081 - Relics 5
SET Relics are UNIQUE. They can't be duplicated or copied and only one of each may be purchased across all characters within your narrative, though you may imagine multidimensional stuff allowing more, like if trying some cross-world multiplayer.
LIMIT: Three sets, 1 4+, 1 with 3 or less, 1 with 2 or less. Set Relics require a "ladder", Noble->Heroic->Epic. You may buy Set relics for companions.
LICH KING'S HORCRUXES
A set of Horcruxes left behind by an ancient necromancer that grew so powerful as to challenge the Reapers. Horcruxes are an alternative to Phylacteries only the most skilled and insane might resort to, fracturing the soul and Ego into a lower soulform. Akin to deliberately resurrecting as a mouse instead of a human.
Set Bonus - 2: Necromancy is half off rounding down, stacking. When you animate a minion you can use a harmless splinter of your own soul to inhabit it as though using a convinced friendly soul. You may take the Epic Relic.
Set Bonus - 4: Necromancy does not count against the magic-ladder of prerequisites. It does not count against the limit of 1 Rank 6 magic either, and you advance it to R6 for free once it hits R5.
DEMILICH SKULL
Cost: SET -8
Divination is half-off, rounding down, stacking. "Demi" The largest surviving fragment of the Lich-King. Demi clings to life by bonding itself into the magical framework provided by Familiars. This demilich-horcrux is quite limited in power, but it can provide narrative insights and act as part equipment part companion, with a fractured personality making it effectively "That grumpy but lovable old granduncle who happens to be a professor of necromancy". He's extremely intelligent, but not quite all there. He can automatically use and maintain Divination effects on your behalf to act like your Operator or info-support. If you lack Divination, he can use his own limited at Rank 3. He is totally immobile on his own but you could stick him on a skeleton body.
VAMPIRE CLOAK
Cost: SET -8
Arachnessence is half-off, rounding down, stacking. This red-thread cloak is animated with a minor personality with a flare for dramatics, but it isn't particularly intelligent, being more NPC-like with specific scripts and reactions. It's a prehensile extension of your will, you can use this to emulate a kind of web-slinging, and the cloak can emulate multiple spider-legs with perfect wall-climbing, or effortlessly glide with bat wings. The threads can absorb blood to add mass to itself for greater reach. It has your strength additive with that of an Apex peak human. With Demi, its animation is smarter & adaptive. If you purchase Arachnessence, its webs and features are emulated by the red threads.
WRAITH RING
Cost: SET -12
A ring invested with some of the Lich-King's own spectral power. This ring allows you to assume a Wraith form, in full or partially. As a Wraith you can move invisible to those without spirit sight, and through walls selectively (not falling through a floor). Your movement in or out of wraith form can selectively be as silent as a ghost. You may force a soulsplinter of your own into a target. The splinter fights for possession, which can dominate the weak willed and those accustomed to giving up control to vices, or the willing. Dominated beings will be your unquestioning minions with their own mind but skewed by your splinter.
REAPER BLADE
Cost: SET -12
A weapon issued to Reapers, stolen by Demi. Despite its size it moves as light as a dagger, without loss of force. The grimscythe is part soulform, so it can damage the ethereal, and it bypasses nonmagical materials. Any damage dealt by the grimscythe is instantaneously lethal and captures the soul into a prison containment within the skull emblem. Stored souls are normally released into an afterlife, but a necromancer can release them for other purposes that require souls. Warding protects against these effects, but if you can disable a Witch's wards then injure them, they cannot use revival methods unless their soul is freed.
GHOUL MOON
Cost: SET -20
An entire moon of undead bone and sinew, a collection amassed by Demi. His disabled phylactery is hidden somewhere within. It is an abundant resource for necromantic materials. The moon itself is animated with bestial intelligence as helpful as a dog. Demi could replace this with his own to provide landscape / security control and automate fleshcraft assemblies. Spirits can be deposited here, and can't escape unless a Reaper discovers it. It is in material realspace but the masquerade specifically blocks it from observations. It doesn't have gravitational effects but sometimes makes tracked asteroids 'disappear' due to collisions. The moon moves via orbital trajectories. You can designate an orbit and it will move into place within limits but it can't be made to crash. You can summon it with R6 Necromancy into the sky above.
