Thursday 20 August 2015

So You’ve Glimpsed The Afterlife

  1. Nothing. Forever. Acquire a penetrating fear of death in all its forms. Quit adventuring and settle down to a lifetime of utmost seclusion and frenzied research into immortality.
  2. Fire and pain. Repent all your sins, donate all worldly wealth to the nearest orphanage and dedicate yourself to attaining sainthood.
  3. Eternal bliss. Calls to you. Lose all fear of death, gain permanent -2 AC and spend the rest of your life seeking out righteous causes to die in aid of.
  4. Hall of warriors. Gain +2 attack bonus and learn the hiding-place of the axe of a legendary queen. Develop inflexible honour code and fear dying in any other way than battle.
  5. Boreal waste. Gain weakness to cold, migrate to the warmest lands, cling to fire as an ally and comforter.
  6. Sisyphean torment. For each day you spend doing the same thing that you did the day before, save vs. panic or run off into the wilderness.
  7. Grey purgatory. Emerge 80% more boring than you were before. Become unable to sustain relationships or correctly estimate the passage of time.
  8. Bacchanalia. Gain +2 attack, AC and the ability to prophesize in strange tongues under the influence of alcohol, on which you are now dependent.
  9. Realm of the gods. You are now on a first-name basis with one randomly selected divinity. You owe them a favour and they owe you a favour.
  10. River of souls. +2 to swim checks. On moonless nights, cannot sleep unless two-thirds submerged in cold water.
  11. Briefly reincarnated. Gain faint memories of and a powerful attachment to a grieving mother in a distant land.
  12. Hunger and thirst. Become permanently ravenous. If prevented with lake or banquet, must save to avoid drinking and eating until stomach bursts.
  13. Darkness below earth. Lose pigmentation, eyesight. Develop supersensitive hearing and other subterranean adaptations. Can talk to stone and learn its secrets.
  14. Four-year trek to paradise. Cannot settle down. Enter into perpetual search for gateway to next layer of underworld. Are offered clues in dreams by winged psychopomp who seeks to reclaim you.
  15. Honeyed garden. Develop infinite appetite for luxuries - fine food, sex, beautiful objects. Have trouble with the concept of actually paying for these things. Become master thief, probably.
  16. Trapped in coffin. Can never again venture underground.
  17. Infernal bureaucracy. Develop superhuman patience with finer points of terrestrial law, appetite for legal detail, political aspirations. If ever found guilty of anything, go into screeching fit of insanity and never come out.
  18. Endless sky. Your movements feel clumsy and ponderous. -2 to all jump and climb checks. In high places, save to avoid hurling yourself from edge and enjoying one last time the sensation of flight.
  19. Choir of angels. Sing with ear-scouring beauty. Attract the attention of wealthy patrons. All other music sounds tuneless and harsh to you.
  20. Cosmic horror. Human life now means nothing to you. Go permanently insane and become determined to usher in a new age of tentacular darkness. Appear superficially normal.
To be clear, you roll every time you hit 0 hp. Almost-dying a lot makes your poor soul very confused.

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