Zigguran Wizards

The Zigguran Fellowship of Dueling Wizards is an organization of wizards and other magical practitioners. The Zigguran Fellows are unique in that usually the members possess no or very little natural affinity for magic. Their magic comes mostly from their hexing sticks. 
== Hexing sticks ==
The hexing sticks zigguran fellows use are received in exchange for selling souls to Felltow, the demonic king of Ziggur.
Fellow wizards collect souls to trade with Felltow in exchange for hexing sticks such as scepters, rods and staves. The stick multiplies the magical power of its attached head, such as gems or other artifacts, which the wizards collect. Handling a hexing stick will impart magical knowledge and spells onto the user, based on the attached head. The more hexing sticks with different heads a wizard possesses, the more magic it will know.
While their association with the demon Felltow suggests that they are warlocks, the fellows of ziggur do not pactise with Felltow, rather he is their armorer, supplying them with unique hexing sticks that grant them magical abilities. As such, fellows do not strictly own their hexing sticks. Hexing sticks are unique to Ziggur's craftsmanship, supposedly supplied to him by underworld giants (where the souls are collected ironically). Their complexity makes them nearly impossible to repair, ensuring Ziggurs long term control over fellowship wizards.
Hexing sticks are unusually brittle, and will break after a while even if handled with care. Not using a hexing stick will cause it to degrade and break over time. 
=== Staff care ===
Fellow wizards can repair their staffs by removing the head of the staff, binding the staff to a mending branch, feeding the branch to a spitshine, killing the spitshine as it finishes digesting the staff stick, plunging the branch fused to the staff in sand grouper digestive fluids which will separate the branch and staff, then reattaching the head to the repaired staff. Most wizards prefer to go to ziggur than follow this process.
== Fellowship ==
To be a fellowship wizard is to be caught in a cycle of grandiose power at the fingertips, constant vigilance towards challengers, followed by trudging in the infernal kingdom of ziggur harvesting souls for a maddened builder king in order to once again leave the mountain of Ru with overflowing power. 
Fellows are free to roam the lands as they see fit, building strange towers and continuing their research free from the restraints of other magical practices such as mana addiction or fulfilling a demonic pact. Their only constraint is that once they lose a duel of if their hexing stick breaks they are summoned back to ziggur to harvest souls, no matter where they are or what they were doing. Amassing hexing sticks and objects to serve as their heads takes up most of a fellows time, and quite a few will actively prey on new fellows to steal their hexing sticks, keeping a healthy stash to use before breaking their own. 
== Dueling ==
Since soul collecting is costly, time consuming and dangerous, wizards will duel each other for their hexing sticks. This is encouraged by the fellowship in order to sharpen their skills. Fellowship wizards often challenge each other and the loser is teleported to king Felltow in the demonic kingdom of Ziggur, and its stick is forfeited to the winner. It must then pay off its debt to the patron by collecting enough souls to pay for a new fighting staff in the hellish lands of Ziggur. The souls are collected so that Felltow can bind them to his will, and create a grand army of demons. 
== Soul harvesting ==
While in ziggur fellows aren't even safe from each other, for they must fight off others who seek to collect souls faster. Most of the wizards are sent to the city of Kuru to collect souls. The city is mostly underground nowadays and constantly shrouded in darkness, and they must fend off the various demons, dragons, monsters and other inhabitants of the underworld. 
== Zigguran Fellowship Wizard spells ==
ZFD wizards have many spells at their disposal, from various magic schools. Among these are elemental magic, summoning, alchemy, herbology, meteomancy, 
Hexing sticks: Fireball, Frostwind, Thunderballs, Crashing wave, Bee swarm, Wind gust, Mushroom and Canon
Growl: construct familiar
Rolling boulder
Water shield
Thunderstrike
Stalagmite 
Summon minions (slimes, bats)
Summon warriors (swordfighter, archer, spearfighter, club fighter)
Banish to Ziggur
Herbology (blinding fruit, explosive fruit, frenzy fruit, smoke fruit, bouncy mushrooms)
Alchemy (increase strength, constitution, speed, lantern, grip, 
Invisibility 
Meteomancy (Environmental modification: heatwaves, thunderstorms, cold snaps)
Levitation
=== Transfiguration ===
Fellow wizards are notable for being expert transfigurants, being able to modify their body with clothes and enchantments to give them an edge in a myriad of situations.
Firefly: Light
Tree frog: Climbing
Fish: Swimming
Sea snail: Burn resistance
Rubbit: Coins
Turtle: Defense
Penguin: Unfreezable
Gila monster: Heat resistance
Electric eel: Shock resistance
Skeleton: Undead disguise
== Notable Zigguran Fellows ==
The gloomy wizard of Botwa: The gloom wizard is a battlemage by profession that served during the gnomish invasion of botwa. He is credited as being the only wizard to have escaped the zigguran underground without paying the soul tithe using gnomish redcap magic. 
Rubicog the mechanical fellow: Real name Rachel Piece, Rubicog is a zigguran fellow who replaced her parts with clockwork machinery in order to escape from Felltows summons to Ziggur. According o legend, she initially lost her arm and replaced it with a mechanical one which didn't follow her to Ziggur, she managed to collect the necessary souls with an arm missing. The trauma of the event prompted her to become fully machine. She is a powerful wizard but is constantly robbed of her ruby stick heads by fellow wizards who exploit her limitations as a clockwork device.
Grin: Joined the fellowship out of his love for dueling, one of the rare wizards who genuinely enjoys soul harvesting. According to legend he was thrown out of Ziggur for collecting to many souls without cashing them out. The foremost researcher of the zigguran hollow.
Bracchante: Mostly joined out of admiration for Rubicog
== Culture ==
Unlike the traditional wizards tower, fellow wizards live in emptied wells, they tend to pop up from the ground when investigating visitors, leading to a reputation of living with gnomes.
Category:Magic Practitioners
Category:Wizards
Category:Unfinished articles
Category:Ziggur