This started out as a blog post about a system for long term costs for resurrection I had been noodling around with for my 5E games, but in writing that up I realized I had to lay a lot of track to get there.  So get comfortable.  This is why I should write an outline before I start writing a blog post. Warning this week I do get into talking about blood magic and draining other people’s souls for magic power, so that may be a bit squicky for some people.  

Souls

In my settings the soul is a known thing; magicians know it exists and it can be immensely powerful if used in magic. Some magicians have learned how to do this, usually by drawing on their soul through sacrificing their blood as blood magic. This is never a healthy life choice. Using part of your soul up means you have space in your inner being that something else can fill.  Lots of supernatural beings love to get their hooks into people with such a lack, which is one way you can get warlocks.  

Generally having part of your soul replaced with something else is not a healthy long term life choice, but some people don’t feel like they have an option.  If you need power to get revenge or protect your family etc, a fragment of this soul you don’t really use on a daily basis doesn’t seem like a big cost.  The Unraveler transformation is another option for the desperate looking for power, especially if they need to combat magicians or magical creatures, but that too is not a healthy life choice.  

On death the soul goes to the spirit world to live out an appropriate afterlife if the body is ritually prepared properly, so even without active gods (the gods in my setting are generally dead or in a state of hibernation due to extreme injuries) funerary rites continue.  The manner of death  or the funerary rituals can affect a soul’s afterlife.   The most common such soul affecting death is a disease known as the Red Plague that consigns the souls of those killed by it to Hell and serving in the armies of Asmodeus to fight the forces of the Abyss. Stopping the Red Plague has been a major goal of one of my campaigns since it began over two years ago.

Addicted to Magic

One of the cultures in my setting are the TIkerosians from the island nation of Tikeros, who are vaguely  Minoan in flavor. The Tikerosians produced a golden age of arcane magic in my setting hundreds of years ago. This culminated in them colonizing much of the world and stealing the innate magic of the lands they colonized by draining their ley lines using various arcane designed hill forts and obelisks built on ley line junctures.  These hill forts would harvest the power of the ley lines into crystals that were then sent back to Tikeros for use there supporting the island nation’s massive magical infrastructure and the abundantly magical lifestyle of the Tikerosians. Through this process the Tikerosians harvested much of the magic of the world, pushing other cultures back centuries in their magical development.  

Tikeros is ruled by the Archmage, an immensely powerful sorcerer whose bloodline power comes from the people of Tikeros living in such a magic rich environment for so long.  They have become suffused with magic and some small segment of their population develop sorcerer powers because of it.  Twenty years after the death of each Archmage the greatest of the Arch-blooded sorcerers born after the previous  Archmage’s death who have certain physical characteristics (the need for  a prosthetic golem hand and leg)  is designated the Archmage’s reincarnation and becomes the new Archmage.   Archmages down through the centuries have varied from just rulers who tried to curb their people’s demand for magic to megalomaniacal conquerors, but they were all immensely powerful.  Being surrounded by so much magic and ruled by a sorcerer, arcane power became fashionable among the Tikerosians.  Thus began the Hollowing.  

This was a process by which the Tikerosians would use parts of their souls to power magic, then replace the missing soul with whatever magic power they could find.  Such individuals were called the Hollowed and the process of giving up their soul Hollowing as they would develop an empty, dazed glint of their eyes that never receded once the process had gone far enough.  This was not a healthy life choice but it did  result in those who took part developing impressive magic abilities in the short term.  Along with this power their bodies began to fail as their souls were too weak to sustain them.   Then they would sacrifice  more of their soul for greater power in the hopes it would help them overcome the weakness of their body.  This was happening in a culture where magical power was tied to social status, so trading your soul for magical power had a powerful attraction despite its long term side effects. It developed a cycle among the Tikerosians like an addictive drug, only instead of dying by overdosing you became a lich.      

There is a scale for characters who become Hollowed.  Characters advance in it by earning Hollowed points through actions that trade out fragments of their soul for magical power; the first of which had to come from a special event that caused  the first part of their soul to be removed (such as the using Blood Magic or Tikerosian Thrones explained below). Once a player had their foot in the Hollowed door they could continue to make choices to draw on their soul for power, becoming more and more Hollowed points as they do so.  

Actions that grant Hollowed Points

• Failing a Wisdom save while using a Tikerosian throne.
• Using a Hollowed Ability: Hollowed Points equal to the Hollowed level that granted the ability
• Using Blood Magic.

At all Hollowed Levels the character has the following abilities:

• You detect  as being magical to detect magic spells.
• If you are  affected by an anti-magic ability at the beginning of your turn you must make a Constitution save against the spell save DC of the being that created the anti-magic effect.  On a failure you take 1d10 necrotic damage per Hollowed level, on a success you take half damage.     
• Any attempts to bring you back from the dead adds your Hollowed Level to their Soul Dearth Level. (see next blog post)  
• You  cannot be transformed into an Unraveler; the Unraveling process will kill you.  
• Being targeted by a dispel magic spell requires a Constitution saving throw against the caster’s spell save DC or suffer 1d10 necrotic damage per Hollowed level on a failed save, or half that on a successful save.  

