Concepts for powerful undead ruling over live subjects

[Balor Patch]

It doesn't look like anyone mentioned Abydos, a city state in Yrth. It's available through Warehouse23.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

As long as you do not cast it ceremonially, that is what Luck and skill 16+ are for. Your odds of rolling a critical failure become 1/216 with skill 16+ and around 1/10,000,000 with Luck. Even if you recover one year at a time, your chances of critically failing are very, very small if you have Luck and Skill 16+.

I always read Magic pg 12 as meaning Luck and Bless couldn't effect spell skill rolls period.

Otherwise every mage would be buying/making Luck elixirs like they were going out of style. (Insert 'our mage has a drinking problem' joke here)

The fact Stable Casting (GURPS Thaumatology pg 28-29) exists and effects all spells (not just ones cast ceremonially) supports this reading of the rule.

[SolemnGolem]

Several posts were lost in a forum crash. RIP.

I am attempting to re-post what I'd had earlier.

Gunther von Morvenes, the military revenant

GURPS Character Sheet 1
GURPS Character Sheet 2
GURPS Character Sheet 3

Meta:

This build is a draug and a veritable engine of violent death and destruction. He's equal parts Elric of Melniboné and swordwraith. In-setting, he's a former Falkovnian military leader who changed sides during an invasion to deliver a victory to the Darkonians. His dark reward was eternal unlife in the Kargat, and an unending vigil against his former brethren at Darkon's southern border.

Backstory:
Von Morvenes was a dedicated career soldier, whose paternal affection for his troops eventually grew greater than his loyalty to the hopeless battles ordered by his superiors. During the latest abortive invasion of Darkon by his native Falkovnia, Von Morvenes switched sides and engineered a largely-peaceful surrender, allowing most of the men under his command to survive and join Darkon as citizens. During the final mopping-up resistance, Von Morvenes himself suffered a mortal wound and was brought by military palanquin to the Kargat.

The Kargat wasted no time in Changing him to his current form in unlife: as a draug, tasked with forever patrolling and protecting the southern Darkonian border.

Appearance:
Von Morvenes appears to be a man in his sixties with a stern soldier's demeanor, trimmed white beard and tonsure, and always dressed in faded Darkonian field armor. (The Kargat transformation, from human into a draug, ended up fusing his body and limbs to the armor, and the only part that can be removed is his helm. This gives him a DR of 7 across his entire body except for his head if the helm is removed.)

Personality:
Von Morvenes is present when something near the southern border needs to be killed, and violently. Diplomacy is not his strong suit and he rarely has been heard to even speak. Behind the hulking tarnished armor, there lurks occasional signs of a faded military mind - Von Morvenes sometimes will accept a duel against an enemy commander in exchange for letting his underlings flee safely.

Telltale signs:
Von Morvenes is unable to remove his armor, but can remove his helm. His head does not cast a shadow, and if he is viewed in reflection from a metal surface (most mirrors, some polished armors or shields, etc.) his face appears as its undead ghoulish true self.

Invitation:
Von Morvenes rarely enters dwellings, as he patrols the outdoor borders, but can enter houses without any supernatural barrier. Given his incredible strength, most natural barriers are ineffective against him too.

Sustenance:
Von Morvenes does not need to feed, as a vampire would, but if he takes damage in combat, he usually needs to leech health from his enemies. Striking enemies with his ceremonial broadsword will heal him a like amount. He also heals (slowly) while resting in his death beddings (his equivalent of a vampire's coffin)

Sleep:
Von Morvenes must rest at least one full hour per day in his personal deathbed - the bloodstained military litter where he spent his final moments in life. Failure to do so means he begins to rapidly age 2 years per hour of missed sleep, meaning assured death within 1 day. This bedding is somewhat portable, and Von Morvenes could roam fairly far afield with his bedding strapped to his back.

Movement:
Von Morvenes is capable of a full sprint in full armor, and moreover does not tire (being undead). Combined with the range of his thrown spear, few living creatures can outrun Von Morvenes over the course of several hours.

Shapechanging, Bite, and Spellcasting:
Von Morvenes does not have any shapechanging, bite, and spellcasting power.

