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.
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3rd Level Vestiges
Evocatia, the Red
Evocatia, the legendary spellcaster for whom the Evocation school of magic is named, grants her binders wild, fiery arcana.
Legend. All wizards know the story of Evocatia and Elozahr, the ill-fated mages that founded the School of Evocation.
In the days before the schools of magic, all spellcasters projected pure, unformed arcana in the form of protospells, whose effects shifted from moment to moment. With time, the cleverest spellcasters learned to tame magic, channeling it into spells with direct intent.
Evocatia the Red was one such spellcaster. Studying under the tutelage of the venerable Elozahr the Blue, she forged spells from flame, creating first the cantrip fire bolt, and then the spell burning hands. Yet, her talent and ambition knew no bounds, and soon she crafted her singularly devastating masterpiece: fireball. With her new spells in hand, she went to visit the icy tower of her mentor, but discovered that his crystal ball was fixed to scry upon her—surely, the old man meant to copy her spells and steal them for himself! In rage, Evocatia burned the tower to the ground.
The two wizards worked in secret to outdo one another, each laying the foundations for their own schools of magic. At last, Elozahr and Evocatia met on the field of Armistal to parley and settle their differences. But Evocatia saw that the scoundrel Elozahr brought with him a staff of frost to slay her once and for all, and so she struck first with a burst of flame!
Summoning all their canny and arcane might, the two wizards unleashed a torrent of wrath upon each other. When all was done, nothing remained of Evocatia and Elozahr but dust. Evocatia’s vestige, a manifestation of her ambition, is a burning effigy of a wizard built of magic wands and discarded spellbook pages.
Personality Trait. While bound to this vestige, you gain the following personality trait: “I don’t shy away from using overwhelming force to solve problems, especially when it involves fire.”
Evocatia, the Red
3rd-level vestige
Inheritance of Flame
While bound to Evocatia, you know the fire bolt cantrip. Additionally, you can add your Charisma modifier to damage rolls you make with spells that deal fire damage.
Fire Spin
As a bonus action, you can launch yourself in a spiral of flame. When you do so, you can make a melee spell attack against a creature within 5 feet of you, dealing fire damage equal to 1d4 + your Charisma modifier on a hit. You can then move up to 10 feet in any direction without provoking opportunity attacks.
Spellcasting: Pyromancy
While bound to Evocatia, you can cast the following spells, without expending a spell slot or material components:
2/day each: burning hands, scorching ray
1/day each: fireball, heat metal
You regain all expended uses of these spells when you finish a long rest.
Trait: Inferno Within
While bound to Evocatia, your skin is hot to the touch, and flickering embers can be seen within your mouth, nostrils, and eyes. You have resistance to fire damage.
Orzi, the Maimed Duelist
Once the world’s greatest blademaster, Orzi lends his binders his incredible speed and peerless skill with one-handed blades.
Legend. Conflicting legends tell of how the Maimed Duelist lost his arm, but all relate to his singular, almost supernatural skill with a blade, even without his dominant sword-hand.
One legend recalls a rivalry between Orzi and the demon-knight Rostam over the affections of a maiden, culminating in a duel. Orzi struck true time and again, but Rostam’s impenetrable armor repelled each blow until Rostam retaliated with a single strike, felling Orzi and severing his arm at the shoulder. Another legend recalls Orzi’s conflict with a dire purple worm, who encroached on his lands. In a great battle, the beast bit Orzi’s sword-arm, turning it black and numb within seconds. Rather than succumb to the venom, he cut off his own arm and struck the monstrosity dead with his remaining limb.
With but one arm remaining, Orzi trained relentlessly to become stronger than before, a shieldless blademaster. He invented a new, blindingly fast fighting style to turn his opponents’ strength against them, while avoiding their deadly blows. For this style, and an endless record of lethal duels, Orzi is remembered as history’s greatest blademaster. Likewise, his vestige is a humanoid blur wielding a lightning-quick blade.
Personality Trait. While bound to this vestige, you gain the following personality trait: “I neglect my non-dominant hand, preferring to use just one hand whenever possible.”
Orzi, the Maimed Duelist
3rd-level vestige
Bonus Proficiencies
While bound to Orzi, you gain proficiency with hand crossbows, rapiers, scimitars, shortswords, and whips.
Fighting Style: Dueling
When you are wielding a melee weapon in one hand and no other weapons, you gain a +2 bonus to damage rolls with that weapon.
Extra Attack
You can attack twice, instead of once, whenever you take the Attack action on your turn.
Trait: After Image
While bound to Orzi, you move with an unearthly speed that leaves a lingering trail behind you. You can use your Charisma modifier, instead of Strength or Dexterity, for your attack and damage rolls with finesse weapons.
Additionally, as a bonus action, you can move 15 feet in a flash, without provoking opportunity attacks. You can use this ability a number of times equal to your Charisma modifier (a minimum of once) and regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.
Rostam, Armor Infernal
Mythical armor of indescribable evil, Rostam will appear about his binders and shelter them from harm.
Legend. All the legends of Rostam the paladin tell of his seven great deeds in the demon land of Mazandaran, but a few make passing mention of his impregnable armor: black, stout, and indescribably hideous.
Rostam was a brave knight, to be sure, but he was no match for the demons of Mazandaran; he was not even a match for the deserts of that land. After a week of wandering aimlessly through the sands, Rostam was on the verge of death from dehydration when he came across a lone woman, a devil in disguise. She offered him a pact for his soul: she would give him food, water, and enough strength to slay the demons. Rostam readily accepted, and was bestowed a living suit of infernal armor: hideous, hairy, and indestructible.
