Image (Black Magic)
Spell, Black Magic, level 2
A week-long ritual carving a mandrake-root effigy of a victim, used with a personal item to inflict pain or disable limbs and senses from afar. Destroying the image before it is neutralized wounds the victim.
From the book
The caster must first find a mandrake root growing in a graveyard or beneath a hangman's gibbet, dig it up, bring it home and carve it into the likeness of the intended victim. Something that belonged to the victim, such as clothing, a weapon or a lock of hair, must be kept close by while the carving is done. The work takes a full week.
Once it is finished, harming the figure harms the victim by sympathetic magic. Each time the caster pushes a pin or blade into the image, the victim feels terrible pain in the matching part of the body. This cannot cause real damage, but leaving a pin in place takes away the use of the matching arm or leg, or of a sense such as sight, hearing or speech, for as long as it stays there.
The only cure is for the victim to track down the caster and destroy the figure, but only once it has been sprinkled with holy water or treated with a Remove Curse spell. If anyone destroys the image before its power is neutralized in one of those ways, the victim takes 3-24 (3d8) damage, halved on a save vs Will; this damage will not heal without a spell or potion. The spell reaches 1 mile per level of ability.
At a glance
- Restricted to
- Necromancers and witchdoctors only
- Components
- Mandrake root from a graveyard or under a hangman's gibbet; article belonging to the victim
- Casting time
- 1 full week to fashion the image
- Range
- 1 mile per level of ability
- Effect
- Pain; temporary loss of a limb or sense while a pin stays in; 3-24 (3d8) damage if the image is destroyed before being nullified
- Cure
- Destroy the image after sprinkling with holy water or casting Remove Curse on it
- Save
- As stated (vs Will halves destruction damage)
- Spell type
- Variable, only in terms of effective range
A scene
For a whole week the witchdoctor Mandla sits in his hut above Okalo, carving the mandrake root he dug from beneath the hangman's gibbet, with the rival shaman's stolen necklace lying in his lap. The little figure has the shaman's jutting jaw and bandy legs. On the eighth night Mandla takes a long thorn and pushes it slowly into the figure's right knee. Across the valley, the shaman screams and falls in the dust, and for as long as the thorn stays in, his right leg will not move at all.