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Adam1949
2014-02-14, 02:30 AM
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This is intended as supplementary material for "Mythos" classes, a special variety and subsystem created by Xefas. It's a "Racial Paragon" in the same vein as the previously-made "Human" (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=320038), "Kobold" (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=16645312), and "Reth Dekala" (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=16718230) varieties. This will be an interesting episode, as this isn't quite the normal look of Illumians, by most thinking. Truespeech, however, as well as bardic mastery, has historically been stated to be the sign of a powerful person, often with a special pedigree; thus, it kinda makes sense, in a way. Just think of it like Xefas' Reth Dekala. Thanks in advance, and PEACH!

Below are currently the three 'original' examples of the Mythos subsystem for which this race is built for.

The Teramach (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=286983)
The Kathodos (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=15947087)
The Olethrofex (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=16517470)



Due to requests, I will no longer post the 'iconic' tri-fold picture for Mythic Races. Instead, Here is a link (http://i.imgur.com/sxP1CKh.png) to the picture.

"Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts.” ~Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

The Mythic Illumian

In the beginning, before even the war between Lawbringers and Primordials, there was nothing (so they say, at least). From this nothing came a word: Something, from Nothing, the first miracle. This Something knew, instinctively, that it was a Something, in comparison to the Nothing around it. "It". What a deceptively simple word; by the very virtue of the word, 'It' implies that something is concrete, existing. And so, being new and naive, the Something called itself "It", to differentiate itself from the Nothing. "I," the It spoke, creating language, sound, tone, pitch, and so many other things, "Am. I am. I am."


Now that It had an identity and knew what it was, It also knew what It was not. It was not, for instance, everything else around it. And so It gave everything else existence and a definition: anything that was not It, was something Else. It gave the time before It a name (indeed, It gave Time a name); "Nil".


Nil, It decided, must have been imperfect, for It was not yet around. And yet, It still felt like Else was missing something as well; for, although It did not know of death (as nothing yet was alive, so too nothing else could have been dead), It still felt that without anything else to notice It, eventually It would forget about Itself, and fade back into Else, into Nothing, into Nil. "This," It declared, "Is not permissible."


And so, It focused, as hard and as forcefully as possible, creating adjectives. It tried to imagine what anything else could be, but found it difficult. After all, It had no clue what even Itself looked like; how could It expect to think of anything else, without something to base it off of? But, after what seemed like an eternity, It looked around, and saw another It. This It was incomprehensible, by mortal minds at least. But to It, this other It was beautiful, perfect in every way. Every way, except that It lacked a name.


It could not be It as well, as that would be impossible: It was It, not It and It. And so, It asked the other being, "Who are You?" The other being responded, in a clear and crisp voice, "I am. I am. I am." It was confused; did It not say that as well? "Yes, you Are. But what do you call yourself?" It's counterpart did not answer It; rather, the Thing looked around, and spoke once more: "What a lovely Place this is."


It looked around as well, and was blown away: surrounding them was suddenly so many sensations: color, scent, taste, vibrancy, touch, and every other descriptor in the world. It looked at the being, amazed. "Wonderful! You are like me, a... a..."
"A God."
"... Yes. A God. You and I are Gods. I am, you are, both Gods." It touched the Other—how strange, the feeling of touch!—and showed happiness. "We are Gods, and Gods must have subjects". He—yes, It certainly felt like a He—did not know how he decided this, but he implicitly understood this. "Come, we must make our people!"

The other being smiled. "But what shall we call them?"


In the end, they created their loyal subjects; their actions out of verbs, their names simple and descriptive. What they called their creations has been corrupted and squeezed about throughout the years. It is the source of many words: Illuminated, Luminous, Enlightened, and more. The people who took the name Illumian used words to forge their path, literally writing their history in the tongue of their gods, gifted by them directly, and so they continue to this day.


At least, that's how the Illumians tell it.


New Feat: The Legacy of the First Word
Prerequisite: One Mythos, Must have Truespeak as a class skill
Benefit: Choose one Mythos-granting class that you have levels in. You may treat the following Mythos as if they belonged to that class. Your Bard and Mythos class levels stack for the purpose of determining the number of rounds of Bardic Music you have per day (meaning that, if you have no levels of Bard before taking this, your Mythos levels count as Bard levels for that purpose only). Your maximum hit points increase by 1 for every feat, and every feat that references "Bardic Music" as a prerequisite, that you possess.

All abilities that require Bardic Music must be used verbally, any that require a Perform skill must use Perform (Oratory), Perform (Sing), or Truespeak; and cannot be used if you cannot speak. In return, you may exchange any points you have the Perform skill into an equal amount of levels of Perform (Oratory), Perform (Sing), or Truespeak (your choice when you first gain this feat), and any feats that state they need a different form of Perform instead need one of those three skills.

If you somehow lose this feat, or no longer qualify for it, you cease to gain the benefits of the granted Mythos until you regain this feat or qualify for it once more.


Exceptional Mythos

[B]Boundary-of-Life Shatterspeech
Prerequisite: —
In the first moments of It's life, It was not fully aware of even himself. It took several words before a solid sense of self arose. By reversing his statement in the Original Tongue, you can Unmake yourself, at least for a short period of time.

