Approved Tech The Black Prophet's Staff of L'ans Zodou

[Zambrano the Starweird]

Spoiler: Rendition, Not Accurate to Concept

Image Source: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_QQbAC4gfeNo/TNpGby7WjVI/AAAAAAAAAfU/PMdnX0w1dhw/s1600/11-9-staff.jpg
Intent: To create a menacing new item to a list of Zambrano's horrific features and antics, and to assist him in facilitating his new fondness of Voodoo-esque magicks (To which he refers to as L'ans Zodou Primevalism)
Development Thread: If needed
Manufacturer: Zambrano the Hutt, through Arcane, and occultist methods.
Model: Not applicable
Affiliation: Zambrano the Hutt, the Black Prophet of Balagoth
Modularity: No, can be decorated though (with body parts)
Production: Production: Unique
Material: The severed head of Captain Slika (mouth sewn shut, eyes removed, decomposing), the skeletal remains of an amphistaff bathed and marinated in spirit ichor, human skin made into a leather to tie the pieces together and hold sacrificial blood sucked out from the deceased amphistaff's modified fangs, into removable pouches hanging around Captain Slika's decomposing head. To support structural integrity as a staff, human bone was used in its construction.

The only thing missing from the staff, are the highly coveted eyes of [member="Sage Bane"].

Description:

Strengths

• Sacrificial Artifact: Being composed of dead things ritualistically slaughtered for the sole purpose of being weaved together, what isn't force dead exudes a strong presence of the dark side, though this aura is mostly superficial with no advantages or ill effects.
• Bathed in Spirit Ichor: To counteract the force-deadness of the amphistaff, every bone was bathed with Spirit Ichor in order to become indirectly manipulatable in the force. This is done by manipulating the Spirit Ichor encasing the force-dead bones, rather than causing them to lose their absence in the force. It also causes the entire staff to become a Force artifact, which enhances its wielder's effectiveness with Magicks (though offers little, and even dilutes, effectiveness in any other category of the force).
• Blood Thief: If one is stabbed with this staff, they should be wary, for it has taken an ounce of their blood, and placed it within a bag of human skin. Using these sacrificial bags, if they should leave the fight alive without reclaiming their crimson donation, they could be subjected to the unsettling effects of Totem Magic later on... or be tracked down in the creation of a Talisman of Finding.
• Resurrectable: Given its entirely organic nature, and its infusion with both spirit ichor (witch rituals) and the dark side of the force, the Black Prophet of Balagoth may temporarily grant the staff and most of its components zombified life. The Amphistaff itself moves only due to the spirit ichor encasing it being manipulated with the spell. This feature of necromancy could have many varied functions, but is most primarily a weapon of terror. There are many people alive that remember well the events of the Dark Harvest, and such acts of necromancy can bring out the worst of memories in others.

Weakness

• Fragile: As a collection of preserved organic matter, it should be expected that this deadly artifact will not stand up to being blown apart by blasters or slugthrowers, or sliced apart by a lightsaber. With no living power glands, the Amphistaff skeleton offers no protection whatsoever. Additionally, all components are subject to decomposition even with preservatives.
• Poor Medium: Given a major component of the staff was originally force dead, utilizing the staff to project the force through it as a medium (beyond the rituals of occult magicks) is ill-advised, as it will at best dilute your utilization of the force, or at worst negate it entirely. It will not dilute or negate force powers of the user itself, but it is merely a horrible medium to pour the force into in the conventional sense of the force (i.e., not Magicks).

Following the death of [member="Mishk"] at the hands of [member="Lord Ajihad"] at the Eternal Pyre, the fragile 'reality' surrounding the consciousness of Zambrano the Hutt, completely and utterly collapsed. It unleashed a hellish spirit bound to his spirit that summoned the dead to awaken through an ancient and arcane magicks he held within him for centuries, unaware of it. The resulting turmoil that fundamentally altered the Warlord of the Chiloon Rift into the sinister Black Prophet, a pious entity fully aware of its own existence, but hell bound upon recovering the soul of its late lover from beyond the "Unseen Rift" at the foot of Balagoth. This resulted in a harrowing killing spree, that claimed the lives of every living thing upon his ship The Thorn (minus the ship itself), including Captain Slika and his pet Vaapaad, Lovey.