Equipment:
Von Morvenes wears a full-body set of Heavy Plate armor, usually leaving only his face or head visible. The Heavy Plate armor has an innate DR of 7, but also carries an enchantment that provides an addition DR 3 against missile weapons (for total DR 10 against missile weapons). Aside from the armor, he carries three iconic weapons from his service in Falkovnia, enchanted with dark magicks by his adoptive Kargat family: the unique spear Eisvogel (Kingfisher) which returns to his hand after throwing, the unique axe Schildspalter (Shield splitter) which ignores up to DR 10 of nonmagical enemy armor, and the nobleman's broadsword Giftzahn (Poison tooth) which drains health from an enemy and restores it to the wielder. Anybody else who uses Giftzahn can heal 1 HP per 3 HP dealt; for Von Morvenes himself, Giftzahn heals on a 1:1 ratio.

Combat:
In addition to the heavily enchanted weapons and armor above, Von Morvenes himself is endowed with truly fearsome strength. His HP is nearly three times that of a normal human, and his weakest weapon (the broadsword) usually deals around 33 HP to an unarmored human, meaning a serious threat of unconsciousness or death after one hit, and almost assured death after two. If Von Morvenes is presented with the possibility of combat, he revels in the opportunity to indulge both his Bloodlust and his Sadism disadvantages. He prefers to down his opponents at a distance, either throwing Eisvogel or with spear melee. Tough opponents get hacked apart with the Schildspalter axe. On the odd occasion that he needs to heal damage, Von Morvenes unsheathes Giftzahn to deliver the coup de grace and replenish up to 33 HP on a typical strike. Von Morvenes knows how to ride cavalry, though he's several decades out of practice. Animals react negatively to his presence (Frightens Animals) and he almost exclusively fights on foot as a result.

Death:
Von Morvenes can be killed only by decapitation using a magical broadsword - the Giftzahn itself is a prime candidate. If he is otherwise brought to fatal HP damage, he reforms in his military palanquin where he heals 1 HP per night.

For PCs:

This build gives the PCs a more military face of the Kargat to deal with - a man who has some faint relatability in his organizational manner, but also a dangerous foe when crossed. As a draug, this NPC is even more hands-on in combat than the average vampire, although he doesn't have much in the way of social skills, mind control, or servitor creation ability. A suitable build for the Kargat's martial might, facing across the border at their old mercenary foe.

He could theoretically cross the border into Falkovnia, but if Falkovnia in your campaign is a low-mana area, his magical abilities and enchanted equipment will cease functioning.

[AlexanderHowl]

Originally Posted by maximara

I always read Magic pg 12 as meaning Luck and Bless couldn't effect spell skill rolls period.

Otherwise every mage would be buying/making Luck elixirs like they were going out of style. (Insert 'our mage has a drinking problem' joke here)

The fact Stable Casting (GURPS Thaumatology pg 28-29) exists and effects all spells (not just ones cast ceremonially) supports this reading of the rule.

No, the rules for ceremonial castings are just that much more restrictive than the rules for normal castings. With skill 16+ and Luck, you can reduce the odds of a critical failure for normal castings to ~1:10 million. You can never reduce the odds for a critical failure for ceremonial castings below 1:54 (meaning that ceremonial castings can be up to ~187,000 times more dangerous than normal castings for an adventurer).

[SolemnGolem]

Tavelia, the faithless preacher

GURPS Character Sheet 1
GURPS Character Sheet 2
GURPS Character Sheet 3

Meta:

This build is a charismatic preacher who hides her false religion behind a facade of arcane spellcasting. She exerts a "dead zone" of divine spellcasting around her. She has voice-based mind control powers, and relies on fanatical supporters to do her dirty work for her.

Backstory:
Tavelia was present when the king and Kargat defeated an angelic emissary, manifested by a local cult. Intrigued by the power of religion, Tavelia started her own syncretic faith in a port city. Though successful for several decades, Tavelia made powerful enemies and was ambushed and tortured at the docks. The Kargat saved her before morning, and gave her a set of golem-clay eyes, ears, and viscera to replace those lost to her injuries.

