Cult of Unfission GLOG Resources: Monsters, Spells, system-neutral Lich Star Influence Table

The first post on this blog introduced an alternative route for Necromancers, a motivation for their cults, and a threat to all things: Unfission.

A cult of derailed necromantic potential being used to achieve a demented perfection, to fuse everything back into the very singularity that exploded into the Big Bang at the dawn of the universe. With the promise of perfection and ego-death, new cult members are recruited to fuse into terrific monsters, from amalgams of matter and flesh to miniature black holes. Far in the cosmos, the Founders of the Unfission cult (fused to the size of star-sized leviathans by now) destroy solar systems to fuse them back into Lich-Stars, undead heavenly bodies created from the matter that they produced upon their death.

This post will expand on the Unfission Cult's lore with some mechanical elements to bring them to (un)life in your game. Keep in mind: the cult of Unfission never truly resurrects: their fusions are always creepy unwholesome semblances of what the precursor they are 'resurrecting' was. They're necromancers after all.

Unfission Masters' corporeal bodies (art by Jesse Balmer, Adventure Time Come Along With Me concept art)

ENEMIES:

Point Convent

When devout and strong-willed Unfission Acolytes fuse, they compress into a football-sized orb of flesh and sheer absorbing force, like the cube that comes out of a car crusher. Their only drive is to suck in so much mass that they reach a critical point and advance into the next stage: a miniature black hole. Point Convents will attempt to fuse with anything in their vicinity to gain mass, even their peers: the Unfission Mantra is absolute to them.

HD 1; ATK /; DEF 14; MOV 8, levitation; Morale 12

• Spacetime Depression: A point convent attacks by producing waves of pulling gravitational energy in a (HD*20)’ cone, producing a corona of visual distortion around themselves when they activate this power. Instead of damage, targets in the cone must save or be pulled a significant distance closer to the Point Convent, (HD*10)’ if you want a more exact distance.
• Add to Mass: When in melee range (next to) a Point Convent, targets with equal or less HD must save or die as they are sucked and compressed into the Point Convent by its deadly gravity. Creatures with more HD take (Point Convent’s HD)d6 damage instead as part of them is ripped off by the gravitational pull. When a Point Convent kills an equal amount of creatures to its current HD with this ability it adds a HD to itself.
• Mutagenesis: When a Point Convent absorbs a wizard, it rolls a d6. If it is 1 to 4, it rolls a random mutation. If it is 5 it gains one of the wizard’s MD and a random spell it knows. If it is 6 the Point Convent must save or be destabilised by the rabid spell entering its system and explodes into a mess of protoplasmic goop.
• Singularity: Once a Point Convent reaches 6 HD, it surpasses critical mass and becomes a miniature black hole. It moves extremely slowly, but cannot be hurt by physical attacks anymore. It will start to rip apart the terrain and becomes a destructive environmental hazard. Its gravitational cone ability is now applied in every direction around it, constantly. Its Mutagenesis trait no longer causes mutations, it only either gifts it a MD and spell on 5 or prompts a save or die it on 6. It now only gains a HD when it absorbs a significant amount of matter and/or energy.

Vestigial Convent

It is not always that aspirants to the Unfission mantra are prepared enough to fuse into a proper Point Convent. When the arcane power, the carrying out of the fusion ritual, or the conviction of the participants are lacking, the result is a Vestigial Convent: the human equivalent of wet clay puppets smudged together and then smeared on the most nearby surface. It becomes a shoggoth-like creature, a sludge of agonising mass. These are the lowest forms of Unfission beings, considered fit for nothing else than to be dead mass absorbed by Point Convents.

HD 1, ATK 12, DEF 6, MOV 4, Morale 6

• Desperate Absorption: Vestigial Convents attack with long sinewy tendrils, attempting to physically pull things into themselves. Any creature succesfully hit by an attack takes no damage but must save or be dragged closer to the Vestigial Convent (similar to the Point Convent's ability, except that this needs both a succesful attack and save to pull). When a creature is pulled into melee range this way it must save or die as it is absorbed by the Vestigial Convent, identically to the Add to Mass ability of the Point Convent.
• Mutagenesis: Identical to the Point Convent's trait, but cannot gain spells/MD: 1 to 5 is a mutation, 6 is self-destruction.

UNFISSION MASTER

The coordinators of the Cult of Unfission, these are the few instances where rabid fusion has in fact produced, or where from previous individuality there has been retained, more intelligence than simply the dogmatic adherence to the Unfission mantra. Unfission Masters understand that when minor fusion is strategically put off, greater fusion steps can be accomplished. Being able to assert authority over Point Convents, they are the ones to orchestrate the Cult's schemes, meditating to receive the will of the Founders from deep in the void of space.

True Form: as a 10 HD Point Convent.

Flesh Body:

Unfission Masters have enough self-control and arcane power to pause their fusion hunger and produce a body from their mass, and contain their black hole-like self. They still, however, have a necromancer's twisted sense of what a 'body' should be, and thus their bodies are generally terrifying fusion monstrosities.

HD 4, ATK 11*; DEF 11*; MOV 11*, many possiblities of movement; Morale 12

• Morphic Manipulation: An Unfission Master can warp and change their body to suit a chosen purpose. It assigns a +5 bonus to one of the skills marked with *. When it assigns this to Movement it may choose a mode of movement (flight, walking, swimming,...), when it assigns it to Defense it may choose one save (except Morale and Death) to which it is immune, when it assigns it to Attack it may choose a weapon type that this form wields (ranged or melee, but it always deals 1d8 damage). Changing options inside a chosen skill takes an action, changing between options half a minute. It may also, as a fourth option, not gain a +6 but take a form with expansive brain mass to store spells, and gain 4 MD and 2 random spells. These MD do not regenerate when switching back and forth between forms, but the spells are always rerolled. MD only regenerate upon forming a new body.
• Generate Body: When it is in its true form, or when its current body is destroyed, an Unfission Master can sacrifice a part of their mass to fashion a new body. This deals 6 (1 HD) damage to itself, and gives the Master a new form as detailed above. Producing a new body takes about a minute.

