Book of Bone and Ebony

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edly affected by this spell are more likely to become mortwights upon death. If cast within the Labyrinth, the Sweet Voice Familiar echoes through the twisted passages and is repeated by the black stone there, effectively doubling the radius of the spell. If cast in Creation, the lively Essence of the world there inhibits the unsound and psychotic whispers of the dead gods, and the area of effect is reduced to 250 yards. VOID CIRCLE The Circle of Obsidian was discovered only after the fall of the First Age — before the rise of the Deathlords, there were none to wield it. The necromancy of the Third Circle represents the utmost control over the dead and the world created by the fall of the Malfeans. When spells of the Void Circle are invoked, the tombs of the fallen Primordials shake with fury, so greatly is it able to pervade their grave slumbers. BIRTH OF SANITY’S SORROW Cost: 10 motes, 1 permanent Willpower Target: Caster For the chthonic entities who slumber beneath the fruitless soil of the Underworld, their two most singularly defining characteristics are the silent and permanent horror of death and the sizzling fury of revenge. Without life, they hate all life. This spell embodies both concepts. It can only be cast once in the lifetime of the caster and only in the instant before death and with a purity of malice. The ability to cast this spell is the sign of a personal blessing from an individual Malfean, for only communion with one of the gods of Oblivion can endow a necromancer with this power. Birth of Sanity’s Sorrow takes a month to learn. The necromancer must sit in prayer, inside the tomb of the Malfean who has chosen to teach her, while the lord of nothingness guides her through the process. The result is a creature crafted from the most brilliant creativity of a powerful death-blessed necromancer and an insanely malefic dead god. The basic statistics for this creature are as follows: Calculate the Attributes for the hungry ghost that would rise from the necromancer’s corpse (see Exalted: The Abyssals, pp. 61-62) and add the necromancer’s Essence to her Strength and Stamina. The form has (the necromancer’s Essence x 5) -0 health levels and a single Incapacitated level. While in this form, the necromancer can use any of her Charms for a cost of 1 mote and can spend a single mote in place of Willpower. A necromancer’s form should also include three unique powers. These should cost between 5 and 10 motes to invoke and be vastly impressive — they can either imitate existing spells or be devised between a player and Storyteller. 139 CHAPTER FIVE • NECROMANCY THE SHADOWS OF THE AGE The rapid growth of the number of shadowlands in the Second Age can be attributed to several sources: The general ignorance of the populace in methods of prevention, the loss of the powerful Solar sorceries that were designed to eliminate such flaws in the Tapestry and the active participation of the Deathlords have all encouraged the number of shadows that lie upon the Age. Forsaken Life Engine is a powerful, if costly, method for bringing the Underworld into Creation. In the interest of balance, its counterpart of the Solar Circle is presented here for those who wish to play the other side. CLEANSING SOLAR FLAMES Cost: 50+ motes Target: One shadowland In the First Age, this spell was needed only after massive massacres attributed to the Fair Folk or rampaging behemoths, and the sorcerer was invariably protected by the rest of her Circle from the mad voices and obsidian claws of the nephwracks and mortwights. To those who can see Essence, the massing power of the spell is an amazing spectacle, observable from tens of miles away as the bright golden Essence piles ever higher toward the sky. As the spell concludes, the tower of near-solid sunlight bursts into reality and fills the world with a glow for several leagues around — the tower then falls, like a dam has burst in Heaven and let the sun shine over the region again. The darkness is wiped away, and Creation is again separated from the Underworld in that area. Cleansing Solar Flames must be cast from the geomantic center of a shadowland, and the sorcerer must spend 10 minutes in supplication to the Unconquered Sun for every 50 miles of radius that the shadowland covers. The spell costs 50 motes, plus 10 for every additional 50 miles of radius beyond the first. Birth of Sanity’s Sorrow can only be cast, if known, at the instant in which the necromancer is reduced beyond Incapacitated. The spell can be cast whether or not she has already used a Charm in that turn and does not require the normal three turns of preparation. If the necromancer wearing her Birth of Sanity’s Sorrow form is destroyed, she dies remarkably and irrevocably, her soul immediately devoured by the Void, without exception. If the necromancer survives the ordeal, the form and spell are
