New OOTS products from CafePress
New OOTS t-shirts, ornaments, mugs, bags, and more
Results 1 to 3 of 3
  1. - Top - End - #1
    Barbarian in the Playground
    Join Date
    Jul 2007
    Gender
    Male

    Default Leeches for magic – a world of organic blood suckers

    What started as a thought experiment on how to justify wizards having to attach leeches to themselves to cast spells ended up getting much more of my attention than I expected.

    In this world, amongst the civilized races, the only ones that can’t suck blood are humans. That is a great weakness, as casting magic requires using the blood of others while it is inside your body. Yet, humans managed to preserve, some even building kingdoms, while others are stuck in farms, harvested for the unique flavor of their blood and marked as property.

    There is a workaround for humans – a special type of telepathic leech, that while connected to a host, can vaguely sense its emotions and react to them. With practice, humans can make the leeches cast spells for them, using their own blood and weakening themselves in the process. The existence of those leeches is considered a gift from one of the gods of leechfolk.

    Spells are much more limited than your average fantasy setting. There are four schools of magic:
    1) Weakening magic – the most commonly used, spellcasters can make someone either generally weaker, weaken a part of his body, weaken mental faculties, make it harder to do specific actions… Basically debuff anything.
    2) Strengthening magic – the exact opposite of weakening magic, but has a lesser effect – the same amount of power will weaken more than it will strengthen.
    3) Sensory magic – allows the spellcasters to sense the physical state, the presence of blood and the emotional state through how it manifests physically. Not considered very useful, unless you’re looking for a hidden enemy.
    4) Pain – useful for short bursts of pain, good for sabotaging a specific action or making someone throw up, instead of the more prolonged debuff of weakening magic. Spells that directly injure fall under this school, but they are inefficient – it takes less energy to make someone faint and cut him with a sword than to make him bleed significantly.

    Due to the commonality of weakening magic, warfare is handled differently in this setting – metal armors could suddenly become too heavy and make the wearer collapse, and heavy weapons are also a possibly liability. While folk venture into dangerous territories with heavy backpacks, they make sure they could take them off quickly in times of trouble. Both warriors and spellcasters put a greater emphasis on physical fitness so they could function better while weakened.

    There are no vampires, or any other kind of undead. All of the bloodsuckers are organic creatures, both the monstrous and bipedal.
    I’ll describe two of the bipedals in short:

    Leechfolk – they have the biggest kingdoms and possibly the biggest advantage – their body can contain huge amounts of foreign blood, which means they have the strongest spellcasters. They don’t invent, but will gladly learn from the advancments of others, and their structures are shoddily built. They are very arrogant, which leads them to have many inefficences both in their society and in warfare. They are large, about a feet taller and wider than a human.

    Bird riders – there are licefolk that go for fur, but those go for feathers. They have colonies on giant birds, and have a symbiotic relationship with them – they take their blood, but offer protection and assistance, both magical and mundane. They are gnome sized, and typically there are dozens of licefolk on a single bird.

    I thought of making an entire RPG book out of it, complete with both setting and game system, but I lost steam and haven’t worked on this world in the last few days. Regardless, I’ll post it here and see what you have to say.
    Last edited by akma; 2021-11-21 at 11:17 AM.
    Madly In Science, an RPG in which you play mad scientists, you can get it for free.

    Spoiler: Some other things.
    Show
    A world behind the mirror (stand alone plane)
    (Wall) passer, a rogue variant
    My not realy extanded homebrewer signature

    Quote Originally Posted by Grinner View Post
    In a world ruled by small birds, mankind cannot help but wonder how this state of affairs came about.

  2. - Top - End - #2
    Firbolg in the Playground
     
    Bohandas's Avatar

    Join Date
    Feb 2016

    Default Re: Leeches for magic – a world of organic blood suckers

    Why can't they just use a cup and a knife?

    EDIT:

    Last edited by Bohandas; 2021-11-27 at 11:33 PM.
    "If you want to understand biology don't think about vibrant throbbing gels and oozes, think about information technology" -Richard Dawkins

    Omegaupdate Forum

    WoTC Forums Archive + Indexing Projext

    PostImage, a free and sensible alternative to Photobucket

    Temple+ Modding Project for Atari's Temple of Elemental Evil

    Morrus' RPG Forum (EN World v2)

  3. - Top - End - #3
    Barbarian in the Playground
    Join Date
    Jul 2007
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: Leeches for magic – a world of organic blood suckers

    Quote Originally Posted by Bohandas View Post
    Why can't they just use a cup and a knife?
    It would technically work, but...
    It's slower, and much easier to interrupt. You can put a leech under your (light) armor and it would be protected. With a leech you could still use your hands and put a helmet on your head. With a cup and a knife, your "bleeder" will bleed much slower than your leech would fill up.

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •