You place the windup key to the back of a toy, or similarly human representing golem. Twist for a minute until your hand begins to hurt. The toy will animate and grow in size to a friendly helper of the one holding the windup key.
This artifact relies on the cultural idea of toys, and the cultural idea of wind up toys, especially in the minds of children. The basic idea of these wind up toys is that you wind them up, then let them go and they move around doing toy things, seeming almost alive. This artifact takes that idea, and merges it with a few other ideas of ways to create useful servants to make an artifact capable of making useful friendly minions.
The ritual to create this artifact relies on a ritual involving
- A variety of children's toys which are popular in the shared imagination
- A collection of stories and myths about the Hebrew golumn
- Mary Shelly's frankenstein
- Carefully shaping the pattern of a wind up key while reading various relevant parts of these stories
Exert your Mind and spend one minute. This Effect cannot be used unless It is used on a toy with arms and legs which the artifact consumes.
Summon a single enlarged animated toy at your location. They will last for two hours, or until they are destroyed. They are controlled by the GM but will follow any commands you give. This Artifact may have at most 1 minion active at a time.
A decrepit flare gun, shooting out a green flare. Skittering in the darkness, several goblins burst from the shadows.
Exert your Mind and spend an Action.
Summon up to 3 Sapient Gobbos at your location. They last until they move more than 150 feet from you or are destroyed They are controlled by the GM but will follow any commands you give. They will attack any Undead targets they encounter immediately and will ignore your commands to do otherwise. This Artifact may have at most 3 minions active at a time.
Anyone who touches this Artifact will notice it warping their mind and may drop it. If they choose to hold or use it, they immediately receive the following Trauma: Klepto. If they lose possession of this Artifact, the Trauma heals over the course of the next day.
Kirk fires the pistol at the ground, ripping into the deepest reaches of hell. Clips, his old friend, crawls up into reality from this place and clambers onto Kirk's back. Clips, while not wholly existent once his form connects with Kirk's, has a facial structure of a healthy person, despite having the oddity of a pierce wound on his cheek, which seems to be locked in time, as if Clips was removed from reality the second he were to die. Clips, nicknamed because of his over insistence on using scissors for everything, has ugly hair and other features, with facial hair that seems like a bear hacked at it in a maniacal frenzy.
Exert your Mind and spend two Actions performing the following ritual: Kirk pulls a weapon out and loads one singular bullet into the magazine. After saying a short prayer, he fires the weapon into the ground, piercing into the dirt/ground, opening a hole into hell. You must actively and obviously use a firearm to activate this Effect. You must maintain Concentration while activating this Effect, and it fails if you are interrupted.
Summon a single ghost soldier at your location. They will last until they are destroyed. They are controlled by the GM but will follow any commands you give. You may have at most 1 minion active at a time.
Increase your sacrificial Injury's Severity by 1 and spend an Action. You must make a Trauma roll when you use this Effect. Its Difficulty cannot be reduced by any means. If you fail or Botch, you receive one Mind Damage and a new Trauma.
Summon a single Non-Sapient, Animate Parrot at your location. They last for two hours or until they are destroyed. They are controlled by the GM but will follow any commands you give. You may have at most one active at a time.
You may end this Effect prematurely as a Free Action.
If you do not have a sacrificial Injury when you activate this Effect, take a new Severity-1 Injury.
Bill places his corn on the cob in the ground, and from that cob the beast emerges. The corn shakes rapidly, as though it is going to hatch, before it starts to grow wildly. The cob expands to immense size, cracking down the middle to reveal a mouth full of razor sharp teeth. The husk stretches and reshapes itself, forming a shambling mound of legs and wings. Roots rise from the ground and tangle amongst the husk, contributing to the beast's body and limbs. The head is definitively formed by the cob, while the body is a constantly shifting and difficult to discern pile of roots and husk. Entirely, the beast is around the size of a horse, it's colours no different from the corn it was grown from. The beast is capable of launching its cob head at targets 50 feet away from it, the head quickly regrows afterwards (though, any damages done to the head remain even after the head regrows). When the beast is destroyed, it rots into the ground, its body reduced to an inedible black mold.
