Unchained Petitioner
Contents
Every Petitioner - that is, Soul of a dead sod - is bound to a certain Plane. This Plane, known as their ‘Plane of Death’, is generally one of the Outer Planes, and closely aligns with what that sod would have most desired in life (unless they were punished and thus sentenced to some form of afterlife imprisonment). A Petitioner can never leave their Plane of Death - in doing so they would be obliterated, consigned to an eternity of torment as their Soul is ripped asunder over and over again.
Unchained Petitioners are the poor sods who have used some bastardized necromantic technology to allow their Soul to travel freely among the Planes… at immense cost.
See, normally, when a sod has unfinished business they anchor themselves in death to their material plane and become a ghost (or some other vengeful spirit). That’s certainly the easier way to pursue a goal after death. The Unchained are those who thought that their business was finished and so moved on… but then later learned that they still had work to do. Perhaps a certain foul villain was not as dead as they thought, or there was a whisper of a particular fabled treasure resurfacing in some remote land. Whatever it is, it was enough to make the Petitioner not only stir into action… but consign themselves to oblivion in doing so.
By Cosmic Law, Petitioners arenot be allowed to leave their Plane of Death. The entirety of the life-death balance of the multiverse hinges on there being a neat separation between the living state and the dead state. Unchained Petitioners pervert that, threatening to undo the Cosmic Order which has two rather nasty implications for the Petitioner themselves:
- Firstly, the Multiverse wants them dealt with. A new class of Inevitables is being rolled out of Mechanus to hunt the Unchained -Yokhmaruts.
- Secondly, should the Unchained Petitioner be ‘slain’ once more, their Soul has no home to go to, nor cosmic sorting to undergo. They are obliterated - lost forever. Only a Wish spell could bring them back... theoretically.
Exactly what happens when an Unchained Petitioner fulfils their death mission is up to the player - some pass on into a much more peaceful variant of oblivion, whereas others continue their unchained existence lending whatever aid they can to whoever needs it; working till they drop for good.
Appearance: Petitioners come from a wide variety of backgrounds, being any of the Prime species in their lives. Lizardfolk, halflings, humans, kenku - you name it. As a regular Petitioner, you may have been twisted in appearance and mind by the Plane of your Death; such as being incorporeal, demonic or completely devoid of colour. However, once a Petitioner undergoes their Unchaining ritual they take on some distinctive changes.
The first is that you become your mortal self again… mostly. You might be a bit see-through under the right light or conditions, or have a weird demonic tongue; but otherwise would look as you did in life.
The second is the actual apparatus that keeps you alive, contained and able to traverse the planes. This ‘phylactery’ takes the form of fragile glass tubing that encircles your body, and is filled with a pulsating green light. This glass tubing feeds into a large mechanical device that is attached to your person, and serves as the bridge between your body and your Soul. It looks rather clunky and bulky, but is in fact the only part of you that actually weighs anything of note.
Personality: Petitioners are ruthlessly determined individuals. It takes a certain kind of desperate Soul to consign themselves to oblivion for the sake of a single task… and these are those Souls. Petitioners tend to be the kind of person who will stop at nothing to achieve their task, whatever that might be. Besides that, they are quite jaded from years of being dead… gaining a phylactery and awakening once more takes a bit of adjustment as they get the hang of the various emotions and social customs once again.
One can’t talk about Unchained Petitioners without talking about the unhinged. Some berks are not content to carry out their post-life sentence (or perhaps theirs was ‘for time immemorial’) and so look to Unchaining themselves as a means of escaping their post-life incarceration. To do so would be highly taboo, not just for the sod being Unchained but for whoever was doing it for them as well. These Unchained sods tend to be vicious, ruthless and some of the more bloodthirsty denizens of the Planes… they have naught but oblivion behind, after all.
Origins: Petitioners come from any of the Outer Planes, noted in reference as their ‘Plane of Death’. This is considered their Home Plane if needed. In life before they were a petitioner, they would have been a Prime. They could have come from any of the Material Planes, or even Sigil of the past.
Languages: Petitioners know two languages: one relating to their former life, and one relating to their life after death (often this is something like Celestial, Infernal or Planar Trade).
Unchained Petitioner Names: Names vary depending on the characters race and culture during life. Most petitioners dead for longer than a year do not remember their names - often resorting to a single word that had meaning to them during life (this is often their chosen name).
Unchained Petitioner Traits
Ability Scores. If using racial ability score bonuses, increase your Constitution by 1 and one other ability score by 2.
Age. Unchained Petitioners do not age nor die of old age. Their phylactery sustains them for a great deal of time, however they know that it will not last forever - it can only go on for so long before it breaks down entirely.
Size. Small or Medium (choose at character creation). Petitioners are very lightweight, being little more than a projection from their phylactery. They generally weigh around 20 to 40 pounds, regardless of how large they are.
Type. Humanoid (Petitioner). You are neither Planar nor Prime, and have no home plane to return to.
Speed. Base walking speed is 30 ft.
Darkvision. You can see in dim light within 60 feet as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You can't discern colour in darkness, only shades of grey.
Languages. Petitioners know two languages: one relating to their former life, and one relating to their life after death (often this is something like Celestial, Infernal or Planar Trade).
Deathless. Whilst not truly undead - the nature of your phylactery revives you somewhat, you do still retain a good number of undead qualities.
- You do not need to eat or breathe, but you can ingest food and drink if you wish.
- Instead of sleeping, you must enter an inactive state for 4 hours each day. During this state you retreat inside your phylactery and resemble a pile of junk to the untrained eye. You do not dream in this state. You are fully aware of your surroundings like this, but only to a distance of 5 feet.
Phylactery. You are maintained by a necrotech device called a Phylactery. This device is treated as a part of you at all times. When you drop to 0 hit points or would be killed by a spell or magical effect, you do not bleed out - your body vanishes, dusting in an instant as your phylactery drops to the floor. Receiving any amount of healing to the phylactery brings you back to consciousness as per normal.
- Your Phylactery. This is an object with an AC of 20 and 3 hit points. It has hardness of 5 and any instance of damage that exceeds this is reduced to 1. If your phylactery is destroyed, you are dead forever.
- Repairing your Phylactery. You must repair your phylactery within 1 hour of it having dropped to 0 hit points, or it fails catastrophically and you are lost forever. Repairing your Phylactery is a DC 10 skill check made with either Glassblower’s Tools or Tinker’s Tools, and that takes one minute of concentrating to do. For every hit point that the phylactery is missing, increase the DC by 5. Failing the roll 3 times in succession means that your phylactery is too far damaged… at the end of the hour, you obliterate.
- No second chances. If you drop to 0 hit points again before having repaired your phylactery, it crumbles to dust and is forever destroyed.
Tool Proficiency. Unchained Petitioners have to maintain their own phylactery and keep it fortified - failure to do so is a death sentence. You gain proficiency with Glassblower’s tools and with Tinker’s tools.
Undead Fortitude. You have advantage on saving throws against being poisoned or diseased. Furthermore, you have resistance against poison damage and necrotic damage.
Light. Your phylactery emits a pulsating green light that sheds bright light to 5 feet and dim light to 10 feet (you can cover this up with sufficient fabrics etc). You can spend an action to increase the range of this light to 20 feet bright and 60 feet of dim; or to decrease it back down again.
Harness the Soul. You can cast Mage hand as a cantrip.