Grandmother Void

Cost: 40+m, 1lhl
Target: Caster and spectres

The ground shakes with increasing violence as this spell nears its completion, then the caster speaks two words in a rare Old Realm dialect. Her image fades, until she looks like a two-dimensional hole in the universe, one that might lead directly into Oblivion. And out of that hole pour spectres.

Each spectre is uniquely (and horrifyingly) disfigured, but they share some qualities. Their skin looks like obsidian. Their claws and teeth drip blood and shed tatters of flesh and torn plasm when they move. Eminently prepared to kill for the necromancer and the Neverborn, they constantly whisper the insanities they hear from their slumbering masters' dreams.

For this spell, the Cast Necromancy action is Speed 5. Including the Cast Necromancy action, the character takes a number of consecutive Speed 5 actions equal to her Essence, in which time her being two-dimensional renders her an invalid target for all physical and mental attacks. On each action, including the first, she spawns two spectres. These dead creatures are fully material. They have full Essence pools and health levels, and they immediately act as the caster wills. Treat the spectres as nephwracks (see Exalted, pp. 319.320), but on each action that she extrudes a pair of spectres, the character may purchase bonus points (as per character creation) to improve both spectres at the rate of two bonus points per mote. (She may spend each bonus point on different things for each spectre.) After the last action, the character's player may roll Join Battle to refocus, as per a normal Cast Necromancy action.

In addition to the spectres' core traits, any ghost who comes within five yards of such a spectre hears the whispers of Oblivion (see p. 33). Ghosts whose players fail the roll for their characters to resist the whispers also begin the agonizing process of becoming nephwracks. Targeting the caster with Obsidian or Adamant Countermagic during her period of invulnerability returns her to her three-dimensional form. She immediately joins battle (as her player makes the roll) and creates no more spectres. Once created, spectres are real and permanent and cannot be dispelled by countermagic.