Vestiges are remnants of powerful spirits residing in the nothingness outside of reality. Vestiges are born of dead gods and tragic heroes, but their forms, personalities, and motivations are shaped by the whims of remembrance. Righteous spirits that are remembered as villains develop a fiendish aspect and sinister overtones, while those who are forgotten fade over millennia into the Void’s static.
In order to harbor a vestige, a binder must divide their very soul and offer part of it to the vestige for residence. As the vestige pushes its way into reality it influences its binder’s personality and usually warps their body in accordance with the vestige’s esoteric form. Skilled binders learn to break their soul into smaller and smaller pieces to bind greater and more numerous spirits, regardless of the consequences.
1st Level Vestiges
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Bluetongue, the Trickster
A duplicitous shapeshifter, Bluetongue offers his sly words and shapechanging powers to those who bind him.
Legend. The old myths remember Bluetongue as a lizard, a liar, and a shapeshifter that traveled from land to land, scheming and swindling those that he met, such that he never needed to work.
One day, Bluetongue came across a hunter’s camp whose owner had left it unguarded as he hunted for the day. Bluetongue laughed at his good fortune and stole everything from the camp that he could, including every scrap of food. When the hunter returned, he was outraged, but found a trail of food scraps dropped by Bluetongue as he ate.
When Bluetongue saw the hunter arrive at the cave where he slept, he hid his treasures and transformed into the form of a feeble old man. But the hunter was wise to Bluetongue’s tricks and set fire to the cave as he left. Bluetongue, too greedy to leave his belongings and too unfit to outrun the flames, perished in the blaze. The hunter told the story of the shapeshifter, and his story spread into legend and, eventually, into vestigehood.
Each time the story of Bluetongue is recorded, it is a little different. None can say if the original story featured Bluetongue’s theft or even his fiery punishment; every aspect of it has changed with time. Accordingly, Bluetongue’s vestige manifests as a blur of ever-shifting appearances, with the sole constant of its unchanging, serpentine tongue.
Personality Trait. While bound to this vestige, you gain the following personality trait: “I speak in a sonorous tone, but it always sounds like I’m trying to sell something.”
Bluetongue, the Trickster
1st-level vestige
Bonus Proficiencies
While bound to Bluetongue, you gain proficiency in the Deception and Persuasion skills. Additionally, Bluetongue steals power from other vestiges, granting you proficiency in one additional skill or tool of your choice for each other vestige you have bound.
Deep Pockets
While bound to Bluetongue, a pocket, bag, or other container of your choice becomes a portal to a personal extradimensional space, which is 64 cubic feet in volume. The container’s opening stretches to accommodate items of any size that can fit within the space, and items within the space are weightless until removed. When you reach into this space, any item you intend to take is magically on top.
Breathing creatures inside the container can survive up to a number of minutes equal to 10 divided by the number of creatures (minimum 1 minute), after which time they begin to suffocate.
A container loses this property and its contents are expelled when you are no longer bound to Bluetongue.
Persuasive Words
You can cast the charm person spell once without expending a spell slot. Once you cast the spell in this way, you can’t do so again until you finish a short or long rest.
Trait: Blue Tongue
While bound to Bluetongue, you can cast the disguise self spell, without expending a spell slot. Casting the spell in this way takes 1 minute. No matter what your appearance, however, whenever you speak, a serpentine blue tongue can be seen within your mouth.
Dyogena, the Spear of Sin
A trained warrior of a bygone empire, Dyogena grants her binders skill with sword, shield, and spear.
Legend. Thousands of years ago, a great empire spanned the continents, unifying its many territories under an unshakable banner. Oracles spoke of the empire’s demise at the hands of a wrathful prophet, an instrument of the gods’ disdain for the wicked regime. In response, the paranoid emperor ordered his governors to execute all holy men that did not swear fealty to him alone. Thousands of priests were slain, and the gods themselves wept at the bloodbath.
Dyogena was one of a legion of soldiers ordered to carry out the massacre. However, when she was to impale and disembowel the martyr Nezare, her heart softened, and she instead thrust her spear into his heart, mercifully sparing him of all suffering.
