Deathwalk Boots
'Hell hath no fury like MY RIGHT FOOT!' Shardath yelled as he stomped upon the holy ground.
'Hell hath no fury like MY RIGHT FOOT!' Shardath yelled as he stomped upon the holy ground. Cracks started to appear in the consecrated stone that bled stinking black sludge. Soon all manner of long-dead holy men were clawing to escape their graves, and the recently deceased High Priest flew out of the ground and started murdering his once friends…
Full Item Description
They look like a pair of large black boots with a motif of darkness and death. There is a large yellowing skull at the tip of each toe and the bottoms are made of black metal. They make the wearer a full foot taller and allow for a strong user to make great strides, they happen to be very heavy.
History
They are created in a dark ritual that curses and desecrates a pair of Gravestompers. Once corrupted, they become an unmistakable tool of evil that is rightfully feared by holy men everywhere.
Magic Properties
Wherever the Deathwalk Boots step… death flourishes. If death can flourish, that is. Flowers fall and the previously dead rise from their graves as Servants of the Boot.
These boots have the power to raise the dead as servants to whoever wears the boots. Simply passing by a grave will animate the body within, but without supernatural strength it will just make noise until it rots. When the wearer of the boots *Stomps* on a grave the body under it will be granted demonic powers as a hell-born soul inhabits the body and causes it fly up through the earth to wreak havoc and destroy life.
To raise a corpse, the boots simply have to touch it's grave, but to grant the corpse demonic power you must *Stomp* upon it's resting place. The number of animated bodies seems to be limitless, but you can only control a small number of demon-powered corpses at a time.
The wearer also has increased speed due to the massive strides allowed by the boots if they are strong enough to handle them.
Cursed Properties
Animals will shun anyone wearing a pair of these and will not come anywhere near them. Once put on they can only be removed with a sacred ritual to remove the evil taint from the boots and your body. They are heavy on the feet and the spirit and actually weight down on your soul, eroding it, until you are no better than the demons that serve your foot.
Article Codex
Items • Clothes • Non-Magical
Some say you can't keep a good undead down. They've obviously not come face to foot with these boots.
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? Responses (14)
Updated: Out with you!
This one was submitted in 2008, then went back into my in-work section... Now it is done again. However, it is not at it's proper place in the recent submissions list. So, uh, I'm just giving it a *BUMP!* for now. Let me know what you think!
Those boots are made for much more then walking. If someone wearing them stamped on his grandfather's grave for example, would the body recognise him?
Another short and sweet submission that is very self-contained. If you are looking for ideas for expanding it, then maybe provide more details on who descreated the pair of Gravestompers and why, although if you do that, it would probably be a story of a evil cult or necromancer and then might fall into cliche and this might've been the reason you only had such a short history. (I wasn't sure if you just wanted general comments or wanted input into expanding it when you said let you know what I as reader think but here's both anyway).
Currently as it stands, would vote 3.5 but not sure if you want to expand it so withholding vote at the moment.
Oh, and I esp. like the italic text, it enhances the atmosphere of the piece substantially.
Finally typo alert- 3rd paragraph of magical properties, 1st line- all the it's should be "its"
Go ahead and vote on it. It's as done as it is going to be for now. Don't let that stop you from sharing your own theories on how they were created. Sometimes the comments can really make a submission better.
Very nice. I can't help but think of those boots the guys from KISS used to wear; back when they did all the makeup. Couple minor punctuation nits and I'd like to see a hook or two, but I think its a very original idea. Nice work! 4/5
Your comment on KISS's boots is pretty much right on target. I was inspired to write this after seeing the boots that Mr. Lordi (The lead singer of Lordi) wore in costume. Good stuff.
Sorry Pieh, I just don't like this
A little too "evil for evil's sake" for my liking
... and way too powerful to boot (sorry, couldn't resist that)
To my mind, raising the dead (or even the undead for that matter) should be a LOT harder than this, involving complex and dangerous rituals taking hours, or even days, to complete
Further, there should be no guarantee that the undead are under the control of the summoner. That should require, at the very least, another spell that may or may not work (I would suggest the undead gets normal magic resistance and/or save rolls)
For these reason, I'm afraid I have to drop this one down to 2/5
Evil perhaps, but evil with flair and slightly different style with a physicality that promotes a different style of roleplay than many items. This wouldn't work in some somber setting perhaps but in an RPG setting more styled of AFMBE or a Buffy premise then this would work fine. How hard raising the dead should be and how hard controlling them should be speaks to the tenants of the genre and this one clearly has a cross-over potential for modern horror/comedy. Often in those setups raising the dead is all too easy.
I can't believe you avoided all the soul/sole puns.
I think this item is pretty cool, but then I don't really roleplay - i just like the fact that the first thing that popped in my head from reading this is John Travolta strutting along the street to the Beegees, Zombies rising from the ground behind him.
This calls to mind plants vs zombies :P
And frankly, its not that hard an item to throw a few limitations on to keep it from running rough-shod over your world.
I would limit the number of stomps that can be used daily and make incidental undead rising a small % chance, augmented by full moons or other magic.
Very metal.
I like this item, and it would fit very well in more video gamey world. Yep, every time that boss stomps his foot, swarms of undead emerge - assuming there are bodies to raise. No worse than Legendary lair abilities in 5th edition now :)
