Somewhere below mundane reality are metaphysical forces with an unwavering hatred of all existence, things that want nothing more than to cause harm. But these forces can't act alone. They need to be invited. They need permission. It takes discipline to allow them into your life without destroying yourself in the process, but if you can manage that, you can count yourself a Maledictor, a speaker of curses.
The effects of Malediction are many and varied, but they all involve something bad happening to someone else. Some curses have mundane effects, such as boils, or a run of bad luck at the card table. Others have effects that are more obviously supernatural, such as growing a pair of donkey ears, or being able to speak only the truth. Some are brief, others last generations, or as long as some condition holds. A solid, lasting family curse is a life's work for an accomplished Maledictor. Curses that affect an entire town or nation are the stuff of legends.
Malediction is one of the most dangerous arts. Like a dam holding back unspeakable horror, the Maledictor's power is not a matter of how much they can unleash, but of what they can get away with. After all, one of the basic rules of wild magic is that the harm you do to others will return to you. (This is why the most powerful curses are those uttered with one's dying breath. It's the one time you're completely unconcerned about consequences.) But magic is all about bending the reality's rules, and Maledictors have certain mental gimmicks to avoid paying the karmic price of their actions.
The Maledictor's most elementary tool is resentment. The idea
here is that the Maledictor can avoid consequences if he, or something he's
greatly attached to, has already suffered enough harm at the hands of the
other party, as this makes the Maledictor something like an agent of the
cosmic justice that he's trying to avoid. Actions on the part of others
that generate resentment are called offenses. Cursing someone
discharges a certain amount of resentment determined by the severity of the
curse (and possibly other factors). Resentment can be thought of as
Maledictor mana, except that unlike normal mana, it's already directed
towards a specific target.
Character stats
There are three sets of numbers governing a Maledictor's cursing ability: the skills, the preference, and the enemies list. For detailed information about the effects of these stats, see Offenses.
These represent the maledictor's ability to control the malevolent forces. They are expected to increase as a maledictor masters the style.
Hostility: Governs the amount of resentment that the maledictor can muster against any particular target.
Self-Righteousness: Governs the amount of resentment that the maledictor can muster in total. One can think of this as the number of targets that one can safely max out one's resentment towards.
These are personal situational modifiers. They are part of the maledictor's psychology, and are not expected to change with training or use, although major events in the maledictor's life may alter them.
Prejudices: Modifies resentment against certain targets or classes of targets. For example, someone who hates soldiers might have a prejudice "soldiers 3". Prejudices do not stack: if you have "soldiers 3" and "rich people 2", then your prejudice towards a rich soldier will be 3.
Peeves: Modifies resentment generated by specific offenses. For example, someone who's sensitive about his weight might have a peeve "fat jokes 1".
Loves: Reduces resentment against specific targets, but also allows the maledictor to gain resentment from offenses against those targets. For example, a patriotic maledictor might have a love "my country 2". Unlike prejudice, love always has a specific target rather than a general class.
All preferences are usually in the range 1-5, where 5 will be recognized by most people as extreme to the point of lunacy.
This is where the resentment accumulates. Everyone who has ever committed an offense against the maledictor is on this list. The list is not limited to individuals, but can also contain groups, institutions, and anything else that could be blamed for things.
In addition to a resentment level, each entry in the enemies list has a record of the worst offense ever committed by that enemy.
| Severity | Offense |
| 1 | Insults or verbal abuse. (Multiple insults in a single situation count as a single offense.) |
| 2-3 | Violence without lasting physical consequence; humiliation; breaking an idle promise |
| 3-5 | Minor injury; public humiliation; petty theft |
| 6-8 | Moderate injury, such as flesh wounds; breaking a solemn vow; major theft; damage to reputation; temporary imprisonment; termination of employment |
| 9-11 | Severe injury, such as broken limbs; betraying a friendship; prolonged imprisonment |
| 12-14 | Permanent debilitating injury; torture; permanent imprisonment, such as marooning on a desert island or casting into an oubliette |
| 15-18 | Murder; treason |
| 19-20 | Really exceptional offenses, like the crucifixion |
The resentment in your various enemies lists can be manipulated by various mental exercises. With the exception of Seething, a maledictor can do at most one mental exercise per day.
Seething consists of concentrating on a particular target's general blameworthiness in order to cast a more powerful curse than you would otherwise be able to cast. Its effect is a temporary 50% increase in your resentment towards that target (rounded up). This can increase your resentment above its normal per-target limit, but you can still suffer harmful effects from exceeding the global limit.
