The wise old hermit consults the spirits for advice. She lifts her crooked cane and turns to you. You must...
d6 ways to break the curse:
1. Stand atop the mountain's peak and dance three days and three nights. That holy ritual will cleanse and fortify you. (+1 STR and CON, permanently, once.)
2. Wait for a rainy day. Then, a massive statue (elephant-sized, made of stone, possibly bigger/more expensive depending on the curse) of that which cursed you must be built. The statue must be started when the rain begins and finished before it ends. When the rain ends, the curse will transfer to the statue.
3. Compose a poem or ode to the curse, or have a bard do it for you. Curses are very vain and fickle things. Powerful curses will require the work of a master wordsmith and possibly a large crowd for you to read it to. The curse will steal the poem and disappear with it. Your audience will probably have nightmares for a while - there's no telling what might come of that.
4. Live in cold and darkness and see no human face for a week and a day, no exceptions. On the very last day, at noon exactly, a family member must bring you under the light of the sun, where friends will be waiting to cheer you on. The unexpected onslaught of love and light will annihilate the curse.
5. Travel to the place where you were born and lie down in a deep, deep pit of mud there. Then cut off one of your fingers (-1 DEX permanently) and bury it in that spot. Your home and those who live in it will bear the curse, and so will your heirs, if you have any, but you will never suffer this kind of curse again as long as your finger still lies there (that is to say, as long as no angry mob finds and unearths the finger and hunts you down).
6. Find the curse-eater bird and pluck a feather from it when it sleeps. It is said the bird will eat your curse if you return the feather. Do not push your luck. Do not steal its evil trinkets. Do not look at its terrible eggs. Do NOT anger the bird.
Curse-Eater Bird ("Melphage" in pedantic wizard-speak)
Where it lives - Lands broken and shattered by magical wars long past, in a nest made of ugly swords, with its (1d8-3) screeching, peeping nestlings.
What it looks like - Size of an ox. Beautiful iridescent red plumage, eyes like bottomless pits, jagged beak. Or, pick a curse and base an appearance on it. What would mummy rot look like if it were a bird?
Encountering it - You'll hear its horrible screaming from a mile away. It speaks - its words sound like it's constantly being choked (because, in a way, it is).
Personality - It wants suffering and beauty. Like a curse, it is vain, fickle, relentless, vengeful. Like a bird, it wants to feed, and to care for its nest above all else.
Curse removal/Ecology - Its empty gaze can draw out a curse (it takes a form like a will-o-wisp's) and eat it like an earthworm. The process is painful for the bird if done on living beings, so it prefers corpses. It also feeds on curse sources (like a cursed item) but the process of drawing out such a curse, edible piece by edible piece, can take generations - or multiple birds convinced to work together.
HD 5, AC as leather, fly as bird, move as ox, morale 9 (12 when defending nest).
Attacks: talon 1d6 + beak 2d6. Alternatively, intense screaming (all within 60' save or throw up blood, taking 1d4 damage).
Treasure:
2d6-4 deformed eggs in sickly, shining colors, each representing a specific curse, inflicting it if thrown or eaten. (it will scream if you take more than a quick glance at these)
1d100 feathers worth 100 gp each (+ 1d10 in nest, it won't notice or care at all if you steal these)
4d6 ugly swords and trinkets (it won't notice or care much if you steal these)
1d4-1 cursed swords and items (it may notice and protest if you steal these, they're food)
No comments:
Post a Comment