Historians, however, recall a different story. They paint Dyogena as a cruel warden that tormented Nezare for weeks before his inevitable demise. They even misremember her gender, portraying her as a male soldier. As such, Dyogena’s vestige is an effigy of her sins: a twisted creature in soldier’s armor divided down the middle, with a noble celestial woman on the left and a diabolic male fiend on the right.
Flaw. While bound to this vestige, you gain the following flaw: “I always feel irreconcilable guilt when I must take a life.”
Dyogena, The Spear of Sin
1st-level vestige
Bonus Proficiencies
While bound to Dyogena, you gain proficiency with shields, as well as with battleaxes, longswords, spears, tridents, and warhammers.
Legion Tactics
While you are wielding a shield in one hand and a versatile weapon in the other, you can use the weapon’s two-handed damage die.
Coup de Grâce
When you take the Attack action on your turn, you can use your bonus action to make one additional melee weapon attack. On a hit, this attack deals extra damage equal to your binder level. Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.
Trait: Bloodstained
You are stained with the blood of saints, which never washes off. Immediately after you take damage from a melee attack, you can use your reaction to gain 5 temporary hit points, which last until the end of your next turn. The amount of the temporary hit points you gain increases by 5 for each vestige other than Dyogena you have bound.
Gyx, the Storyteller
Prerequisite: bound to at least one other vestige
Gyx, the mother of binding, offers no power of her own, but lets you fully seize the might of your other vestiges.
Legend. The first binder, Gyx, had no ambitions of founding a religion or pioneering a new form of magic, no matter what her later followers might claim. Instead, she stumbled upon the existence of vestiges quite by accident when her scrying spell malfunctioned. As often happens when this spell fails, Gyx heard a whoosh of static and saw a flash of deep black. But on this occasion, she heard a whisper in the noise. Through experimentation, she refined the spell into a rudimentary binding ritual and communed with the distant spirits of the Void. They had always been there, just out of earshot, just beyond the limitations of sight, only Gyx had learned to look for them.
She took fastidious notes on anything the fleeting voices told her: their names, their symbols, all they could remember. Many of them possessed names recorded in history books or spoken of in temples, but these voices were different and told stories of hardship and heartbreak, not of glory and triumph. She collected these tales of the forgotten dead gods and heroes in a tome, and printed ten copies. These books would go on to inspire legions of binders, as well as others who would brand them heretics.
Gyx’s final story, however, she took to grave. It was a collection of all she learned, a succinct tale now told only by her vestige:
“In the beginning, there was Void. Then one great sin. In the end, there shall be Void.”
Personality Trait. While bound to this vestige, you gain the following personality trait: “I love hearing and telling stories, especially those with a tragic end.”
Gyx, the Storyteller
1st-level vestige
Prerequisite: bound to at least one other vestige
Heretical Lore
You have advantage on ability checks you make to recall legends, myths, or lore. Additionally, the GM can allow you to make such checks, even when it would be impossible for you to know such information.
Strength in Numbers
While bound to Gyx, you gain a bonus to your vestige save DC, spell attack modifier, and any weapon attack roll you make that uses your Charisma, instead of Strength or Dexterity. This bonus is equal to the number of other vestiges you have bound and doesn’t stack with bonuses provided by magic weapons or items.
Legendary Vestige
If a creature succeeds on a saving throw against a spell or feature offered to you by one of your vestiges, you can force that creature to reroll the save, and it must use the new roll. Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a long rest.
Trait: Hidden
While bound to Gyx, you can cloak your vestiges with ease. You can suppress or reveal any of your vestiges’ traits once on each of your turns (no action required). Moreover, you can instantly tell when another creature is bound to vestiges, and the number of vestiges to which they are bound. You have advantage on attack rolls against other creatures bound to vestiges.
K’Sir, Thief Primeval
A mythic thief who once stole power from the mighty dragons, K’Sir offers binders his roguish cunning and his infamous mark.