You gain the Subsonics (CAd) and Sunken Song (SW) feats as bonus feats without needing to meet their prerequisites.
A number of times per day equal to your class level, you can speak a reversal of the Word of Making as an immediate action, letting it into yourself and temporarily erasing yourself from existence. Upon speaking it, your hard edges disappear, making you appear murky and flickering. Until your next turn, you become incorporeal, which means that any attack against you has a 50% miss chance (even area and magical attacks), and you can move through walls (though you cannot go up or down through the air or through the ground).

Echoing Yell of Unrelenting Force
Prerequisite: —
As any Illumian will tell you, words are weapons, so long as they are put in the right hands... or throat, rather. Your skill in learning the word of Force is proof of this.

You gain the Sound of Silence feat (CS) as a bonus feat without needing to meet its prerequisites.
While you are utilizing the Sound of Silence feat, you may expend one more use of your Bardic Music. If you do so, your performance becomes more akin to a jet of pressurized air. Make a Bull Rush attempt, replacing your Strength check with your choice of a Constitution or Charisma check. If you succeed, act as though you had succeeded in a normal bull rush attempt, except that you do not move with your target. In addition, you deal 1d4 force damage per class level to the target; on a failure, you only deal half damage.

Maddening Black-Text Whispers
Prerequisite: —
Not every word is created or spoken equally. Some have been forgotten, their original speakers long dead. Others were not forgotten, but forbidden instead, too dangerous to let anyone here them in their full vileness. Fortunately(?) for you, they were not as successful as they had hoped in hiding all of them.

As a standard action, you may speak with the same tongue that the ancients did, unable to be understood by most modern ears. So unintelligible these words are, they cause internal hemorrhaging against those that can hear you. Every target within 40 feet of you must make a Fortitude save; any being that fails suffers 1d8 points of sonic damage per class level as they begin to bleed out of their ears, nose, and mouth. Targets that are deaf are immune to the effect. Note that while you are immune to this effect, your allies are not; make sure they are far away, or at the very least can make their saves.

Soul-Revitalizing Aria
Prerequisite: —
You are not quite as skilled as It; after all, It gave your people life, and It was one of the few beings that could create anything from nothing. However, given a template to build off of, you can repair the damage done to life with little effort.

You gain the Epic of the Lost King and Warning Shout feats (both CS) as bonus feats without needing to meet their prerequisites.
In addition, you may speak the names of your allies with the breath of first life, healing them and reversing damage from them. By expending a use of Bardic Music, you may cast Cure Serious Wounds upon a single ally as a spell-like ability. When you do this, you do not need to touch them; instead, they must be within (10 x your class level) feet of you, and able to hear you. You may not use this ability upon yourself, however.

Advanced
"Once More, With Feeling": You gain the Extra Music (CAd) feat as a bonus feat.


Fantastic Mythos

Inquiry of Ignorance and Armor
Prerequisite: At least 1 Mythos gained by The Legacy of the First Word
It is amazing how simple it is to ruin another man's life. Simply by asking the right things, letting slip just the right words, the strongest warrior can find themselves filled with self-doubt and questions of his own. Questions that, of course, he will end up choking on and getting killed for.

You gain the Doomspeak feat (CoR) and the Haunting Melody feat (HoH) as bonus feats without needing to meet their prerequisites. You may stack them at the same time, intoning the doom of your foe enough to shake them in their boots (or spectral tail, or tentacle-sleeve, or whatever it is they wear). In addition, the target takes an additional penalty to attack rolls, saves, ability checks, and skill checks equal to the number of Mythos you have gained from The Legacy of the First Word. Finally, you may affect Aberrations, Outsiders, and intelligent Undead with this feat.

In order to activate these feats, you must pose a question to your foe that will force them to question themselves, and their place in the multiverse. This can be anything, and some questions may not work against certain foes (For example, asking a demon "Your child has outgrown your dark blood; how is that?" may not work against, say, a Succubus, who is unlikely to know which child you are referring to; the GM is the final arbiter on this topic). A very popular question, made famous by an early Speaker, was "What can change the nature of a man?" If your question does not affect your target, either by an ineffectual question or from them succeeding the required Will save, you do not expend a use of Bardic Music.

Sticks-And-Stones Reverberating Shield
Prerequisite: At least 1 Mythos gained by The Legacy of the First Word
An old rhyme, created by lesser mortals in order to delude themselves into believing that the spoken word could not harm them, is a quaint thing. However, it has taught the Illumians a very important lesson: protection from speech is an invaluable thing, indeed.

You gain the Ironskin Chant feat (CAd) as a bonus feat without needing to meet its prerequisites.

In addition, you may, as a swift action, expend a use of Bardic Music to call forth a force-field made of your own crystallized voice, protecting you from outside harm. The force-field has an AC of 10 + your class level, an amount of HP equal to twice your class level, and a Hardness equal to your class level.
The force-field completely surrounds you, protecting you from every angle, except for attacks that come from directly below you. If you enter the space of an enemy, or get into a grapple with them, you may weaken your barrier to shake them to the core; your force-field loses an amount of HP that you choose between 0 and twice your class level (up to its current HP), and your target must make a Fortitude save or suffer the same amount of damage (a successful save deals half damage).

