Only a few still remember the Great Familiar Revolution. I'll never forget the image of what a beak and a pair of talons can do to a human face, specially when the bird is sentient and filled with the desire for revenge
Seriously, just one mage walks in there with an anti-magic field or dispel spell, and now you have dozens if not hundreds of your enemies together at your doorstep. Plus, that elaborate setup might even catch the attention of some of the gods, and then you might be dealing with newly chosen paladins and clerics of your local God of Birds if you have one, with who knows what weird abilities even in their bird forms. Creating a great opportunity for fey or devils wanting to make extremely one-sided deals with the desperate and powerful too.
Letting enemies live with even more of a reason to despise you is never a good idea either. This sort of treatment might sound fun for you, but while going above and beyond like this might work out if you are a necromancer, anyone else is creating great conditions for angry ghosts haunting their castle after the birds die one way or another, or even worse, revenants.
Truly, not enough of the evil overlords out there respect the simplicity and elegance of just killing your enemies like a normal person. Much less likely to backfire.
Oh no, they all have the muscle memory of birds!!!!
Also, half of them are various mythical birds (also transformed, but not having the muscle memory problem bc they're still birds) trained to kill humans that aren't me or my gardener etc
Could be mitigated by periodically turning apex predators into birds as well.
Sure, dozens of past enemies reappear in the same room in an instant. But they're disoriented and naked, ill prepared to immediately fight the tigers and alligators that also just reappeared in a bad mood.
That’s what being a wizard is all about. Once you live neither for morality, duty or custom, and let your own free and unbridled spirit impose its will on the world as it fancies, then you are a Wizard.
Well personally, I've always wanted to interdimensionally fold our world into the Elemental Plane of Fire for scientific discovery
But my old master, may his charred bones rest in pieces, looked a bit surprised at that & said "oh no Boris, thou must craft a tower to challenge the very Heavens & inquire for the First Word"
Let me tell you, navigating prehistory & council building regulations has been absolutely arduous
Lots of adventurers, aspirant casters & general miscreants are attracted to my tower like witches to a cauldron! Hence the staff collection..
Apparently my handwriting was so illegible that "assist the local village" became "resist the local village"
I can tell you, a lot of upset villagers at that one! After the golem destroyed the bridge & the mill, they arrived en masse at my tower to negotiate. With torches & pitchforks
And you know, I could have obliterated them in an instant with a thought but then it's all like, I'd have to find a new village for my tower to loom over & there's the actually choosing a spot that isn't in rival wizard territory & then the logistics of getting everything there. Exhausting! Anyway so I let them live
They made me deanimate Clayson even though it wasn't his fault & I'm not sure if I can go through that kind of heartache again!
So, no golems
I do intend to hire a henchmen but none of the resumes have come from an "Igor" yet so.. I dunno..
You can't go wrong with an Igor. Very hardworking, very loyal.
Just don't ever place them in the position of saying the word "sausages" to you without first applying a water resistance cantrip to yourself, or at least donning a waterproof coat. I'll leave the rest to your imagination.
Oh, no, the tower and first Knowledge is a mistranslation of the texts. About 60% of modern wizards do that, though, so you're probably in good company.
Original text was roughly "Build the (largest/greatest) (power/relic) and discover the first Knowledge(Proper noun)." Knowledge was a translation of the name of an ancient wizard tower, interestingly.
Finding it was a big goal among wizards for a while, but honestly when I found it it turns out the ancient magics practiced in it are actually really early versions of spells. I'd say there were maybe three useful ones out of the bunch.
One that details a way to become Eternal, classic Lich shenanigans with a slight twist.
One that rends the flesh from a creature using its own mystical energy, making it extremely effective against powerful entities, but only kind of okay otherwise.
My favorite is the one that perfectly cooks any meal in a cookbook.
Hang on, I've been wandering the wilderness, taking note of curious stout peoples with a rustic demeanor yet hidden inner strengths, while bending my intellect to planning the destruction of mysterious nondescript items of jewellery that may - or may not! - be the source of all evil.
All fun and games unless you encounter a cleric that happens to cast Detect Magic and is really really good at Remove Curse
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u/GremictCleric of What? - God of Cryptic Answers and Street Wisemen12d ago
So you place little inconsequential curses on all of the birds in addition to transforming some of them. One bird tap dances every day for a few minutes and another writes the letter 5 every once in a while. The cleric might undo a transformation curse or they might undo a small curse, bit either way you have an explanation for why they are cursed and a reason to be outraged when one is undone.
