Warlock

Warlocks also referred to as anti-magi, oath breakers, lords of the broken oath, diabolists, unweavers, unravellers, adversaries, followers of the left-hand path, and a number of less kind names, are the clergy of Oblivion, the primordial Darkness itself.
The road of the anti-magus warps and twists the flesh, mind, and soul through granting knowledge not meant for men. Unlike the clergy of any other divinities, warlocks cast both rituals and spells on their Path of Dark Reflections, that of Qlippoth. The sacred magi consider warlocks' arts to be a perversion of their esoteric paths which they claim to have been recorded in the books of Tey'Kor-Akx long before the first oath was broken. However, warlocks claim that in truth their arts are far older than magic. Their mysticism works by unravelling the spiritual energy of the universe. They attack the energy which holds a thing together, the energy which keeps the forces of decay away from object and flesh alike.
Warlocks are horrendously unnatural creatures. They do not naturally regain their powers. Instead, they must rip the essence which fuels their macabre arts away from reality itself. This is accomplished using the Nihilistic Caress rite. The energy stolen with this power is known as the warlock's Thread Count. Maximum Thread Count is a warlock's Caster Status + PRE Rating. Unlike other casters they cannot expend VIG points for additional casting powers. Status 0 rituals and spells cost nothing, as per usual. All other rituals and spells cost the warlock 1 Thread unless otherwise stated. Warlocks gain access to the following spells, at the Caster Status listed below, and rituals from the Darkness Precept. They also have a number of maledictions listed after their spells. To cast rituals, they must have a Piety score equal to 2 + the Caster Status of the ritual they wish to cast (they must of course, at least be that Caster Status). To cast spells they must have an Occult score equal to 2 + the Caster Status of the spell they wish to cast.
== The First Key - Cultist ==
Any prospective traveller down the Path of Dark Reflections must first be taught the terrible secrets that Oblivion guards, reserving for its chosen ones. The first Key, that of Misery, teaches the first lesson: To exist is to suffer.
Cultists are introduced to the daily meditative practice common to all branches of Oblivion's church - the Prayer of Hatred. Entering a trance state, the cultist is required to meditate upon every wrong that was ever done him, every opportunity for improvement or happiness that he let pass him by, every single instance in his life that caused him distress or emotional pain. This practice, if diligently stuck to, allows deeper communion with the entities of the Outer Darkness, which begin to slip into the soul in greater numbers, converting the neutral emotions of anger, shame and fear into a boiling cauldron of rage, hate and the will to entropy. Only once adequately enraptured by his or her own existential agony can a cultist start to learn the deeper mysteries of the black void.
Those who willingly choose to enter the very blackest of pacts with primordial annihilation commit a crime against the Divine, and garner the attention of unclean spirits. Those who depart Oblivion cults without becoming initiated fully into warlock rank are haunted by the things they have seen and learned, often unable to shake off the demons that walk in their shadow and driven still to acts of atrocity. The minute fraction who find repentance are still affected by the horrific things they have found themselves capable of within the fantasies of their darkest imagination. They are also frequently hunted down and granted horrendous death by their former brotherhoods, who seek to erase those who would spill their secrets to magi or lightbringers.
A cultist is worth little or nothing in the eyes of his superior warlocks, and is still regarded as nothing more than a disgusting blight upon the face of the void by the demons he worships. Disobedience to the whims of a superior within Oblivion's church is repaid with gruesome psychological torture, and possibly death itself. The purpose of this Key is to teach the cultist that within this world he has no true free will, and that if he ever wishes to achieve freedom from pain and tyranny he must utterly unwrite the tapestry that holds Thaelis-Y'Arda together.
Even when reincarnated, the demons of Darkness know that a cultist's soul has the potential to become one of their own. They will come for the child and force force them back to the path – a path that will feel so natural to such a young mind. While it is possible to fight against their calling, it is not in such a child's nature to do so. Those cultists that do not become first warlocks and secondly Saints of Darkness are doomed to journey many lives of unending horror. It does not matter how many lifetimes have passed. The malefic spirits will always come back for them. There is no known way to remove this taint beyond direct intervention by a deity of light.
=== Caster Level 0 ===
==== Aura Reading (Cantrip) ====
By expanding your own aura, you can see the life energy of a subject. This allows you to know whether a subject is close to death, diseased, has had its life force injured, possesses magical or mystical abilities as well as its general mood. This also grants you the Insight Fortes (Emotions and Lies). If you already have 1 or both of these Fortes you gain twice the normal benefit. This spell requires no roll.
=== Caster Level 1 ===
==== Nihilistic Caress (Rite) ====
The subject rolls Piety against your Occult. The subject gains a +1 bonus to this roll if they have any gold upon their person. If you win the contested roll you drain 1 VIG point + 1 VIG point for each Boost you gain. This VIG only returns through the restorative powers of Light-based mysticism. If the subject does not possess Piety they automatically fail this roll. This power can also automatically be used on objects that are not made of gold, silver, copper, or diamonds. Afterwards, the object looks monstrously defiled and projects an aura of wrongness. Whenever this power is successfully used you gain 1 point in your Thread Count, up to your Thread Count maximum. The damage inflicted by this spell leaves horrific occult sigils upon a living subject’s flesh. These markings ache, bleed, ooze pus, and occasionally move of their own volition. So unclean is their presence that they slowly wear away the subject’s sanity, leading to chronic despair, attempts at suicide or even psychotic bouts of homicidal rage. You are able to cast this spell a number of times per day equal to your Occult + your VIG Rating, and unlike other Rites it costs you no Threads to cast. The marks left behind by this spell are one of the most common tells a warlock hunter seeks out while tracking down his foe.
Once you have learnt this ability, you get a +1 bonus to all Caster Checks make to cast Darkness sphere magic.
=== Caster Level 2 ===
==== Regenesis (Rite) ====
By spending 1 point from your Thread Count, you are able to create a simple object up to the size of a weapon and no more complex than a sword. Regardless of the type of object you create it has an appearance of utter wrongness. The object has a septic, mist-like composition to it and will slowly taint anything (other than you) it holds or touches for a prolonged period of time. If you create a weapon, it deals an amount of damage equal to your PRE Rating and automatically bypasses armour and shields; however, it does not bypass Species-granted Hide Rating. This weapon Boosts on 5. No bonus damage is added from STR or ENL. These objects last until you dissolve them, which requires an Accelerated Action. You may purchase a 1 point Advantage that allows any weapon created by this spell to also be able to damage ghosts and spirits. You may purchase a 1 point Advantage that allows you to create Bows and Projectile weapons with this spell.
== The Second Key - Warlock ==
You are merely a cultist until you are deemed worthy to undergo initiation into the true warlock rank, at which time a demonic voivode of the Outer Darkness is either summoned by the church or appears to you personally and offers to perform the Song of Annihilation for you. If you decline, you can never again gain Caster Status as a warlock, and the demon is also likely to attack you and carry off your soul to the depths of Oblivion. If you accept, the dissonant notes of the song slide inside you and rewrite your fundamental essence, forever, it is said, annihilating the beauty of your soul and replacing its harmonious sound with a pitiful hollow song that no mortal creature should ever hear. This begins a spiralling descent into utter insanity and bottomless evil.
Once fully accepted into the second Key on the Path of Dark Reflections, a warlock is subject to various maledictions which result from his or her becoming the antithesis of reality whilst remaining within it as an agent of chaos and the Dark. The degeneration of the physical shell mirrors the internal rot of the anti-magus, and is viewed as further proof that the cruelty and malfeasance of the current world must be undone for what it has delivered unto oneself as punishment for simply accepting and acting upon cosmic truth. The second lesson a warlock must learn is that the world holds for them no salvation, and the second Key is that of Despair. As the finality of their transgression against the Divine hits their psyche, the tiniest part of them that feels remorse for their actions is doomed to fight a tormented losing battle before it is finally subjugated by inner shadow.
The process that changes a cultist into a warlock is not simply one of flesh and thought. It is a transmogrification of your entire soul. For those who have surpassed the cult and become full-fledged warlocks, the curse of Annihilation is infinitely blacker. It should be noted that the song of the voivode only needs to be performed once upon any single soul - once corrupted on such a fundamental level, it is blackened forever. The ghosts of warlocks are considered demons and appear as pitch-black shadows of incorporeal demon-taint, the very most malevolent of wraiths.
The inverted soul of a warlock is a truly blasphemous thing, the complete reversal of everything Creation intended. While the cycle of reincarnation may grant the the brutal tyrant, the sadistic serial killer or even the Oblivion cultist another slim chance for redemption, a warlock whose soul has been written backwards by the Fingers of Ahriman is beyond the grasp of Nito to restore, and must instead be passed on for the demon goddess Tarasque to consume and eject into the Outer Darkness. It is said that the shattered soul shall then spawn numerous demons. However, Occasionally one such soul slips by the Gravelord's notice, and becomes encased once more in carnal flesh, creating an acherus, one of the most dreadful creatures conceivable.
