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Cryomancy vertical slice from the upcoming sorcerer guide


Darth Nyrys

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Cryomancy

 

All those who obtain power fear that the same cycle will cause them to lose that power in due time. Cryomancers study the metaphysical forces of stagnation and stillness to cement any power they achieve. By stagnating the Force and preventing natural cycles from occurring, the cryomancer creates a frozen well of power to draw upon. This methodology is extremely corrupting, leaving the Sith with a doll-like appearance, with their skin becoming pale and rigid, and over time cracking to reveal black ichor underneath.

 

Cryomancers are able to solidify the souls of sacrifices and defeated enemies into a material called soulfrost, which they use to construct labyrinthine citadels. These sorcerers readily support the Sith war effort and slave trade so that they may easily obtain the resources to expand their domains. As cryomancers prefer to spend most of their time in their frozen lairs, many of them amass great archives to both pass the time and to entice other Sith to perform tasks for them in exchange for access to their archives. While cryomancers don’t use traditional Sith sorcerer powers, their ideology is incredibly Sith oriented. This disparity is a good pick for new players upon reaching lord rank, as apprentices may have trouble acquiring the resources needed to make this disparity shine, but the concepts of it are easy to learn. 

 

Cryomancy spells and rituals

 

Creeping Doom: The cryomancer conjures metastasizing ice crystals on the ground and walls that expand and try to envelop the sorcerer’s enemies. The ice hates heat, life, and motion, and wants to silence it all in its smothering embrace. Anyone caught in the expanding ice is in for a slow and painful death as it entombs them and saps their life force while cutting off their oxygen. Enemies killed this way find their final agonies preserved for the cryomancer to add to their collection. This spell requires continued focus for the ice to expand, and should be used more as a means to force enemies out of cover like a fragmentation grenade than a stand alone threat.

 

A wise lord uses the downfall of others to gild their own throne. A victory not capitalized on in full is a wasteful, thrashing bout of foolishness.

 

Hope Denied: With a great inhalation the cryomancer sucks the life, heat, and energy out of the area in front of him, leaving only cold misery behind. While not a lethal spell, it can effectively shut down any build up of energies by enemies and leaves those afflicted open to a pressed attack.

 

What is the strength of a lord who cannot hold to their own power? Hope and courage tremble and flee at the coming of my desolation.

 

Glare of Cruel Disdain: The cryomancer attempts to overwhelm an enemy that they can see with unnatural chill, trying to shatter focus and disrupt aim. Limbs seize and tremble, resisting the will of their owners. 

 

It doesn’t matter how right you feel, or what you think is at stake when you strike at me, in the end your fate will be the fate of all fools.

 

Garland of Winter Blossoms: While the cryomancers prefer their frozen kingdoms to the light and lustre of the outside world, they are not always immune to the charms of its inhabitants. This ritual is equal parts binding ceremony and indoctrination, a mockery of the institution of marriage, and turns the victim into little more than a blankly staring puppet. The sole respite for any victim to this ritual is that the cold no longer affects them, but that’s hardly any consolation for the half life that they must endure. Stripped of personal will, infected by the sorcerer’s own darkness, and forced to watch themselves obey the sorcerer’s every command as if in some suspended nightmare dreamstate, these cursed individuals quickly go mad while also being consumed by Dark Side corruption.

 

People of considerable will find the ritual instead targeting their grip on reality, driving them into a delusional state that rationalizes their obedience to and obsession with the Sith that bound them. (Intended for use on NPCs, PCs require direct consent)

 

In time all creation will be frozen belike your heart, and the rule of our sovereign desolation will be undeniable. Unlike our misguided kin the dichotomy of light and dark does not suit me, so I will remake creation as I see fit. The Jedi were right to pick a side in an attempt to make it prevail, they just picked the wrong one.

 

Throne of Oppression: This cryomantic ritual is core to the beliefs of the cryomancers and begins the journey of their greatest works. Upon gathering enough souls to sculpt the necessary soulfrost, the cryomancer crafts the central heart of a new frozen temple. No cryomancer has ever truly finished their grand artifice, as their ambition is boundless, but to an observer these temples swell to hauntingly grandiose proportions. This ritual is the source of the unnatural chill that perpetuates the soulfrost structure, and a necessity to creating any kind of permanent layout. The darkness that emanates from the throne is so suffocating that the light cannot reach it from beyond its walls, attempts to disrupt the ritual must be made from within the throne chamber itself.