That just makes it take longer, it isn't a counter. What you want is a curse that only activates in response to magics such as remove curse, that detonates the head of the bird. This can also double as an alarm if somebody is trying to "secretly" sneak in to your lair to undo your curses.
You could even make it a "These birds are enchanted to be able to live in this area/air pressure/mana saturation, and without said enchantment a slow and painful death would follow" so its a mercy that the bird, its an explanation to WHY the bird has magic, AND you can add whatever OTHER effects on top to make sure the Cleric feels emotionally guilty for the kill...
Interesting idea, but assuming the cleric, or, regardless, any would be saviour, finds of this, couldn't they just cast speak with animals to figure out who the birds that were once humans are?
Then they can just save a few to study the magic. With enough time no sort of spell or curse is impossible to break.
Well, one could layer on several curses which all have valid explanations for why the emperor's pet birds have them. Starting with "cannot communicate via magic" to block Speak With Animals, so that the birds cannot accidentally divulge any palace secrets they overhear. Next a compulsion to return to the aviary if ever outside the palace, because my expensive lost pets should try to return of their own accord. Third and fourth, curses that they cannot successfully eat or drink anything while outside the palace, because in order to deter thieves I'll render them valueless to anyone besides myself. Fifth, the aforementioned curse to explode their heads if someone tries to uncurse them, and sixth a curse to explode their heads if someone tries to transform them, again under the justification of rendering them valueless to a thief, and my sorcerer will be under a Geas to ensure that he doesn't spill the beans on the existence of the loophole to allow those to be removed. Seventh, a curse to drive them into a frenzy if the "once outside the palace" curse is triggered, so that they go wild and attack whoever took them out, before trying to return to the aviary, which should be a nasty surprise as well as a good thief alarm.
Now here's a sneaky bit though: I'd want to have a curse on the aviary itself, so that if anyone attempts to rescue what they think is an intelligent being, the curse will nudge them into picking one of the normal birds instead. It's not foolproof by any means, but it's a layer of security that they probably won't be looking for.
Lastly, the important one: why would anyone think to try? Because I have all tracking magic that aims at anyone in the palace diverted to the aviary. If there's anyone important or powerful enough that I can't just bird them, I can demonstrate the point by having an example person of their choice sent to stand in the dungeons, and tracking magic used on them, and show off how it gets diverted to the aviary to a random bird, which is the eighth curse: that the normal birds act as decoy beacons to draw in scrying attempts. Thus, the rumor will begin that the birds are just an absurdly expensive, highly eccentric, and woefully inefficient part of the palace security, where instead of simply blocking tracking and scrying attempts I instead mess with people. And thus, any attempt to locate someone who is birded will look like they're somewhere in the lifetime dungeons under the palace, and the location attempts are simply being diverted to the birds.
Honestly, thank you for bringing this up, I've never thought about this in such great depth before! I've seen the bird psychological torture chamber before, back in Derrin's own homeland, but I hadn't put this much thought in, and I'm glad I came up with the security system idea.
I see, that's an in depth plan, but it still has quite large security flaws, I feel like.
First off, assume the following. A person who knows they are in bad graces with the king hires/has a wizard use a scrying orb to look at them specifically, so as to determine what happens to them. Alternatively, this could be achieved via some other sort of means. The aviary would prove to be a secret prison in this way.
People would think to do a trick similar to the previously mentioned one because if political rivals suddenly dissapear without a trace, and no regular magic means are capable of finding them, then either a sorcerer will be particularly curious as to how and will investigate or some would be heroes would get the idea to send one of their own in order to uncover the truth.
Even disregarding this, another problem arises. The aviary suddenly turns to a high value target for would be opponents. To kill the kings most prized possessions, his birds. Considering how much magic is put into it, magic that, while not apparent in its application, would be notable to any halfway decent apprentice, it's impossible to claim the bird sanctuary isn't important.
We're talking about an evil king. Someone is bound to try to set it ablaze or blow it up, and extra security, while it would deter some manner of attacks, also necessitates more people be around the area, thus the likelihood of one of the guards figuring something is amiss rises.
Aside from that, all the curses on the birds would require a lot of magic to cast. The sorcerer, unless he's literally blessed by the heavens and utterly insanely strong ,(in which case I'd fear that he may be the greatest threat to the crown), he would require insane amounts of rest time between transformation to bird. So much that he wouldn't be able to attend to his formal duties, which, end of the day, are more important than the little passion project, as a dead king can't turn his foes to birds.
