Abandoning Your Humanity (Classes: Behemoth and Inhumed)

 For QAL ASHEN. 

A mesopotamian-esque setting, where the world is consumed by a curse that infuses all living things with Too Much Life, turning them into immortal monsters. The only safe place, where uncursed people remain, is a bleak, theocratic city where the God of Death is worshipped: Qal Ashen. 

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I nicked The Self Remade from Vayra’s Artist. 

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The method has long been considered heretical. Not all are pleased with their station in the sacred City. Oftentimes, glory cannot be found through methods which the people of the City approve of. Oftentimes one must seek it out in the dark places of the world, and in the writhing flesh of beasts. 

The power of Life is not welcomed in a city that worships Death. 

THE BEHEMOTH 

+1 Inventory Slot and +1 HP per Template. 

A - Too Much Life, The Self Remade 

B - +1 Attack per Round

C - The Self Evolved, Black Blood 

D - Curse-Eater, Speak With Monsters

Too Much Life

You have deliberately inflicted yourself with The Curse, using magical, chemical and meditative methods to keep it in check.

You have a new stat: LIFE. This represents how much power you are drawing from the Curse. You start with 1, or, if you’re Part-Cursed, you start with 3. 

Increase LIFE by one when you:

• Eat the flesh of a monster. Only 1 per individual monster.
  OR

• Fail a Save vs. Curse. Unlike with everyone else, this doesn’t immediately start the process of you becoming a monster. 

Methods to decrease LIFE are not well known - finding out how would perhaps be the first step towards curing the Curse.

You subtract [LIFE] from Saves vs. Curse and Saves vs. mental effects like fear, charm and command. 

When you consume a Ration, gain [LIFE] HP back over the course of a minute. Stopping to eat food in the middle of a fight is probably not a great idea. 

Your lifespan is extended by 15 years for each point of LIFE you have.

If you get to 10 LIFE, you lose your mind and become a Monster. This makes the character unplayable. 

The Self Remade

You may fill up to [LIFE] inventory slots with muscle, sinew, or fat. Filling a slot takes a day of focused effort, such as by lifting heavy things, stretching, indulging in food, etc. 

It also takes a day to empty or change the contents of a slot of muscles, sinew or fat. 

Each slot of muscle grants you +1 Fortitude.

Each slot of sinew grants you +1 Reflex.

Each slot of fat grants you one point of Damage Reduction.

The Self Evolved

When using The Self Remade, you are no longer limited to just muscle, sinew and fat. You can now fill slots with horn, shell, fur, fangs, or other animal features. 

Each slot of horns, claws or fangs functions as a weapon - 1 Slot for light, 2 slots for medium, and 3 slots for heavy. 

Each slot of shell, scales or thick fur grants you +1AC.

Wings big enough to work take 5 slots of muscle, feather and bone.

Get creative! Scaled tails, insect chitin, and other animal organs are all options for the cunning Behemoth. 

Black Blood

Your blood has turned an onyx shade, and is now a wretched poison. Anyone imbibing your blood takes 1d4 damage per 1HP of blood you spilled. Even as little as 3HP of your blood going into a sealed water-source will make it undrinkable. 

Curse-Eater

You can take the Curse from other things into yourself.

This increases your LIFE by 1, and removes a mutation from whatever it is you’re affecting.

A Monster has 1 Mutation per HD, usually. 

Doing this to willing Part-Cursed turns them into Humans. 

You can’t do this to yourself. 

Speak With Monsters

Monsters and other creatures afflicted by the Curse won’t attack you, unless you attack them first. They see you as one of their own. 

You can, with focus, interpret the garbled speech of those monsters which were formerly human. Almost all monsters are rambling, agonised and insane, but likely hold insights of their own - or insights on the lost world.

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The rite is old. Very old.

There are sacred herbs involved. Unguents and whispered prayers. A certain state of mind. 

Choose a cloudy night, when the sight of the Moon is obscured. Dig yourself a grave. Climb in and pull the dirt after you. There must be no witnesses. 

If you did it wrong, you die. If you did it right, you rise again with the sun. 

THE INHUMED

+2 HP per Template 

A - Fourth State, Body

B - Form, Sense

C - +1 Attack per Round

D - Banishment, Draw Spirit

Fourth State

Traditionally, the three states of existence are Living, Undead and Dead. You are Inhumed, existing in a fourth-state, or an anti-state. 

Denizens see you as a fellow Denizen, and Shades see you as a fellow Shade. You can eat underworld food with no repercussions. 

You feel absolutely no fear. Your sense of pain is dulled to a faint tingle. 

Body

When it is advantageous to you, your body behaves as if it is rock, meaning you only take 1 damage per dice from slashing weapons (i.e., a sword cutting you for 2d8 damage does 2 damage), and your unarmed attacks hurt like a goddamn bastard - to the tune of 1d6 damage. 

Form

When standing perfectly still with your eyes shut, you can quadruple your weight until you next move or open your eyes. While you do not move or open your eyes, you do not need to breathe or eat.

Sense

You can, when you are perfectly still with your eyes shut, focus to sense the shape of the surrounding stone - and to sense through the surrounding stone. 

You can sense air pockets, tunnels or large pieces of different material up to 100ft underground, when on the surface. 

You can tell if there is air, water, soil or stone, on the other side of a wall or floor. 

If leaning against a wall or a door, you can hear what is happening on the other side of it. 

Banishment 

You can now grab incorporeal creatures, like shades, droughts and plagues, with your bare hands. 

You can wrestle the damn things, allowing you to stuff them into appropriate containers, or just bash them around a bit, if you like. 

When in an appropriately prepared ritual space, you can wrestle creatures into the ground, to be pulled down into the underworld. Creating an applicable ritual space for this purpose takes a season. 

Draw Spirit

All people have a vital breath flowing through them, which serves as the medium between body and soul. 

You can sense the presence of living creatures by hearing this breath, at a range of 100ft. You can combine this with Sense to tell if something living is on the other side of a wall or door.

You can, with a day’s careful work, pull out 1 slot’s worth of someone’s spirit - people and other living creatures have 1 slot of spirit per HD, and if they lose all of it, their soul and body separate, and they die. This ritual requires total silence from all participants.

Spirit has all sorts of uses - not the least of which is providing vital animation to things which otherwise lack it.