More Unfission Master bodies (art by Jesse Balmer, Adventure Time Come Along With Me concept art)

SPELLS:
To add some Unfission flavour to necromancy in your game, these following spells can be usable for necromantic players in your game. Or, they might acquire them only by unearthing tomes of the cult's less maniacal precursors in forgotten libraries, when they still did things like write in books. They might have to pry them as living spells from the broken singularity of a dead Unfission Master.

Alternatively these spells can be wielded by evil casters, or they can be locked away inside lead books in the university tempting players to free them (and causing a obsessive fusion mania in the university when they do). There's many uses for a few more semi-necromantic spells.

1. Amalgapparatus
R: within hand's reach T: [sum] (broken) tools D: instant
Fuse broken or intact items into one functional unit. Roll a d6: if it is 1 the resulting device loses all functionality, becomes a weird pointless machine. If it is 2 or 3 it gains the function of (randomly selected) half of the tools. If it is 4 or 5 this one device becomes a multi-tool that performs the functions of all the tools invested. If it is 6 the tool hybridizes the function of the tools invested into an apparatus with one oddly specific function: for instance, hybridizing a corkscrew and a sword yields a spiralling sword with a powerful enchantment against enemies made of cork, whereas simply having all their functions yields a sword with a corkscrew as the pommel.

2. Clustering Vector
R: 50' T: [dice]+1 creatures no more than 30' apart D: [sum] minutes
Creatures that you target must save or be pushed together and stick to each other as if glued for the spell's duration. At the end of the duration all creatures still stuck must save again. The creatures that fail this save have their flesh melded together by the ever tightening embrace. They are permanently grafted together. These creatures save one last time. If any of the creatures fails the save, all these creatures merge into one new hybrid entity. Creatures that succeeded the last save are the ones who mentally stay in control. Willing creatures may voluntarily fail any of these saves.

3. Remold
R: Touch T: 1 object D: [sum] minutes
Summons fragments of a whole that the touched item was once part of to it. Shattered sword pieces, carpentry made from the same tree, identical twins. More MD invested means they are drawn from further away and/or with more force. Any parts that make it to the touched item within the spell duration fuse with the touched object to recreate the lost whole.

4. Point Compress
R: 50' T: orb of space D: instant
Compress everything within an orb of space into a marble-sized superdense pellet. This orb's size increases with the amount of MD you invest. A 1 MD orb is the size of a baseball. Hitting a moving target with this is very difficult.

5. Monoharmonium
R: - T: [dice]*20' radius around self D: [dice]minutes
One sense becomes completely homogenised, rendering you and all creatures within the target radius incapable of any differentiation in the environment based on said sense.

6. Feigned Convent
R: - T: self D: [sum] minutes
A spell not developed by the Unfission Cult itself but by the people tormented by them, allows you to compress your body into a ball, like a Point Convent. Unfortunately the makers of this spell found out that Point Convents do in fact fuse with everything, even their own kind. They also missed the floating part. The spell is still useful for crawling (rolling?) into tight places though. A 1 MD Feigned Convent is the size of a football. A 4 MD one the size of a marble.

TABLE:
A Lich-Star can be a fun element of cosmology to add to your game, even if it's only a tiny pale green speck in the sky, burning brightly and hungrily. The following chart contains possible effects that may apply to your world when a Lich-Star is aligned with others in a certain way, forms a constellation, passes convexely under the moon, etc. Lich stars or Lich Planets aligning are the Cult of Unfission's GREAT ECLIPSE™. Maybe, if you're very unlucky, you're living on a piece of ripped-apart planet floating about and this table always applies during the day, when the Lich-Sun is out. If you are dramatic, roll multiple effects. If this is the event those damn Mayans put on their calendar, use all of them.

1. Necromantic spells become exceedingly more powerful.
2. Both mania and despair become exceedingly difficult to resist.
3. Ghosts  and shades start appearing everywhere, unable to interact with the mortal world, silent (or howling) watchers.
4. The Undead rise.
5. Any other magic than necromancy is significantly powered down/nullified.
6. People's thoughts are influenced with visions of Unfission, waves of temporary madness afflict the population.
7. Milk turns sour, animals become rabid, crops die.
8. Ancient Unfission ruins or artefacts reactivate. Their purpose is without a doubt heinous.
9. The Sun cowers behind the moon, hiding itself from the Lich-Star's evil eye. Solar eclipse.
10. Tides turn freak, either causing floods or drawing back impossibly far.
11. Children born have bizarre mutations.
12. Minor or sometimes major spontaneous fusions happen. Objects, buildings, animals, people.
13. The planet, influenced by fusion mania, compresses together ever so slightly. Major earthquakes.
14. Gravity increases significantly.
15. The Lich-Star's fusion pull extends with its light. Things are sucked/ripped off the planet surface.
16. The clouds try to fuse with the earth. Constant thick fog.
17. Children born have powerful innate (necromantic) magic.
18. Due to planets shifting in their orbit due to induced fusion mania, the length of a day/year is permanently altered.
19. Space debris gets fusion mania, speeds towards the planet to fuse. Meteors.
20. One very oddly specific and harmless event occurs, which even Unfission Masters do not know the meaning of.