You've killed the
Sorcerer. The evil witch lies dead at your feet. Now you're going to
loot the corpse; except something still manages to kill or maim you.
It could be a trap or final posthumous curse laid by the Wizard in
spite, or it could be just a natural result of the Sorcerer's vile
biological meddling with their own body.
Roll on the table
for what hazard awaits within the Wizard's body, which usually only
activates if they are looted or you attempt to burn them (cremating
Wizards is common practice, so they can't try to come back from the
dead). Apprentice Wizards only have a 1 in 6 chance of having a
booby-trapped body, regular Wizards have one, Archmages and Sorcerer
Lords may have 2 or more.
12 Sorcerer-Corpse Hazards
[1]
The Sorcerer's mouth suddenly starts to spew a massive cloud of
black-green smoke. The smoke deals 2d6 damage per round you breathe
it in, no save if you were the one to touch the corpse. Every roll of
a one deals one damage and also reduces your maximum hit pitons by
one, permanently. The smoke clears in one round if you're outside and
one exploration turn in an enclosed space.
The mouth and
throat of the Sorcerer is stained bright green all the way down to
the lungs. Both lungs in the body will be bloated and leathery, with
extra gas-sac chambers growing like pustules on the sides. This
Sorcerer was probably trying to acclimate themselves to an arcane
atmosphere.
[2]
You hear a tinny screeching coming from the Sorcerer's ears. Many
years worth of “saved” conversations come billowing out of their
ear holes, loudly stacking on top of each other and building the
volume to a crescendo. Every round, roll a wandering encounter check.
Those with sensitive ears, like Elves, must cover their ears with
their hands and can't do anything else. Every round, all magic items
in your possession have a 1 in 6 chance to fire off as a magic word
or phrase is replayed from the irritating static of noises.
The noise will end
after 1 exploration turn for a normally aged (old) Wizard, but may
last for an hour or more for a truly ancient immortal spellcaster.
You can also muffle the noise by stuffing the earholes shut or
covering the dead corpse's head with pillows and blankets to stifle
the racket.
[3]
One of the Sorcerer's hands randomly shoots up and tries to grab and
claw at you. It's not a zombie, the limb if just firing wildly. If it
manages to scratch you (attack roll at +2), your matching hand on
your body will start to act strangely every night, and the Wizard's
hand goes inanimate again. This hand will try to scratch arcane
symbols into any nearby objects when you sleep, or in your flesh if
no objects are available. The hand also compulsively (saving throw to
resist) touches, opens, and clutches spell books or arcane artifacts.
Your hand seems to be trying to spread knowledge of magic through the
drawing of runes and esoteric diagrams of things you don't want to
understand.
If you cut off the
Sorcerer's hand while it is flailing, it turns into a 1 HD monster
that puppets the hand as its body, though in truth it is a mass of
tentacles inside from an extradimensional monster, puppeting the
Wizard's hand and granting enhanced dexterity for lapping at the
caster's soul. If you cut off the Sorcerer's hand after it has
already scratched somebody, the tentacles are already dead and it
slides out like a snail boiled in its shell.
[4]
The Sorcerer's body lies still, until the moment something burning or
red hot touches it. It poofs into white powder, which, after one
round, ignites and explodes as a 4d6 damage fireball in the
containing area. Those who have managed to survive this booby trap
attest to the fact that the Wizard's body smells like bread, as the
white powder is in fact their entire body turned into very fine
flour.
It is also
possible to use a grind stone to change the Wizard who cast this
spell into flesh and bone into bread. Eating this bread makes any
normal human sick, but gives Wizards an easy feeling of nostalgia and
comfort; you can make 30 Wizard rations from a bread-wizard corpse.
[5]
The Wizard's eyeballs retain a shimmering quality after death, eyes
wide open in death, as though staring right at you. If you touch one
of the eyeballs at all, cover the face with a cloth, or try to close
the eyelids of the corpse the eyeballs explode and squirt
metal-burning acid at you. Make a saving throw; on failure you take
4d4 acid damage. The acid can burn through anything except stone and
has a 1 in 6 chance to ruin your armor if you were exposed to it
while wearing armor.
The acid in the
eyes is a very common enhancement Sorcerers put into themselves.
Injection of the acid causes early blindness, cataracts, and
hallucinations, as well as a permanent “sunken in” look to the
eyes that many magic users share. The acid has the beneficial
property of “melting” any malignant text or trapped runes; the
image is essentially burned away within the Wizard's eye before it
reaches their brain to process it. This is a required surgery for any
Sorcerer who wishes to read books made by other paranoid and
possessive magicians.
