The human body is resilient, but not nearly as resilient as anyone would hope. Consider all the myriad ways it may be broken beyond repair by accident and happenstance; while evolution has seen fit to be charitable and not make our weak points z-targetable, that’s all we’re going to get.
Now introduce an evil wizard to your consideration.
All those elaborate power systems? Irrelevant.
Special bloodlines? Worthless.
Fireballs, lightning bolts, magic missiles? The tacky merchandise of cheap tricksters.
If a wizard really wants to turn a human being into a corpse, all they need to do is pick one of the countless ordinary ways the body can fail and give it a push in the wrong direction. Barring that, incapacitation for long enough for someone to finish them off. That can be done with a bit of severe nausea.
When that first wizard found a way to kill someone with their mind, the methodology of violence began its convergence on the path of least resistance. Death holds out her scales and weighs reliability, cost, speed, difficulty; the fewest words, the simplest actions, the most reliable outcome. Less efficient methods are winnowed out until the state of the art settles in temporary equilibrium with the defenses possible against it. A glance, a hand sign, a murmured word, and then it’s done.
Spell: Kill
Target may save to prevent spell from taking hold; success will still result in an instinctual hind-brain recognition that something is attempting to kill them.
Thankfully, I don’t need to make further special mechanics for this, as Mr. Mann already made Magical Violence (Thank you Luke Gearing for solving rpg combat) and good ol Sanity checks can cover the rest.
d12 ways a wizard can turn a human being into a corpse
- Induce Stroke
- Supersonic Pebble Acceleration
- Internal Decapitation
- Evoke Pancreatic Cancer
- Aura of Anaphylactic Shock
- Blood to Ice
- Intracranial Bleed
- Seal Trachea
- Cloud of Hydrosulfuric Acid
- Testicular / Ovarian Torsion, followed by just stabbing when they’re down
d10 reasons why this hasn’t become the norm
- Wizards that pose a threat to other wizards tend to get killed by other wizards ganging up
- The spirits responsible for performing magical acts refuse to kill without extremely good reason
- True name / direct eye contact / hair / nail clippings / prized possession of target required
- Souls provide decent protection against unwilled magical effects on the body
- Defensive amulets have kept up with spell developments
- No one wants to become a case study for divine retribution
- Beings killed by magic become ghosts and / or demons and they are understandably angry about that
- Magic is an ecstatic mental state + overactive pattern recognition, you can’t actually do anything with it
- It’s still cheaper and less time consuming to just hire some thugs
- High risk of reflective counterspell
This post was inspired by my partner telling me about Sarah J. Maas’ Crescent City series, and how genre does funny things to your expectations.
ReplyDelete11. Magic doesn't do "efficient" or "subtle" or any of that other nerd bullshit, and wizards that try to force it to tend to either lose their ability to cast magic or explode messily. It's giant fireballs while you're chewing the scenery or nothing.
ReplyDelete12. Magic fills the user's heart with universal love and compassion. Wizards are almost universally really chill and nice, and would probably be very upset if you called them 'evil' or suggested that they might use their powers to intentionally hurt someone else.
13. Magic is actually fairly harmless and limited, but there's a persistent conspiracy theory that wizards with murder spells rule the world. Most people agree that it's actually just people trying to hide their bigotry against elves.
14. You can't learn spells without someone casting them on you first, so...
15. The gestures and words needed to cast Kill are theoretically simple but aren't possible for humans to perform, and if you warp yourself to make it possible you're honestly better off killing your target with your bare hands.
16. The person who invented the first killing spell doesn't want to share, and mostly uses it to kill people trying to invent killing spells.
17. Didn't you hear? Blood to Ice got errata'd to only work on blood outside of the body, and everyone who died in the one week period between release and when the admins patched the bug got a complimentary resurrection.
These are all great.
DeleteAnother reason the big death curse hasn’t become normalised;
DeleteCreepy supernatural drawbacks.
Failure to cast/kill poses a risk. Maybe the bound demon powering the spell wiggles out of its bindings and goes on a rampage. Severe pain all over is a classic smackdown for hubris.
Permanent consequences for casting it. You can always tell who tried or succeeded at the death curse by the horrid [X] on their body. Maybe it blights the immediate area with [X]. How bad do you want that kill?
This blogpost reminds me of another, older one. Thank the gods for the Internet Archive.
ReplyDeletehttps://web.archive.org/web/20210226045150/https://adventuresingaming2.blogspot.com/2015/10/first-level-death-spell.html
18. The study of magic is accretive. Most spells are modifications of existing ones, and the more well understood a part of magic is, the easier it is to make new spells. While your suggestions are simple in theory, none of them are closely related to existing magic. It would be difficult to make such a spell, and the result would be unpredictable, which given it is a killing spell is quite concerning. (this goes a long way to explaining why this field remains understudied).
ReplyDelete19. magic directly intended to kill tends to be a bit... 'overeager' leaping from your mouth when you least expect it. Much of the art of killing spells is making spells that both are efficient at killing but not directly 'intended' for it, with fire being a particularly popular option.
20. (in addition to another explanation) what actually makes power word kill special is that it directly targets the essence/soul, which handily circumvents many arcane protections but is also only possible through incredible brute force throwing vast amounts of power at the problem.
21. Not only are people fragile, but it takes constant magical force to keep anything alive. Death is the natural state. While it is easy enough to create a killing spell, merely understanding one is enough for it to take effect. As is writing or carving one without understanding, or even writing a significant part. As is glancing at one. As is being near one. While they serve as highly useful wards, they are such a nightmare to create that only the most powerful wizard may do so with any level of safety.
22. magical defenses have evolved like any other, and a killing spell so blatant is sure to trip the arcane immune system. It is short and cheap enough to be useful if repeated to over-activate the arcane immune system