The remains of nearly every victim, were then summarily used for one arcane and occultist ritual, or another. All for the sake of communing with the dead, to which the Prophet now understands, as the "L'ans". The L'ans are the product of a soul passing through the Unseen Rift, and can be persuaded or bribed to produce certain effects if accommodated according to its personality. This magick "Zodou", culminated into the Witch Elder Hutt producing a menacing artifacts symbolising this dramatic switch from senseless slaughter though sith power to proposed sacrifice through magickal ordainment.

It started with Captain Slika's head, which had a snug hole drilled through his brain guts so that the skull of the Amphistaff could be forced through the top of his deceased head. This allows it to act as a blood sucking spear tip. Surrounding the sacrificed head, are bags of human flesh awaiting the donation of blood from the staff's fangs. The whole thing is bound together by human leather, and structurally supplemented with human bone. What isn't bound by leather, is often sewn together, with entwined human hair and bone needles.

All in all, the artifact is a monstrous symbol of the new consciousness that has taken hold of Zambrano the Hutt...

Primary Source:[SIZE=12.2222px] [/SIZE]N/a

 

[Ellie Mors]

Under Review.

 

[Ellie Mors]

Infused with Spirit Ichor: To counteract the force-deadness of the amphistaff, every bone was bathed and infused with the ichor in order to become manipulatable with the force, and it enhances its wielder's effectiveness with Magicks (though offers little, and even dilutes, effectiveness in any other category of the force).

What, exactly, is accomplished by adding spirit ichor to this? If the amphistaff is force dead spirit ichor will have no effect on it. Just like a force push will, at best, only push the air into a force dead object and do absolutely nothing to the force dead object itself, adding spirit ichor to an object that is force dead will do nothing - it would be like trying to utilize the force from outside of a Ysalamir field to the inside of it, it isn't possible. It could be the wording of this that I'm misunderstanding, but a force dead object is unable to be touched by the force (except in the case of Yuuzhan Vong by force lightning and similar such methods).

Blood Thief: If one is stabbed with this staff, be weary, for it has taken an ounce of their blood, and placed it within a bag of human skin. Using these sacrificial bags, if they should leave the fight alive without reclaiming their crimson donation, they could be subjected to the unsettling effects of Totem Magic later on... or be tracked down through a blood trail. These are not specific abilities of the staff itself, but it can serve the purpose of supplying the necessary sacrifice for the wielder to enact these rituals.

A blood trail requires the person placing the trail to use their own blood and place it on the desired object/person/thing to be tracked, not take the blood of someone else. The totem magic checks out, though.

Resurrectable: Given its entirely organic nature, and its infusion with both spirit ichor (witch rituals) and the dark side of the force, the Black Prophet of Balagoth may temporarily grant the staff and all of its components zombified life. This feature of necromancy could have many varied functions, but is most primarily a weapon of terror. There are many people alive that remember well the events of the Dark Harvest, and such acts of necromancy can bring out the worst of memories in others.

Could you define these varied functions in the submission? And, given that you use a force dead amphistaff, wouldn't this be impossible to perform with the force?

Poor Medium: Given a major component of the staff was originally force dead, utilizing the staff to project the force through it as a medium beyond the rituals of occult magicks is ill-advised, as it will at best dilute your utilization of the force, or at worst negate it. It will not dilute or negate force powers of the user itself, but it is merely a horrible medium to pour the force into in the conventional sense of the force (i.e., not Magicks).

Sith magic, Nightsister Magic, and so on are all branches of the force - they are all treated the same way by force dead material, in that they do not effect the force dead material either on the same scale or at all. Force lightning and a couple of other abilities used in canon have been shown to effect Yuuzhan Vong and other force dead creatures, but it is not explained why or how.

We can describe the amphistaff as not being force dead to resolve the issues with force dead stuff, as there is canonical precedence for Yuuzhan Vong creatures being such, but if it is described as force dead (prior and post-mortem) it will need to have changes made to accommodate for such.