The children born with a warlock's soul are born dead, but yet walk amongst the living. Their skin is pallid and ghostly white, and their life will never know the touch of joy, the glory of triumph or the sting of love. Instead they will experience only the eternal fury of a soul forced to return to a world for which it holds only contempt, a place in which it finds every breath agony and every word an affront to its mind. The acheri are referred to in folk tales as black-eyed children, for their nature is known from the instant they open their lids, and the dark horror felt by their parents is matched only by the terror of the newborn as it comprehends its inescapable fate - to suffer through eternity with no chance of relief. The children of rage, the acheri are perhaps the only things in the universe that are truly born evil.
=== Caster Level 3 ===
==== Breaking The Law (Ritual) ====
This spell should only be put into effect at the end of a great ritual. This should involve obscene and terrible sacrifices to your demonic patron. This ritual culminates in your undergoing a transmogrification which unravels and rewrites your soul, and you become an abomination in the eyes of reality. Once this deal is made, you will no longer be a mere cultist, but a fully realised warlock. Learning the secrets of this spell elevates the cultist to the ranks of the warlocks as the use of this power officially breaks the sacred oaths that Tey'Kor-Akx laid down for the use of magic.
You may now devour the Prana or Zeal of any magus or clergyman within melee attack range. The subject must roll Meditation (Body Control) against your Occult. If you win, you drain an amount from their Prana equal to your INT Rating + 1 for each Boost you roll. After reducing a caster’s Prana or Zeal to 0, you tap into their vitality as if they were casting beyond their capabilities. This means you take points from their VIG score at an equal amount as you did their Prana or Zeal. VIG points taken in this way are regained at a rate of 1 per day. If the subject reaches 0 VIG, they die. Prana and Zeal are regained normally. Due to the nature of a warlock’s magical energy this spell does not work on them, nor does it work on individuals without a Caster's Calling Advantage. You heal 1 point of HG for each point you siphon from a caster. As you cast this spell, your aura actually slides over the victim, parasitically feasting upon their soul. This act is completely visible to anyone capable of reading auras, and is dreadfully traumatic to behold.
Once the Law has been Broken, the +1 bonus you have to cast Darkness sphere magics increases to +2.
Maledictions: You are no longer able to touch or carry gold without having it cause painful burns that scar you heavily. Most animals except swine, wolves and deer will not go near you, and are deeply disquieted by your presence. You no longer cast a shadow, it is thought because you no longer have a soul worthy of recognition by Tey'Kor-Akx. You no longer heal naturally; Entropic energy from the Darkness Precept heals you and energy from the Light Precept does you severe harm. 
=== Caster Level 4 ===
==== Demonolatry (Ritual) ====
To cast this spell, you must surrender your flesh to your demonic master through an elaborate and dreadful ritual involving a series of crimes against reality itself. Once finished, your body will be forever altered as a portion of your demonic master is infused into your skin. You can feel the thoughts of this creature when it chooses to allow you. The nature of the change to your appearance is left to the creativity of the FT but should be severe enough to mark you as a demon’s thrall. Some examples include an eyeball on the palm of your hand, a face on your tongue, or tentacles which grow from your back. While your mark may be readily noticeable, it may also be concealed well enough that it can only be seen when you are nude. Once the fusion is complete, you gain Fire Tolerance equal to your Caster Status and total immunity to all disease. You also gain 1 additional ability as decided by your FT to reflect the nature of your physical change. Casting this spell costs 3 points from your Thread Count as well as 1 permanent HG, and it can only ever be cast once. All effects from this casting are permanent.
Maledictions: Milk curdles, wine sours, food rots and bread will not rise in your presence. People feel deeply unsettled by you and you inherent aura of intangible wrongness, and a low hum of silence pervades the air around you - the hollow echo of the darkness of your soul. Colours begin to leech out of the environment you stand in, as if being pulled into your lifeless and decaying aura. People in your nearness find it hard to think with logic and sound reasoning. Your skin is pallid and dead but does not decompose, instead hovering between life and true death, black blood visible in the veins beneath it. A semi-puppet to the demon inside of you, your movements are now horridly unnatural - graceful to the point of unreality, or mechanical as a corpse pulled by invisible strings.
