The Bone Stitcher
Appearing in the form of a massive bloody spider, the Bone Stitcher is one of the more macabre creations of the infernal...
It is not known how many Bone Stitchers exist, but it is known to be only a very small number, less than a dozen at the most. Each looks like a giant spider, perched stop ten multi-jointed legs, with six smaller appendages dangling under the blood wet carapace. Eight gleaming crystal eyes glare at creation, four on the bottom of the carapace, and four located in the front, and the sides of the upper surface.
The Bone-Stitcher can do one thing, it can physically enhance any living creature with greater strength, endurance and agility, increasing any physical stat with ease. The catch is that very few creatures, or wizards, survive the augmentation with their sanity intact. For some, this is pointless as their sanity was gone long before they cast the spell to summon the monstrosity up from the hellish realms.
Once summoned, the Bone Stitcher pounces like a hunting spider, stabbing the summoner through the soft part of the abdomen with a six inch long stinger. The summoner is near instantly paralysed, and made largely numb to the pain they are about to go through. Using its dangling limbs, the Stitcher chops open the summoner and begins the process of augmentation.
The simulacra siphons blood from the summoner and uses it to creature synthetic muscle mass, spinning the tissue out of spider-glands on its own abdomen. With the small limbs it snips out the old muscle, devouring it, while spinning out new to take the old's place. The summoner is subjected to the horror of watching their own bodies being pinioned open and eaten.
Stamina and endurance are increased in an equally disturbing manner. The Stitcher removes their bones, one at a time, and licks them clean before secreting a foul substance onto the bone, strengthening it. THe bone is then reinserted into the body while new muscle and tendons are spun out obscenely. The whole time, the Stitcher makes small clicking and gurgling sounds that sometimes sound like laughter.
One the augmentation is complete, the Stitcher then secrets tendrils of spiderfine silk and uses them to sew the savaged flesh back together. If bargained with, a stitcher can be induced to add very unnatural augmentations such as plates of bone under the skin, additional limbs, and the like. The summoner should have another victim on hand to provide the donor material, unless he is very foolish, and then he deserves to be eaten alive for bothering the Stitcher.
Limitations
Nothing touched by a Stitcher ever looks better. The cutting and sewing, while never life threatening, are vicious to the point of savage mutilation. Those enhance by the Stitcher are turned into Frankensteinian horrors of patchworks of their own skin.
It cannot make you smarter, if it eats the brain...the PC or NPC dies...permanently.
Plot Hooks
Stop that Madman - An evil wizard is summoning the Bone-Stitcher to create a cadre of elite monster soldiers brainwashed into being his utter slaves. The PCs must defeat the evil minions, confront the wizard, and possibly face the Bone-Stitcher.
I'm not a Madman, I'm a Genius - A PC (Munchkin) discovers the spell to summon the Bone-Stitcher, and gets the strength he wants, but ends up uglier than three-day old road-kill. He must then defend himself from others who recognize him as an evil minion!!!
Unhand those Villagers! - The evil wizard has abducted an entire village and is using a Bone-Stitcher to turn the entre village into one giant shambling monster, bound to his will!
No More Evil Cheerios
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Abaseth the Tailor:
A larger and more intelligent specimen of bone stitcher, Abaseth is capable of speech, although he is a quiet individual. Obsessed with his work of improving his work constantly, Abaseth refuses to discuss anything that does not involve subjects of his work, or potential subjects to improve.
Abaseth is in the employ of a powerful demon who uses him to augment his troops. Many fear Abaseth and his techniques, although they are the source of great success for his employer.
'Bones. Long. Lacking muscle. Can fix that. Will fix that. Stay still. No scream. Stronger after.'
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? Responses (36)
Wow...this is something else....I like it alot, and it will be very helpful in my undead campaign. Great description and good plot hooks, but something more about where it comes from would be nice, the 'sommoned from the pit of hell' is ok, but could be much better. Like made by such-and-so a necromacer to aid in the creation of an army, or given to such-and-so a person who wished for strength from a genie or somesuch thing
Scas is adding more Evil Fantasy Cyberware. The Evil guys can be bigger, stronger, tougher now because they have access to the Evil Stitcher.
That... Is... AWESOME!
Giant spider bioware creator, GO!
5/5!
5/5 Now that is one horrible demonic beast...but I can imagine why someone might summon it.What if a person was dying of a cancer type disease-could it heal him/her?
This is prime Scrasamax stuff
Wow. Scared the living bejeezus out of me. It'd be great if you could have one to carry around on your back, which can minorly shape a creature in a few minutes. Useful if there's going to be a battle or difficult mission with no time to prepare.
Shads of HP Lovecroft here - very CoC - love it - 5/5
That's Love'craft'!
Opps - just a typo - very very very sorry
Yes. Well.
DON'T let it happen again.
:)
How enigmatic.
I wonder if the Horde meant to be so concise? Usually, they're very rambling.
Very cool item. The concept of it looking like a giant spider is very nice, I think it adds to the item.
I'm impressed. You always come up with super stuff. This is the kind of concept that I could use, in contrast to some other really difficult-to-administer ideas I find on Strolen here and there.
Anteaus is right; your background is really good, but if there were more it would be even better. But I could create some if I needed it. Thanks.
A lot has been said already. I'll just say thank heavens for 'random submissions' popping up!
