Akhs, like all thoughts, can be helpful or destructive.
These ones are harmful. Akhs in Yarfu are useful alternatives to classic D&D diseases and curses. You can hand out akhs with harsh initial penalties that resolve into moderation, our deadly time-bomb akhs, ideas that shatter their carriers upon being fully grasped. Unlike normal akhs which may surprise the player with their effects, it's probably a good idea to give the player a full idea of what to expect when they contract the dreaded Au or frightful Strigoia. Any of these akhs would be fine hazards to include in an ancient tomb or polluted spring. Use a save with amulets to see if exposed characters start to incubate them.
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Imagine a cool picture here, blogger is being defiant.
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Given the nature of these bad akhs, I've updated the terminology used in the previous post, which presumed an initial penalty and eventual bonus. Now I'll say "onset" for the immediate effect and "processed" for the effect that is unlocked after you gain 1000 XP. If these bad akhs demand a save from you, it will almost always be a save with amulets— warding off curses and diseases is the prototypical purpose of amulets, after all.
The people of Yarfu call "curse" any akh with a severe onset. These commonplace curses listed below mostly just go away after time, which remember is measured in XP acquired, so getting out from a curse is a challenge to successfully adventure while disadvantaged.
The people of Yarfu call "disease" any akh with a severe effect when processed. Their onset is usually mild but if left untreated can be punishing. Treatment is difficult, but wise women, pilgrims, and kings are said to be able to banish processed akhs.
d10 Curses
- Resut - Onset: every overland turn, save with amulets or lose 1 max HP as your body necrotizes. If you die, rise as a gibbering plant. Processed: regain all lost HP except 1. Learn the language of gibbering plants. Personality: scholastic, controlling.
- Brein Ar Vamm - Onset: automatically fail saves with amulets. Magical healing does not touch you. Fresh air tastes stale. Processed: giddy relief for a day. Personality: offended hostility.
- Towershade - Onset: take on a lupine, other-sexed humanoid form, with ferocious instincts and newfound fascinations. +2 to strike with your natural weapons, -2 to most other things. Processed: return to your previous form, with a lingering yearning for new flesh. Personality: panicked everyman.
- Word of Doom - Onset: become psychically damaged, incapable of hope. -1 to most rolls, -1 reaction (as others see you seeing the worst in them) and after major setbacks save with amulets or give up. Processed: gain a one-time vision of a greater power that purposes your description. Personality: maternalistic, gaslighty.
- Au - Onset: frantic need for approval, -5 to all rolls when unsupervised. Processed: perennial nightmares of being a smooth stone. Personality: pharasaical.
- Deviled Eye - Onset: total blindness. If you have blood eyes, save again to see if they’re affected. Processed: sight restored. Personality: sharp hyperrationality.
- Evitar Gelted - Onset: save to resist orders from social betters or avoid attacking foreigners. Processed: blue discolorations mark 20% of your body. Personality: laddish, incurious.
- Urevox - Onset: skin burns off, muscles and bones reshape like wax, and tawny fur itches to the surface. You are a common fox, with all that implies. Processed: return to form. 1-in-6 chance per Turn to activate latent sense of keen scent. Personality: mocking dweeb.
- Alienare - Onset: swap bodies with a nearby creature, ideally in a round-robin with those who also failed the save to avoid Alienare. Processed: everyone restored to their original bodies, plus a random spell known by their host if any. Personality: like if Disco Elysium’s Shiver was a serene nincompoop.
- Sunblindness - Onset: sunlight is like a dark mist to you. Processed: save with amulets. If you pass, you completely acclimate and may see in sunlight as normal. If not, you get a -1 to most d20 rolls in sunlight unless you wear shades or a veil or something. Personality: French Attenborough
d10 Disease
- Strigoia - Onset: -1 to most dice rolls in sunlight. Processed: ignite in sunlight, require an invitation to enter a domicile, and get -2 reaction with respectable people; but gain the ability to transform into a gliding lizard, scarab swarm, or maned wolf, hypnotize 1-HD people, and never age. Personality: dogged paranoia. Note: spread by bite, 1-day incubation.
- Sabotan - Onset: weariness, grouchiness. Processed: unpredictable mood swings, difficulty perceiving veracity. Cannot target the same foe as an ally does in the same round. Personality: slurred Dracula. Note: spread by bite, 1-day incubation.
- Hr - Onset: minor vocal and facial hallucinations. Processed: diminished ability to take others' perspective, suspicion and distress when others act as though they don't know people you know, intend what you suspect they intend, or express differing worldviews. Personality: ride-or-die.
- Furnezhard - Onset: by focusing, can see magic as a sort of fuzz or current of crystal tubes. Processed: save with amulets or brazenly succumb to wizard hubris when given the opportunity, pulling any given unmarked lever or picking up obviously cursed what-have-yous. Personality: solemn and mysterious, yet whimsical.
- Geas - Onset: uncomfortable fascination with history and ancient things. Racist opinions about horses. Processed: possessed of a blazing desire to achieve some set task, usually a grandiose achievement from ancient days like massacring a particular tribe, subjugating a hive, or carrying a statue somewhere remote. For every day not spent in fulfillment of the task, save or take 1d4 damage. If the quest is fulfilled, the akh burns out of you. Personality: maniacal ranting. Note: can be spread to anyone willing to listen to you rant for an hour who isn't inimical to the task (e.g. a member of the tribe you want to wipe out).
- Ovidiu's Retreat - Onset: mild agoraphobia. Processed: a giddy drive overtakes you, and you find it effortless to be diligent and efficient in constructing defenses. At least half of your rightful revenue must be spent in constructing a grandiose dungeon or complex, trusting none but yourself with total knowledge of its layout and secrets. Personality: relieved conspirator.
- Gold Madness - Onset: minor itchiness and sweatiness, pupils gradually reshaping to the sign of the Thrice-Impaled Serpent ($). Processed: kilos of cold clinker call. Save to resist nabbing unattended riches right away, and refuse to leave discovered treasure behind if it’s even technically portable. If you could easily kill someone to make your share of the loot bigger, save to avoid doing so. Personality: Robert Service poem
- Cucui Brut - Onset: develop welts that swell to bubos over the course of a couple days. Processed: gross gross gross the bubos grow wings and fly away, leaving your skin cratered and torn for 2d6 damage. Personality: whirling bon vivante. Note: disease transmitted by sweat, or by bubo bite.
- Noy of Gwen - Onset: sometimes cry for no reason. Processed: the coagulated traumas of dozens of strangers seeps through you. Lose small patches of memory, and when doubles are rolled on a reaction roll, perceive some imminent threat. Personality: sanctimonious elegiac
- Green Flux - Onset: shed frog-like slime. Processed: melt into a mucussy blob. You can’t hold a shape for long and can only carry or use a number of items equal to your level. However, you no longer breathe and are immune to ingested poisons. Personality: Phlegmatic.
