The Beasthead
This post was made as a submission for Dice Goblin's Adventure Calendar Jam 2023 where we post one short RPG idea every day until December 24. Here are my previous entries: day one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine and ten
I had this idea while doing some writing for Valkia, a region in one of my home games' settings inspired by Slavic folklore, Norse imagery, dark European fairytales and the idea of a "Weird North". This was originally an encounter and plot hook, but I kind of it like as a spell as well.
On The Coronation of Fangs
Under the shade of the boreal woodlands, there are tales whispered in the cold of wintry nights. Tales of witches, scorned and wronged, that seek means for vengeance deep in the forest. There, wherever they find a clearing in the trees, they draw a circle of blood and howl at the moon, beckoning the beasts of the forest. And the beasts are swift to answer.
When the wolves come, they kill the witch and devour her flesh in a mad frenzy. But her soul has nowhere to go, warded off by still-fresh blood. So it seeps into the flesh of the animals - and the pack is reborn. A Wolfshead roams the land.
The Beasthead
A Beasthead is a gestalt consciousness projected over an entire pack of animals - wolves are common, but any beast capable of devouring human flesh can be a suitable vessel, from bears and hawks to rats and carnivorous scarabs. Different Beastheads born of different species plague other cultures and regions as variations on the same ritual.
The process of being reborn into such form is irreversible, often a last ditch effort at surviving grievious injury or getting vengeance, by any means necessary. A Beasthead is also a doomed thing - whatever remains of a human mind will slowly lose grip on reality as the days and weeks go by, eventually fadind into nothing. However, during it's brief existence, what lingers of a Beasthead is a terrible force of wrath.
Call Forth the Beasthead
Ritual Spell1
Duration: special*
Range: the caster
The caster must prepare for the casting of this spell by drawing a warding circle that will prevent their own soul from escaping the area. Drawing the circle takes a full 10-minute turn.
Roll on the region's non-humanoid wilderness encounter table twice, also rolling for number encountered. Select the result that yields more total creatures. If both results are from related creatures (e.g. rolling dire wolves and regular wolves, or rolling duplicates), combine them together. These are the beasts that answer the call.
All beasts show up after 10 minutes, magically entranced by the spell, and proceed to devour the caster's body. During this brief window, the ritual can be interrupted by breaking the trance of the animals. Otherwise, after a few gruesome minutes, the casting will be completed: the caster's bones will sink into the earth, the bloodstains will never dry off and the caster's mind will seep into the animal bodies, birthing a Beasthead.
Effectively, the Beasthead can inhabit the body of any creature in the pack as long as it's in the same loosely-defined region as the rest of the pack - seeing through it's eyes and feeling everything it feels. As a construct of consciousness, the Beasthead does not inherit any of the characteristics of it's former human self, except for it's Willpower score: the Beasthead may use it's WIL modifier in place of any other modifier, if it's higher, but must use it if it's lower.
The Beasthead's longevity, in days, is determined by the Caster's former Level and the total HD of the beasts, as such:
| Level / HD | 6- | 7-9 | 10-12 | 13-15 | 16-18 | 19+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 7 | 5 | 3 | 1 | -2 | -2 |
| 2 | 9 | 7 | 5 | 3 | 1 | -2 |
| 3 | 11 | 9 | 7 | 5 | 3 | 1 |
| 4 | 13 | 11 | 9 | 7 | 5 | 3 |
| 5 | 15 | 13 | 11 | 9 | 7 | 5 |
| 6 | 17 | 15 | 13 | 11 | 9 | 7 |
| 7 | 19 | 17 | 15 | 13 | 11 | 9 |
| 8 | 24 | 19 | 17 | 15 | 13 | 11 |
| 9+ | 30 | 24 | 19 | 17 | 15 | 13 |
For every single day after this period has elapsed, the Beasthead loses 1 point of Willpower on a successful Save vs Spells, or 1d4 on a failed one. When the Beasthead's Willpower is depleted, it fades away and the spell's effects on the beasts dissipate. On a day that the Beasthead kills a human being, it does not lose WIL.