Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Lobe Wyrm

Born only when a salamander lays a single silver egg in the fire below a wizard's cauldron, a lobe wrym is a powerful magical parasite that are coveted by magic-users. The parasite is implanted into the mage's ear where it draws nutrients from the bloodstream and from the ambient magical energies that leak from every cast spell.

It takes about a year for the parasite to grow to full size, at which time it provides no bonuses and is very vulnerable to spellshock and backlash. One failed spell can easily kill the creature at this stage. It can also be easily removed and embedded into another host, which means that, as a rule, mages with a Lobe Wyrm are very cautious during this phase.

Once they have grown a little, the wyrm begins to augment a mage's power, allowing them to cast at one level higher than they actually are. At this stage, they can only be removed by killing the host, which still has a fifty/fifty percent chance of killing the parasite.

The wyrm feeds primarily on ambient magical energy. Spells cast in its presence provide most of its nourishment, but spell failures release an unfocused blast of eldrich energies ... which the wyrm feasts like like a red dragon in a shire. Each time there is a spell failure within 100' of the wyrm there is a thirty three percent chance of the wyrm absorbing enough energy so that it grows, and absorbed some of the mage's endurance with it (permanently loose 1 point of CON).

As the wyrm grows, it becomes more powerful.and even develop an unhuman intelligence that begins to whisper ideas to the mage that only he can hear. Eventually, the mage will die , either of natural causes or by the draining of the wyrm. At that time, their skull will hatch like an egg .... and a fresh dragonspawn emerges; its temperament and alignment shaped heavily by the head it hatched from.

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