Angstrom’s Black Revelations

Steel Realms

Attributed Author:

Initial Appearance:

Item Origins/Purpose:

SIGNIFICANT EXPERIENCE: Reference works and basic exposure alone may only provide the foundation for gaining a [mechanics based] advantage. To reflect the practice and experience to gain that benefit consistently, typically requires a cost in Character Points.

Common Knowledge: Angstrom was a collector of stories of a sort – stories of torture. He was a master torturer of the death god Djerduth. He collected and documented thousands of
techniques and tales of torture. The tome records in gory detail the flaying, cutting, stretching and all manner of worse torture, its effects, and statements from the victims.

PRICE: Priceless

The Lightbringers pay handsomely for copies of the work, or proof of its destruction. It is referenced in other sources that up to 30,000 silvers was offered by a priest of Malek once for a partial copy in Gladnorean.

Uncommon Knowledge

Angstom is long dead – no one knows how he met his end – but his work lives on. A copy of the work was known to have surfaced in in the Vale Evander in 5902. Partial works, enough to do the reader a serious turn, have
been known to surface from Rhyl to the Vale Evander, and even in Gwinn. These partial collections are some of the most prolific works of the minor Diabolique.

Item Statistics

[Incarna 5.0]

General Requirements: Reading the tome requires competent literacy: Gladnorian (or whatever language for a partial copy).

Details over a thousand sacrifices (does not say to who – Djerduth and Malek) in meticulous, gruesome details. It promises to ‘open the reader’s eye’ and grant them a gaze that will wither a reflection.
The whole tome must be read several times over, and it suggests that in order to retain the benefits, the work must continue to be “refreshed”.

PARTIAL: If the reader can make it, they must make a SAN-4 check or will lose -1 SAN and CHA and gain a permanent measure of Disorientation. Regardless, they suffer -2 to all empathy skill checks/and those against them and gain a permanent measure of disorientation.
In return, they gain the trait: Cold Hearted, +1 on all SAN checks in the future, GAIN a point of essence, gain +4 on checks to recognize hidden symbols of Djerduth and Malek, and gains the ability to perform an Unnerving Stare 1/day

Of course they will start to see symbol’s everywhere and will start to lose their grip on reality over time; each time they read it thereafter – and they will be compelled each year: SAN check – failure indicates another permanent measure of disorientation.

FULL:


Realm's Aptitude Powers: Divine, Occult, and Psychic