Protective Death Fetish

After a soul has left a body the body is neither useless nor bereft of energy/essence. There are residual traces of energy left within the body. Just as the soul can be guided and shaped while alive, these deathly energies can be guided and shaped after death. These energies tend to focus upon certain areas and in doing do are able to be harvested for use in the bits of flesh that they are guided to or naturally collect in. Interestingly this guiding and harvesting does not require any abilities beyond the 4th rank of healing and can easily be harvested by any sufficiently trained healer. Normally this energy focuses in the extremities (fingers, toes, ears). Making use of this harvested energy is another matter and requires more advanced healing ability.

To make:
1) Obtain a corpse, preferably one that is mostly whole.
2) Track where the energies focus in the corpse using thanatological techniques.
3) Sever the piece of flesh that is the focus.
4) Repeat this process for at least two separate corpses.
5) Prepare the focuses for preservation using thanatological methods for tanning and meat preservation.
6) Carve into each of the focuses particular Oscurian runes to channel the essence flow.
7) Puncture each of the focuses with a needle threaded with chain to string the two together pulling the chain through each focus.
The preparation of the parts generally requires 7 twists worth of embalming and tanning chemicals.

To use:
1) Wrap the chain around someone’s wrist in a fashion similar to the Dark Lords Fetters.
2) Concentrating on the stored energy focus your mind on causing the energy to release into the bearer. Releasing this energy does require more advanced uses of the art of thanatology.

The death energy forms an infusion that temporarily mingles with the energies of the living bearer. This infusion offers protection for 24 hours before being washed out and becoming ineffective. This in turn causes them to register or “smell” as ‘animated dead’ to most other undead and as such most undead will ignore them. How the undead actually perceive this (or many other things) is unknown. Testing has shown no side effects from individual or repeated uses. The effects of prolonged use has not yet been determined. How this phenomenon interacts with a Banelight is currently unknown. How this affects a soul if it dies or is brought back while under it’s influence is currently unknown.


Theories: While this use of these particular energies may be unknown I [Marcus] theorize that the energies themselves are actually known to any sufficiently skilled healer in all the worlds (with the likely exception of the Enchanted Glade). I [Marcus] propose that manipulating these energies may be what allows healers to hold souls in place to prevent them from leaving their body for an extended period of time so that they may be coaxed back to life using Ars Thanatos. These same energies may also be what gets converted to a ‘boon’ should such a treated soul end up departing its body. I [Marcus] won’t yet theorize on how these energies interact with putting ghosts and other angry souls to rest or the possibility of sending them to an ‘afterlife’. As being consigned to oblivion is the natural state of my world and (possibly) the current state of forest I [Marcus] have no practical experience to draw from to form a theory regarding this.