effect).

Infuse the Vessel: Greater Transform Spirit (8) + Altered Traits, IT:DR 1/50 (50) + Duration, 1 hour (3) + Subject Weight, 300 lb (3). 192 energy (64x3).
Prepare the Vessel made our vessel capable of containing the souls, this actually puts them into him. I felt the most appropriate way to go about this was just to toss on the same Modifier as Prepare the Vessel.

...

As I noted before, there should be a loss of efficiency here. I'm thinking it should be based on how successful the mage was at casting Infuse the Vessel - the sacrifice is worth 1/4 the total energy with MoS 0, 1/2 with MoS 10 (or any critical success). So, in this case, we're looking at a base of 300 energy and +30 per MoS.

For this example, we're looking at the casting of 5 spells, and a combination of Path of Spirit and Path of Body. A skilled mage will be able to manage Trap the Soul and Prepare the Sacrifice on his own, but for the rest you're going to need Grimoires, a Place of Power, and alternate sources of energy (possibly some more sacrifices). For reference, even with Skill 20 each of the 3 remaining spells is (using Quick-and-Dirty Rituals and Charms as a reference) probably going to botch on a roll of 14 or higher (this assumes you have enough energy to drop the amount gathered to more than 130 but less than 195). That's only a 60% chance of success, with failure on any one spell being disastrous - you might summon up a powerful demon, boost the strength of your would-be sacrifices to the point they escape their bonds and overpower you, or simply kill yourself up outright!

While casting all of this and whatever horrid spell you're setting it up for will only take at most an hour, the set up for it (acquiring - or making the appropriate Grimoires, finding the right Place of Power, gathering all the materials and trappings, and of course capturing all the sacrifices) is going to take a very long time. Long enough for an intrepid group of heroes to piece it all together and come knocking on your doorstep just as you're preparing to cast it...

[PTTG]

Breathtaking.

Knowing my PCs, preventing this is the last thing they'd do. There's a good chance that at least two of them will attempt it, and if not that, they'll end up as the sacrificial victim(s) and overpower the evil mage and escape to have crazy new adventures.

[Nereidalbel]

Originally Posted by Varyon

As I noted before, there should be a loss of efficiency here. I'm thinking it should be based on how successful the mage was at casting Infuse the Vessel - the sacrifice is worth 1/4 the total energy with MoS 0, 1/2 with MoS 10 (or any critical success). So, in this case, we're looking at a base of 300 energy and +30 per MoS.

Rather than MoS 0 and MoS 9 being the same, with MoS 10 suddenly giving double the output, how about 5% for every MoS 2?

Also, any mage PC I play would wait until the final casting, "snipe" it, and then Sparta kick the stunned mage into a vat of something nasty...

[DangerousThing]

What I don't get is that if you're willing to change the rules so this works, why not make an easier change and allow multiple sacrifices instead?

I would make it such that each sacrifice after the first gives less and less mana unless they do this in a certain ritual way - perhaps a simultaneous sacrifice using a sub-ritual which is specific to whatever you are sacrificing them to.

For example, in my current game, a normal human is made into one of the "Blessed" via a painful and complex ritual that requires the sacrifice of three slaves of high chi who are tortured and killed simultaneously. Occasionally something goes wrong and one slave lasts a bit longer than the others, breaks free with all the ritual's power. But as the song says, "With great power comes great power bills." :)

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Nereidalbel

Rather than MoS 0 and MoS 9 being the same, with MoS 10 suddenly giving double the output, how about 5% for every MoS 2?

I didn't write it out that clearly, but it's set up as +10%/MoS. Note the end states that the (maximum 600 energy) sacrifice gives a base 300 energy and +30 energy per MoS.

Originally Posted by DangerousThing

What I don't get is that if you're willing to change the rules so this works, why not make an easier change and allow multiple sacrifices instead?

Because I see this as much less of a rule change than just outright allowing multiple sacrifices in one go. Essentially, the massive amount of preparation required is "payment" for the small rule breakage, kind of like grabbing an Unusual Background to get cinematic/supernatural abilities in an otherwise-realistic game.

[Anders]

It also gives a certain grotesque flavor to magic, which may be desirable for certain settings.

[DangerousThing]

Originally Posted by Anders

It also gives a certain grotesque flavor to magic, which may be desirable for certain settings.

I think that human sacrifice and the destruction of their souls is quite grotesque enough.

If you want to have multiple souls stored, store them in an enchanted object, usually something from which one can hear, faintly, the screams of the souls within.

To me, trying to stuff all those souls into one human just so that you can sacrifice him, seems more silly than grotesque.

This is purely my opinion, of course, but I would find an almost assembly line killing of hundreds do people to be more dehumanizing and hence more horrifying than what is being tried here.

And with that opinion I will leave the discussion up to those who want to talk about this. Maybe I'm too old to be in touch with this sort of thing.