Appearance:
Tavelia looks like a striking, if faintly unsettling, woman in her late forties. Wrinkles, or possibly faint scars, line her face, growing more prominent as the hours pass and her injuries begin to show through her magical prosthetics. She tends to leave her long hair loose, the better to punctuate her grandiloquent preaching gestures. Her eyes are disturbing to onlookers, almost as though made of glass, not fully seeing.

Personality:
Tavelia's sole source of her power and influence stems from the Faith of the Overseer, which features a somewhat circular logic: phenomena in the natural world exist only when perceived; the natural world is too grand for any mortal to perceive it; thus, a divine being (The Overseer) must exist eternally to perceive everything in the Universe to prevent it from ceasing to exist. Because the Overseer's eyes see everything, including the evil that men do willingly, this leads the Overseer to weep for humanity.

Though popular, Tavelia knows the faith to be founded on a lie, and she ambitiously seeks another source of her legitimacy. She believes that religion may in time become even more powerful than arcane magic, and that her church may one day rival the secular power of the king.

Invitation:
Tavelia cannot directly touch any person unless they have symbolically accepted the Overseer's guidance, in a ceremonial touch of their fingertips to hers (or those of a member of the Temple), and then raising their fingers to touch their own eyelids. This gesture must be repeated with the ears, lips, and heart. (This applies only to physical contact with her own body - she can prod, strike, or otherwise touch a person using a weapon or other implement.) Tavela also cannot enter a dwelling unless somebody inside it has professed their faith in her religion. This often means that she needs to infiltrate a target residence with one of her servitors.

Sustenance:
Tavelia's injuries were healed only temporarily by the Kargat, who filled in her eyesockets, earlobes, nose, and visceral wounds with a form of wizard's golem protomatter known to some as Crafter's Clay. The ersatz flesh passes well enough for living tissue, and restored her senses to a very keen degree, but Tavelia must periodically treat it or it will begin to revert to protomatter and eventually crumble to dust. Human tears are perfect for this, although in a pinch artificial salt water would do as a temporary measure. Tavelia's blithe dissembling and glib lies in her former life have now become a matter of survival for her - the impassioned, tearful trances of her followers are now vitally important to maintaining her own existence. Tavelia often holds "communing sessions" with one or a few worshippers, hypnotizing them as they weep in reaction to her charismatic monologues. At the very least, she collects their tears by wiping their faces with supposedly sacramental cloths. In times of extreme desperation, she has been known to lose her self-control and feast on their tears directly from their eyes.

Without proper maintenance each day, Tavelia regresses into blindness, deafness, and becomes unable to speak coherently as her facial orifices fail her. Given enough time, her visceral integrity fails and her unnaturally-extended unlife rapidly expires.

Sleep:
Tavelia does not need any special place or equipment to sleep, but the Crafter’s Clay made her senses so preternaturally sharp that she must remove her eyes and ears in order to have darkness and quiet to rest. If somehow surprised in her lair while asleep, she is initially at a disadvantage as she must first assemble her face by putting in her eyes and ears. Intruders who are unused to disturbing sights may be give up the fight just upon witnessing this grotesque process.

Movement:
Tavelia has no special movement, except in her crow forms (below).

Shapechanging:
Tavelia can morph into a flock of about a dozen crows if pressed - the flock must reunite as one in order for her to reform properly, so she is not entirely immune to damage this way (individual crows killed in transit show up as gashes and wounds to her body upon reforming). One crow in the flock is also a sickly albino - if this crow is killed but relatively intact, Tavelia loses much of the Crafter’s Clay upon reforming and must retreat to obtain replacements. Completely destroying the albino crow means Tavelia reforms without the Crafter’s Clay with a mortal wound and assured death within a minute.

Tavelia can also morph into a large winged corvid-humanoid form, giving her some limited flight ability, and with a second, vaguely crowlike massive head appearing off-kilter below her human jaw.

