Book of Bone and Ebony

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etched into bones are often the anchors for necromantic magic, the means by which the magic grips the corpse (flesh is poorly suited to this due to its excessive malleability and tendency to rot). Necromancers employ a wide range of techniques for fusing, shaping and sculpting bone. Resources Cost: None to •••, depending on the rarity of the bones. Human bones are common and omnipresent. The bones of the largest cachalots, on the other hand, are both popular in war machines and hard to come by and therefore carry a Resources ••• price tag. METAL The basic frame of a necromantic siege engine doesn’t even need to be made entirely from the bodies of the dead, as long as they’re cleverly incorporated into the device. The Abyssal Charm Bone Graft Technique allows a necrosurgeon to fuse flesh, bone and metal into one smoothly functioning whole. Metal may be little more than a practical embellishment on a walking war engine, like hooks or blades fused into the war machine’s bones. Alternatively, the siege engine could be made almost entirely of metal and incorporate the walking dead as its method of propulsion. In some cases, corpses are incorporated into large metal wagons used to carry passengers or in odd variants of the rickshaw or palanquin. Resources Cost: This is where walking war machines get expensive. The costs in the table below represent the cost for metal embellishments on a war machine of the appropriate size. If the actual infrastructure of the war machine is composed of the material, double the Resources cost below. NECROTIC PROPULSION Some war machines incorporate the walking dead only as source of power. Like slaves rowing a barge, the dead take their places at oars, chains or drive shafts and row, pull or turn, as appropriate. Entire corpses aren’t needed for this. As little as one joint — a knee or perhaps a shoulder — can be enough to animate certain simple devices. Resource Cost: None to •, depending on how the corpses are integrated into the device. SIZE The phrase “walking war machine” is, in some instances, misleading. It brings to mind images of colossal horrors of fused flesh, bone and metal. In some cases, this Metal Class 1 Class 2 Class 3 Class 4 Iron • •• •• ••• Jade •• ••• ••••• ••••• Soulsteel •• ••• ••••• ••••• Other (Brass, Steel) • •• ••• ••• 97 CHAPTER FOUR • CREATIONS OF BONE is accurate. The enormous fortress-corpse Juggernaut and the horrors of the thousand-corpse war frame (see p. 105- 106) are only two of many applications of necromancy, but the range of sizes varies immensely. The weapon of mephitic desolation (see p. 108) requires only five bodies and can potentially wreak havoc on a vast scale. While necromancers don’t think in terms of “size class 2” or “size class 4” war engines, it’s a convenient system for keeping track of game mechanics. LESS THAN HUMAN (SIZE CLASS 1) Devices used in war don’t always have to be enormous and obvious. A severed hand has enough mobility that it can be dropped near its target and scuttle closer on its own, committing small acts of espionage or sabotage. Augmented with (or powering) a metal frame (a head atop limbs grafted to eight soulsteel insect legs, for example), these small war machines make excellent drones and citadel guardians. Such devices are also more affordable and easier to animate. ON A HUMAN SCALE (SIZE CLASS 2) Many war engines aren’t necessarily as big as the term “war engine” might suggest. Creature on this scale range from the size of a single human to the size of a large horse. Many necromantic creations this size are very similar to the transcendent revenant vessels used by nemissaries in their work in Creation (see p. 87-91), single corpses highly augmented with metal, bone and parts from other bodies. Also in this categories are other devices of moderate size, such as those comprising two or three augmented bodies grafted together. Spine chains (see Exalted, pp. 299-300) and the weapon of mephitic desolation (see p. 108) fit into this size class. BIG AND DEAD (SIZE CLASS 3) Ranging from the size of a small wagon to that of a moderate building, these are the walking war machines that people imagine when they hear that phrase. These are the self-propelling bone golems, the highly augmented reanimated yeddim with soulsteel exoskeletons, the iron wagons propelled by the labors of hidden dead flesh and so on. War engines of this size can only be animated by the Labyrinth Circle spell Spurring the Beast of War or stronger spells (see p. 98-99).