Hollowed Level	Hollowed Points Required	Spellcaster Ability	non-Spellcaster Ability	Penalty
1	1	You can use a bonus action to get +1 to Spell save DC and spell attack rolls until end of your turn	Gain the ability to cast 1 random 1st level sorcerer spell(determine when you gain this ability) once per long rest.	-1 to all Healing dice rolled for you.
2	5	You Regain a 1st or 2nd level spell slot.	You Can cast Detect magic at will.	Animals can smell something is wrong with you. You suffer disadvantage to Charisma (Animal Handling) checks.
3	10	You can use a bonus action to get +2 to Spell save DC and spell attack rolls until end of your turn	As a reaction to being hit with a spell, you can gain magic resistance until the end of your turn.	You suffer a -5 penalty to all Healing dice rolled for you.
4	50	You can support two concentration spells at the same time.	You gain the ability to cast 1 random 2nd level sorcerer spell(determine when you gain this ability) once per long rest.	You are so off putting you Suffer disadvantage on Charisma ability checks
5	100	You can use a bonus action to get +3 to Spell save DC and spell attack rolls until end of your turn	You can attune an additional magic item.	You cannot be returned from the dead
6	500	You become a lich	You become a Hollowed Lord

Losing Hollowed Points

Losing Hollowed Points is much harder than getting them. There are a few methods for doing so. 

• Time: For each month the character does not gain any Hollowed points they can make a Wisdom saving throw against DC 8 + their Hollowed level.  If successful they lose 1d6 Hollowed points.
• Ritual Cleansing: This is a painful and dangerous process.  It requires a character other than the Hollowed who has the Ritual Caster ability, and can cast dispel magic at least four times. The character performing the ritual must make an Intelligence  (Arcana) check DC 20,  expend spell slots to cast Dispel Magic 4 times and consume 1,000 gp worth of rare herbs and ritual components.  The ritual takes an hour to complete Regardless of the success of the skill check the target of the Ritual must make a Constitution check DC 8+ their Hollowed level. Failing this check will inflict twice the Hollowed character’s Hollowed levels in d10s of force damage to the Hollowed character that ignores resistance and immunity.  So if the Hollowed character has a Hollowed level of 3 they would suffer 6d10 force damage. If the Intelligence (Arcana) check was successful the ritual reduces the Hollowed character’s Hollowed points by 2d10.    

Blood Magic

Blood magic is the means by which spellcasters can draw on the power of their soul through the sacrifice of blood.  This can be the spellcaster’s blood or someone else’s blood.  Note this only works for Intelligence and Charisma based spellcasters; the gods don’t give you more power for bleeding generally.  For spellcasters to sacrifice their own blood and soul for power they need to draw their own blood, inflicting 1d4 slashing or piercing damage and decide how many hit dice they wish to sacrifice. Each hit die sacrificed gives the spellcaster one level worth of spell slots and one Hollowed point.  These spell slot levels can be combined into higher level spell slots but can only be used to cast spells the character already knows.  So if a character with first level spell slots sacrifices two hit dice they can either get two first level spells or combine them to get a second level slot, but can only use it to cast first level spells they already know.  

Using blood magic to drain someone else generally require them to be incapacitated.  The spellcaster draining the power must draw blood, inflicting 1d4 slashing or piercing damage on the sacrifice. The sacrifice can then make a Constitution saving throw against the spellcaster’s spell save DC; if successful they have fought off the attempt to drain their soul.  If it fails the sacrifice loses one hit die and gains one Hollowed point while the spellcaster gains one spell slot level. If the sacrifice is still incapacitated this process may be repeated to drain more hit dice and take more power, possibly killing the sacfirice in the process.      

The Tikerosian Thrones

Tikerosian hill forts are scattered across the world, and those that remain functional are still collecting and concentrating the magical power of their surrounding region. At the heart of each of  these hill forts is a large stone throne, on the armrests of which there a number of crystals that when pressed can be used to control the power collected by the hill fort. Tikerosian hill forts  have a number of standard actions their magic can be used to accomplish, with most being able to do the following though individual hill forts may be missing some of these or have others.  Successfully carrying out any of these actions requires an Intelligence (Arcana) skill check against a DC depending on the intended action.  Failure can result in gaining Hollowed points, putting the character on the path of their doom.  

 

Action	Arcane (Intelligence) DC	Success Effect	Failure Effect
Restore Spell Slots	10	Restore 1d6 levels of spells to Intelligence and Charisma based spellcasters	Wisdom saving throw DC 12 or gain 1d4 Hollowed points
Reduce Age	15	Reduce age by 1d6 years	Wisdom saving throw DC 14 or gain 1d6 Hollowed points
Recharge Magic Item	15	Restore 1d4 charges to a magic item	Wisdom saving throw DC 12 or gain 1d4 Hollowed points
Direct Defenses	20	Constructs and magic traps will ignore you if not help you in the hillfort.	Wisdom saving throw DC 12 or gain 1d4 Hollowed points
Teleport	15	Teleport to another Hillfort in the region or Tikeros itself.	Wisdom saving throw DC 14 or gain 1d6 Hollowed points
Access the Underhalls	15	Open the door to open the Underhalls plane.	Wisdom saving throw DC 12 or gain 1d4 Hollowed points

 

The Underhalls

All the Tikerosian hill forts are linked by portal to a plane called the Underhalls by the Tikerosians.  It is essentially a never ending dungeon that extends out into infinity.  No one knows who built it or why, but if you know your way you can navigate it to travel great distances in the Prime Material Plane.  Traveling a mile in the Underhalls to another entrance to it may mean you return to the Prime Material Plane one thousand miles from where you entered the te Underhalls, but that mile of Underhalls travel may have you dealing with cloakers, mimics, traps, all manner of dungeon threats. The doors to the Underhalls require magic to sustain and thus are often closed when not in use, requiring the throne to unlock.