Spellcasting:
Tavelia's Overseer religion uses arcane magic, disguised as divine. Thus, it is capable of miracles (spells) only within Darkon, where the mana level is high enough to support magic. Tavelia and a few spellcasting priests (including Derakoth) tend to prepare their enchantments ahead of time and imbue them into charm talismans, which can be broken to release the spell. (In GURPS terms, this is Ritual Path Magic made into solidified charms.) Anything that resists or dispels arcane magic will be effective against the Overseer’s supposed divine magic.

Mind Control:
Tavelia can also induce a pseudo-religious mental haze in listeners just by speaking forcefully. This requires a successful Quick Contest of Will at +4, and induces the irritating condition “Euphoria” (-3 to DX/IQ/skill/self-control rolls, can roll each second to recover at Will -4). This only affects living sapient creatures.

Divine Disruption:
Tavelia’s iconoclasm led her to strike the quelling blow against an angel, and her cynical leadership of a false religion has furthered her antipathy to divine power. Tavelia herself can project an area-effect “static” that obscures and interferes with a divine spellcaster’s link to their divine source. Divine spellcasters must succeed in an opposed Will roll against Tavelia - her levels of Talent are high enough to grant her a +4 to this opposed roll. Also, any divine spellcasting attempted in her radius will regenerate her own spellcasting energy by a like amount.

Combat:

Tavelia relies heavily on Ritual Path Magic, meaning that she must prepare her spellcasting ahead of time. Usually, she orders her Overseer faithful to defend her, though she can also launch attacks with her mace, claws, and teeth.

Death:
Tavelia suffers pain in direct sunlight and will try to avoid it if possible. She also suffers damage if immersed in running water, but is unharmed by salt water. She is also vulnerable to damage to her Crafter's Clay.

For PCs:

This build is highly specialized - Tavelia doesn't usually kill her victims, as she feasts only on the tears of her followers. But her deeper operations place her as a "dangerous cult leader" character archetype, and she has thralls willing to defend her as she continues to spread her perfidious influence. Tavelia is particularly dangerous to clerics and priests, as she can shut down their divine link to their power sources. Her preaching effectively acts as a stunning or slowing effect to living sapient creatures around her.

This build also is not terribly combat-oriented, although Tavelia could come with dangerous magic prepared. In my personal canon, Siberyleus Magnus was able to eliminate Tavelia as part of his role in "policing the police".

[WingedKagouti]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

No, the rules for ceremonial castings are just that much more restrictive than the rules for normal castings. With skill 16+ and Luck, you can reduce the odds of a critical failure for normal castings to ~1:10 million. You can never reduce the odds for a critical failure for ceremonial castings below 1:54 (meaning that ceremonial castings can be up to ~187,000 times more dangerous than normal castings for an adventurer).

Looks like the forum crash ate a lot of posts in this thread. But support for your point of view can be found in the sidebar on page 30 of Thaumatology, which specifically states that Luck can be applied to the normal success roll to cast a spell (but not against any critical failure table roll).

[SolemnGolem]

Li Zhiwen (Leadger Wynn) 李智文 the jiangshi alchemist

GURPS Character Sheet 1
GURPS Character Sheet 2
GURPS Character Sheet 3

Meta:

Li Zhiwen is an Eastern-style vampire with a breathstealing curse. I also made use of the Chinese Elemental Powers supplement for Thaumatology (water and wood only), and some alchemy and gadgeteering. Because his powers have a different focus (qi instead of arcane power) he can travel abroad to lands where mana is low or nonexistent, and his qi powers will still continue to work.

Backstory:
Li Zhiwen came to the Core as part of a trade delegation in his youth, but lost his memory upon entering Darkon. He worked for many decades as the herbalist for the treacherous Agence d'Affaires. When he finally escaped Darkon and rediscovered his past, he realized that his herbal research had allowed the Agence to export a ruinous drug that collapsed many foreign economies, including that of his distant home port city. He gradually regained two of the five elemental texts, and underwent the Change from the Kargat in order to wreak his final vengeance upon the principals of the Agence. By the time he was done with them, the Agence had become a subjugated front organization for the Kargat.