I imagine that the spell to summon it is suitably vague:
In a few moments it was done. I had completed the incantation, the ritual to summon 'Ye Chiurgeon fromme Beyonde ye Veil'. Now if the description was right, the powerful entity would cure the deadly, gangrenous wounds and fever that had my fearless comrades on their deathbeds. Slowly, a foul-smelling mist filled the room, causing my allies agonized, labored breathing to echo strangely. A voice rang out hollowly, a voice as painful to hear as nails dragged across a field of broken glass. 'Whattt woulddd yewww have of meeee?' it questioned. 'Yourrr fellowsss arrrre dyingggg. Woulddd youuu havvve meeee improvvvvve themmmm?'
Much more effective than a simple 'Cure Critical Wounds' spell...
Sweet sub! really freaky...
But is it neccessarily evil? surely you summoned this upon yourself after all, and beyond the horror of watching yourself be torn apart and rebuild, the spider doesnt actually perform any evil act...
(cant vote yet, but will do tomorrow)
Not evil, just... messy.
I love when one of my older submissions gets dredged up to to the recent comments section. Why Evil? Quite simple actually, and in a single word, Method. The bone stitched is evil because it is a quick and dirty fix. You want massive muscles, you summon it, get chewed up and slapped back together with big bulgy muscles like you wanted.
The 'good' method would be to train, excercise, eat a high protein diet. In short, you earn it, you dont get it for nothing other than a few scars.
If quick and dirty fixes are evil, then we programmer types are doomed. :)
I don't think that it is 'evil' per se, but it definitely makes doing evil easier, and being 'good' is a bit harder as a monster.
There is also no telling on what sacrifices features the ritual for its summoning...
'Are you sure?' asked the angel. 'The changes will be permanent.'
'I swear it!' gasped the dying paladin. A steady trickle of blood oozed from beneath his armor, and his voice was beginning to fail. 'Please, divine one, give me the strength to strike down the demon!'
'As you wish,' said the angel, and the paladin was engulfed in divine fire. It purged him, burning the poison from his blood, closing his wounds, and searing his torn flesh together. When the paladin stood up, a moment later, his charred face was grim. The fires of heaven burned in his chest, and he was filled with an unearthly vitality. But he was disfigured. His skin was charred and black. He would never again be pleasing to look upon.
'Thank you,' said the paladin, and the angel watched him wordlessly strap on his armor and walk from the temple.
There's no reason this thing has to be evil. It does what it's summoned to do, nothing more and nothing less. It's just our Saturday morning cartoon morality. We see spider, gore, muttering, and we think that this thing must be evil. Probably a tool of the spider cult.
Actually, reading this reminded me of real surgery. You should see the sort of stuff that they do for hand surgery. Not for the faint of heart.
And I suppose there's this conceit that the powers of heaven are freely given out to those who are worthy, while the powers of hell are earned by sacrificing something. I agree with Scras with that one. Unfortunately, this is also one of the reasons why hell is so much more interesting than heaven.
voted!
ok, thats awsome!
I'm envisioning something almost mechanical, like out of the Matrix. It's awesomely gory, rediculously over the top,and chillingly frightful, but also AWESOME.
5/5
Found this in the daily HoH offerings.
Scrasa, why you submit so much stuff I want to blatantly steal for use in my campaign? :D
Oops, forgot to vote
Could it make you beautiful, if you left it instructions of what you wanted to look like? If you could command it, you probably could do something like that. I know you write that it nothing is made beautiful, but with careful instructions, you theoretically could become beautiful.
Only voted.
So, Abaseth made an appearance in tonight's campaign. My players were suitably disgusted and multiple references to the Chtuhlu mythos were made. He's now captured one of the characters who is going to undergo 'augmentation'.
Should be a great deal of fun.
Now this is an awesome sub. I like the idea of these, and perhaps there are many in the Hells, though it really does not matter how many of them there are. They are the infernal medics.
And Wulf's comments on these along with curative spells provides an avenue for 'evil' clerics to have healing spells - instead of 'poof, you're healed' you summon one or more of these bad boys and they stitch up the damage. Since they are not enhancing, merely repairing, the impact may be reduced, but they would always scar badly when healed in this manner.
I love this idea, Summon Infernal Battlefield Medic
5/5
This summons a lot of nice demonic images in my mind :)
5/5 for flavor, usability, and completeness.
Just . . . wow. Scras, I am eternally jealous of your skill. Truly a desperate tool for the insane or those with nowhere else to turn. I can imagine a character turning a bone stitcher on someone else as an act of mercy or revenge, possibly when the 'beneficiary' is under magically-induced sleep. They wake up horribly disfigured, but alive and with greater physical powers. Very cool. I'm glad that val linked back to this!
A way for the munchkin in your group to get stronger, at a terrible prize..
The Evil Overlord (tm) no doubt tries to get one to enhance his army, said minions might like the idea of stronger bodies but dread the procedure to get it..
While the Bonestitcher might be summoned just to perform needed surgery, no doubt the summoner must keep a careful watch on it,so it does not stealthily tries to 'enhance' the subject.
'Yes, the creature your wizard summoned cured the princess, and she can easily deal with any assassin single-handedly, but she will only eat raw meat and looks worse than an Orgre Hag!'