Legend. Legends say that in the early days of the world, the dragons knew the Words of Creation by heart. It was by speaking these forbidden words, the very same words that brought the whole multiverse into being, that dragons gained their fearsome breaths and auras.
This power was coveted by all mortal beings, but only one brave soul attempted to claim it: K’Sir, the thief, snuck into the dragons’ lair while they slept. With expert precision, he slipped past every trap, avoided every guard, and silently stole the Words of Creation for himself.
When at last he was away safely with his prize, K’Sir might have translated the words into mortal runes, but his curiosity got the better of him: K’Sir opened his satchel and read all the Words of Creation at once. When he was at last done, the magical energy was too great to bear, and K’Sir was spread thinly across time and space, such that even his name is distorted today. Though, if the legends are true, K’Sir, in his reckless arrogance, is the only mortal to have ever read all the Words of Creation.
Flaw. While bound to this vestige, you gain the following flaw: “My curiosity always gets the better of me.”
K’Sir, Thief Primeval
1st-level vestige
Bonus Proficiencies
While bound to K’Sir, you gain proficiency with scimitars, shortswords, and thieves’ tools.
Sneak Attack
While bound to K’Sir, once per turn, you can deal an extra 1d6 damage to one creature you hit with an attack if you have advantage on the attack roll. The attack must use a finesse or a ranged weapon. You don’t need advantage on the attack roll if another enemy of the target is within 5 feet of it, that enemy isn’t incapacitated, and you don’t have disadvantage on the attack roll.
The extra damage dealt by this feature increases by 1d6 for each vestige other than K’Sir you have bound. If you already have the Sneak Attack feature from your class, you add this damage to the Sneak Attack roll.
Thief’s Instincts
You can take the Dash, Disengage, or Hide action as a bonus action. You can use this feature twice and regain all expended uses when you finish a short or long rest.
Trait: K’Sir’s Mark
While bound to K’Sir, your skin becomes branded with all manner of ancient runes and symbols, which magically silence your movements. You don’t have disadvantage on Dexterity (Stealth) checks due to wearing wearing any type of armor. Additionally, if you make a Dexterity (Stealth) check, you can treat the result as a 10, or your binder level plus your Charisma modifier, whichever is higher.
Lexicon, the First Word
An ancient sage and the first god of the written word, Lexicon grants his binders a variety of spells and mastery over the written and spoken word.
Legend. Before Lexicon, all knowledge could be passed only by speech and example through the generations. Man’s oral traditions were rich but fragile, for a single death from a common disease could wipe away untold generations of understanding.
And so, a wise sage known as Lexicon, gathered the Words of Creation scattered by K’Sir and devised the means to record information and spare it from oblivion: The Written Word. With a few strokes of charred ash, Lexicon recorded the very first word known to man “Un”—which in that time and tongue would come to mean “me,” or “I am”.
By naming things, and writing them in certain ways, The Written Word allowed Lexicon to make permanent things that were fleeting and to establish definitive truth. In this way, Lexicon also become the first spellcaster.
With his great boon of writing and his power over arcana, Lexicon ascended to godhood to take his place among the primordial deities. In time, however, his tale was replaced by apocryphal ones, and was eventually forgotten entirely. Men today believe that writing has always been with them and that spellcasters have always practiced their art. Therefore, Lexicon’s vestige is like his legacy, faded nearly to nonexistence, with an outline of ink and the vague impression of written symbols within.
Personality Trait. While bound to this vestige, you gain the following personality trait: “I obsessively write down and record new information.”
Lexicon, the First Word
1st-level vestige
Words of Power
While bound to Lexicon, you learn two cantrips of your choice from the bard, sorcerer, or wizard spell list, plus an additional cantrip for each other vestige you have bound. Charisma is your spellcasting ability for these cantrips.
Pale Arcana
While bound to Lexicon, whenever you take damage from a spell, you can use your reaction to gain resistance to the damage taken.