Appearance:
Li Zhiwen differs from the traditional Jiangshi in Earth’s legends. Instead of a Manchurian-style civil servant, he appears as a Ming dynasty scholar or skilled expert: he wears his hair long, wrapped in a jade pin, with no forehead shaving or braided queue, and wears flowing robes with decorative sweeping sleeves to denote elevated social class. He continues his expertise in botany, alchemy, and various traditional body exercises as a personal code of behavior since adolescence. His clothes are mostly earth-tone brown or black, the better to hide the stains and spillages of his herbal and alchemical work.

Personality:
Li Zhiwen is filled with shame at the decades of his neglect of the ancestral rituals, as well as his own unwitting contribution towards the opiate collapse of his homeland. He is driven by a desire to regain all the knowledge that was lost to him, which now includes hunting down the three lost elemental scrolls of fire, earth, and metal. On a higher level, this serves the goals of the Darkonian king well, as he seeks to collect experts across a wide range of supernatural disciplines.

Telltale signs:
Li Zhiwen's fingernails can extend instantly to dangerous claws, and the smallest finger cannot retract the nail, which always appear to be several inches long. Li Zhiwen also cannot abide the smell of a certain type of drug plant, as he worked with it for decades before realizing he had poisoned his own homeland with his labors. More esoterically, he is repulsed by any Daoist scripture intended to ward off undead, but in the Westernized Core this is hardly a frequent phenomenon.

Invisibility:
As a jiangshi, Li Zhiwen can fade from sight at will, giving all stealth rolls a +9. A metal surface will reveal the opposite of his chosen state: When visible, he casts no reflection in metal surfaces. While invisible, he can be seen plainly in metal surfaces.

Sustenance:
Like any jiangshi, Leadger Wynn sustains himself on the Qi (breath, air, spirit) of the living, and must fill his undead lungs with the dying breath of living creatures at least once daily. If he has access to small vermin or passing birds, this can usually be accomplished slowly without drawing undue attention, but in less patient moods he has been known to snatch sailors or rivermen to kill and leave their bodies in the water (where evidence of their death by asphyxiation becomes obscured by their waterlogged condition.

Sleep:
Li Zhiwen must spend at least one hour each night in meditation and rituals to propitiate his ancestral spirits. Failure to do this will result in disruption to his own link to the land of the living, and he will begin to fade away - potentially to an eternal afterlife of torment and punishment.

Movement:
Li Zhiwen's Qi mastery means that he floats gently downward from a leap, making falling damage impossible. His affinity for water makes him immune to most natural fire damage.

Chinese Elemental Powers - water and wood
Li Zhiwen can temporarily blind opponents by blowing leaves around them. Provided that he has advance notice and is conscious, he can harden his body to wooden toughness, reducing all injury that penetrates his DR by half. Finally, his Skin of Oak power allows him a flat DR 3 all over his body while conscious.

His water powers can produce a jet of water at short range from his mouth. If this successfully strikes a victim’s face (range C or 1 yard at -5) it immediately deals 1D fatigue damage, halved if at range. He can also inflict fatigue damage by merely touching a person using his Touching the Heart attack, which deals 4D fatigue damage. Any creature that succumbs to fatigue can instantly be a target of his leech Qi attack, satisfying his daily hunger for living breath. Perhaps most insidiously, the victims are hard to distinguish from drowning victims. Finally, he can also contort and compress his body to an extreme form of double-jointedness, squeezing through passages that would be impassable for most humans of his size

Mind Control:
Although Li Zhiwen has no supernatural means of mental control, he does brew potions that result in stun, confusion, and suggestability conditions in his victims.

Equipment:
Li Zhiwen has no magically enchanted equipment, though he carries a pair of flintlock pistols and a mastercrafted jian sword (with modest skills for using both). His true combat danger comes from his potions, which include flammable and contact poison attacks, and from his close-up qi powers, which can drown a man's lungs in an embrace.

Combat:
Common concoctions in his possession include: invulnerability (for 3 DR additionally), Magic Resistance for +5 on opposed magic rolls, and True Sight; weapon grenades include Naphtha to burn things, Death concoction to damage them, and Forgetfulness to confuse and distract his opponents. Leadger Wynn has a Wood elemental power, Catapult Hand, which allows him to throw light objects a truly prodigious distance with uncanny accuracy.

