⭗ REDIRECTIONS XXIV⭗

 

⭗ TALES FROM THE UTTER WEST #4 ⭗

⭗ SPELLS FROM THE WINEDARK DEPTHS ⭗

“I can see shadowy dreams of what they did to you in their Eldershale Bastion,” the Blue Oracle said, reaching out to touch Charred-Hand’s shoulder.

The old man didn’t respond. He stared into the hard grit at his feet, his saffron and honeysmoke cigarette hanging from his two remaining fingers.

“I can see the spells the arbolarios taught you while you labored in their arboretum,” the Blue Oracle continued. “I can see the spells you used to make your escape. I can even see the spell that turned your hand into shadows, part of which never became flesh again.”

“Then tell the stories yourself,” Charred-Hand shook as he said the words, trying to steady himself with a long draw from the cigarette again. “Remind me what it is like to wield Zenithali magic. Maybe in your hands, it will be less dangerous than it was in mine.”

⭗ UMBRALIZE ⭗

Transmuting Flesh To Shadow Since Nineteen-Aught-Ninety

Power: 2 - Range: Touch - Target: An Individual - Duration: 1 hour

Insubstantiate the skin, the meat, the bone, all that is the Ha. It is now darkness, hazy and permeable. You, a conscious gap in the light, are unbound to the visible world. You can pass through spaces small enough to block the movement of flesh. You can stream through seams and flatten against a wall, invisible to those looking for more than shades. Light can wound you, erase you, but as long as you stay in the darkness, you will remain whole. This is a “dangerous” spell.

Overcharged: Doubles the length of time that the target is umbralized. Each time the spell is overcharged, it doubles the power, the duration and the dangerousness. Be careful not to become permanently umbral.

This spell can also be reversed to turn shadow beings or umbralized targets into meaty Ha-body ones. For many natively umbral creatures (like the Zenithali) this can be incredibly uncomfortable, if not deadly.

⭗ ELECTROMAGNIFICENT AURA ⭗

A Radiating Shell Of Unseeable Light

Power: 2 - Range: 2 meters - Target: Self - Duration: 1 hour

Become the bane of electrics, the anti-saint of silicon, the incarnation of x-ray radiation. Summon the song that lights the night with a shell of electromagnificent radiance beyond the range of human eyes to see. At its most basic level, the aura only affects electronics (and those that run unshielded and according to the same physical principles) but overcharge it and it starts to cook things. This is a “dangerous” spell.

Overcharged: Anyone who spends too much time within the aura’s range gets a terrible radiation burn. Overcharge again for deeper burns. Overcharge a few more times and you can liquefy any flesh foolish enough to pass through your aura.

⭗ ANTI-GLUON ARROW ⭗

A Microwave Missile

Power: 2 - Range: 50 Meters - Target: one per bolt - Duration: Instantaneous

The tri-barrelled boarding pistol of electromagnificent magic. Three bolts carved from the vicious heat of an invisible sun go streaking toward targets, flying from an outstretched hand and burning enemy flesh for 1d4 radiation damage each. Electrics and artificial persons who operate on the same, unshielded principles take double damage. This is a “dangerous” spell.

Overcharged: can be overcharged as many times as you wish. Adds an additional Microwave Missile for each time it is overcharged.

⭗ ICY GLAZE ⭗

Hard Ice For Hard Environs

Power: 2 - Range: Touch - Target: An Individual Or Object - Duration: 1 hour

A shivering shell envelopes the skin, shielding it from heat and (some) electromagnificent radiation. Will melt away after it takes 6 points of damage from heat or radiation sources, but otherwise does not stop the body from being flensed by claws and blades, or otherwise beaten with percussive / kinetic weapons. It’s still ice, so it’s really, really uncomfortable to wear unless you’re walking through one of Dante’s infernal circles. This is a “dangerous” spell.

Overcharged: adds +3 points of resistance to heat and radiation sources, plus an extra 30 minutes of duration and a drop in body temperature of 3° Celsius. You can overcharge this spell as many times as you want, for better or worse.

⭗ INVERT SIGHT ⭗

Seeing The Umbral As The Umbral Do

Power: 1 - Range: Touch - Target: An Individual - Duration: 1 hour

This spell? Nah, you don’t want this spell. It’s not darkvision or infravision or anything useful like that. It just inverts the spectrum in your eyes so that shadows glow and the sun streams black. I guess it would be useful in a world where the sun was invisible and everything was all made of shadows or something, but who ever heard of a world like that? Just invest in darkvision and call it a day, kid.

⭗ SUMMON GAMMA CRAB SWARM ⭗

Though They Be But Little, They Are Fierce

Power: 4 - Range: 10 meters - Target: Ground - Duration: Instant

To the Zenithali, they are less than a pest. They are snacks and good eating. In the world of visible light, they are an invasive species so blinding that they are impossible to look at straight-on, making them difficult to hit. They also move fast, seeming to shimmer in and out of existence. Worse, they breed like rabbits and eat anything, whether it’s animal, mineral or vegetable. 

This spell summons 1d6 gamma crabs (L3, radioactive) which boil out of the soil from some momentary portal to the depths of the Winedark Ocean, attacking anything nearby. This is a “dangerous” spell. In addition to the usual effects for failure, another 1d6 gamma crabs appears, even angrier than the last batch.

Overcharged: another 1d6 gamma crabs appears for every time this spell is overcharged, and they get bigger and angrier the more oomph you put into the spell. Add +1 to the level of all gamma crabs summoned for every time this spell is overcharged.

⭗ OUR PARTY (SO FAR) ⭗

Lleva Vyeldisana, Greenfolk Naturalist and Zoa Conservationist

"Charred-Hand" a perfectly ordinary and unassuming wastelander

The Blue Oracle, Dreamer of Dreams

 

Coda-1, Coda-2 and Coda-3, a bluelander polybody pilgrim, allegedly.

⭗ WHAT ARE REDIRECTIONS? ⭗

My goal with REDIRECTIONS is to add my own contribution to the Psychedelic / Heavy Metal / Ligne Claire art RPG space.  Much in the way that people inspired by Tolkien’s style helped give birth to the modern genre of High Fantasy, the style of Jean “Moebius” Giraud (and others like him) seems to be spawning a sort of genre of its own right now, and I want to expose more people to the wonders of it. I want to share it. I want to be a part of it. Most of all, I want it to grow.

    REDIRECTIONS is a collection of wondrous places and resources presented in story format (as a game in play, specifically traversing the universe of UVG (Ultraviolet Grasslands) but it is also kept more general for your own RPG characters to visit and explore regardless of the system you use. Each place is unique and wholly original, with a bevy of interesting stories, plot hooks and characters to color your experience. The format and many of the specific terms are from UVG. I'm just playing in Luca Rejec's universe. If you like these posts and find them useful, let me know! As of this point, all art in these posts is created as a collaboration with AI. Basically I trained an AI art model on my own sharpie marker drawings, then generated a bunch of pictures and trained a series of other models on them. I generate images with these secondary models, sometimes using the output as it is, and sometimes modifying the images with inpainting and/ or using the secondary models to refine output from DALLE-3. There is, literally, in every image, a little bit of me. Consider these images to be homages to the genre and pretty pictures, but nothing more. I greatly respect the skill of people who work with pen and pencil and have the skill of hand to make things from scratch. This is a series, and each entry is numbered. If you like things like this, please support the true artists whose works are part of the genre, such as the works of Moebius, Luka Rejec's Ultraviolet Grasslands, Luke Gearing's Acid Death Fantasy and Raw Fury's game SABLE.