In Flambergast

Far beyond Pricking Moray another citadel smoulders. In the cinders of Flambergast, ever-burning outpost of Empire long-retreated, a silence reigns. In the silence is a great white horse with a broken back, it has no ears or tail. In the horse is a man older than the world and kingly. In his mouth a key. 

The horse comes terribly maimed and fierce. Its touch is bane and induces intrusive memories of being sewn by elders into a hide and left by a thunderous cataract among dismal wastes, there to be assailed by visions of descendants falling into internecine savagery and the ritual cannibalism of infants, betrayals of the most beloved under torture and couplings with sooty extraneans in barbarous gardens beyond the south.

Draugr-Steed: AC: 16 MV:80’ HD: 6 (32hp) #att 1 bite dmg: 1d8 + level drain ML: 10 AL: C

The steed is undead and thus is immune to sleep, charm and hold and other spells that affect minds and the living functions of living beings.

-From the ruins of the draugr-steed rises the man wide-eyed and bloody. He seems old but hale, white haired, dark skinned and tall.

-There is a profound sense of the numinous about him, characters with a WIS over 12 have burning visions of the man bearing witness to the drowning of the world from a mountaintop and placing a key of bronze in his mouth.

-Those touched by the man are assailed by the inescapable knowledge that everyone and everything they have ever loved will be swallowed by a deluge, that nothing can save them and that the sun will shine upon the surface of the water indifferent to their fate. Everything they experience from that moment forth will be tainted by that vision.

The Man: AC: 15 MV: 40’ HD: 7 (40hp) #att 1 touch dmg: level drain ML 12 AL: N

-The man is immune to magic but not to conventional weaponry.

-The key in his mouth may be used to unlock the heart of the Keeper in the Apple-Garth

-His bones are marked with runes describing the six of the seven rituals needed to unleash the drowning of the world. These can be read and unleashed as scrolls by any witch who takes it upon themselves to boil the flesh off of them and read the runes inscribed thereon: 

Skull: Matriculation of the Hollyhock Demiurge (MU 8) 

Range: Skin

Area of Effect: Caster

Duration: Until the sun dies

You must eat a wildcat alive at dawn. You are transformed into a smiling marble godling, flower-wreathed and priapic, all about you (30') sleep, charm and hold at the nightingale twittering that emanates invisibly from somewhere in your vicinity. This effect is continuous so that a save must be made every round while within range.  In addition to this the unyielding marble that is your flesh will blunt and break any weapon save maces and hammers and the like. There is a need to consume a larger living thing each morning or the transformation is reversed at noon.

 Left Thighbone: Unravelling the War-Skein (MU 7)

Range: Whisper

Area of Effect: Instruments of violence borne in the hands of those who hear the whisper 

Duration: Until the weapons are melted in a foundry or the keepers are dead.

 Every weapon sings a bright and shimmery song of violence (+3 to hit, triple damage), it must make blood flow each turn or it will turn against its keeper with all the wrath its keeper can muster.

Pelvis: Offering to the Incinerated One (MU 8) 

Range: horizon

Area of Effect: Living souls within the horizon

Duration: Until the lives run out

With an athame must be inscribed a glyph into the face of each sentient offering - d4 dmg. At the incantation and every 1d6 rds thereafter a horrible blackened thing will approach in the minds' eye and guide the caster through a parallel reality of burning canals on the backs of shrieking silver-green dolphins. The caster is then able to enter the souls of the living and to steal the quintessence of their being (which manifest as fragments of radiant jade embedded in effigies of dung) , taking 1000 XP each round to be their own. After each d6 round jaunt an offering will go shrieking into fiery doom until there are no more and enchantment is done.

Right Shinbone: Dance of the Timeworn Vestiges (MU 9)

Range: Chanting

Area of Effect: One person

Duration: While chanting continues

A door opens inexplicably in the chest of the subject and out come all those who the subject has loved and betrayed to cavort in a damnable pageant of unspeakable degradations. Should the subject strike out against them they will crumble to ash at 1hp but any damage inflicted will be visited sevenfold upon the subject at the end of the spell's duration by the subject's own guilt manifest as flailing viscera from the door in their chest. Should the subject survive the ordeal they must still save vs. spells or experience level drain.

Across five vertebrae of his lower back: Xanthic Apotheosis (MU 8)

Range: Horizon

Area of Effect: Caster

Duration: One day per caster level

The caster steps willingly into an alembic of cosmic energies and is transformed instantaneously (but subjectively over a period of many years) into a serpentine emblem of incipient monarchy. The caster must remain enthroned in basilisk-form inside the alembic until the spell expires, during which time the caster is vulnerable to all attacks as normal. The landscape around the caster caustic substances begin to precipitate on every surface, killing life slowly but inexorably. Each day the caster is present within an area  causes a cumulative 1 hp of dmg to everything.

On the bones of his left forearm: Profanation of the Sanctuary (MU 9)

Range:Self

Area of Effect: Caster

Duration: One round per caster level

The caster vomits a darkness like ink that spreads in a pool and keeps pouring forth whether the caster wishes it to or not. Whatever enchanted being or thing is touched by the stuff may have the enchantment in it snuffed like a candle flame. Magic-using creatures get a saving throw vs. spells and items get a saving throw based upon the level and class of their creator (who becomes aware of the profanation as a sickly shudder). The caster receives no saving throw. Assume the pool spreads five feet per round on flat ground.

_____________________________

Nothing beside remains