 

In long lost Ryllacethos a forgotten princess sits a frozen throne. She bides her time plotting as she awaits the return of her intended with a gift worthy of her hand in marriage. Upon her necklace is set the frozen heart of an ancient flame, and empty rings await its last few embers.

 

Crown of Desolation: Another ritual for cementing power, the crown of desolation creates a mystical link between the cryomancer and their temple allowing them to channel the bitter cold into the world around them. At this point the cryomancer has internalized the stillness and is unaffected by cold and can move unhindered across ice and snow, however the ravages of the Dark Side feed on the festering power of stagnation, twisting and ravaging the cryomancer’s body. There is no lasting escape from this, as even if the cryomancer steals the body of another, deformity will rapidly consume the new shell. Cryomancers that choose to embrace this power find their ability to excel in the physical techniques of the warrior and assassin paths hobbled, and powers from those paths based on strength, endurance, and agility are treated as being performed as a rank lower, and master level physical powers become unavailable. A cryomancer with this power that is using cryomancy with no weapons drawn or readied and is focusing entirely on cryomancy spells treats their attacks as being a mastery level more powerful. In battle the cryomancer becomes a fount of bitter cold, sapping the life out of those around them and inflicting painful (but not lethal for PCs or tactical NPCs) harm to any that stay in the aura for too long (Like all cryomancy spells, this is not an attack that absorbs the energies/life that is lost). A cryomancer doesn’t kill their enemies, they wait for them to inevitably die.

 

When the cryomancers earned the favor of an ancient Dark Lord for averting a foretold doom, they sought the boon of forming a new dynasty to cement their future place in the order. The Dark Lord’s son gifted their chosen sorceress with a ring that made her the fairest to gaze upon, and she treasured this token and would spend long hours gazing at her illusory beauty in a mirror. In truth, her visage had been so twisted by corruption that none could bear to look at it.

 

Shrieking Wail of the Accursed: The Cryomancer shatters a soulfrost talisman to unleash the tormented souls bound within. Driven mad by their confinement the souls scream in agony as they streak through the air, rupturing eardrums and emanating chaotic energies to disrupt the light.

 

Curse of Hollowing Despair: Unsealing a crystal phial, the cryomancer releases a miasma of distilled despair that clings to any living or powered things that it touches, sapping away both emotional and technological energy. Victims of the curse suffer immediate severe depression and apathy, and machines afflicted by it struggle to function on the barest minimum of power. The cone of effect is short but broad, reaching ten feet away from the sorcerer but spreading thirty feet wide.

 

Curse of Howling Agony: Opening a bottle of purely refined agony, the cryomancer unleashes a narrow vortex of freezing winds and razor sharp ice crystals. Anyone unlucky enough to be caught in the trajectory of the curse is swarmed by the ice crystals relentlessly while being slammed back by one hundred fifty mile per hour winds. The cursed ice shards crawl over the bodies of the accursed, flaying but not killing them. The area of effect for this vortex is five feet wide and eighty feet long.

 

Curse of Weeping Regret: Shattering a bottle with a fat belly and slender neck, the cryomancer releases an oily concoction of shame, self loathing, and regret. The hydra-like unguent substance spreads out to a radius of fifteen feet, entangling and affixing itself to anyone unlucky enough to be in range. While it can feed off of a target’s own negative emotions and psychological burdens, it is also able to infect victims with the inner darkness used to create it. In these cases, the victim experiences the alien memories and feelings as if they were their own dark secrets.  