=== Caster Level 5 ===
==== Call On The Dark (Ritual) ====
Casting this spell allows you to whisper questions into the primordial darkness itself, where conglomerates of rancour, regret and cosmic filth itself receive them and respond. Answers to your questions are returned by the demons within the night. Upon casting this spell, you roll your Occult. the higher your success, the better the information you learn. Whenever you roll 1/1 on your Occult roll, something particularly bad happens to you and to those in your vicinity. There is a price for calling upon things which are best left alone, but you are now far beyond mortal concern and may in fact take perverse spiritual satisfaction in your own calamity and misfortune.
Once you have Called on the Dark for the first time, the +2 bonus you have to cast Darkness sphere magics increases to a +3 bonus.
Maledictions: Your eyes now become pure black orbs that permanently swirl with the shadow-stuff of the demon you invited to colonise your flesh. This further distorts your already twisted worldview, making your vision of the outside world appear grey, dark and horrific. Your eyes, nose and other bodily orifices begin to leak a black liquid as the unwholesome essence of your demonic patron seeps out of you and your flesh is further infested by its virulence. The degradation of your flesh can be reversed with magic, but requires constant attention. Light seems to dim in your presence, as if a gloom follows wherever you tread. People around you are occasionally accosted by terrible thoughts about the nature of reality and their entrapment within it, and begin to feel resentful and bitter at the conditions of their existence.
== The Third Key - Blaegard ==
The third Key is that of Hatred, and the lesson is that proper blame should be allocated to the Divine for the crimes it has committed against you and the crimes it has caused you to commit against yourself. To a warlock of Blaegard rank, hatred and contempt for existence are weapons honed to a razor's edge.
=== Caster Level 6 ===
==== Unlawful Knowledge (Variable) ====
As the demons of Oblivion reveal their forbidden mysteries to you, you are capable of casting any profane spell (from the esoteric paths of chronomancy, necromancy, amaranthy, animancy or evokation) that you witness on a given day for the remainder of its duration. Casting such a spell costs 2 points from your Thread Count, and you must have Caster Status 2 levels higher than any profane spell you wish to cast. For example, to cast Horde Of The Dead, a profane necromancer must be of Caster Status 8 and spend 1 point of his Prana. A warlock using Unlawful Knowledge who wishes to cast the same spell must have Caster Status 10 and spend 2 Threads.
Maledictions: You no longer cast a reflection of any sort except those produced by obsidian, the black glass of Oblivion. Gnoggus and his grendels no longer tolerate any trace of your presence within their sacred realm, and trolls are likely to seek you out to attempt your destruction. Your demonic patron now exerts greater control over not only your mind, but your body also. At its will your flesh warps and twists in horrendous ways, possibly granting you abilities temporary or permanent. As you walk, shadows bend and reach out towards you as you pass, sometimes detaching and following you around. Emotions of hatred and rage are evoked more strongly in those around you, and weak minds are in danger of breaking entirely.
=== Caster Level 7 ===
==== Behold The Black Sun (Rite) ====
This rite bears forth your twisted and blackened soul for all to see, a grisly testament to Oblivion's triumph over the solar body of Mithras which evokes dark panic and terror. When you cast this spell, Extras of lower Status than you will flee, and other subjects must roll Meditation (Fear) + Sanctity against your Intimidate to avoid having to flee from you. So great is the force of your wrongness that it triggers the raw animal instinct to escape in those around you. However, all those that make their Resistance Roll will likely do all they can to end you. You can choose to allow this not to affect any other warlocks or cultists working under you. Warlocks of equal or higher Caster Status are immune to this spell. This spell does not affect demons, who are at the root of your corruption.
Once you have Beheld your new inner saviour the +3 bonus you have to cast Darkness sphere magics increases to a +4 bonus.
Maledictions: Golden spikes or similar objects forged from the Sun's blood can be driven into your footprints, causing you immense pain on both the mental and spiritual level. People near you begin to develop minor illnesses as facet demons escape your infected form and find new hosts to feed upon, hoping to cause misery and suffering within the world beyond your own. Shadowy tendrils of darkness extend and contract from your form, the manifest will of your voivode master. 
=== Caster Level 8 ===
==== Chronos Slaying (Ritual) ====
Casting this time-consuming spell damages the flow of reality around you so badly that you no longer age, nor are you subject to the effects of anything magical that would age you. Its effects are permanent, and include the lack of a need to eat, sleep or breathe oxygen as well as great resistance to pressure, gravity and other laws of physics. To illustrate these phenomena, rumours circulate of powerful warlocks who upon completion of this ritual make unholy pilgrimage to the blackest depths of the ocean trenches, where they commune with great and blasphemous entities of coiling tentacles and shadow. You can cast this spell on others, but it twists them in unpleasant ways and costs you 1 permanent point of VIG. You must first eat a living toad - the sacred animal of Tey'Kor-Akx - in order to cast this spell.