THE HEROMAKERS
A Series of fabled artifacts known as the Heromakers. Each one alone is capable of diverting a story into that of a hero's tale, and can be seen in different forms or in between the lines of many epics, fables, and legends. Pieces are adaptive and may resemble a hero of old, or a hero of the modern era.
Set Bonus - 2: Heroic Mentorship. Free 15+ cost companion of neutral/ally faction. They may teach you one trait it has (R5 max) over the course of 1 Folk, 1 Noble, and 1 Heroic quest. You may incorporate it in those quests in training. You may take the Epic Relic.
Set Bonus - 4: You may take Wishcasting, which does not count against the magic-ladder of prerequisites. It does not count against the limit of 1 Rank 6 magic either, and you advance it to R6 for free once it hits R5. Your Wishcasting can only be used unconsciously and selflessly when performing heroic acts, a miracle in a moment of great need. Unless you otherwise have access to Wishcasting, in which case those terms apply separately.
HERO'S TRICK-WEAPON
Cost: SET -8
Usually found in a form it takes to conveniently appear in an hour of need; this is Heavily enchanted liquid metal remembers the shape of any weapon it touches and can intelligently combine recorded forms into amalgam weapons. The liquid can devour the weapon to copy enchantments and other effects to remember those as well and incorporate them into the same or other forms it can assume. Mix and match as you please to create combined weapons. It can also take the form of single-piece jewelry and hand tools, like a pen or a pocket knife. Ignore prerequisites for weapon relics, provided you took them to "feed" to the Trick-Weapon to incorporate its effects.
HERO'S QUESTING BEAST
Cost: SET -8
Many heroes are known for having a noble steed or "guy in the chair", a mysterious owl guide... and in many cases, the Damsel in Distress. The Questing Beast covers these as a narrative role. It can take many forms as it's mainly a divine spirit construct that can meld with another being. It can fuse with a companion or your familiar. You may take an additional Quest equal to the slot value of this and other Hero's Set Relics of equivalent values, gaining an extra Noble quest just from this slot for example. The "Questing Beast" will always be involved with these quests somehow, whether it guides you there, or they were abducted and used as bait for it, and so on.
HERO'S MANTLE
Cost: SET -12
A scarf, cape, cloak that usually embeds itself into the life of a would-be hero long before a heroic call, only revealing its potential when the call to heroism is answered. Once recognized it can change appearance to any other neckware. All damage you receive is delayed by 10 seconds. Every time you take damage this timer resets and new damage is stacked to the impending damage. The damage is reduced by your resistances initially before storage, but then applies a second time when it actually hits. If you kill or destroy the origin of the damage before it applies, the damage is negated. This doesn't account for armor, just bodily damage. Damage applies to armor first before being delayed.
HERO'S EVOLVING-ARMOR
Cost: SET -12
A drop of liquid metal that spreads on contact with your skin to form a skintight second skin bodysuit, including a full cover face mask. No surface left exposed, transparent film over the eyes and anywhere else you wish, and the lining reaches in to coat the inside of the mouth down to protect the entire digestive system still allowing respiration and digestion or other functions, with added defensive filters. The skin can record the forms of any clothing or armor it contacts and recreate them. It can devour objects to likewise mimic magic and material properties applying to any shape taken. You can withdraw coverage as you wish. The armor will adapt to grow resistances to specific sources of damage, 20% per source of the damage type, until immunity.
HERO'S BELT OF MIGHT
Cost: SET -20
Enchanted with overwhelming strength. The concept of strength itself, defying pesky physics. Your own strength is additive to the strength to easily lift 250k tons. The belt will augment and apply force in ways that assist in enacting your intentions. You could lift a house without damaging the structure of it even as you plop it down elsewhere, unless you intended to smash it. Likewise, you can lift and throw avg skyscrapers with strain. A specifically boosted added benefit is you can jump yourself to the moon or around the earth, emulate flying. You're immune to physical backlash from effects you cause such as falling after a jump, or breaking your hand punching.
SPARK OF HUMANITY
Alphazon is never one to sit idly by, with countless secret laboratories scattered throughout the realms and solar system. With secret operatives embedded within most factions, notably Arcadia, they pry at the fundamental workings of the world always looking to "escape the cradle". This set is half-price for Alphazon & ORC, or Neutral (Human) race characters.