 

Malevolence of Eternities: Within the halls of a cryomancer’s abode, the walls do occasionally weep a distillate of suffering that collects in torpid pools in the depths. These wells of curse laden water are used by the cryomancers as an unholy medium for the creation of limnal blades that carve frozen paths through the air, freezing joints and turning armor brittle with a touch. Victims that have survived being struck by a limnal weapon have reported feelings of extreme numbness, apathy, and despair, along with energies of both a physical and spiritual nature being sapped away. Limnal blades are so potent in their purpose that they cannot be wielded by someone wearing metal or powered armor without the armor ceasing to function. A limnal blade can serve as a conduit for the cryomancer to channel preternatural cold into surfaces and inanimate objects, but with significantly less efficiency than a Stillblade.(These weapons do not in any way store or absorb energy, they only bleed away the energies of the enemies and objects that they strike)

 

The same misery wept waters can be used to treat textiles and metals for armor, although only Sith warriors have the stamina and strength to effectively battle in a full suit of cursed Sith steel armor, making such things a common item of trade between the two castes. Both forms of armor sap the energy and momentum of attacks, in particular ranged attacks, but only the metal variant offers significant protection from melee strikes. Attempts to wield both limnal blades and cursed steel armor have been fatal at best, with the sum energies overwhelming and killing anyone that has tried. (This statement is not meant to be read as a way for your character to show how amazing he or she is at mastering the Dark Side, it’s a warning that you will die if you attempt it, and the other Sith will point and laugh at you.)

 

Stillblade Chrysalis: Using profane sorceries and offering up foul sacrifices, the cryomancer denatures a lightsaber crystal to create a darkness that devours rather than a light that blazes. Often one of the first steps that a new cryomancer takes on the path, the weapon becomes a focusing conduit for their inner darkness. While activated, frost crawls across every nearby inanimate surface, and freezing mists emanate from the cryomancer, partially obscuring their outline and movements. If used with Crown of Desolation, the cold is significant enough to blot out thermal vision. If used with Darkness Reigns, the cryomancer is treated as being a rank higher. The cryomancer must be actively wielding an activated Stillblade to gain these benefits. As a weapon, Stillblades are interchangeable with lightsabers in terms of damage and materials that are resistant to lightsabers.   

 

Casual Dismissal: The cryomancer conjures a spear of ice, either from water in the air, a nearby body of water, or souls, and uses it to strike down an enemy, preferably while they are restrained by ice or otherwise incapacitated. While the cryomancer is capable of making the spear travel quickly, they often prefer to make the attack appear effortless like the name suggests while they put down defeated foes. The penetrative power that a cryomancer can muster depends on their rank as a Sith, but the attack must always be a single spear that originates from the cryomancer's general area. It is not a fire and forget attack, requiring dedicated focus throughout the spell, but in return this makes the attack significantly harder to deflect or redirect through counter TK.

 

Deny the Coward: The cryomancer can slowly seal off doors, tunnels, or hallways with soulfrost walls. The creation of these obstacles is too slow to be useful as an effective mid duel defensive move against attacks.

 

Maw of Inevitability: The frozen surfaces around the cryomancer metastasize sharp spikes like teeth, creating a plethora of deadly traps for drained and weakened enemies to be driven into.

 

Tyranny of Winter: A cryomancy ritual of intricate invocations and complex sigils, this is the cryomancer’s answer to enemies that would try to press them with hordes of troops and mechanized assaults. The battlefield is consumed by a blanket of white and visibility dwindles to nothingness as bitter winds and snowfall obscure all vision. Superstorms meander through the blizzard flash freezing anything caught in their eyes. Infantry are forced to take cover or freeze to death, and machines find their inner workings failing in the extreme cold. While the cryomancer is channeling this spell they cannot leave the ritual area or hide their Force presence in any way. The storms cannot be used to target specific PCs or NPCs, think of the spell as a means for mass suppression of armies rather than a way to snipe high value targets.

 

Darkness Reigns: Cryomancers can choose to manifest their TK as a blast of freezing winds. Upon reaching the rank of Lord, the winds are able to persist for a few seconds beyond the initial blast. At master rank the winds become a persistent channeled effect, ending only when the master loses concentration or chooses to end the effect. A master that is using a Stillblade or Crown of Desolation’s unarmed power boosting option can treat the use and upkeep of this spell as an innate passive ability, although doing so reduces the intensity to more like walking into a strong headwind, difficult but not insurmountable.

 

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