Cursed Artifacts

Begin with what its creator was trying to make. Then, add 1-2 abilities/drawbacks that make it clear something isn't quite right. As subtle or unsubtle as you want.

Then, imagine some time passes. Staple on more qualities the more time goes by, up to and passing sentience. Try to make its qualities work together to make it dangerous in a really weird way.

It may wind up more like a creature, but don't underestimate the damage a non-speaking, non-thinking object can do. Think of the One Ring, or the Goiânia accident (warning - link gets intense starting at 'Theft of the source'; no graphic images at time of posting, though).

EXAMPLE

Intended as: staff of withering
Not Right A: Ages anything it touches by 1 year/round until dead.
Not Right B: Can wake a nearby dead body as a nonspeaking wight, and telepathically communicate with it. It can't, or won't, otherwise communicate.

Magic Words

Imagine a campaign where the first PCs are the ancients, who create the spells the rest of the PCs will later have to uncover.

If you need a structure to help come up with spells, Carcosa has a good one: weird monster, spell to summon it, spell to bind it, spell to banish it, spell to make it do your bidding. Having monsters running around that are primarily interacted with using spells like these is a good way to prompt spell creation.

Ask your players what the magic words are, and record what they say (with permission). Make them a bit too long for anyone to remember. After the session, write them down.

Before too long, have a generations-long timeskip. Build your world to plan for this, either with a smaller area for the 'ancients' section, or a short 'past' entry and a short 'future' entry for each location.

Thenceforth, to cast spells, players have to find their words written down somewhere, and repeat them exactly or risk interesting magical mishaps. If someone manages to remember one perfectly from earlier, let the feat of ancestral memory stand.

Brief Example

Session 1: Outer beings have broken into the world, and you, the ancients, must handle them how you see fit with your godlike command of magic.

Session 2: Centuries later, a rediscovered ritual unleashes one or more outer beings, and you have to delve into history to find your other rituals.

Gnarlier Healing Spell

What does a healing spell do? It closes wounds. It makes flesh grow.

Anyone can now cast cure (light) wounds, but if you don't "know" the spell the normal way, it heals 1d6 that now explodes.

If you heal more HP than the target has lost, the flesh grows more than you intended. This doesn't actually push their HP any higher than the maximum, but may cause issues with squeezing, wearing armour, or certain movements, and may lower movement speed.

If it's at least 4 over their maximum HP, it becomes a fused-in living entity, with HP equal to the difference. Its stats are 4d6 drop the highest, or 3d6 if its HP is scarily high. Whether it has any attacks (and what those are) depends on how you describe it. Its damage is proportional to a monster with its HP.

Removing it requires/deals damage equal to the original surplus that created it. If it breaks itself off with an attack, it "steals" the excess damage as HP.

Keep in mind that it's possible to live amicably with these, whether they're intelligent or not. In any setting where this happens often, people will learn to compromise with it, and form neutral or even positive relationships with it. It need not just be horror. The more interesting stories might even be the ones where it isn't.

What Subduing a Dragon Means

Hubris.

HUBRIS.

You tore it out of the sky.

Pushed your fingers through the romantic film of wonder.

Gripped a timebreaking god.

It lies twisted around itself, burning in rope, gaining scars in chains.

Its scales shimmer. The thing in your chest that drew you to do this beats at you to reach through.

Become bloody-handed.

TAKE.

OWN.

Break its skin with your fingertips.

Root around inside for the thing that makes it a god.

Ignore the long-tongued cries of pain.

Pain boiling reality around it.

You can't care. You're too close.

Pull

out

its

flight

and

its

fire.

 

Forever now, you may fly,

lest something tear it out of you.

Feel trust slip away from you forever.

 

Fire is larval genesis.

Hold it and know all fire spells.                       (Cast as a caster of your level)

1% of fire, any fire, will become

 

GENESIS  — late-stage destruction, as burnings start to curl, recolour, bloat, and reshape.

Fire that burns the right way can rewrite reality, or become something that doesn't exist yet.

                                                                     (Table perhaps to come, otherwise use a giant one — jam several together, ie d100 on five stacked d20 tables. It doesn't matter what they're

                                                                     for... encounters, mutations, anything. When it happens, make it big. World's already destroyed, eh? Might as well make it a little worse.)      

But of course, there is one other god:

CAPITAL.

Are you shrewd enough to negotiate a price for what makes a dragon a god?

For a dragon itself?

You will see kingdoms.

 

Dragons always escape. But it could be in a hundred years.

If they do, they will seek you. But they aren't gods anymore,

just big reptiles that drool curses,

mutter colourful grief for their flight.

They've no fire; only what few lightning bolts they catch in their mouths.

 

Killing a dragon permanently is a Carcosan feat.

 

Knowing this, can you sell what you've reaped?

CAPITAL can take all your worries away.

Sequester you in an unimaginable fortress of dreams.

Enact your will in parts of the world you'll never have to see.

It will give you more and more. Your word will mean more and more.

 

Have you heard of numen? A simple nod to accomplish anything?

Sell the dragon. Sell the flight. Sell the fire. CAPITAL will give you numen,

build the pyramid of aching labourers and broken backs,

manpower and mass graves, worshipers and pseudoslaves

to make anything so. What's some overbeast past its time compared to that?

 

This is how we drained the wonder out of the world.

Leave flying and genesis to the overripe who bought them from you.

Accept CAPITAL and anything will be yours.

This place is already a mud-wound filled with melting plastic.

We should have left the beautiful things were they were,

but we made our choice.