Silk Wizards- A Wizard Template for the GLOG
PERKS
Asceticism- You may go without food or rest
for a number of days equal to your level, and
without water for a number of days equal to
half your level, without suffering any ill
effects. Furthermore, you can perform incredible
feats of endurance. You should be assumed
to automatically succeed at all normal tests
of endurance: resisting pain, heat, cold,
exhaustion, etc.
Silk Mentor- Roll on the Silk Wizard Background, or pick one if your GM allows. You can channel 'touch' spells through silk.
Power of The Silken One- If you somehow roll a 7 on the mishap table, you recover all your magic dice. But rolling a 7 is normally impossible and besides exists only as a gamist concept that your character could have no in-universe knowledge of. Right?
WRONG
The college of the Silk Wizards is located in distant lands, in a swelteringly hot city.
Silk Wizards gallivant about without much clothing at first- they have a single piece of silk about as big as a veil or loincloth that is worn as such- this is their spellbook. As they learn new spells, they get longer and longer pieces of silk to cover themselves with (or just to wear as an enormous turban). Apprentices who start out with a long, blank piece of silk instead of the small square are viewed as pretentious, presumptuous, and severely lacking in the humility and poverty that elder Silk Wizards feel is appropriate for apprentices.
humble for their own good
Being trained as a Silk Wizard has several benefits- firstly, they are trained to endure the weather and adverse conditions, and can go without food and water for much longer than an ordinary man and their tanned skins and road-weathered feet can ignore burning sands and freezing snows as well as any leather-clad adventurer. Whereas other wizards may be soft-handed scholars, Silk Wizards are ascetic monks- they even learn simple grapples and throws, with more advanced Silk Wizards often incorporating their long silks as weapons for parrying blows or even whips to lash and entangle their enemies.
This training is for the inevitable assassins that will come for them
Secondly, they have access to their silk, which is 1 foot long per spell known and practically indestructible due to the magics they weave into it. Apart from the mundane uses of their silken spellbook, they can also write spells they know multiple times, provided they have the funds for extending the length of their silk. The reason they do this is because silken wizards can rip off spells from either end of their silk(certainly not the middle!) to cast them as though reading from a scroll.
Each foot of magically inscribed silk costs 1,000 coins, and those with longer silks outrank those with shorter silks. Duels are common between Silk wizards, with the victor taking parts of the losers spellbook. Taking nothing from an opponent is more of an insult than killing them is, and typically the most gracious and diplomatic action is to take a single spell and spare the life of the loser- though if an inexperienced wizard beats a more masterful one, it's considered tradition to take just enough silk to 'outrank' the loser by 1 spell.
Silk Wizards tend to be jealously possessive of their spells, a master generally gifting his apprentice but a single spell from his silk and then encouraging more and more creative uses of the spell until its potential is thoroughly exhausted. As such, many apprentices become wanderers, who seek to find new spells on their own either by adventuring or challenging other Silk Wizards to duels.
Silk Wizard Background
1-Accidental Recruit
2- Rogue Apprentice
3- Disciple of Nine Chicken Fist
4- Secret Disciple of Zero Spider Jury
5- Disciple of One Giraffe Wind
6- Disciple of Four Moth Dream
1- You were mistaken as a Silk Wizard by an apprentice Silk Wizard and challenged to a duel. You won, and bemusedly accepted their surrender and the bribe they melodramatically offered to spare their life- their only spell. You don't have silk wizard training, only this one spell and a drama queen rival, so you can pick another template from any class.
2-Rogue Apprentice- Seeking an easy route to power, maybe for good reasons, maybe for no reason at all, you killed your master for his massive silk turban, only to realize too late that he was a bit of a sham- his turban is 50 feet long sure, but it is 50 copies of a single random spell! Other Silk Wizards revile you and will surely kill you if they can, but they also fear your alleged power and giant hat.
3- You underwent orthodox, but intense training under the master Nine Chicken Fist. Your spell is Sand Skin and one other, and you are well trained in martial arts (take a bonus proficiency of your choice for Fists, and you can advance further in Fists just as Fighters can) and your spell ensures that you might actually survive if you go up against a monster or an armed man. However, your master has befallen a terrible fate and turned to stone, and you seek several ingredients, for use with your cockatrice egg, to brew a potion to restore him. Your egg is dangerously close to hatching...
4- You were chosen by the secret master of black ops, Zero Spider Jury. Your spells are Aspect of Weaver and Fire Friend and you are trained in moving stealthily (Stealth 2) and garroting people silently and swiftly with your ribbon of black silk. Your signature execution style is climbing along the ceiling and slipping a noose around their neck and then lifting your target to hang them, and you have very strong arms and excellent knot-work for this very purpose. You also have 3 molotov cocktails and 20 candles.
You're on your first mission- to assassinate a rogue apprentice who killed his master via treachery rather than a duel. The irony of using treachery yourself to kill the traitor is not lost on you.
5- Disciple of One Giraffe Wind- You have multiple long scarves of weighted silk and you are trained to use them as a sort of non-lethal chain weapon that deals 1d4 nonlethal damage. You have a reach of 10 feet, and if you 'damage' someone you can instead disarm them, trip them, or snag a limb with a knot for later pulling on them.
One Giraffe Wind is ostentatious and garish and unpopular, but he is undisputedly a master among masters and you are undisputedly a master apprentice. Aspect of Drifting Feather and Aspect of Gallows are your spells, and you are under a lot of pressure to succeed and fill out your silk with spells- because you had to take out a loan of about 5,000 coins to buy 'em and the interest is 10% monthly.
