Death Study

“All flesh ends. The wise do not waste it.”
Before Pythagoras, before Babylon, before even the name "Hermes" crossed the lips of the learned, there was Khemet, and there was the Quiet Science. They called it, in the oldest glyphs:
Kh’tet Ma’at – “The Arrangement of Stillness”
This was not magic of the living. It was magic of dead matter. Its secrets were kept on tablets of black alabaster, red ochre, and cursed limestone, etched in a glyphic syntax too old to parse by Greek or Roman minds, and buried in sealed tombs beneath tombs, where even the priests forgot the way.

They called it archaeology. But the Hermetics knew what it truly was: a hunt for the First Art of Death. They came to Egypt with spades and steamships, with translators and curses half-remembered. They bribed local guards, blew holes in pyramid walls, and packed bones like relics into crates bound for Oxford and Cairo.

The first tablets were unearthed in 1827, near the “Unnumbered Tomb” outside Saqqara, slabs blackened as if fire-hardened, inscribed not with hieroglyphs, but a harsher form: deeper cuts, jagged, arranged in squares like funerary architecture. It took 30 years to partially translate. When they did, the first phrase read:

“That which ends is the last shape. From that shape, we build again.”

Now, in backrooms and lecture halls, white-coated Hermetics recite rituals carved on stone cut before the Pyramids were built. They speak of “Decay as Pattern”, “Bone Structuring”, and “Entropy Harnessing Rituals” as though they created it.

Access to the original tablets is only through The Department of Special Antiquities at the British Museum. The department will only allow access with Government approval. There are rumours that some staff might be bribed to take tablet rubbings.

1. Touch of Rot

• Difficulty: 1
• Q Cost: 1
• Casting Time: 1 action
• Ritual: Smear black mould or corpse-lichen on your hand and breathe in the decay.
• Effect: Target object or corpse begins to rot unnaturally fast.
• Organic matter deteriorates in seconds
• Armor or weapons made of bone, leather, or wood lose half their structural Level/ health.
• Use: Sabotage, corpse disposal, or anti-material prep.

2. Necrotic Seal (Magically Preserve a Corpse)

• Difficulty: 2
• Q Cost: 2
• Casting Time: 1 minute
• Range : Touch
• • Ritual: Apply bone wax over the corpse’s chest and speak the Three Rites of Stillness.
• Effect: Corpse is preserved perfectly (no rot, no smell, no bloat) for 1 week per net success

3. Carrion Plating (Bone-Armor from Nearby Corpse)

• Difficulty: 2
• Q Cost: 2
• Casting Time: 1 action
• Ritual: Scatter black salt and speak the Name of the Ribcage while facing north.
• Effect:
  • Bone shards from a nearby corpse (10 yards) fly to you and form temporary armour
  • +3 Armor for 3 initiatives
  • Reduces Dexterity - one black Dice during this time.

4. Haemorrhage Mark (Curse Sigel)

• Difficulty: 3
• Q Cost: 3
• Casting Time: 1 action
• Range : 30 yards
• Ritual: Draw a glyph on the ground using liver, ash and bile; a bloodstained cloth in the centre.
• Effect: Resisted resolve vs Caster Successes
  • Marked target becomes unable to stop bleeding by normal means for 1 hour
  • Armour of the target is considered 2 less during this time.
• Use: Makes even small hits dangerous.

5. Bonecraft Servitor

• Difficulty: 3
• Q Cost: 3
• Casting Time: 10 minutes
• Ritual: Assemble bones into humanoid shape and bind with iron wire and stitched muscle.
• Effect: Creates a non-combat skeletal helper
• Can carry, dig, open doors, or assist rituals
• Lasts for 1 hour per net success, construction can be reused.
• Use: Utility necromancy—construction and labour.

6. Putrefaction Wave

• Difficulty: 4
• Q Cost: 4
• Casting Time: 2 actions
• Range : 10 yards
• Ritual: Scatter a vial of corpse bile in a 3 yard radius and chant “from flesh to slime.”
• Effect: All organic material in the area begins to decay.
• Living plants wilt or Die dependant on size, a tree wilts a marigold dies.
• Living creatures test Fortitude vs successes or take 2 black dice to all rolls for 3 initiatives.
• Ordinary food, cloth, leather gear is automatically ruined.
• Use: How to ruin someone's day

7. Skull Vice (Crushing Cranial Hex)

• Difficulty: 3
• Q Cost: 5
• Casting Time: 1 action
• Range : LOS or by one of the targets 10 favourite possessions
• Ritual: Smash a cracked skull with both hands while whispering a pressure incantation.
• Effect: Resisted Resolve vs Successes
  • Target suffers 4 black dice to all mental actions for 3 initiatives (Wits, Spellcasting, Resolve rolls) whether resisted or not.
  • On a failed Resolve test, also takes 2 damage from cranial haemorrhage
• Use: interrogator’s favourite tool.

8. Bone Husk

• Difficulty: 4
• Q Cost: 5
• Casting Time: 2 actions - preparation time 30 minutes
• Ritual: Assemble 20+ bones, lash with sinew, and pour melted grave-wax into the chest cavity for each husk.
• Effect: Creates a temporary skeletal brute per net success (2 attacks, 6 attack dice, Strength +2 , 6 Health, lasts successes hours)
• Obeys only simple commands
• Creations can be reused.
• Use: When a bone pile stands the scare alone can be enough.

9. Anatomical Rewrite

• Difficulty: 5
• Q Cost: 6
• Casting Time: 10 minutes
• Ritual: Lay a dead body on a corpse-table and trace spirals into their skin using hair and blood from a donor.
• Effect:
  • Optional reshape the corpse to appear to be the donor.
  • Animate the corpse, will follow simple commands of the caster. Speech is very limited.
  • Lasts until the corpses head is separated from its body, this can occur with natural rot after a few weeks if not attended to.
  • (1 attack, 4 attack dice, Strength as donor , 15 Health)
• Use: A great stand in

10. Everlasting

• Difficulty: 5
• Q Cost: 6
• Casting Time: 12 hours
• Ritual: Bathe in a vat of rendered corpse-fat and marrow while consuming a tincture of preserved heart. You must lie still for 12 hours while chanting your own name backwards into silence.
• Effect:
  • Your body becomes functionally immortal—you no longer suffer from aging or disease and cannot bleed.
  • You become grey of skin, your eyes become dark and while health damage heals naturally the wounds visibly remain.
  • You gain + 5 bonus dice to Interrogation and Intimidation, +4 armour, Strength +2 for 24 hours after finishing the casting
• Fear Effect: While conscious, enemies within 10 ft must pass a Resolve test or suffer one black dice on all actions due to a subconscious death-instinct response.
• Notes: You become cool to the touch, those injuries may add up over the years leaving you looking more corpse than person.