Bill discovered this gift the morning after his stay at The Vermillion Manor. While harvesting his freshly grown corn, he attempted to hold more than what he could carry, and accidentally dropped a singular ear of corn. He thought nothing of it, until the corn began to jitter on the dirt unnaturally. He backed away in fear, and watched as the once innocuous corn sprouted into a true monster. A monster that listened to his commands. A monster that belonged to him.
Exert your Mind and spend an Action. You must use up A full corn on the cob, with husk intact in order to activate this Effect.
Summon the one and only Sapient The Corn Beast at your location. They last for two hours or until they are destroyed. They are controlled by you. You may have at most one minion active at a time.
If killed, you cannot re-summon your minion until after your next Contract.
You may only use this Effect once per day.
The operator slots the FRM chip into the universal constructor, selects this program, accepts the end-user license agreement, and then waits as it goes into overdrive.
Over the next few seconds, it renders via a sweeping laser 3d print a set of three Bishop combat walkers.
The Bishops are bipedal forms, with a shoulder-mounted metal storm cannon. They have a pair of arms that terminate in both flexible graspers that double as cutters.
Named after the Black Rabbit of Inlé.
The license for this FRM unit states that it's not for strategic use, and thus there is an enforced restriction that units cannot move more than 150 feet from the operator or they deactivate.
This is an up-armoured version and licensed for domestic use only.
Expend a point of Battery and spend an Action.
Summon up to 3 Non-Sapient, Animate Bishop-Class Inlay Combat Walker at your location. They last until they move more than 150 feet from you or are destroyed They are controlled by the GM but will follow any commands you give. This Artifact may have at most 3 minions active at a time.
Any successful musician knows the value of a good roadie. The musician calls for a roadie, and one will promptly arrive. The roadie doesn't talk much, and they aren't too bright, but they can sure haul gear.
After a couple hours of work, the roadie will retire to smoke and get some sleep.
Exert your Mind and spend an Action.
Summon a single Sapient roadie at your location. They last for two hours or until they are destroyed. They are controlled by the GM but will follow any commands you give. You may have at most one minion active at a time.
You may only use this Effect once per day.
The mobster knows a guy they can call for a hired goon, who arrives about a minute later. The goons are dumb as bricks, but tough nonetheless, perfect for sending a message when you need to keep your hands clean.
Exert your Mind and spend an Action. You must actively and obviously use cell phone to activate this Effect.
Summon a single Sapient goon at your location. They last for two hours or until they are destroyed. They are controlled by the GM but will follow any commands you give. You may have at most one minion active at a time.
The Vampire is able to turn one of their victims into a lesser vampire, a pale shadow of a full creature of the night but useful nonetheless. Having drained and killed their target, the Vampire performs a brief ritualistic bloodletting, wherein they spill their own blood into the target's mouth, forcing them to drink, and bonding them together as child and sire.
Shortly afterwards, the fledgling vampire will rise from death, hungry for blood and eager to serve.
Increase your sacrificial Injury's Severity by 1 and spend one minute. Select a Dead target within arm's reach that has died within the last hour. This Effect cannot be used unless you drained the target's blood while they were still alive.
Your target rises as an Animate being. The raised creature is totally mindless, with no memory of its past life or hint of its old personality. They cannot communicate. They will follow any command you speak.
The creature lasts until it dies again. It is revived at full health. Any Injuries it had in life are not accounted for when determining its penalties or progression towards re-death, though they may affect its ability to perform certain actions at GM's discretion. The raised creature must consume flesh every day or it will die again.
Raised creatures have their Abilities set to the same that they were in life. Their Charisma and Intellect are set to 1, but their Dexterity, Brawn and Perception are the same as they had in life. A raised creature cannot use any Effects.
Your revived targets deal 2 Weapon Damage with their unarmed attacks.
If you do not have a sacrificial Injury when you activate this Effect, take a new Severity-1 Injury.