 

[Zambrano the Starweird]

[member="Braith Achlys"] The idea behind infusing it with Spirit Ichor would be that any magickal influence I put into the object, would be influencing the Ichor, and not the amphistaff itself. I wasn't aware that an Amphistaff corpse could be lacking its force dead qualities. I was just thinking that an ordinary Amphistaff in my experience is force dead, so I assumed its corpse would be too. My solution to work around that was to pump it full of spirit ichor (maybe ala Savage Opress style?) which might/would allow me to influence the "creature" indirectly through the ichor itself.

As was stated in the submission, those abilities are not inherent to the staff. The only thing it does is collect blood. The Totem Magick and Blood Trail were merely the foreseeable uses I could use the blood collected for. Besides, I believe I have seen somewhere a case of the Blood Trail being utilized in reverse, which is why it is listed as all. I'm not sure that I could source it though. Ask Ashin Varanin if you're concerned about it, I'm sure he would know whether such an instance has ever occurred around here, as I believe he was the one, or at least connected with the one responsible for the technique I describe.

I couldn't think of any other "functions" other than look awesome, so that was the vaguest way I could put it. The only thing that I could really think of, which is basically redundant since I am force sensitive, is to send it out as a scout or something, to act as eyes and ears where I cannot, etc..

As addressed with the first issue, I imagined it being an item so infused with ichor it becomes a channel for any magicks directed through it... but any other applications of the force that don't rely on the ichor would interact with the staff much in the way you described, with it being mostly force-dead (save for the skull, human leather, etc.).

 

[Ellie Mors]

[member="Zambrano the Hutt"]
The reverse of a blood trail (that isn't exactly what it is, but I understand what you mean - a locator for the person whom you have the blood of) is not a blood trail but rather a Talisman of Finding. They are similar in that you can locate the desired person, but it is a process rather than just tracking through blood as a blood trail is (you basically take an extra step to create this amulet rather than just locate your own blood trail, as it is not a blood trail) and would require turning your staff into such a talisman (maybe one which can locate many people rather than just one?). I am aware this process works, I've submitted a talisman of finding of sorts myself, it just isn't a blood trail - though, again, it is similar to what it would be in reverse if there was such a thing.

As for the force dead portion, I meant that because it was force dead no force would work on the amphistaff itself. While you'd be able to interact with the rest of the staff, you would be unable to touch/interact with the amphistaff (as it is force dead) with the force, besides maybe electrocution through force lightning or similar. I was suggesting that it be labeled as "not force dead" (as there is canonical precedence of a method to make something, specifically Yuuzhan Vong creatures/people, force sensitive by way of implanting a force sensitive bodily tissue into the brain of the subject, as seen with Shimrra) to avoid this issue, not to inform you that it would not be force dead.

So I've arrived at the notion that the spirit ichor is around the force dead amphistaff, rather than inside(in the sense that it is not a force imbued amphistaff) and thus using the force on it allows manipulation of everything except the amphistaff, then that is fine. I just need that clarification that it is not the amphistaff being interacted with the force. Alternatively you could go a different route and just state the amphistaff had been made force sensitive prior to its death and thus give you full freedom with utilizing the force through the staff (which is fine if you don't want to do that).

Just be aware that trying to resurrect the amphistaff with the force isn't going to work, as it is force dead.

Note: It was an error on my part in the cited submission because I couldn't recall the actual process/name of what was being done.

 

[Zambrano the Starweird]

[member="Braith Achlys"] Funny, that may be just where I got the idea from. Although I believe at one point the One Sith or someone, had created a "Dark Mark" That functioned in a similar way to a blood trail, in that it burned whenever one with a mark on themselves was in close proximity. That's a tangent conversation though.

So I get the Talisman thing, so I'll edit it to reflect that, but also wanted to clarify whether or not you approved or disapproved of a concept where a traditional amphistaff, bathed in Spirit Ichor, could be manipulated indirectly by influencing the ichor that surrounded it (not, the amphistaff itself)?

Otherwise I'll do as suggested.

 

[Ellie Mors]

(not, the amphistaff itself)?

This is fine. I just need you to clarify it in the submission that such is the case.

 

[Zambrano the Starweird]

[member="Braith Achlys"] I believe that should do it now

 

[Ellie Mors]

Awesome. Pending Admin Approval. Thanks!

 

[Allyson Locke]

Approved.