Death:
Li Zhiwen can be immobilized by a peachwood stake through the chest, but he will remain alive until his ancestral artifacts in his lair are destroyed. These include a few engraved bronze plaques, a calligraphic family tree scroll, and a set of incense burners carved with exhortations of vengeance:

Originally Posted by 李智文

家乡孕育仁善德 Home town taught me: virtue, kindness, morality
洋岸山川隐祖国 But foreign shores and hills block my homeland
杀杀杀杀杀杀杀 Kill kill kill kill kill kill kill

For PCs:

Li Zhiwen can boast several (modest) combat abilities that cannot be deactivated by antimagic. He also throws around grenadelike bombs and can shoot people with his pistols. Up close, this build is not particularly strong in swordsmanship or martial arts, but the drowning qi power is especially dangerous.

His mission profile is specialized enough that Li Zhiwen could also be a neutral or allied party to the PCs, if he needs their help in obtaining the three missing scrolls.

[SolemnGolem]

Skeintwist, the parasite collective

GURPS Character Sheet 1
GURPS Character Sheet 2

Meta:
Skeintwist is a more Lovecraftian take on a vampiric-style creature, consisting of a colony of wormlike mind thieves (tsochar, from DnD 3rd edition's aberrations book). The worms can infest individuals if they latch onto their skulls or spines, bringing them under thrall-like control of the main mass... provided that the worms' hunger for cerebral fluid doesn't end up killing the hosts unwittingly.

Although harmless to undead (since its "Possession" ability requires living hosts), Skeintwist's ability to control living individuals, and moreover gain access to their memories and knowledge, make it a valuable addition to the Kargat's top ranks.

In meta terms, Skeintwist is a mind-controller character that literally burrows into the brain and controls puppets that way. No magic, psionics, or any other supernatural ability is required. The tsochar worms interface with the thoughts of their victims the way a gourmet might savor a wine's vintage.

Backstory:
Vorjak Strake was a hulking brute of a thug, running unchecked in the southeastern hills and mountains of Darkon. His bandit crew waylaid a wizard from the Royal Court and seized maps pointing to a place of interest in the hills. When Strake and his men went to investigate, they found a nest of alien wormlike creatures that quickly killed or possessed each of the bandits. Strake himself benefited from two properties of nature, though: first, his massive frame (nearly seven feet tall and barrel chested) allowed the tsochar in his chest cavity enough room to grow without killing him, and second, his thoughts weren't that interesting, so the tsochar left his brain alone.

Appearance:
Strake himself is unremarkable, other than his physical size. He carries a colony of four adult tsochar in his torso, and combined they display greater intelligence than their host. Each tsochar is roughly the length of a human arm and features a tripartite jaw. Strake now cannot easily go around in public without heavy clothing to hide the mass of tsochar tentacles emerging from his spine.

Personality:
The tsochar have an intelligence that is quite alien to humans, but they feed off of the host and seem to take pains to protect the host body. Tsochar need sapient beings to successfully create sapient colonies, but they are also limited by the physical mass of the creature. Thus, the tsochar have taken especial interest in the rumors of a mated pair of shadow dragons in the southeastern mountain ranges. Capturing an egg to hatch and infect would allow them dramatic neural growth.

Telltale signs:
Strake's cloak writhes at times with the tsochar beneath. Strake's own speech is hesitant and distant, as his brain functions are vying for control against the tsochar. He has an open wound in his torso where the tsochar emerge from his body.

Sustenance:
Tsochar delight in latching onto the spine and skulls of victims, so they can influence their thoughts. Tsochar

Sleep:
Tsochar individually may need some sleep, but the colony as a whole generally is constantly awake. This causes problems for Strake himself, who (being human) is slowly wasting away due to the constant mental strain.

Movement:
Tsochar do not have any magical or psionic abilities, and must travel by crawling. However, small tsochar larvae can be spread around during a melee combat, especially if the host is grappling an enemy, and can slip onto an enemy to parasitize them.

Bite:
Tsochar have a painful bite, but its primary threat is if the tsochar successfully attacks the skull or spine of the victim, at which point its biological mind control can take effect.