[Varyon]

I had originally thought up the idea as a "Jar o' Souls" or the like (it was originally in response to the idea of a powerstone in RPM), but I wasn't certain what sort of the properties the container should have (while with a "super-sacrifice," I could just use the sacrifice rules as a guideline). Additionally, it seems to me that the human body - presumably purpose-built by divine being(s) for containing a human soul - would have a better chance of holding multiple souls than some jug an artificer whipped up.

I also wanted it to be difficult, time-consuming, and above all preventable. I want it to be something that's extremely rare and only done by the most depraved and/or desperate of individuals, not the magic equivalent of Soylent Green.

[Nereidalbel]

Originally Posted by Varyon

I had originally thought up the idea as a "Jar o' Souls" or the like (it was originally in response to the idea of a powerstone in RPM), but I wasn't certain what sort of the properties the container should have (while with a "super-sacrifice," I could just use the sacrifice rules as a guideline). Additionally, it seems to me that the human body - presumably purpose-built by divine being(s) for containing a human soul - would have a better chance of holding multiple souls than some jug an artificer whipped up.

I also wanted it to be difficult, time-consuming, and above all preventable. I want it to be something that's extremely rare and only done by the most depraved and/or desperate of individuals, not the magic equivalent of Soylent Green.

Human bodies are intended for one soul. Just look how bad things get when a single extra soul possesses somebody.

To make it rare and depraved, let's just "borrow" the Flesh Armor from Blood Omen. You must skin 100 noblemen alive, and use their flesh to craft your vessel.

This is very difficult, takes a lot of time and planning, and can probably come with horrible backlash if anybody destroys your vessel. You could even require *wearing* the flesh when you make your sacrifices for it to store souls!

[DangerousThing]

Originally Posted by Varyon

I had originally thought up the idea as a "Jar o' Souls" or the like (it was originally in response to the idea of a powerstone in RPM), but I wasn't certain what sort of the properties the container should have (while with a "super-sacrifice," I could just use the sacrifice rules as a guideline). Additionally, it seems to me that the human body - presumably purpose-built by divine being(s) for containing a human soul - would have a better chance of holding multiple souls than some jug an artificer whipped up.

I also wanted it to be difficult, time-consuming, and above all preventable. I want it to be something that's extremely rare and only done by the most depraved and/or desperate of individuals, not the magic equivalent of Soylent Green.

OK, since I believe you are responding to my post, I will respond.

First, while I wouldn't do this in my game because I believe it isn't horrifying enough, it is up to you to decide what to do in your game.

What I'm about to write comes from gaming experience (RPGs, mostly face to face, and 50 years of reading, and watching movies) as well as a few horrifying things I've seen in RL. It's also my opinion and you can take or leave it as you will.

As far as horror goes, usually less is more. One victim who is meaningful to the character is usually more horrifying than 100 strangers.

If you want to have the villian commit an atrocity, I would have him start small. This is something I'd build up to for a couple of years in a campaign. I would try to introduce him to the PCs early in the campaign as somebody who sacrificed an animal to save his villiage/city/country. This being against the law of the land or church, the PCs would track him down. Knowing that what he did was wrong, he would surrender after a token resistance, explain what he did and why.

If this is played out right, either the PCs would let him go or they would go to the set of authorities that might let him go (if the church sent him, then maybe bring him to the nobility).

This saves the mage, but perhaps the church imprisons his wife and children and kills them trying to get information on the mage.

Nothing more is seen of the mage for a while, then he attacks the PCs country using a mask. After a series of encounters the PCs unmask the mage, but he escapes.

The third encounter is the one where he truly shows himself to be an abomination as the hate has built up in him. This time he wants revenge on the PCs because had he been brought to the church his family wouldn't have been killed, the king because he didn't stop the church, and the church because they killed his family.

The idea of building this up is so the players know they could have stopped this before he did all this. That gives the players a stake in all of this.

As for the collection of the souls, I would do something more traditional. A huge gemstone (where do these villians get these things?), a glass object (large), or a cage made out of human bones.

In any case, the souls within should be vaguely visible and audible when close to the device. And they should seem to be in agony. Their faces are seen a bit, he voices screaming. It should be possible for the PCs to break this if they can get close enough, but the mage is always there seemingly addicted to the souls' agony.

That's how I'd handle something like this. I'd let the players believe they had at least two chances to stop him first before he became too poweful. Then I'd let them believe that he was much too powerful to stop, though all they have to do is to break the soul cage and the mage should die in the backlash though with no body. That way they can be looking over their shoulders for the rest of the campaign. And if you run another campaign with the same people, tell them that they are the reincarnations of their old characters, though they remember almost nothing, of course. And if you let it slip that some of the NPCs have reincarnated as well, they'll be looking over their shoulders in this campaign as well.

Or to make it simple, Never Trust a Smiling GM.