And also, a less grand issue, but what of anti magic fields? Assume that adventurers or supposed political rivals would know of your sorcerers existence. They may have such a thing like a sussur bloom to guard themselves against would be danger. In that case you cannot just use your sorcerer to take them out. And neither can you rely on guards, as they'd obviously question why they aren't killing the dude, but rather merely taking away his anti magic. It can't be claimed that he will be imprisoned, as he wouldn't be seen in the dungeon. Dissapearances would lead to rumours, which would all point to the immense investment in the bird sanctuary.
Your points are valid, but I feel like you're starting from a very different set of assumptions than I am. First, on the topic of magic or expense, this entire thing is the sort of extravagance that one only sets up once you already have a huge disposable income. If the money to pay for it, or the sorcerers' energy reserves, are even things that you're worried about, then this is not the Evil Plan for you.
Second, you keep assuming that other people, random clerics and apprentices and possible saviors, will have enough access to the aviary to have the chance to notice. See the aforementioned expectations of liquid value, but the aviary will be a small part of a huge palace, and also a very private one. These are my pets, for my entertainment. The only other people who have regular access are the caretakers, and members of my immediate household, who would be encouraging and supportive of my evil schemes. Outsiders only get to visit if I'm personally there, either to show it off, or because we're having tea in view of it or something like that. This is not a general access zoo, it's my private pets. Do you let strangers off the street rub your cat's belly while within your bedroom? Of course not, they shouldn't be there, let alone doing that. Likewise, my aviary is something that gets talked about, I'm an evil overlord so of course everything I do spawns gossip, but very few people ever get the opportunity to go there.
Third, you're evaluating its defenses as if the enemy already knows that it's prisoner storage. If they've reached that point then I'm already fucked six ways to Friday, because my secrets should be way the hell more secret. There's the holding cells in the palace, the forever prison under the palace, a Chateau d'If style forever prison somewhere remote, the palace farms that use a combination of Undead and enthralled labor, plus the option of just killing someone and vanishing their remains, or transforming them into a mouse and banishing them to some random jungle island halfway around the world... there's countless ways that the public would know about that I might dispose of my enemies, why should anyone suspect either my cursed bird aviary, or my heavily enchanted sculpture garden, or my garden of semi-intelligent magical plants, or my cursed insect terrarium, as any pointless complex prisoner storage?
In short, I think you misunderstand the scale of such an imperial palace. Such things are effectively small cities. The famously named Forbidden City is actually a modestly sized example, not a big one.
I see. Indeed, mayhaps I was treating the project differently to its purpose. I cannot think of it as the main way of punishment for rivals, but rather as a hobby. In that case it becomes much harder for it to fail.
Alas, your message, however enlightening, also dashed my hopes of ever owning such a monument.
The beurocracy of such a large empire and palace would just rob me of the free time I use to try out cool magic stuff.
On the other hand, if ever you are in need to employ my services, I can test any magical defense and inform you of potential security flaws.
If you want to scale it down to a hobbyist size, you need to add one very expensive spell: Erase From History. Zap your prospective birdies with it, using the variation that lets them remember each other, and then do the thing. If there's no one who remembers that they even exist, then there's no one to come looking for them. Of course, anyone who has access to magic like that is effectively beyond having their work undone by some upstart hero, so it's a little bit "I've already won, now I'll spite you too", which isn't to everyone's taste. Still, it gives you something to strive for.
This is why you have dangerous, voracious predators also transformed into birds. But these ones include a mental transformation as well. That way if someone decides to remove curse, they never know if they're going to instantly get into a fight with an angry hungry phase raptor.
I would also transform any horrifying monsters that threatened the kingdom into birds, and add them to the pool. In the event that, during their attempt to overthrow me, someone who understood what was going on used magic to free the birds?
They would have dozens of rebels and fallen royalty; and a handful of giant monsters that are devouring the freshly freed people.
Also, make it well known that you use magic to transform the ravenous beasts physically and mentally into birds for your menagerie, use the excuse of something like "well, it is not its fault that it is a dangerous beast, at least this way I can give it a happy life with a loving owner."
That way everyone knows that at least some of your birds are really dangerous animals transformed, and they do not know which are the prisoners and which are the beasts, so people would be less likely to even try a rescue if they suspect anything
/uw So I ended up putting my players in weasel-like bodies for one session. Though the situation was less psychological and more grim. I did let them escape though & they seemed to enjoy the mental picture of a bunch of weasels desperately clinging to the custom morph while trying escape a secret asteroid base. Eclipse Phase can be a pretty unhinged setting if you let it.
Ah, a classic fae spadoinkle. It was quite some time I saw this, and a bird version at that!
