Magic
Magic Name: The Returned
Magic Type: Lost Magic
Description: At its core, necromancy. The Returned gives its user control over death and decay, in return for acting as a bridge to the departed. While those born with this magic in the past were often respected for their ability to speak with the dead, just as many saw their abilities as unnatural and dangerous. Most found with this magic have ended up hunted down and killed throughout history, but mages continue to occasionally awaken to its powers.
The Returned has three core classes of spells: reanimation, spirit control, and malady.
Reanimation lets the user bring the dead back to life, or rather unlife. While a novice can only bring mindless undead back, those that have mastered their magic can create undead that almost seem alive.
Spirit control allows the mage to call and speak to the recently departed, and even use them to fight. However, their ability to see spirits cannot be turned off and spirits often seek them out. Malicious spirits are also prone to lash out to one of the few people that can interact with them.
Finally Malady gives control over the spread of disease, as well as the natural decay of flesh and objects. It is this class of spells that has garnered the most hatred, as many natural plagues have been blamed on practitioners of The Returned.
To use their magic, a mage draws in the shadows around them and focuses them at their target. Most of their spells are ritualistic in nature, and can take several minutes to perform depending on what they are attempting. The exception is combat magic, which has been developed for fast use. These spells tend to be weaker or have more limitations than ritualistic magic.
Unique Abilities:
Spells
Magic Name: The Returned
Magic Type: Lost Magic
Description: At its core, necromancy. The Returned gives its user control over death and decay, in return for acting as a bridge to the departed. While those born with this magic in the past were often respected for their ability to speak with the dead, just as many saw their abilities as unnatural and dangerous. Most found with this magic have ended up hunted down and killed throughout history, but mages continue to occasionally awaken to its powers.
The Returned has three core classes of spells: reanimation, spirit control, and malady.
Reanimation lets the user bring the dead back to life, or rather unlife. While a novice can only bring mindless undead back, those that have mastered their magic can create undead that almost seem alive.
Spirit control allows the mage to call and speak to the recently departed, and even use them to fight. However, their ability to see spirits cannot be turned off and spirits often seek them out. Malicious spirits are also prone to lash out to one of the few people that can interact with them.
Finally Malady gives control over the spread of disease, as well as the natural decay of flesh and objects. It is this class of spells that has garnered the most hatred, as many natural plagues have been blamed on practitioners of The Returned.
To use their magic, a mage draws in the shadows around them and focuses them at their target. Most of their spells are ritualistic in nature, and can take several minutes to perform depending on what they are attempting. The exception is combat magic, which has been developed for fast use. These spells tend to be weaker or have more limitations than ritualistic magic.
Unique Abilities:
- Necromantically Touched: At rank D the mage is immune to sickness, magical or otherwise, resistant to curses equal to their rank or weaker, and can see and speak with willing spirits. This cannot be turned off, meaning the spirits always have access to the mage's ear.
- Morgue: At rank B they gain the ability to store and summon corporeal undead in a space accessed through shadows. When an undead is stored and then summoned from this space, once its duration expires it returns to storage instead of being destroyed. The maximum number of undead that can be stored is equal to the amount the mage can create at one time.
- Ruinous Angel: At S rank The Returned manifests physically. The specific appearance varies between mages, but typically appears as a pair of long, boney structures appearing like wings that emerge from the mage’s back. A single row of black feathers hangs from the faux wings like ornaments. Ruinous angel increases the durability of their corporeal and incorporeal undead, as well as causes any living creature nearby to receive Rot damage. Both the Rot aura and wings can be suppressed.
Spells
- Basic Spells:
Name: Call Spirit
Rank: D
Duration: 6
Description: Ritual. The mage calls a willing spirit by name to their location. If the spirit is antagonistic it can attack the mage, but this can be warded against by drawing and enchanting a circle as part of the ritual.
Name: Lesser Animation
Rank: D
Duration: 6
Description: Ritual. The mage can reanimate a small corpse into an undead of their choosing, the size no larger than a cat or small dog, and is completely mindless only able to do as the mage commands.
Name: Sicken
Rank: D
Duration: 3
Description: Combat. By sending their shadowed magic into a target, they can cause them to become sick. They will become lethargic and sore, and may show symptoms such as coughing and sneezing. The weaker the target's magic, the sicker they become. This illness cannot be passed to others.
Name: Corpse Explosion
Rank: C
Duration: 1
Description: Combat. A designated body nearby explodes violently, damaging anyone nearby and covering them in gore.
Name: Plague
Rank: C
Duration: 5
Description: Combat. Plague acts identically to Sicken, except that its effect immediately spreads to anyone nearby the initial target that the mage designates.
Name: Spirit Sight
Rank: C
Duration: 8
Description: Ritual. By casting this spell on a willing spirit, the caster gains the ability to see and hear through the spirit as they move around. They cannot communicate with the spirit once out of speaking range.
Name: Animation
Rank: B
Duration: 9
Description: Ritual. Now the mage can reanimate larger mindless undead, including humans and large animals like tigers.
Name: Bone spear
Rank: B
Duration: 1
Description: Combat. A spear made of bone forms above the mage’s outstretched hand before hurtling toward the target.
