I like magic that ultimately twists the user in a dark and sinister way, like in the role playing game Kult, for those of you who have played it. For those of you who haven't played it, the basic premise is that reality is a thin illusion that is fading, and the real world would reduce Cthulhu to a gibbering, neurotic wreck.
Someone suggested dwarven artefacts could be magical, which sounds great to me, so...
quote:
It was ten or so years after we'd settled near the lava pit... I thought it was a bad place to settle, but they said there was adamantium there, and there was... and I guess that made it worth all the strange... problems we had... Anyway, we were mining the adamantium, and then Lorbam dropped his pick and got a funny look on his face, and went to a workshop... We figured he'd come out with an artifact, and he did, weeks later. It was a bed... a bed like you had never seen before... It was made of adamantium and cinnobar and... something else we didn't know where he had found it... and the decorations! He'd taken the elven bones we found and... well... it was disturbing. Beautiful, irresistable, but disturbing.We gave it to the Baron to furnish his new suite with. He went to bed that night and didn't come out. Eventually we'd go looking for him. He was found on the bed, in a sort of trance... we couldn't wake him. We didn't know what to do, so we put him on a bed in the barracks where he'd just... lie. He lay like that for a month and then he just woke up one day, yawned and told us how great he felt. Rested, energetic.
From that day on, he never slept again. He didn't have to. He'd just go on being awake, never getting sleepy. So of course everyone had to try it, we started with the most important dwarves. They'd all go in a trance for a month and wake up and not have to sleep again. Eventually it trickled down to us miners and haulers and the like... But by then we had started to notice the side effects.
Dwarves that had used the bed started... I dunno... going distant. They didnt' talk much, didn't seem to feel anything. Their pets would die and they wouldn't care, and they'd constantly go around lost in thoughts, as if they were somewhere else. And then we noticed the Baron started to fade. Bodily, that is. He literally began to go transparent. At the same time he stopped eating and drinking. And then one day he was gone.
I don't remember ever using the bed, but one day I woke up and I was in the bed, and everyone looked different. I realised they were older. A month older. They looked at me strangely, seemed to think I'd gone to lie in it by myself. I told them the truth but they didn't believe me.
I don't get hungry anymore, or thirsty. I noticed this morning I don't cast a shadow anymore, but there's hardly anyone to see it. Everyone who hasn't used the bed has fled. They locked the bed in the deepest vault, but I don't think that'll help. Bebmal help whoever finds it.
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Topic: Power Goal: "Kult" like artefacts (Read 506 times)