Beyond a Bleak-Grey Portal

Beyond a Bleak-Grey Portal
Version 1.0
By Savestate

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As it goes in so many stories, you are drawn through a portal and into a land of fantasy. You may never know why, but it is a bleak world you have come to. Bleak in a very mundane way. Superficially, it resembles the early 1990s of your own Earth, if a bit more morose. Behind the scenes, three secretive wizard-nations vie for dominance. They tug at the strings of the mundane world, sapping it of lives and treasure and momentum. Perhaps in another sixty years, this world might approach the technological sophistication of your own origin’s 2020s.

You will arrive in a mundane nation of your choosing.

You have 9 Points to spend.


Elixir
Costs 1 Point
Several dozen liters of the fabled elixir of life. Transforms a thing into the most ideal version of itself, healing wounds, reversing age, granting beauty, developing a person’s physicality to its limits. Fails utterly to breach essential barriers; to alter a thing’s nature, to bring about a state truly impervious to decay, to touch upon anything beyond the material. Enough to keep a dozen people in the peak of health for thousands of years, or to create many tons of precious gold from baser metals.

Elven
Costs 1 Point
You become an engineered lifeform created in another world to serve as the new baseline of humanity. You can comfortably live for many hundreds of years, recover in time from injuries as severe as lost limbs and organs, and are highly resistant to poison and disease. Though no stronger than a baseline human by default, your natural physical limits are significantly higher. These traits breed true.

Bloated Spirit
Costs 1 Point
Somehow, you possess twice as much soul as you should. For any specific spiritual organ, you have an extra copy. This explicitly doubles your magical power.

Ally
Costs 1 Point
A native to the world, immediately loyal to your cause and absolutely trustworthy. This might represent a mortal wizard of unexceptional power, or a lower member of the Deathless bureaucracy unable to preserve their body without mummification. You will encounter them within twelve hours of arrival.

Estate
Costs 1 Point
An old house, yours in name and title. You will be able to reach it within one day of arrival. Though its vault is empty, it is otherwise well-stocked with its own small library of magic, and its enchantments will defend you fiercely.

Circlet
Costs 1 Point
A simple silver circlet built to defend the mind. So long as you wear it, you cannot be touched by mind reading, emotional influence, pain curses, mind control, or the like; it is a perfect seperation of your mind from all that might harm it. Its metal is stronger than steel, and enchanted not to leave your head once donned.

Deathless
Costs 2 Points
One of the three great lineages that dominate the world.
Your soul is sculpted to match your ideal body. No injury short of removal will reduce the effectiveness of any part of your body; the carbonized remnant of a limb can flex and move and strike with full force and without ruining itself further. You are not immune to aging or tissue death, but can easily repair your form with an infusion of magical power. Only the total destruction of your head, or an attack upon your soul, can end your life against your will.
You are not subject to the natural drawback of deathlessness: the stagnation of your natural magical growth.

Vampire
Costs 2 Points
One of the three great lineages that dominate the world.
You harbor a spiritual infection that thirsts for blood and magic and allows you to drain it from others. Fed blood it converts it into magical power, fed magic it enforces your physicality. The light of the sun interferes with the conversion of blood, but otherwise does not harm you. Over time, your stomach and capacity to feed will grow, and your power proportionately.
You are not subject to the natural drawback of vampirism: the uncontrolled consumption of your magic at steadily-escalating rates as your infection grows.

Multi-Lich
Costs 2 Points
With several days of uninterupted work, you may forge a soul anchor. As long as any one remains unbroken, your spirit may linger indefinitely. Even as a bodiless wraith, you will retain any magical powers and your capacity for spiritual growth.

Wizardry
Costs 2 Points
You have an extra spiritual organ, a “magical core”. It generates, stores, and directs magical energy seven times as effectively as the baseline human soul, and makes learning and mastering magic exponentially easier. As you cast spells, it will learn their shape and come to support both it and similar spells. Casting and maintaining spells will become steadily easier, until it is reflexive and effortless, and learning new magic will come steadily faster. The magical core grows, slowly, throughout a wizard’s life.

Lycan
Costs 2 Points
One of the three great lineages that dominate the world.
You are marked by a terrible moon spirit. Under the light of the moon, your magical power rapidly sublimates into a silvery essence. This can be stored like any other magical energy, and used to enact with sufficient reserves and mastery all manner of impermanent transformations. You can become a beast, easily, but you can also become stronger, faster, smarter, become someone else, make metal more receptive to enchantment, bite and tear at and swallow up the soul. Mastering this essence is unlike wizardry, akin to mastering your body.
You are not subject to the natural drawback of lycanthropy: spiritual domination by the moon spirit.

Beckoning
Costs 2 Points
The emotions of humanity carry some of their magical power. Overwhelmingly, the nature of that power is misery. You may call upon this power to commit magical feats of incredible scope, to flood whole fortresses with acid tears or manifest armies of spirits. This is a slow and unwieldy power, but your reserves are no less than the combined strength of billions of people. Other emotions can be tapped, but it would be a struggle to muster even a thin strand of true healing.

Weapon
Costs 2 Points
A sword that seeks victory, a wand to best any other, a weapon. Unbreakable, enchanted powerfully with a simple purpose. It wants you to win. Raise your blade and swing, and it will carry you closer to victory. That is its promise.

Cloak
Costs 2 Points
Armor against the world and a comforting embrace. More protective than dragonhide, better for stealth than any spell of invisibility, cozier than your favorite hoody. Anything meant to hurt you has to go through it, first. No damage will last- it will always be there for you.

Jewel
Costs 2 Points
The souls of the dead depart from this world and never return. No power can force them back into the world of the living. This shining crystal does not force, but asks sincerely. The memories of the dead may be used to restore what was lost.