Seething takes about a minute to become effective, and lasts until anything aside from new offenses from the target affects your resentment levels. That is, it goes away as soon as you curse, brood, seethe, shift blame, forgive, or receive resentment from another source. When you stop seething, your resentment towards the target is reduced by the amount that seething gave you. (In other words, when you curse, the bonus resentment is consumed last.)
Seething is the one mental exercise that can be done multiple times per day. Usually, the only reason to not seethe is time constraints.
Brooding consists of replaying an offense and its consequences in your mind, and has exactly the same effect on your resentment levels as if the offense occurred all over again, including spillover into the general pool. (This is the reason that the worst offense is recorded in the enemies list.) Alternately, you can brood on an imaginary offense in order to add the highest applicable prejudice to a target, or brood on life's unfairness to increase your general resentment pool by 1.
Brooding takes hours to accomplish, and requires solitude. Conducive conditions (such as a prison cell or a barren moor) may shorten the time needed.
By shifting blame, the maledictor can move resentment from one target to
another. The amount of resentment that can be moved in a single day
depends on how closely the two targets are related. Think of resentment as
flowing from target to target to target in a chain as follows: from groups
to members and vice versa, from anything in a subordinate position to the
thing it's directly subordinate to (child to parent, employee to manager,
kingdom to king), and directly between things seen as being in close
cooperation. If you can join the source target to the destination target
using only things in your enemies list, you can transfer resentment. The
amount you can transfer is:
self-righteousness - steps in chain +
prejudice towards destination
To shift blame effectively, a maledictor has to rant out loud, preferably where other people can hear and chime in with agreement, argument, or heckling.
Forgiveness is seldom practiced by dedicated maledictors, and when it is, it's usually a last-ditch effort to reduce out-of-control resentment and save one's sanity. The effect of forgiveness is to completely wipe out one target from your enemies list, removing both the resentment and any past offenses. Forgiveness is all-or-nothing: there is no way to forgive someone and keep part of your resentment. The target can be re-added later as new offenses occur.
| Cost | Effect |
| 5 | minor (scrapes, bruises, sniffles) |
| 12 | moderate (sprain, flu, flesh wound) |
| 20 | severe (internal bleeding, broken limbs, scarlet fever) |
| 28 | acutely critical (pierced lung, partial evisceration) |
| 36 | mutilation (freshly severed limbs, full evisceration) |
| 44 | recently killed corpse |
| 52 | decayed corpse |
| 60 | skeleton |
| 68 | dust |
Some other possibilities:
| 5-10 | Easily-concealable deformity, such as a pig's tail |
| 11-15 | Non-easily-concealable deformity, such as a donkey's head |
| 16-20 | Hideous, monstrous deformity that makes babies scream |
| 20-25 | Eliminated abilities, such as blindness or muteness |
| 10-20 | Failure in some particular endeavor, such as losing footraces |
| Destruction of objects, such as food rotting in the target's presence | |
| 25 | Unconsciousness (comatose) |
| 25-30 | Turning into an animal |
| 30 | Madness |
| 50 | Victim's gaze turns people to stone |
A lad named Simon is thrashed by a schoolyard bully and sent home crying. What the bully doesn't know is that Simon has been secretly studying Malediction. As an inexperienced student, Simon's Hostility is 4 and his Self-Righteousness is 3. This is the bully's first offense against him; it is painful and humiliating, but has no lasting effects, and Simon gets 3 resentment from it. This is not enough to produce a curse, so Simon spends the afternoon brooding on it. This gives him 3 more points, of which 1 goes to max out his resentment toward the bully, and the other 2 go into his general pool. He then begins to seethe at the bully, increasing his resentment towards the bully to 6. He can now revenge himself on the bully with up to 7 resentment (the 2 points in the general pool being used at half-value). He gives the bully a faceful of horrible-looking pimples that last the rest of his life.
Simon grows up and becomes a competent Maledictor, with a Hostility of 9 and Self-Righteousness of 10. He is travelling alone through the woods and is set upon by bandits. At this moment, his general pool is at maximum, but he has no particular resentment towards the bandits. This gives him an effective 4 resentment to use against the bandits, which is less than he used against the shool bully! So he invites abuse. First, he feigns deafness until the lead bandit makes a crack about his age, which the other bandits laugh at. Simon gets 1 point for the insult, plus his peeve "1 cruel laughter", and applies this to the lead bandit. Then he allows the bandits to take his purse: a petty theft worth 4 points, which he also applies to the leader. This gets him up to 10 resentment (4 for the general pool, 6 for the bandit leader). Simon would really rather seethe for an additional 3 points before cursing, but doesn't have time.