Name: Forced Visitation
Rank: B
Duration: 9
Description: Ritual. By using the blood of a relative or an object a person once owned in life, a spirit can be called forth by force and must do as the mage commands. If the spirit was a more powerful mage that the caster, then it can break free and attack. A warding circle like that used for a normal Call Spirit will protect against their attacks.
Name: Grasping Hands
Rank: A
Duration: 5
Description: Combat. Skeletal hands burst from the ground and grab anyone within range, immobilizing them. Only works on targets that are standing on the ground, and where there is dirt directly below the summoning point (but can be cast if there is a floor on top of the dirt).
Name: Cripple
Rank: A
Duration: 1
Description: Combat. By sending a wave of magic toward a target, the mage causes the target’s bones to become brittle and break, causing serious injury. Against a mage of similar strength this can only break a single bone, but against a weak opponent it can cripple half their body at once.
Name: Returned’s Chosen
Rank: A
Duration: 10
Description: Combat. The spirit of an ancient military commander takes command of the mindless undead and spirits under the mage’s command, allowing the mage to turn their attention elsewhere. This general retains their memories from life, and is completely loyal to their summoner.
Name: Greater Animation
Rank: S
Duration: 13
Description: Ritual. The mage can turn anything with a corpse into an undead, regardless of its size. These undead retain a basic sense of self, like that of an intelligent animal.
Name: Spirit Walk
Rank: S
Duration: 13
Description: Combat. For a brief period of time the caster becomes incorporeal, invisible to those without spirit sight and able to freely pass through walls and other objects. They cannot be affected by outside forces, but likewise cannot affect anything material.
Name: Bloody Festival
Rank: S
Duration: 8
Description: Combat. Unbearable pain racks the target, and blood begins to gush from every orifice. If the bleeding is not stopped by healing magic or the caster they will bleed out when the spell completes. In addition the blood spilled becomes toxic, causing anyone that comes into contact with it to also suffer from this spell’s effects.
Name: T-Virus
Rank: H
Duration: 23
Description: Ritual. The T, or Transformation, Virus infects a single person. This person then quickly transforms from a living human into a zombie that immediately attacks anyone nearby that is not designated as “off limits” by the caster. This zombie’s bodily fluids such as blood and saliva are infectious, and anyone infected also quickly turns into a zombie. Every time a new zombie is created the spell duration resets, and can only end if the caster cancels it, every zombie is destroyed, or the caster is killed.
- Advanced Spells:
Name: Old Guard
Rank: D+
Duration: 8
Description: Combat. The spirit of a long passed knight is summoned to fight for the mage. This spirit is immune to non magical damage, and its spectral blade does magical instead of physical damage. It does not have a consciousness beyond its memories of combat techniques.
Name: Sphere of Darkness
Rank: C+
Duration: 5
Description: Combat. A sphere of absolute darkness appears around the caster, robbing everyone but themselves of their senses while inside.
Name: Rear Sentry
Rank: B+
Duration: 11
Description: Combat. An archer spirit is summoned that can launch ranged attacks. It otherwise functions identically to Old Guard.
Name: Bone Golem
Rank: A+
Duration: 12
Description: Ritual. By drawing on any nearby corpses, the mage creates a lumbering golem of bone to fight for it.
Name: Wisened One
Rank: S+
Duration: 15
Description: Combat. A caster type mage is summoned from history to fight as a spirit, casting basic elemental spells at a rank one below the rank of the summoner. It otherwise works identically to Old Guard.
Name: All Things End
Rank: H+
Duration: 1
Description: Combat. Shadows swirl and burst from the caster’s body, turning anything and anyone that comes in contact with it to dust. Strong mages can resist being disintegrated instantly, but will still watch and suffer as their flesh begins to turn to ash.
- Signature Spells:
Name: Bind Spirit
Rank: C
Duration: Permanent
Description: Ritual. By using a part of a corpse, a spirit is bound to a physical object. The effectiveness of this binding depends on two things: the rank of the mage and the amount of blood used in the ritual. At rank C the bound spirit has a shadow consciousness and is capable of only broken speech. At S rank they think and act like they did in life, and have full control of the object they are bound to. To increase the effective rank blood must be sacrificed. At C rank the blood of a small animal is sufficient, but at S an adult human is required. At H rank the mage can sacrifice several people to store their own soul, creating a phylactery to protect them from death. Should the object be destroyed the spirit is also destroyed and lost forever.
Name: Rot
Rank: A
Duration: 5
Description: Combat. A green and black ball of magic shoots forth from the mage’s hand. Whatever it strikes is coated in a toxic film that causes it to slowly undergo the material’s natural decomposition. Flesh putrefies, iron rusts, and stone crumbles to sand.
Name: Swarm
Rank: H
Duration: 1
Description: Combat. Drawing upon nearby spirits, the caster swarms their target with dozens of angry, screaming spirits that rip and tear at their enemy, bypassing any physical defense as they do so. Then as quickly as they appeared, the spirits vanish leaving only silence behind.
- Aspect of Pluto Signature Spell:
Name: Dark Puppet
Rank: S
Duration: 10
Description: Combat. Reaching into the target’s body, the mage wrests control of their skeleton. If significantly weaker than the casting mage, the caster can move their body against the target’s will. Otherwise the target is frozen in place.
Last edited by Saiko Akai on 6th November 2024, 5:31 pm; edited 3 times in total
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