[6]
As you examine the corpse, you see several lumps under the skin
around the wizard's body, hinting at internal tumors. The lungs start
to change color, shift, and smell quite strangely as they mutate post
mortem. The tumors are changing into metals, which were otherwise
being manufactured or produced by the Sorcerer's body.
After one turn,
the Sorcerer's body doubles in weight as some of the lumps turn to
iron and lead. After two turns, being touched by water causes a
burning stinging cloud to form from the Sorcerer's body; the lithium
in their body reacting and exploding violently. After three turns,
you can fish through the Wizard's corpse to find 1d3 nuggets of gold,
worth 300c each.
[7]
As the final blow hits the Sorcerer, their body releases a cloud of
spores. These spores only infect dead things; any meat or corpses you
are carrying will similarly be infected by the spores. The Sorcerer's
corpse and all affected flesh sprouts mushroom heads- they grow from
tiny buds into four inch long fruiting bodies in a matter of minutes.
After one turn, these spore heads release spores again, infecting all
nearby dead things again, spreading the chain of infection.
After one hour,
any flesh hosting the mushroom spores will start to turn into putrid
slime, pooling together and flowing like water. This will attract all
manner of filthy creatures. Slimes will autogenerate from the pool of
liquid; 1d6 HD worth of slimes per human sized corpse or amount of
meat. If this mushrooming phenomena happened on the site of a great
battle or within a large coven of Sorcerers, it's highly likely the
entire surrounding countryside would be enveloped by slimes.
Sorcerers tend to know the secret words that can control these
mindless creatures, hence infecting oneself with these mushroom
spores is a useful method to take back territory even after you die.
[8]
Upon killing the Sorcerer, their sleeves must be rolled down or their
clothes removed to reveal this feature. The corpse has holes along
the arms; small nooks which are tiny nestboxes for even tinier
sparrows. The bright-blue birds chirp and fly away the moment they
are uncovered. For the next three days, the weather in the
surrounding area becomes stormy and unpredictable, local wildlife
acts strangely, cats wander far away from the houses and farms they
are supposed to be ratting. It's as if nature itself is trying to
kill these birds as fast as possible, and make sure they do not
establish a foothold or create nests outside of the bodies of
Sorcerers.
These birds, as
with many species created by Sorcerers, has been purposefully
designed to fulfill a purpose. These birds have flammable feathers
and, if they are incinerated alive under the darkness of a new moon,
the ashes will contain an amount of magical energy useful for several
arcane practices.
[9]
The moment the Sorcerer dies, all light around its corpse grows one
level dimmer. Light spells and lanterns become like torches, torches
become candles, candles glow like fireflies or not at all. This has
the normal effect on vision and corresponding negatives for trying to
fight in dark places.
The ability to
reduce light is commonly associated with attempts to preserve the
physical body after death- light speeds up the decomposition by
attracting flies and insects. Lesser magicians have this adaptation
to serve as better undead servants after death, powerful sorcerers
retain it so they may raise themselves from the dead in a less severe
state of undeath afterwards.
[10]
Whatever weapon was used to kill the magician is now magnetically
attracted to it, if it's made of metal. It is pulled towards their
body and sticks to it so hard that only someone with a Strength of 18
or higher could pull it out. Every round you keep the blade away from
the body, the magnetic force gets stronger and stronger, soon trying
to pull the sword out of the scabbard or from a long distance or even
bending the blade if you can hold it back. If the weapon touches the
corpse for at least one exploration turn, the magnetic effect wears
off.
The purpose of this enchantment is to catch returning
arrows or boomerang-style weapons so the user can be disarmed or the
weapon identified. Mostly given to Sorcerers who work as low ranking
guards for higher powered ones; this enchantment is hard to remove
though so most who ascend through the ranks end up keeping it later
in life.
[11]
After the Sorcerer dies, you feel a faint rumbling in the ground.
Make a saving throw to duck for cover. After 1d3 rounds, they explode
with iron swords, daggers, arrows, and magic weapons. On a failed
save, take three attacks from three random weapons. These require a
to-hit roll, and use the magic weapons bonus to modify the to-hit.
Naturally, many
wizards are packrats that steal whatever magical gear they can, even
if they can't make good use of it with their weak arms and bodies.
Regardless, after death, the spells that keep these weapons and items
in extradimensional space cease to function, and these tools of
destruction must return to the mortal plane with explosive results.
[12]
The body disintegrates. If you're touching it on the moment of death
(such as with a hand to hand attack), you must save or take 3d6
damage from the disintegration field.
Some Sorcerers
don't want to be brought back.