Basic
"... And I Beheld Satan, Falling From Heaven Like Lightning!": As long as you have a use of Bardic Music unused, you gain a morale bonus to attack rolls equal to half your class level.
"... But Words Can Never Hurt Me!": As long as you have a use of Bardic Music unused, you gain a natural armor bonus to AC equal to one-half your class level.


Legendary Mythos

Philosophical Perfection Declaration
Prerequisite: At least 2 Mythos gained by The Legacy of the First Word
The first color that It saw was Gold, for his Other had an aura about her that could be described with no other word, even though It had never seen a real color previously. It is only fitting that the shade of a Goddess could hope to enthrall the hearts and minds of mankind as much as it does.


As soon as you take this Mythos, your form begins to shift and reshape into a more perfect version of yourself. Firstly, your lowest attribute gains a permanent +6 bonus, as your flaws unmake themselves. If this would raise it high enough so as to make another ability score your lowest, you may choose to balance them as best as possible; for instance, a character with their two lowest scores being WIS 6 and STR 10 may make them either 12/10 or 11/11, at their choosing.

Your type becomes Outsider (with your native plane being the place of your birth), although you can still affect yourself with your own abilities.

A number of times per day equal to your class level, you may declare the True Name of an inanimate object, bringing it into existence for your use. This works much like the Major Creation spell, except that you do not need to have a sample of the item at hand (although you must still know what the object is; 'a key' is summonable, but unless you know the inner workings of a lock 'the key that fits this lock' is unattainable), and the amount of time needed to Name the object is equal to 1 full-round action per cubic foot of the object.

Finally, you may invoke the Name of Truth upon a person once a day, forcing the power of metaphysical reality against them. The target must make a Will save; on a failure, they are prevented from lying for 24 hours, much like being afflicted by a Geas against the action. They may still omit the truth, but doing so is painful; they suffer 5d6 points of damage that bypasses all forms of damage reduction for each round that they refuse to answer a question that you personally have asked them (against other people they still cannot lie, but they may remain silent with no repercussions). If they succeed this Will save, they are immune to your ability for 24 hours; however, your daily allotment of this effect is not used up if this occurs.

Primal Fury
2014-02-14, 10:36 AM
The fluff is weird, but the end of it makes me think that from the Shining Empyrean arose a multitude of heroes. Those who use his divine command, his hateful flame, his broken body, and with this, his divine voice.

I am confused as to how this is supposed to work with Bardic Music though. Does taking this feat grant them a "ghost" of the Bardic Music class feature only for the purposes of qualifying for and using these abilities?

Adam1949
2014-02-14, 10:52 AM
I am confused as to how this is supposed to work with Bardic Music though. Does taking this feat grant them a "ghost" of the Bardic Music class feature only for the purposes of qualifying for and using these abilities?

It works much like how the Swift Hunter feat combines Scout and Ranger together for certain purposes. With this feat, your chosen Mythos class and your levels in Bard stack for the purpose of the Bardic Music class feature, even if you have no levels in Bard (which means that you would only gain uses per day for Bardic Music, and nothing else from the Bard class).

Primal Fury
2014-02-14, 10:56 AM
Ah, okay. Cool, cool. Another thing: Why does Echoing Yell of Unrelenting Force scale, but Maddening Black-Text Whispers does not?

Adam1949
2014-02-14, 11:10 AM
Ah, okay. Cool, cool. Another thing: Why does Echoing Yell of Unrelenting Force scale, but Maddening Black-Text Whispers does not?

Because I missed it while editing, apparently. :smallredface:
It's fixed now.

Primal Fury
2014-02-14, 11:17 AM
A question on the fluff. What are these "Gods" supposed to be in relation to the Mythos Cosmology? Are they Primordials? Are they the gods that fought them? Are these some kind of Overbeings that are beyond both?

Adam1949
2014-02-14, 11:23 AM
A question on the fluff. What are these "Gods" supposed to be in relation to the Mythos Cosmology? Are they Primordials? Are they the gods that fought them? Are these some kind of Overbeings that are beyond both?

However much I usually hate including things like them, they would be 'Gods beyond the Gods'; Overbeings, as you put it. Whether or not they still live is a moot point to the occasional Illumian that worships them; so long as words exist, they claim, the He and the She still rule.
Whether or not this is true, the reality is that neither have been seen, physically, by any other god, Lawbringer, or Primordial. So, where the Illumians come from is a mystery to them.

Draken
2014-02-14, 12:13 PM
The Mythos is an adaptation of the story presented at the opening of Fiendish Codex II, so the Gods mentioned would be the baseline Greyhawk pantheon, actually. Or any other gods, for that matter.

If I were to guess, they are never called out by name specially so that they can be whatever gods you need them to be.

Adam1949
2014-02-28, 02:48 PM
Updated a few of the abilities to make them on-par with the Mythos system, including boosting Philosophical Perfection Declaration to a truly Legendary bonus to an ability score (albeit your lowest, but hey).