EXALTED • BOOK OF BONE AND EBONY COLOSSAL (SIZE CLASS 4) This category includes those vast sculptures of reanimated corpses larger than the size of a moderate building. The thousand-corpse war frame (see p. 105-106) falls into this category, as does the Mask of Winters’ Juggernaut and the web is the spider (see p. 107). These war engines represent necromancy on the very largest scale. While they are immensely powerful and appropriately feared, creating and maintaining such walking war machines is an enormous challenge. If one is making use of mortal corpses, hundreds or thousands of corpses must be obtained, treated in order to slow decay and painstakingly fused together using sutures, hooks, bone screws, Charms and necromancy. Animating creations of this size can only be done using the Void Circle spell Incomparable Destruction Engine (see p. 99). WEAPON MOUNTS War machines of classes 4 and 5 can carry weapons, either First Age weapons such as implosion bows or weapons of Oblivion that spray bolts of pure annihilation. Building weapon mounts into the war engine increases the base cost by Resources •. PASSENGERS Larger war machines are capable of carrying passengers or cargo. Juggernaut carries an entire fortress on its back. More undead passengers can generally fit into a mobile war engine than living ones, because the dead don’t care if they’re jammed in and unable to move. Only the living worry about luxuries such as comfort. The dead can just as easily be hung from hooks or compacted for transit in bone shells. ANIMATION OPTIONS Before a necromancer builds a war machine, he needs to be certain that he can animate it. Dead flesh won’t move itself no matter the necromancer’s virtuosity in combining corpses. Though it’s the most popular means of animating war engines, necromancy is not the only way. NECROMANCY Incredibly powerful in dealing death and channeling the power of Oblivion, necromancy is also the key to deploying the engines of death that are so popular among the Deathlords and their deathknights. One spell is responsible for most of the devices used in Creation, but two additional spells exist in the lore-troves of the Deathlords that can animate even larger monstrosities. Iron Reanimation The most basic of the spells that animate dead flesh, Walking War Machine (see Exalted: The Abyssals, p. 226), is simple Shadowlands Circle Necromancy that can animate up to a ton of dead flesh, equivalent to around 10 98 BY WAY OF CLARIFICATION… Necromancers are great fans of complexity, in their nomenclature as well as their craft. They use certain terms interchangeably in ways that might confuse those who are not privy to their secrets. Walking War Machine is Shadowlands Circle Necromancy and is also known as Iron Reanimation. Spurring the Beast of War is Labyrinth Circle Necromancy and is also known as Onyx Reanimation. Incomparable Destruction Engine is necromancy of the Void Circle and is also known as Obsidian Reanimation. to 15 bodies. Walking War Machine is a very forgiving spell. It not only animates the mass of flesh, but fuses undead tissues, correcting and adjusting for small errors in necrosurgery and thereby attaching muscle to bone more effectively and optimizing the animation of the composite war machine. So long as the necrosurgeon building the machine had a Craft (Necrosurgery) rating of •• or more, the device animates without difficulty. Initially crafting the device to be animated requires one success per hundred pounds of flesh on an Intelligence + Craft (Necrosurgery) roll. Each roll in an extended action represents eight solid hours of work. Walking War Machine animates weapons of size class 1 or 2. While unusually simple or unusually complex war machines may require less or more Essence, Walking War Machine typically requires (8 - the necromancer’s Essence rating) motes of Essence per success on the necrosurgery roll, representing the difficulty of animating larger weapons. This spell provides the war machine with the following basic stats, although these may be modified based on the specifics of the weapon animated: Attributes: Strength 4, Dexterity 2, Stamina 3, Charisma 0, Manipulation 0, Appearance 0, Perception 2, Intelligence 1, Wits 3 Virtues: Not applicable. Never fails Valor rolls, never succeeds at any other rolls. Abilities: Athletics 1, Awareness 2, Brawl 2, Dodge 2, Endurance 1, Melee 2, Resistance 2, Stealth 1 Base Initiative: 5 Soak: Highly variable due to size and armor options, but not less than 3L/6B Health Levels: For each success on the initial necrosurgery roll, the walking war machine has two -0, two -1 and two -2 health levels. Onyx Reanimation The Labyrinth Circle grants access to a yet more powerful version of Walking War Machine. At this level, the spell is called Spurring the Beast of War. A war machine of this type requires a minimum Craft
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AND A Compendium of Necromantic Lor
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