Spellcasting: Mystic Utterances
While bound to Lexicon, you can cast the following spells, without expending a spell slot or material components:
Spells: detect magic, feather fall, floating disk, fog cloud, mage armor, magic missile, shield, sleep, thunderwave, unseen servant
You have a number of uses of this feature equal to 1 plus the number of vestiges you have bound. Casting a spell from this list expends one use. You regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.
Additionally, you can cast any spell from this list as a ritual if it has the ritual tag.
Trait: Glossolalia
You constantly speak in a language that mixes all known (and unknown) forms of speech, and your writing at a glance seems to be gibberish. Despite this, your speech and writing are comprehensible by any creature that can understand a language. In addition, you can understand and read any language.
2nd-Level Vestiges
Asklepios, the Physician
The fathers of all medicine, Asklepios and his serpent grant their binders supernatural healing and unsurpassed medicinal knowledge.
Legend. All great physicians stand on the shoulders of their predecessors; so too was it with the first physician. While Asklepios was walking through the woods, he deeply punctured his leg on a splintered log. A wise serpent named Sissiro came to his aid and constricted his wound, teaching Asklepios the first of many secret principles of Medicine. By way of thanks, Asklepios took the serpent with him, coiled on his staff, and the two traveled together.
Together, Asklepios and the serpent founded the first temples of Medicine, where healers could learn the art of mending bodies, curing illness, and easing the mind. Asklepios even created a salve of medusa blood that could raise the dead from the underworld. The God of Death raged at this, for it was the first time that souls were wrenched from his grasp, and conspired with the God of Lightning to strike down Asklepios. The fearsome bolt of lightning struck Asklepios and the serpent alike, but fortunately, the medusa salve spilled onto the serpent, resurrecting it from death.
Though Asklepios laid dead, his temples would remain, and the symbol of his serpent-entwined staff would forever remain the emblem of Medicine. His vestige is this very image: the staff speaking with the voice of the Physician and the serpent chiming in with profound medicinal insight.
Ideal. While bound to this vestige, you gain the following ideal: “Do No Harm. I have taken the oath of a physician, swearing to do no harm to those in my care. (Good)”
Asklepios, the Physician
2nd-level vestige
Triage
While bound to Asklepios, you know whether each creature you see has all its hit points, more than half of its hit points, less than half of its hit points, or less than 10 hit points. You also know if a creature you see is cursed, poisoned, or diseased.
Bloodletting
For all the Physician’s insight, his methods can be quite brutal. Once on each of your turns when you deal bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing damage to a creature, you can add a d4 to the damage dice.
Physician’s Balm
While bound to Asklepios, you can use your action to touch a humanoid. The target regains hit points equal to your binder level plus your Charisma modifier. You can also end one disease afflicting the creature or end the blinded, deafened, or poisoned condition affecting it. You can use this feature three times and regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.
Trait: Serpent Staff
While bound to Asklepios, his serpent materializes and coils on your arm, or on a staff, tool, or weapon you are holding, and whispers medicinal wisdom in your ear. If you make a Wisdom (Medicine) check while bound to this vestige, you can treat the result as a 10, or your binder level plus your Charisma modifier, whichever is higher.
Hou Yi, the Archer
A legendary archer that shot down many suns, Hou Yi grants his binders his eagle vision and his skill with the bow.
Legend. In the early years of the world, the deep flaws in its creation manifested as terrible catastrophes, each more cataclysmic than the last. In one such catastrophe, ten suns rose over the horizon, boiling the seas and scorching the land. It would seem the gods were powerless to stop it, so the great hunter Hou Yi rode to the peak of the highest mountain with his bow. One by one, he shot the suns down, which crashed to the earth, forming islands where they landed.
As thanks for his great deed, the gods bequeathed Yi a boon of apotheosis, an elixir that would grant whoever drank it eternal life and propel them to godhood. Instead of drinking it immediately, Yi hid the potion in his home, hoping that he might find a way to bring his beloved wife with him to godhood.