Mind Control:
The maximum number of mature tsochar that can fit inside a (roughly) human sized host is four, and that's for a physically very big man like Strake. Together, they have an intelligence significantly above human norm (13 to a human's 10 average). The tsochar have the following powers:

• Detect Life
• Mind Control, provided a tsochar succeeds on a melee attack to the head or face
• Mind Probe (to uncover thoughts and memories), again after striking the head or face
• Possession (often the only way to solve tsochar overcrowding and leave the current host).

Equipment:
Strake himself has a usual single attack, which he often makes with a flail.

Combat:
Strake alone is merely a standard (albeit large) thug. He has a cadre of about half a dozen heavily infected humans in thrall, and an outer circle of two or three dozen, which provide support and intel for the center.

Death:
Strake has no special ability to regenerate or otherwise cheat death. The tsochar that have parasitized him would be forced to leave and find a new host if he died.

For PCs:
Skeintwist is a nonmagical example of a potential recurring villain, transferring its intellect across several bodies if the PCs can defeat it. It may also be a hint of the king of Darkon's goals, as Skeintwist's ambitions to produce a large neural net dovetail nicely with the king's own motives.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

No, the rules for ceremonial castings are just that much more restrictive than the rules for normal castings. With skill 16+ and Luck, you can reduce the odds of a critical failure for normal castings to ~1:10 million. You can never reduce the odds for a critical failure for ceremonial castings below 1:54 (meaning that ceremonial castings can be up to ~187,000 times more dangerous than normal castings for an adventurer).

Your math is off. That 1:54 is for normal and critical Failure (16-18). Critical failure (17-18) is ~19/1000

I wouldn't say "never" as the way it is worded Stable Casting enhancement effects all spell casting... even ceremonial casting. Since you have to roll that ~19/1000 twice which is ~43/5000000 or .0086%.

Also if we RAW "Critical Magical Failures and Luck" then it overrules the older Luck doesn't effect ceremonial casting rule just as the way Day-Aspected Magery works in the Basic Set was overruled. Otherwise the section would reinforce the idea that Luck didn't have any effect on ceremonial casting. GURPS Thaumatology has several little quicks like that.

[SolemnGolem]

Lakrias, the Pyrewraith

GURPS Character Sheet 1
GURPS Character Sheet 2
GURPS Character Sheet 3

Meta:
Lakrias is closer in design to a banshee than a vampire, although she still relies on draining the vital fluids of living victims for her sustenance and healing. She is a swift foe, closely associated with fire, and can conduct hit-and-fade attacks in any terrain with trees.

Backstory:
Lakrias was a reluctant leader in the elven tribes east of Darkon. After decades of human encroachment and elvish retribution, she was brought to lead the tribes as their last common noble relative. The Darkonian leadership believed it could either co-opt her to enforce a peace with the elves, or use her to destabilize and undermine the elvish cause.

Lakrias, as a living elf, was among the only members of the leadership ever to visit the Darkonian capital. Impressed both by the progress of urban civilization, and also by the military strength and numbers that the king could field, she returned to the forest determined to find a way to coexist with the humans - recognizing that the alternative was to perish.

Her entreaties ultimately failed to sway the elves, and they continued their resistance. After Lakrias commanded her kin tribe to hold the others to the peace, the rest of the elves mounted a coup and neutralized her kinsmen. Lakrias continued to hold out hope for a peaceful solution, until the Darkonian settlers and soldiers arrived, and escalating violence befell the humans and elves. Lakrias' people were executed by her elven rivals, and Lakrias herself was taken to a forest cave and burned at the stake as a traitor.

Appearance:
On the rare occasions that she has to maintain a facade before a human, she swathes herself in illusions, appearing as a hooded, dark eyed female elf with pale skin. Underneath the hood, she is completely bald. Her feet are filthy and she leaves tracks of dark footprints - at first these appear to be mud, but on closer inspection they are trails of ashes. Sometimes these even smolder if she walks on dry grass.