6-Disciple of Four Moth Dream- You have an entire bolt of white silk, and this treasure is made even more valuable due to the training as a healer the kindly Four Moth Dream imparted upon you, a wounded outcast taken in out of mercy. Your spells are all more powerful if you can wrap the target in a cocoon of white silk before hand, and though you claim to know three spells, Healing and Metamorphosis and a random spell, in fact you only know Metamorphosis and perform your healing by transforming things into themselves. This has some drawbacks, as miscasts tend to turn people into mutants or monsters. But you bear no prejudice against these changes- after all, a human isn't your original form and you aren't complaining.
You were once a silken servant, but you don't remember that. Four Moth fears you.
Common Silk Wizard Spells
1-
Sand Skin [R]-Touch [T]-One Being With Skin [D]- [Sum]x10 Minutes
Target gains 2 defense per dice used. Cannot raise defense above +8. Mishaps cause you and the target to also gain Encumbrance equal to the Defense gained.
2-
Aspect of Weaver- [R]-Touch [T]-One Being [D]- [Sum] Hours
Target's feet+hands (or appropriate analogues) are coated in silk that allows them to walk on ceilings, walls, and have a small bonus when trying to determine grapple success barehanded, and they can tie people up with the silk and secrete more.
3-
Fire Friend- [R] Sight [T]- [sum]Candles/Torches/Bonfires/ Forest Fire. Scale depends on # of dice used. [D] Until Extinguished
Fire affected by this spell will not harm you and will spread or not spread in ways favorable to you. Torches and Candles will even flicker out rather than give you away to your enemies, but larger fires prefer to simply immolate your foes and are less considerate in general.
4-
Aspect of Drifting Feather- [R] Sight [T]- Up to [Sum]x50 pounds [D] Until grounded
Things affected by this spell fall slowly and land safely and silently- unless there is wind, in which case they can drift on the breeze like a feather.
5-
Aspect of Gallows- [R]-Touch [T]-One Rope per Die used [D]- [Sum] Actions
You can control a rope or similar long, flexible object as though it was one of your own limbs, provided it remains in contact with your skin.
6-
Metamorphosis- [R]-Touch [T]-One Living Being [D]- Permanent
You turn a living creature into another living creature of roughly the same size if it fails a save, +/- 50% mass per extra spell die used. You can even turn something into itself to heal its wounds, healing [sum] HP. Dice used on this spell are always lost due to its power.
7-
Flying Bolt [R]-Touch [T]-One Piece of Cloth [D]- [Sum]x10 Minutes
You make a piece of cloth(traditionally a bolt of silk) of any size able to fly as swift as a bird at your mental command. It can carry [Sum]x50 pounds. If large enough it can be used and sundered as a shield, protecting who you dictate.
8-
Dust Devil [R]-30' [T]- 15 foot diameter area [D]-[Sum] Minutes
You create a small whirlwind that moves at 30' per action as you command it. It throws small objects around and may kick up obscuring dust. Those in the whirlwind move at half speed and flying creatures may be forcibly crashlanded.
9-
Steelsilk- [R]- touch [T]- Silk [D]-[Sum]x10 Minutes
Some silk becomes as steel. Silk clothes give armor as Chain, silk threads serve as wires, silk ropes can serve as killing weapons, etc etc. Other fabrics work as well, but for Sumx1d10 minutes. 3 or more dice makes this effect permanent.
10
-Silksteel- [R]- touch [T]- Silk [D]-[Sum]x10 Minutes
Some steel becomes like silk. This makes weapons fairly useless, steel bars as silk ropes, armor as clothing, etc etc. Allows weavers to serve as blacksmiths. Works on other metals, but for Sum x 1d10 minutes. 3 or more dice makes this effect permanent.
Mishaps- roll 1d6.
1- Spellsilk Spellbook/Clothing flies loose in an unnatural wind and must be caught. It doesn't want to escape, only be free for a bit.
2- Gagged by own spellsilk for 1d6 rounds.
3- Bound by own spellsilk for 1d6 rounds, or if spellsilk is too small, levitated 1 inch off the ground and held midair by the tiny piece of silk for same.
4- Lose 1 casting die from your pool
5- Mutation for 1d6 rounds, then Save or it is permanent.
6-Your spells have 50% chance to turn against you until either a day passes or a spell betrays you.
7- Restore all magic dice to your pool.
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Doom- The secrets of the Silk Wizards were gleaned from a powerful magical spirit bound in a lamp. It is known as the Silken One. It was like a spider and a moth and a wind and a flame, and it had faithful servants from another too-similar reality that can easily cross over to ours.
And we do, and we have, and we will.
One way to avoid the Doom is to live in a harsh, inhospitable land as an ascetic, eating almost nothing and never interacting with more than 7 other people at one time. The other is to capture one of the dread Silken Servants and bind it into a bottle and keep it as a hostage as insurance against other servants.
1- Your magic draws the attention of the cultists of the Silken One. The details of this incredibly secret society is unknown even to the Silk Wizards- all you know is that the next time you encounter more than 7 people in a group, one of them will be an assassin with a poisoned dagger out to kill you.
2- Your magic draws the attention of one of the Silken Servants. You have 2 options- either find another Silk Wizard within 7 weeks and burn their silk, keeping none for yourself, or simply ensure that you see no living creature that you do not know on the 7th day of the 7th week, lest the stranger reveal itself to be a Silken Servant and destroy you. Contrary to what you may think, the latter option is by far the harder one.
because we know what you're doing
3- The Silken Servants are on your trail and will never leave it. They will torture you for the location of their master, and you will not need ears to hear their questions, nor a tongue to answer them. Every 7th stranger will somehow be a cultist, and every 7th cultist will be a Silken Servant. You must either forsake society and the company of strangers forever, or take a Servant hostage.
You're only safe so long as the hostage is. You are always watched. We are waiting.
