Pyre-Flame Guardian

Cost: 50m
Target: Caster

Pyre Flame

The green-hued pyre flame of the Underworld combines aspects of liquid fire and burning acid. It's rare enough that it's not a constant danger, but it's common enough that only the newest ghosts do not know its properties.

Pyre flame burns through anything except for earth, stone, jade and soulsteel. Other magical materials are not proof against the flame, but they are resistant enough that they can serve as shortterm protection. It burns as hot as normal flame but tenaciously clings like pitch to anything it touches. The green flame neither spreads nor permanently goes out. It burns brightly until it has consumed all of its available fuel, at which point it dims into embers and lies quiescent until fed more substances it can consume. Most Underworld inhabitants quell pyre flame by throwing dirt over the embers, which works well enough until one of them unwittingly shovels it up.

Contact with pyre flame inflicts the following environmental effect: Damage 2L/action, Trauma 4. The damage can be greater, depending on the volume of pyre flame—the listed value is for a hand-sized patch. Greater quantities inflict greater damage. Inanimate objects do not have (Stamina + Resistance) pools, so they suffer automatic levels of damage and are quickly consumed. Magical materials other than jade and soulsteel reduce the Damage to 2L/minute, increasing the time they take to burn away. Pyre flame will also consume armor and weapons, if it gets on them. The sticky substance can be removed with a miscellaneous action and an appropriate tool, though it consumes whatever tool is used for the purpose. Quantities of pyre flame that inflict greater damage require more effort to remove. For each additional die of pyre flame damage, scraping off the substance requires one additional miscellaneous action.

Sunlight evaporates pyre flame in minutes, leaving an acrid green haze and stain. Still, there is no true sun in the Underworld, and some of the Underworld's springs or geysers produce the stuff in seemingly unlimited quantity, so there is no danger of running out.

The caster must possess and swallow a soulsteel vial—one the size of a pinky finger joint—that contains pyre flame. Once she performs that action and finishes the spell's casting, the necromancer swells to twice her normal size. The screams of a dozen random and unlucky ghosts in the Underworld resound around her. Each shrieking ghost is instantly shaped into soulsteel that fuses to the caster's skin, face, hair and eyes. Once she is protected, the caster's skin bursts into a sickly green bonfire of pyre flame.

Her new skin gives the character +15L/+15B soak and 12 Hardness. She adds to her Strength rating a value equal to her Essence, and the corrosive flame that engulfs her inflicts three dice of aggravated damage on anyone foolish enough to attack her barehanded. Foes who strike her with a weapon not forged of a magical material end up with weapons burning in their hands, soon to be consumed. Even the mightiest artifact weapons of the Exalted become dangerous, because even though they burn slowly, they can carry the flame to other targets. A character who continues to wield a weapon after it has been smeared with the sticky fire suffers its basic environmental damage unless he wears gauntlets of the magical materials or is otherwise immune to pyre flame, at least until he scrapes it off (see sidebar). Victims of the necromancer's barehanded attacks are likewise afflicted with the touch of the pyre flame.

As an attack action, the character can vomit a sticky wad of furiously burning pyre flame at her enemies, using a (Dexterity + Thrown) dice pool. This projectile inflicts six levels of aggravated damage, plus extra successes, and it cannot be parried. Where the green balls of flame land, they leave circles or streaks of green fire. These flames are likely to kill extras before they can hope to scrape off the flames.

The spell ends either when the caster chooses, when someone targets it with Obsidian Countermagic, or when one hour has passed in the Underworld. The spell's end causes the necromancer's soulsteel skin to explode off of her. Thousands of fragments of shrieking black shrapnel coated in green flame fill the area around her, inflicting five levels or lethal damage and two levels of aggravated damage to all viable targets within 30 yards. Only perfect defenses can block or evade this debris.