Absent her illusions, Lakrias appears as a nude faintly female figure, charred and ashen from a great fire. The left side of her body still smolders with embers and sparks, the right side is a ghostly phantom of a hairless corpse.

Personality:
Today, Lakrias is filled with anger at the shortsightedness of those who claimed to serve her. The rage and sorrow at her lost kinsmen, as well as the general elven refusal to accept the realities of Darkonian rule, have kept her walking the earth and leaving a trail of ashes wherever she treads.

Lakrias is not exactly loyal to Azalin, so much as she accepts that his rule is inevitable. She preserves a swathe of the forest that roughly corresponds to the holdings of her dead clan (now surrounded on all sides by human farms that have encroached in the intervening decades), but aside from that, she is a staunch guard at the periphery of the forests.

Lakrias is now a being of death and fiery devastation, but she is served by an immediate cadre of monstrous Kargat (mostly werebeasts of forest creatures) who themselves control a patrol of forest ranger Kargat humans.

Telltale signs:
Lakrias rarely bothers with niceties, as she usually manifests only when she intends to terrify and kill a victim in any case. However, she has been known to guise herself in the form of a hooded bald female elf when a less shocking manifestation is called for. In this guise, she still goes barefoot and leaves apparent muddy footprints everywhere she walks. Closer inspection shows this to be charred ashes.

Lakrias can also be seen for her true form through any form of water - whether through a reflection in a pond, or though rain or even steam or faint mists.

Invitation:
Lakrias needs no invitation to go where she pleases, though she stays far from natural water.

Sustenance:
Lakrias is a spirit trapped in an agonizing burning torment, and she must salve her pain by immolating living creatures in her fiery embrace. She leeches the vital fluids of a person or animal, leaving the victim as a charred husk.

Sleep:
Lakrias must spend at least 1 hour per night resting in the embers of her death site, a cave with the ruins of an ever-smoldering funeral pyre. Although once deep in the elven territory of her rival clans, the forward momentum of the human settlers means the cave is now within a deforested valley. Most living things give the cave a wide berth, but occasionally Lakrias has to contend with human intruders. They rarely survive their first encounter with her.

Movement:
Lakrias can move unusually quickly for a creature of her stride, and is capable of long gliding leaps due to her affinity with fire. If pressed, she can also dimension door between trees, although her corrupted nature means this causes both trees to burst into flame, rendering them unuseable after one usage. Her main movement vulnerability is her pyre, which has no useable trees nearby, meaning that she must physically walk to and from her resting place.

Shapechanging and Bite
Lakrias does not have any shapechanging ability or bite. Her mere touch is enough to drain vitality from her foes.

Spellcasting:
Like many elves, Lakrias has a basic affinity for magic, and can cast a small array of spells. Most of her spells are useless now, but in the past she held a few spells for controlling water and plants. She also had illusion spells, which she now uses occasionally in her rare interactions with living non-monstrous servitors.

Equipment:
None. Lakrias walks the earth as a bare-bodied corpse still seething with the embers of the pyre.

Combat:
Lakrias has a banshee-like wail that causes living creatures failing a Will check to freeze in their tracks with fear. She can cause excruciating pain in living creatures merely by looking at them, creating a sensation as though their skins are burning. Up close, she can leech HP from an enemy to heal herself (and salve her own pain) by touching them - any enemy drained to death bursts into flame.

Death:
Lakrias is deathly afraid of running water, suffering injury from contact (such as a thrown bottle, or being out in the rain). She has some water-controlling spells that she will use to try to escape such situations. If she is immersed in water (such as in a river or lake) she will take rapid injury and can be permanently killed.

For PCs:
Lakrias is a more direct combat build for a Kargat head, and her antipathy for the living is even more pronounced than the others. She could be the capstone of a forest campaign. Her complex allegiances could also allow some collaboration with the PCs, for example to recover remains of her clan members from a watery location that she cannot reach. Politically, Azalin has largely extinguished all possibility of revolt from the elven territories, and he has placed Lakrias in the breach to ensure that they stay that way - if the PCs could defeat her or neutralize her Kargat division's work, the Darkonian kingdom could suddenly face a resurgence of hostilities on its sparsely protected northeastern frontier.