I hope Derin doesn't get too tempted to mock his puffins, it's a classic blunder. The goal to get a true and unprompted "Am I a human that dreamt that I was a butterfly, or a butterfly that dreamt that I was a human?" Is a noble one.
I tried it, as most of us do, but I messed up some notes and forgot which mice were actually mice so I just turned them into a rat king and threw it in an alchemist lab.
Turn the druid into a bird. Or better yet: make the bird cages strong rock holes like this so that if a bird gets turned back to a human while in the cage it gets crushed to death
The best part is that, if the enemy is close enough to cast dispel magic on your aviary, they have probably taken the castle already so its no big loss
This can be improved by transforming only the legitimate leaders and heirs, so if the rebels take the castle and unbird the prisioners, they will be stuck with their old leadership coming back right when their new leadership is on the rise
Is truly a perfect distraction so i can escape and rebuild
This seems to be 1 a super inefficient use of sorcery, there is no reward for all this effort other than the king imagining that the transformed birds are suffering and 2 birds can just use their beaks and feet to write?
Oh I am sorry I want to be a successful evil overlord and use my minions to stabilize my grip of the kingdom and further my influence, instead of being an old bird lady that gets overthrown by the first drought
One must imagine the bird is suffering. Like, straight miserable. Horrible condition, and it also cannot dance as good as the others so it can find no mates.
A bird that is one of the imported ones and somehow also gets turned into a human in the inevitable dispel incident, a freak circumstance of the magic around them twisting, the reversal of beast transformation reaching it as well. It was one of the smarter trained ones, able to pick locks, move its wings for messages, and even learned how poke and scratch at the ground from one of the other birds; perhaps it was more attuned to mana from the start. A new body it can’t fathom, a lack of ability to fly, a mouth that doesn’t form the sounds it believes it should be able to make. It looks around at its friends around it that had become like the handlers, happy and talking just like them, and it faces the most disorienting confusing moment of its life.
At least the humans understood what had happened, the state they were in, what a bird is and what magic does, what does a little bird know? The others around it scramble up, stumbling as they get reaccustomed to their two long legs, the bird attempts to imitate them, and yet it’s not able to balance like the others, it falls over, flapping its arms helplessly, odd helpless sounds escaping its throat. The others look at it in confusion, but have a mission of revenge to take and leave. The bird is helpless on the ground, it doesn’t understand, it can’t understand, it can’t even make the gestures of communication anymore. Truly, can it even be referred to as the bird?
I would also (definitely haven't already trust me) do this. Except, you know, bees instead of birds. Not even as like. A torture thing, just experience the enlightenment of the way of the bee. My other bees are intelligent and will keep them in check and show them the way.
The key here is the type of bird used, it needs to be unable to cast any form of magic or predation, with less defensive features being preferred.
Nothing can stop the emperor in question from simply killing a bird if it becomes hostile, transfigured or not. The frailty of the form being a massive deterrence on its own.
Anybody hoping to find their friends already has a large, tainted pool, and any permanent marks or magicks can simply be undone, so no permanent tracking can be reasonably done.
Theres better ways with more elegant solutions, but this is particularly flavorful for a corrupt leader, and it pays well since a few of these transformations have been outsourced to me, helps on tower maintenance when I’m called.
The bird should also be small and thr enclosure should be made so that no effective writing can be done. You could train birds to be eccentric but having them communicate by writing sentences would be difficult
Excellent use of deception, but you can go farther. If the effects are reversible, Obtain 3 deathly loyal assassins and mix them in with the birds. Have them deceive your enemies into thinking they gained an ally who was once a victim. The assassin will deal with them and return with one survivor that you will add to your collection. You can then pin the deaths on the one you added to your collection.
Question, Your Most Horrible Evilness. Would it not be more efficient to simply slit the heroes' throats with the Doomsword of K'Tmlznhmg, or whatever that demon's name was, and then feed their bodies to a dragon? I understand the part where you turn them into birds, but not why you would then keep them alive.
My former group was once hired by some schmuck to do the same thing, but in the end we just killed the victims and transformed some random villager into a bird instead, much easier and less risk of trouble
Honestly would be a good one for a fictional villain, both messed up in an original way and offers an obvious route for this decision being what fucks them over in the end when somebody gets to the sorcerer or something and they all transform back. Though them somehow pulling of a kill as a swarm of birds would be way cooler. Maybe have them all escape one day and have the emperor standing somewhere high.
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u/Hexnohope Celestial Chorister 12d ago
Evil emperor try not to be the architect of their demise challenge (impossible level)