Toil and Trouble (More Familiars)

Five Witch Familiars, for the Mountain. 

Skull Witch

You can have two witch-skulls active per template. 

These are creepy copper facsimiles of your own skull, that bloodily extrude from your head when you summon them. 

You can jam your witch-skulls into the heads of corpses to animate them, as entirely loyal 1HD Shamblers. They’re totally mindless, but move on all fours with unsettling agility. Shamblers adjacent to you can take hits for you. 

You must manually recover your skulls from destroyed Shamblers, and the Shambler suffering a crit destroys the skull. If the corpse happens to be deprived of its face, for some reason, the copper witch-skull is visible. 

If you die, your Shamblers go utterly feral and start attacking everything around you (including any present allies), re-dying after 1d6+[Level] rounds. 

You speak a warped and tinny variety of Clatter which makes most “ordinary” speakers of the language wary, or even afraid, of you.

At template C when you get Improved Familiar, your witch-skulls gain the ability to move around on their own, flying at walking speed -  this allows you to create Shamblers at range and automatically recover your skulls. 

Secondarily, you can hold a candle or match to a witch-skull to ignite it, turning it into a Flameskull, which will violently explode for 2d6 damage in a small area if it slams into something at top speed. This destroys the skull, and forces you to extrude a new one. 

Whisper Witch 

You have one witch-voice per template.

These are whispering disembodied voices, which can speak from anywhere within half a mile of you. This is, of course, useful for communication and for scaring the shit out of people. 

Other witches see your voices as wisps of red fog. None of your voices sound like your original one. 

Your physical body is mute, unable to speak.
Your witch-voices can be scared back down your gullet by incredibly loud noises. 

Given your odd mastery over the quiet and unspoken, you can perfectly read lips. 

At template C when you get Improved Familiar, your voices gain the power to speak at any volume, including, far, far louder than you yourself could manage.

Further, you can have all of your witch-voices perform a keening wail, which shatters glass, deafens all listeners and forces enemies to test morale. 

After the wail, your voices are totally silent until you do two of the following things: sleep, drink something hot, or jam a nail or spike into a corpse’s larynx (to “borrow” their voice). 

Eye Witch

You can have two witch-eyes active per template. 

They are bluish, bloodshot little globs of vitreous jelly. 

Your witch-eyes reside inside your body, and can be pushed up from any part of your skin, such as your palm, forehead or back. They see just as well as your normal eyes. 

You can embed your witch eyes into anything organic with a minute of contact. Unwilling creatures may save.

Eyes placed into organic surfaces do not count as being separated from you, and so last indefinitely. You can see through your witch-eyes at any distance. Witch-eyes combust if they look directly at the Sun. 

You can look through any two eyes at once - so, to look through two witch-eyes, you must shut both your ordinary ones. 

You can also speak Serumic, the language of viscosity and gore. 

At template C when you get Improved Familiar, your witch-eyes can now see fairly well in pitch darkness, and see illusions and invisible creatures as crackling masses of visual ephemera. 

Cloak Witch

Your familiar is a massive hooded cloak, made of something slick and leathery. It has a very distinct, acrid stench - difficult to describe or forget. You only get one, and others cannot remove it from you unless you let them. 

Your witch-cloak is extremely resilient, adding [+Templates] to your AC. It cannot be burnt, torn, pierced or cut. It’s also waterproof. 

You can speak Hadeal, the tongue of the bubbling dark. 

At template C when you get Improved Familiar, you can take flight by flapping your cloak like a giant pair of doofy bat-wings. While doing so, your hands are melded into the material of your cloak, and you can’t use them for… hand things. 

Chain Witch 

You have one witch-chain per template. 

These coil around your limbs or waist, and rattle ominously as you move. Your witch-chains are each 10 feet long. They can be controlled as you wish, so long as you can see them, and some part of them is in contact with you or the ground. They move like loud, heavy snakes. 

If your chains restrain a creature, they grapple with [+Templates] strength. 

 

Whipping someone with a witch-chain does 1d8 damage. 

Creatures restrained in your chains can understand you perfectly. 

At template C when you get Improved Familiar, your chains can now affect incorporeal creatures, such as spirits, and have become completely indestructible. If a dragon incinerates you, you’ll be a pile of ash with three or four red hot chains on top of your body.