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You have the Psyscape(sp) book?

Check out Nyxla, his minions (humans) steal souls for him/it. This it make the enemy a rival tribe, and the people whose souls were stolen, would be dead. But maybe the tribe wants to be able to properly send the souls of their loved ones to the after life. Something that is not possible when Nxyla has them.

Hairy_Homebrewer3.25 wrote:While that would be a great story arc, I don't think a group of three low level adventurers has much chance against Nyxla, nor do any of them have the ability/spell Exorcism (and no, I don't have that book, I have only read a portion of it)

They don't have to face off against Nxyla itself, just those humans (i.e. the other tribe) who follow it. The name Nxyla might not even come up in game and just be the bad guy pulling the strings.

Hairy_Homebrewer3.25 wrote:For now, I am just looking for something of power that can be made from the act of killing a sentient humanoid. Something which the evil shaman can use against the players as well as act as evidence that the players did not kill the innocent tribesmen. (they're all playing a good alignment, and I think the act of stealing and imprisoning the souls would be most likely to evoke the players and the characters' Ire.)

Why not just make some sort of rune weapon which the evil shaman weilds?


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What about having the souls of the slain being stored in tiny clay figurines sculpted in the victim's likeness? Or small soul jars? Perhaps the witch doctor carries a couple of these soul-filled trinkets with him and uses them to power his magic (ironically for the good of the tribe or to continue his ruse)?

Of course, let's presume these items are made with a unique clay that conducts magic better for the ritual involved.

If you're looking for a pre existing mechanic for what you want to do, I don't think there is one. Psyscape is a good reference (as listed above) for matters of the soul and there's always dark rune magic as well.

What I like about the shrunken head approach (or figurines, jars or whatever) is that you can easily just chalk it up to a unique ritual exclusive to this villain. Real easy to maintain without getting bogged down in the how's or why's.

That's a great idea. I like the effect of holding a soul hostage in case of resurrection. Are there any unintended side effects of casting resurrection on a deceased victim of the spell like creating a low powered undead version of the person?

Palladium's official materials have tended to shy away from the subject of souls. There is no official statement of in-game souls, what they are, and how they work like you would find in the old Wraith RPG. Even Haunting Entities aren't the actual dead characters but identity-confused fakes. When I read between the lines of Mystic China, it sometimes seems that a person's chi and soul are the same thing.

What little afterlife information we've got is always culture-specific. We know that some Vikings end up in Valhalla and come back as Odin's champions (Conversion Book 2). The Cargo and Hawaiian Rifter articles also deal with afterlives for specific cultures. The Priest article in Rifter #48 has a brief mention of souls traveling to various places controlled by the pantheons of the Palladium Fantasy world.

The best match I have found is the variety of Soul Fragment monsters for PF from the "Death is Not Always Final" article way back in Rifter #4. The Soul Fragments are treated a lot like Entities. If and when Rifts Voodoo comes out, this might or might not all be clarified.

Keeping the soul in a container seems like a cross between the Talisman and Control/Enslave Entity spells but targeted at souls or soul fragments. I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work, but it would creating a new spell. If it is a new type of Talisman, it could take the form of any object including a clay jar or a shrunken head.

Update! Oh wait, I almost forgot. There is a class ability which does exactly this. It's one of the Kahuna powers in Rifter #46. It's called Bind Spirits on Page 73. In the case of the Hawaiian supernatural, the term "spirit" really does refer to a part of the soul of a dead character.

The SenZar RPG made soul-stealing soooo much easier and clearer.

The Shadow Soul spell seems like a good match for the Shadow Magic spell list. Most of the Shadow Magic spells aren't that particularly evil outside of the summoning spells, so I was kind of wondering why the Shadow Mages had such bad reputations. Spells like this Shadow Soul pt the bad back into the class.