You place the windup key to the back of a toy, or similarly human representing golem. Twist for a minute until your hand begins to hurt. The toy will animate and grow in size to a friendly helper of the one holding the windup key.
This artifact relies on the cultural idea of toys, and the cultural idea of wind up toys, especially in the minds of children. The basic idea of these wind up toys is that you wind them up, then let them go and they move around doing toy things, seeming almost alive. This artifact takes that idea, and merges it with a few other ideas of ways to create useful servants to make an artifact capable of making useful friendly minions.
The ritual to create this artifact relies on a ritual involving
- A variety of children's toys which are popular in the shared imagination
- A collection of stories and myths about the Hebrew golumn
- Mary Shelly's frankenstein
- Carefully shaping the pattern of a wind up key while reading various relevant parts of these stories
Exert your Mind and spend one minute.
Summon a single enlarged animated toy at your location. They will last until they are destroyed. They are controlled by the GM but will follow any commands you give. This Artifact may have at most 1 minion active at a time.
After you finish activating this Effect, you cannot move quicker than a walk (max 15 feet per Round) for one minute and suffer a -1 dice penalty for an hour. Exhaustion’s penalty and duration stacks with multiple activations.
You may only use this Effect once per day.
Imagine a horde of small demon mushroom men, each standing about two feet tall. Their caps are a vibrant mix of deep purples, sickly greens, and ominous blacks, resembling both mushrooms and sinister hats. Their bodies are squat and bulbous, covered in a textured, spore-like skin that shimmers in the dim light.
Each creature has wide, glowing eyes that flicker like candle flames, conveying both mischief and malice. Instead of mouths, they sport jagged, gaping maws filled with tiny, needle-like teeth, ready to snap at anything that comes too close.
Their limbs are spindly and disproportionate, with long fingers that end in sharp, claw-like nails, perfect for digging into the ground or snatching at prey. As they move, they emit a faint, earthy smell mixed with a hint of decay, and small clouds of spores waft around them, creating an almost dreamlike haze.
In unison, they scuttle forward, their tiny feet barely making a sound, creating a sense of creeping dread. They communicate through high-pitched cackles and chattering noises, sharing their wicked intentions as they swarm, ready to spread chaos wherever they roam
In shadows deep, where whispers creep,
Small demon mushrooms dance and leap.
With caps of gloom and eyes aglow,
They skitter forth in a wicked flow.
Their spore-filled laughter fills the air,
A mischievous sound, a chilling snare.
In crooked lines, they scuttle near,
With jagged grins, they spread their fear.
A horde of mischief, sly and spry,
In moonlit nights, they prowl and pry.
Beware the woods where they convene,
For in their dance, dark dreams are seen.
Exert your Mind and spend an Action. You must actively and obviously use A Drop Of Blood and A Song To Unleash The Horde to activate this Effect.
Summon up to 3 Sapient anamorphic Mushroom Demons________ at your location. They last for two hours or until they are destroyed. They are controlled by the GM but will follow any commands you give. You may have at most 3 minions active at a time.
Temperance clutches the Mask to his chest as a small flame flickers behind it, growing larger until the mask itself begins to grow and begin to hover in the air in front of him as a wisp is reborn
by combining his latent abilities with those of Neo-GENIS, Temperance is able to temporarily return life to what was once lost.
Exert your Mind and spend an Action. You must use up carved mask in order to activate this Effect.
Summon a single Non-Sapient, Animate Greater Wisp at your location. They last for two hours or until they are destroyed. They are controlled by the GM but will follow any commands you give. You may have at most one active at a time.
Leonard surges forward, as his back jerks upwards. In a flurry of mana particles and bloody red, crystalline shards begin to tear themselves free. Soon after, following the emergence of its extensions, the Guardian raises its primary body, in a gruesome display of warping its physical form outside of its host. Almost as if his spine were the entity itself, the Guardian would fully tear itself out his back, arching out its enormous crystalline 'limbs', as it stretches out several meters, taking careful guard behind its host.
The guardian is a mana symbiote long forgotten by history, almost all knowledge having been lost to the careful work of the Sabisians. The rare few scholars that still hold existing records of these beings believe them to long be extinct, lost to mana wars passed long since and the Sabisian incursion.
While in its docile state, the Guardian appears as a crystalline growth connected directly to its hosts nervous system through the spinal cord, easily being visible to the naked eye underneath the skin, alongside visible patches of mana-crystalline material left in patches above the skin containing it. While in its docile form, the guardian remains in a sort of dormant state, co-existing with its host and feeding off of its body.
During its active phase, the Guardian appears to burst out of body of its host. Despite this appearance, this process is all but a trick of the eyes, in reality being no more than an energy transference as the Guardian takes form, leaving behind no actual wounds on the host's body. The crystalline being seen during its active phase is not in reality the entity's true form, that being the crystaline growth located inside the host. Henceforth, destroying the active entity does little but return it back into its primary shell, where it can recover.