Set Bonus - 2: Your Alphazon related effects are directly supervised by "The Director" without Board inter-ference. The Director is generally hands-off, only requiring you do not betray mankind. In practice, this significantly lowers Alphazon's privacy concerns and so long as you're pro-human, the Director's attention is itself also a perk. You can consider yourself part of all three factions, and gain all 3 faction perks. ("Arcadia") You may take the Epic Relic.
Set Bonus - 4: You have a one time get out of jail free card for one severe Masquerade Violation. The larger the effect, the more other entities will contest or alter it. You now gain the Faction Quests. If you began with one, you also gain 1 Epic and 1 Folk quest slot bonus.
HUBRIS OF MAN
Cost: SET -8
Gadgetry is half-off rounded down and stacking. A combination study of the Servant Doll and Dollmaker relics creating prototype Synth life bonded to your own with a connection inspired by the Gemini species. While not completely unique, there are very few prototypes and each is different. Initially you have a perfectly loyal Clockwork synthetic human that shares as much of your own psyche as you wish, sharing your soul. Has all Ro benefits. You may purchase any perks, relics, or magic for it with a universal 50% round down discount that can ignore the magic ladder. It's Class is True Wizard, with its own artificial body as its implement.
HUMANITY OUT OF BOUNDS
Cost: SET -8
Integration is half-off rounded down and stacking. A hidden bunker to an abandoned Alphazon facility. You uncover a disabled gateway machine resembling a technological stargate. There is no dust anywhere, and despite the apparent importance, you find the missing components to the gateway simply sitting on the "director's office" desk. Activating the portal, you have 6 "slots" to customize an alternate dimension using either or both Gifts of Faves: Top Secret Facts, and any time travel cyoa you wish (Optional). All effects are contained to that world. Once visited, you could use normal Portals magic to return at-will. If you have Alpha Zero Proxima and this, you can find an Unstable Gate with unlimited "slots" and can keep 1 perk from Top Secret, and you may now also use Prison of the Mind to customize the other world(s). Also, a version of your-self helps for 1 Quest +that quest is free.
POWER OF HUMAN IMAGINATION
Cost: SET -12
Digicasting is half-off rounded down and stacking, and may be purchased by humans or ignore dysfunction-like limits. You gain a 1990's looking digital trinket of some sort (Tamagotchi, flip phone, Game Boy) with which you may use Digicasting to replicate the effects of any Elementalism magic you choose (On demand), replicating the basic control effects that grow and improve on per rank, not other spell effects gained at later ranks. The control rank is equal to your Digicasting rank. The result is always visually pixilated and RGB dominated by the relevant colors of the element and damage done is "Pixel" typed but emulating things like burn damage in how it harms the body.
ALPHA ZERO PROXIMA
Cost: SET -12
"Fate" guides you to one of Alphazon's first original facilities. "Oldest House" It's heavily corrupted by outsider influences filling it with corrupted victims and monstrous entities, but you can fight your way through it to reach Purge Points that can cleanse a "Zone" into a stable state. You somehow gained a directorate authorization for security access through all locks. You gain one free Epic quest slot which must be spent "questing" in this facility for no RP, instead, you may find Relics or acquire Perks from Future Contri-butions and 3rd party content or DLC's of equal quest slot value. You may buy normally from any source you used a Quest on, and have them canonically within "core" Witch universe without further justifications or other lore details as you please. You may spend your own quest slots to acquire more, and the facility itself is yours as you clear it, which has "fast travel" networks.
Synthetic Code
Cost: SET -20
Requires Digicasting and Integration. Half-off if you have False Light. The Director through some proxy implants you with a strange sequence reconfiguring your soul, becoming neither Outsider nor Native. An Artificial Angel. You acquire False Light, its visual effects are "pixelated" and neon. You cannot be Corrupted by Far Entropy and can be considered to have Celestia Code for any requirements. If you take Ministration, rather than golden beings, you can summon entities of silver, chrome, and pixel. They're glitchy and erratic but mechanically function- without Service payments. You can't purify corruption but you find you can digitize corrupted beings to "compress" their existence into a quarantine, if you can defeat them.
May be emulated as a non-set relic, but only one element each & usage is specific to individual effects used through the device like single spells. Noble.