However, Yi’s jealous apprentice, Feng Meng, attempted to steal the elixir for himself. Rather than let the thief take the potion, Yi’s wife drank it instead, ascending and becoming a goddess of the moon. Yi was furious, having lost his wife and his own bid at immortality, so he battled his apprentice to the death. However, having used all but one of his arrows to slay the suns, Yi was no match for his apprentice, who drew close and beat him to death with a club.
Yi’s vestige is a battered and bruised amalgamation of eagle and man, with piercing eagle eyes and broken arms.
Ideal. While bound to this vestige, you gain the following ideal: “Challenge. I will rise to any test that presents itself. (Neutral)”
Hou Yi, the Archer
2nd-level vestige
Bonus Proficiencies
While bound to Hou Yi, you gain proficiency with blowguns, hand crossbows, heavy crossbows, longbows, and nets.
Fighting Style: Archery
You gain a +2 bonus to attack rolls you make with ranged weapons.
Sunkiller’s Quiver
Whenever you would draw a weapon, you can summon the antique but exquisitely crafted longbow and quiver used by Hou Yi. The quiver contains an unlimited supply of nonmagical arrows and 9 sunkiller arrows. This equipment lasts until you dismiss it on your turn (no action required) or you are no longer bound to Hou Yi.
A sunkiller arrow deals fire damage instead of piercing damage and deals an extra 1d4 fire damage on a hit. When a sunkiller arrow hits a target, it explodes in a 5-foot-radius sphere and is destroyed. The arrow can be fired at an unoccupied space within its range. Each creature other than the target within the blast radius must succeed on a Dexterity saving throw, taking half the damage rolled for the attack on a failed save, or no damage on a successful one.
Once a sunkiller arrow is used, it can’t be used again until you finish a long rest.
Trait: Eagle’s Eyes
While bound to Yi, your eyes are replaced with that of an eagle’s, bordered by resplendent feathers. Because of this, you can use your Charisma modifier, instead of Dexterity, for your attack and damage rolls with ranged weapons.
Additionally, if you make a Wisdom (Perception) check that relies on sight, you can treat the result as a 10, or your binder level plus your Charisma modifier, whichever is higher.
Tilo, the Collossus
Once a brave but tiny mousefolk knight, Tilo grants his binders titanic weapons and incredible size.
Legend. Tilo was a mouseling knight, small of stature but brave in spirit. In his youth, he traveled the world as a knight errant, doing honorable deeds where he could, and searching for a master worthy of his blade. At last, he arrived in the southern kingdom of Osira, where he saw the golden knights of the royal guard, and instantly knew he wished to be among their number. At first thinking Tilo to be a new court jester, the king mirthfully accepted his service.
When the kingdom was beset by a terrible goblinoid army, Tilo led the defense. Eventually, the castle’s defenses crumbled, and the keep’s outer wall was breached. As the other golden knights of the royal guard fell, Tilo alone held the breach, and held it true for seven days and seven nights.
In life, Tilo was tiny, but he died a colossus. Due to his courage, his king escaped, and the legends of Tilo’s bravery propelled him to persist in the Void as a vestige.
Personality Trait. While bound to this vestige, you gain the following personality trait: “I never fear anything larger than myself.”
Tilo, the Colossus
2nd-level vestige
Bonus Proficiencies
While bound to Tilo, you gain proficiency with martial weapons.
Fighting Style: Great Weapon Fighting
When you roll a 1 or 2 on a damage die for an attack you make with a melee weapon that you are wielding with two hands, you can reroll the die and must use the new roll, even if the new roll is a 1 or a 2. The weapon must have the Two-Handed or Versatile property for you to gain this benefit.
Gigantic Size
As a bonus action, you can cast the enlarge/reduce spell on yourself once with this feature, using only the spell’s enlarge option, without expending a spell slot or material components. When cast in this way, the spell doesn’t require concentration. Once you cast the spell in this way, you can’t do so again until you finish a long rest.
Trait: Colossal Strength
While bound to Tilo, you grow an inch taller and your muscles have greater definition. You can wield heavy weapons without penalty, even if you are Small size. Additionally, you can use your Charisma modifier, instead of Strength, for your attack and damage rolls with melee attacks using Heavy weapons.
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