In appearance, during the active phase, the Guardian is a large, several meters tall crystalline biomechanical creature. It is composed of a long lanky crystalline 'spine' flanked by long sharpened shards that it uses to strike at the enemy or otherwise carry out its commands. When out of range, it uses a head-like appendage, which it can seemingly use to see, to fire a directed burst of energy.
The Guardian forms a bond with its host during the symbiotic period, carrying out their commands on its own free will, in exchange, the host provides it safety and nutrition.
Exert your Mind and spend an Action to activate.
Summon a single Guardian at your location. They will last until they are destroyed. They are controlled by the GM but will follow any commands you give. You may have at most 1 minion active at a time.
Minions have 6 Body and can make ranged attacks at targets up to 30 feet away with 5 dice to attack and +1 Damage. Your minions can move 20 feet per Round as Free Movement, and double that when performing an all-out Sprint. They cannot dodge or Defend. They have dog-level intelligence, and cannot communicate back to you. Any Perception checks they make are rolled with 8 dice.
Anyone who witnesses you during this Effect's activation or for its duration will almost certainly be disturbed to see The guardian 'tears' itself out of the hosts back.
Possession of this Artifact causes the following Battle Scar to manifest over the course of a day: Crystalline-mineral growth around the spine. If you lose possession of this Artifact, the Battle Scar heals over the course of the next month.
the user will slowly pour a gallon of water into the glove slot, somehow all of it being absorbed inside of it as the glove then slashes the user's hand open, and with the needle tool, drip some blood into the slime-water concoction, causing a volatile reaction that creates a Slime-bat similar in appearance to Aira's slime, Lavender. In fact, it is literally a clone of that slime created from a small portion of the original.
Increase your sacrificial Injury's Severity by 1 and spend an Action. Roll a single D10 as a critical failure check. If you roll a 1, the Effect fails, and you a ball of useless grey goo appear and a slime that speaks nothing but unneccesary talking, LOUDLY.
Summon the one and only Sapient Slime-Bat at your location. They last until they are destroyed They are controlled by you. This Artifact may have at most one minion active at a time.
You may end this Effect prematurely as a Free Action.
If killed, you cannot re-summon your minion until after your next Contract.
If you do not have a sacrificial Injury when you activate this Effect, take a new Severity-1 Injury.
This summon will manifest creatures resembling a human skeleton. Once casted by weaving specific signs, these summons rise from floor through a circle of light.
When activated these undead will follow each and every command to lacerate their opponents with their dagger as they can't care for themselves.
Exert your Mind and spend an Action.
Summon a single Skeletal Servant at your location. They will last for two hours, or until they are destroyed. They are controlled by the GM but will follow any commands you give. You may have at most 2 minions active at a time.
Any successful musician knows the value of a good roadie. The musician calls for a roadie, and one will promptly arrive. The roadie doesn't talk much, and they aren't too bright, but they can sure haul gear.
After a couple hours of work, the roadie will retire to smoke and get some sleep.
Exert your Mind and spend an Action.
Summon a single Sapient roadie at your location. They last for two hours or until they are destroyed. They are controlled by the GM but will follow any commands you give. You may have at most one minion active at a time.
You may only use this Effect once per day.
The mobster knows a guy they can call for a hired goon, who arrives about a minute later. The goons are dumb as bricks, but tough nonetheless, perfect for sending a message when you need to keep your hands clean.
Exert your Mind and spend an Action. You must actively and obviously use cell phone to activate this Effect.
Summon a single Sapient goon at your location. They last for two hours or until they are destroyed. They are controlled by the GM but will follow any commands you give. You may have at most one minion active at a time.
The Vampire is able to turn one of their victims into a lesser vampire, a pale shadow of a full creature of the night but useful nonetheless. Having drained and killed their target, the Vampire performs a brief ritualistic bloodletting, wherein they spill their own blood into the target's mouth, forcing them to drink, and bonding them together as child and sire.
Shortly afterwards, the fledgling vampire will rise from death, hungry for blood and eager to serve.
Increase your sacrificial Injury's Severity by 1 and spend one minute. Select a Dead target within arm's reach that has died within the last hour. This Effect cannot be used unless you drained the target's blood while they were still alive.
Your target rises as an Animate being. The raised creature is totally mindless, with no memory of its past life or hint of its old personality. They cannot communicate. They will follow any command you speak.
The creature lasts until it dies again. It is revived at full health. Any Injuries it had in life are not accounted for when determining its penalties or progression towards re-death, though they may affect its ability to perform certain actions at GM's discretion. The raised creature must consume flesh every day or it will die again.
Raised creatures have their Abilities set to the same that they were in life. Their Charisma and Intellect are set to 1, but their Dexterity, Brawn and Perception are the same as they had in life. A raised creature cannot use any Effects.
Your revived targets deal 2 Weapon Damage with their unarmed attacks.
If you do not have a sacrificial Injury when you activate this Effect, take a new Severity-1 Injury.