EXALTED • BOOK OF BONE AND EBONY immediately scoured from her memory, and she is left with only her Incapacitated health level, gasping for life. The spell, once cast, is active only for one scene. BLACK FAITH Cost: 30 motes, 1 lethal health level Target: Caster Screaming obscenities that glorify the Malfeans, the sole fathers of Oblivion, the necromancer cuts himself across his belly and lets his blood spill before leaping into the Mouth of the Void. This act is preceded by half an hour of silent worship and prayer, which follows immediately the sacrifice of one ghost’s pain and corpus to the Abyss. This spell represents the final effort of a desperate necromancer. His actions prior to his leap are meant to endear himself as much as possible to the sleeping gods of nothingness and to cause them to dream of him as he dives. His fall is nothing to be taken lightly — as the necromancer plummets toward the certainty of the Void, he slowly dies. His accoutrements are burned off by the sheer lack of flame, and his skin and bone peel away into shreds smaller than dust, as even dust dies. The last thing that remains is the corpus of his falling spirit; it boils slowly away as it blurs past the entrances to the Malfeans’ tombs, Oblivion excruciatingly digging into the necromancer’s soul until he is no more. There is a single moment between the final loss of the spiritual vessel and the final dissolution. This is the time of judgment. If his actions have pleased the Malfeans and if his mission benefits them and if they are not angered to have their slumber disturbed so greatly, they revoke his dissolution. The act of being destroyed, too, is a thing which, if cast into the Void, can never have been. The necromancer who dared call so loudly into the nightmares appears, having never been destroyed. He is most likely in whatever place he needed so desperately to be, the Malfeans hearing his plea and letting it be so. Sometimes, the Malfeans decide that the necromancer would better serve them in another place, and he unexpectedly arrives there. This rarely used form of transportation facilitates the necromancer’s appearance anywhere, from the Labyrinth and the Underworld to the wide, bright world of Creation, spirit sanctums, Yu-Shan or Malfeas itself. Wards have no effect on his ability to arrive in any given location, since before being there he was, literally, nowhere. Should the Malfeans fail to be impressed by the necromancer’s performance before his dive, he has committed a rather inspired and complete suicide, and he is irrevocably dead. Use of this spell is very much a Storyteller device, and it is recommended that players discuss its use with their Storyteller before enacting it. THE CLAY OF WARPED DREAMS Cost: 60 motes (committed) Target: Area of effect 140 The necromancer stands in the Labyrinth with a minimum of three sacrificial ghosts behind him. As a 10minute prayer to the Malfeans comes to a close, the caster’s black will envelops the sacrifices and destroys them utterly, devoting the Oblivion of each to the dead gods whose slow nightmares define the place where the caster stands. Temporarily appeased, the unthinkables that rest in tombs above the edge of the Void gift the caster with control over that small portion of their restless slumbers. With the completion of the Clay of Warped Dreams, the necromancer gains total control over 10 square miles of the Labyrinth, in any configuration he desires. The landscape shapes itself to his waking dreams instead of the tortured malice-borne thoughts of the Malfeans. He can, with a successful Perception + Occult roll made by his player, be totally aware of any space within his power that he could not normally see. His ability to shape the Labyrinth can manifest as physical attacks — swarms of tarnished silver moths fly at his whim, stabbing stalagmites of bone and gouts of boiling brains. Such an attack is made with a Wits + Melee, Archery or Thrown (as appropriate) roll, with additional successes equal to the necromancer’s Occult score. Additional effects, such as the creation of poisonous gases or dangerous beasts or imprisoning a victim, are possible at the Storyteller’s discretion. Vastly dangerous creatures can be created by borrowing the Malfeans’ nightmares, but it is time consuming, and such creatures are highly likely to be swallowed by entropy when those dreams are reclaimed. This control endures as long as the necromancer commits the Essence or (at the Storyteller’s discretion) until a dead god stirs enough to actively reclaim it. Deathlords make use of this spell in their rare convocations of peers, creating vast and affluent palaces beneath the Manses they keep in Stygia. Often, only a grudging respect for the vast power a Deathlord’s tentative allies have, the certainty that each has planned contingency and the expenditure of motes necessary to invoke the spell prevent the host at such a gathering from abusing his power. FORSAKEN LIFE ENGINE Cost: 50+ motes Target: Area of effect With a simple wave of her hand, the necromancer conjures into being a vast engine, with cogs and levers of bone, pulleys strung with iron-reinforced spinal cords, oiled with blood and bile and emitting voluminous clouds of black soot. The engine, twice as high and wide as a yeddim, stands several dozen yards in the air, supported by heavy iron beams. In the bottom of the machine is a wide, dark hole. When this mysterious orifice is empty, only a pathetic trickle of smoke drips upward from the large and soiled pipes on the top. When a living creature is put in
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AND A Compendium of Necromantic Lor
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