As they ride away, Simon curses as follows: "Blackguard! May you retch uncontrollably whenever you hold stolen goods! Only by turning yourself in to the authorities can you end this curse!" The base cost for a disease of this sort is about 12, but the explicit and easily-achievable (if unpleasant) end condition knocks 1 point off, and the conditional effect is good for at least 1 more point.
Simon really hates his neighbor, and wants to cast the ghastliest curse he can on her. He can take the time to accumulate as much resentment as he can hold. He still has 9 hostility and 10 self-righteousness, which puts him at a maximum safe total of 90 resentment; just in case he suffers some wrong before he can cast the curse, he's going to only brood up to 80. He'll distribute this over the neighbor, the general pool, and various groups that the neighbor belongs to, but only the resentment allocated toward the neighbor specifically will keep its full value. As it happens, she enjoys gambling, and Simon has a prejudice of 3 against gamblers, so Simon will be able to put 12 resentment towards her and 68 in other pools, for a maximum curse severity of (68/2)+12 = 46. He then knocks on her door and starts seething for an extra 5 points. She answers, and while he's waiting for the seethe to take effect, he stalls with a litany of complaints.
At 51 points, Simon could just curse her dead, but he wants worse that.
Instead, he concludes his complaints with the words "From this day forward,
you will be murderously insane and hideous to look upon, judged a monster
by all who look on you, except for one day a year, on the Feast of
St. Quagga." The base cost for hideous deformity is 20 and for madness is
30, giving us 50. The lame attempt at reducing the cost by having it take
effect all but one day a year is laughed away by the DM, but it was unnecessary.
Traditions
There have been Maledictors throughout history, and they figure into myth and folklore, but they don't have much in the way of organization, and dedicated Maledictors are relatively rare. It's more often practiced as a sideline: some magic schools teach a little Malediction as part of a general magical education, and your typical rural witch will practice it for personal defense.
Learning Malediction is dangerous and not all that appealing to most people (especially after the first couple of backfires), and illegal in many places (although laws against practicing Malediction tend to go unenforced for practical reasons). It takes a certain knack to get into the right mindset, but it's something most people could pick up if they wanted to. Beyond that, it takes years of practice to learn where your limits are and how to expand them. Most Maledictors seek some guidance in the early stages, but it's ultimately something you have to teach yourself. The greatest Maledictors tend to be entirely self-taught.
There are two ways to practice Malediction as a vocation: offensively and defensively. Which is to say, as an Avenger or a Defender.
Avengers are vigilantes who use their powers to punish. They live in poverty, hiding their powers, seeking out degradation and scorn, provoking bullies, and brooding a lot. This gives them lots and lots of resentment that they can use in curses. Avengers are sometimes "hired guns", but usually just pursue their own agenda, in which case they support themselves through either mundane labor or extortion.
Social status: Generally reviled and feared. Avengers can sometimes become folk heroes to the downtrodden by afflicting the powerful, but no one actually wants to be around them.
Defenders are living deterrents against aggression. They don't go out of their way to make trouble, but they hone their craft as best they can and cultivate a strong love of whatever it is they're trying to defend (usually their nation, tribe, or homeland) and resentment towards its enemies. Since they don't cast curses very often, the few that they do cast involve lots of pent-up resentment, and tend to be powerful and, most of all, noticable. To be an effective deterrent, every curse has to be a spectacular public display with lasting effects. Even when not actively cursing, they adopt ominous and intimidating affectations. A defensive maledictor is often the least popular member of a king's court.
Social status: Less reviled than Avengers, but still reviled.
People can be grateful for the protection they represent, but are aware
that they're risky. To be ready to cast a devastating curse at a moment's
notice, Defenders maintain a level of resentment dangeously close to their
breaking point.
Schools
The Covenant of the Hood is a secret society originally founded to enable mutual cooperation between Maledictors in their individual quests for vengeance, but now it exists mainly just to perpetuate its own existence. They recruit students who show aptitude for Malediction in magic school and offer to show them greater powers in exchange for their loyalty (an empty promise because, as pointed out, Malediction is something you teach yourself, but once you're in, it's hard to leave). Their motto is "An injury to one of us is an injury to each of us". They have infiltrated various governments and institutions, and could probably rule the world if it weren't for the fact that the members all hate each other. Their name derives from the hooded cloaks that they wear to hide their identities on cursing missions.
Scattered: Every major city has a lodge hidden somewhere.
Incompetent: They're largely mad, there's a lot of
infighting, and the veil of secrecy prevents them from cooperating
effectively at more than a local level.