Maledictions: Your profanation of Tey'Kor-Akx and its trolls has resulted in the breaking of the flow of time around you, causing the air within a small distance of you to ripple and warp. Creation itself rejects your fundamental nature, and Urana boils to avoid touching your flesh. You care not, for you no longer require its life-giving oxygen to survive. People around you are plagued with visions and fantasies of themselves doing dreadful things to others, and find it hard to resist the calling of their own inner demons.
== The Fourth Key - Nihilus ==
The fourth and final Key is that of Rage, and none within the lands of flesh embody this, the darkest and lowest of all emotions, more summarily than a warlock of the Nihilus rank. Once the anti-magus has embraced their own suffering, given up all hope of redemption and resolved to hold the self and the other equally responsible for the travesty of existence, all that is left to do is to bend every fibre of the will towards the eradication of life, light and time.
To imagine the day-to-day state of a Nihilus, one should remember a time when frustration took hold to such an extent that for the briefest of instances, all that consumed the mind was the impulse to lash out at the object or person, with the intent of pure destruction itself. To hold that emotion, amplify it one thousandfold and experience it through every waking instant would be to garner the barest level of understanding as to the Nihilus' doom. As the most senior members of the Black Church excluding the greater demonic voivodes and Oblivion's avatar, the Nihili are responsible for world-spanning co-ordinations of atrocity, collapse and ultimate cataclysmic unravelling.
Warlocks of this rank are so consumed by cosmic hatred that they rarely deem others worthy of conversation, resolving to simply annihilate life upon first contact. Their minds are made up - no amount of appeal to their so-called "better nature" will make a difference, for they do not have one any longer. Very few servants of the Dark have achieved the rank of the nihilus, but those who have are dangerous beyond mortal reckoning. Dealing with the voivodes of the Outer Darkness as near equals, they bow only to the will of their personal demonic patrons and to the avatar of Oblivion. All others will fall before them.
=== Caster Level 9 ===
==== Denial Of Life (Rite) ====
The unholy cadence of your song echoes the emptiness and desolation of the Outer Darkness, and those who hear its awful notes are struck down by cosmic malice. Extras within range of your voice whose Status is less than yours will be slain immediately. You can choose to make any of your followers immune to this spell. Other subjects (such as Stars or monsters) each make a Life Force Resistance Roll against your Occult Roll. Each subject you defeat in this roll loses all their actions on their next turn.
Once your new voice has been put to good use, the +4 bonus you have to cast Darkness sphere magics increases to a +5 bonus.
Maledictions: Plant life withers and dies when you tread near it, and the lives of insects and small animals are likewise snuffed out. Oblivion suffers not the cycle of life and death - its will is annihilation. Your form practically bleeds pure entropy and shadow, as you are by far more demon than you are an entity of flesh. Those around you are overcome with intense and unshakeable feelings of despair, as if your mere presence in the world has broken their faith in its goodness. Perhaps if something as unclean as you is permitted to exist within it, it should not be at all.
=== Caster Level 10 ===
==== The Equation Of Unmaking (Rite) "The Formula of Uncreation" ====
By tracing mathematical symbols into the air, you unravel the flesh, mind and vital essence of the subject, attempting to remove them from all existence past, present and future. The subject of your spell must roll Meditation (Body Control) against your Occult roll. If you win, they lose an amount of VIG equal to your entire PRE score + 1 for every Boost you roll. The visual effect of the spell is their body actually unweaving as you reverse-create them. This usually involves a spectacular display of blood and disintegrating organs as their vessel turns to crimson mist, before being reduced further until the very genetic material and atomic components are unwound into nothingness. Once this spell is complete, and the subject consigned back to the well of creation, all who knew them in life slowly but surely begin to forget them. Writings containing their name will start to self-erase, and tales of their deeds will cease to be spoken, remembered or even thought of at all.
Maledictions: Large animals and crowds of people become seriously ill in your presence. Such is the bottomless up-welling of demonic energy from your blackened soul that if you were to walk through a town, a deadly plague would follow in your wake. Your defilement at the tendrils of the voivode that commandeers your mind and body is such that you barely resemble your original form at all - you are humanoid, but the common elements beyond this are largely severed. A walking mote of perfection, annihilation and chaos, you are anathema to all that is held up as pure, good and true - a literal incarnation of anti-magic.