Guided by his infernal plate, Rostam went on to complete his seven deeds, and further to earn a reputation as a fearsome and savage warrior. Each new battle brought Rostam greater glories and new, terrible crimes. He slew every foe he met. One story even claims that he butchered his own son in a fit of rage.
In his last and bloodiest battle, Rostam fell into a deep pit of spikes, which skewered him between the plates of the armor. Rostam himself bled to death, but the armor was not yet finished. It moved of its own accord, wading through the battlefield, slaying friend and foe alike, cackling with infernal cadence. Therefore, Rostam’s vestige is not the hero himself, but the hideous armor, which bleeds from every joint, the corpse of the so-called hero still within.
Flaw. While bound to this vestige, you gain the following flaw: “Once I draw blood, I don’t stop fighting until my enemies are dead.”
Rostam, Armor Infernal
3rd-level vestige
Bonus Proficiencies
While bound to Rostam, you gain proficiency with heavy armor, as well as with flails and morningstars.
Mortal Bargain
While bound to Rostam, whenever you are reduced to 0 hit points but not killed outright, you remain conscious and don’t begin making death saving throws until the end of your next turn. If you take any damage while you have 0 hit points, you instantly fall unconscious and suffer one death saving throw failure.
Fiendish Resilience
Whenever you take bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing damage while wearing heavy armor, you can use your reaction to reduce the damage taken by 1d12. You can further reduce the damage by an additional 1d12 for each vestige other than Rostam you have bound.
Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.
Trait: Hideous Armor
While bound to Rostam, you can use your action to summon his hideous, infernal armor around yourself, along with any melee weapon of your choice with which you are proficient. The armor is a suit of plate that can’t be destroyed, and you can wear it without penalty, regardless of your Strength score. This equipment vanishes when you dismiss them as an action, or when you are no longer bound to Rostam.
The armor seems to be alive and is terrible to gaze upon. If you make a Charisma (Intimidation) check while wearing this armor, you can treat the result as a 10, or your binder level plus your Charisma modifier, whichever is higher.
4th-Level Vestiges
La Diablesse, the Devil Woman
A creature of equal enthralling beauty and terrifying ugliness, the Devil Woman offers her binders powers over fear itself.
Legend. Long ago, the Devil Woman would disguise herself as a beautiful woman at the annual harvest festivals and lure men to their doom. In a flowing dress and wide-brimmed hat, she cut a striking figure that was irresistible to intoxicated men and disloyal husbands, who she soon lured away from the firelight and deep into the wilderness. Once far from help, the Devil Woman would reveal her true nature: the face of a rotting corpse, eyes burning like coals in their sockets, and a half-beast body, with one leg possessing a cloven foot. The terrified and disoriented men that saw her usually became hopelessly lost, plunging into ravines or falling prey to wild animals by sunrise.
Binder scholars have learned that the Devil Woman was once a mortal, perhaps even a beautiful one, cursed to become a monster. However, her vestige refuses to acknowledge her life before being cursed, and seems to prefer her hideous appearance and flowing gowns. Perhaps she found empowerment in her withering curse, or perhaps, she merely likes watching men scream and flee into the night.
Flaw. When you bind this vestige, you gain the following flaw: “I constantly seek validation from others, especially in regard to my appearance.”
La Diablesse, the Devil Woman
4th-level vestige
Evil Eye
As an action, choose one creature you can see within 60 feet of you to make a Wisdom saving throw. On a failed save, the creature is frightened of you until the end of your next turn. Only one creature can be frightened by this feature at a time.
You can extend the duration that a creature is frightened of you by one round by using your bonus action to cackle loudly. When you do so, this effect requires concentration (as if concentrating on a spell), but you can concentrate on this effect and a spell at the same time. You make only one saving throw to maintain concentration on both.
Waking Nightmare
Once on each of your turns, when a creature fails an Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma saving throw against one of your spells or vestige features, you can cause that creature to take 2d8 psychic damage.
Spellcasting: Spellbind
While bound to La Diablesse, you can cast the following spells, without expending a spell slot or material components:
2/day each: bane, darkness
1/day each: fear, phantasmal killer
You regain all expended uses of these spells when you finish a long rest.
Trait: Cloven Hoof
While bound to La Diablesse, one of your legs transforms into a cloven hoof, a mark of her enduring curse. By leveraging this curse, you can use your action to cause one creature that you can see within 60 feet of you that is frightened of you to flee. The creature must use its reaction, if available, to move as far as its speed allows away from you. The creature doesn’t move into obviously dangerous ground, such as a fire or a pit. The creature can then repeat its saving throw against the spell or effect that caused it to be frightened, ending the effect on itself on a success.
Nezare, the Broken One
Wronged by his friends and enemies alike, the hateful Nezare grants his binders his thorny flesh and boiling blood.
Legend. In ancient days, Nezare was a commoner-turned-cleric, an ordinary man who discovered that he possessed extraordinary blessings and a singular divine connection. He traveled the land and amassed a small band of followers. Together, they lived on alms and preached a peaceful message of forgiveness and complete devotion to faith, but quickly garnered enemies.
Fearful of losing his power, the wicked emperor ordered a slaughter of holy men to purge Nezare and his followers. When the soldiers came for Nezare, his followers abandoned him one by one, leaving him to die.
It is the fashion to retell the story of the Broken One in gory specificity, improvising the details for maximum shock value. Though his ultimate execution—brutal torture and impalement in front of a crowd by a soldier named Dyogena—is always the same, the tortures and tribulations he endured on his way to the stake become more gruesome with each telling. In this way, his suffering should heighten his martyrdom, but it seems his vestige would not agree. The vestige of the Broken One appears as a maimed and mutilated sheep, hateful of all holy men.
Flaw. While bound to this vestige, you gain the following flaw: “I despise all saints, clerics, paladins, and priests.”
Nezare, The Broken One
4th-level vestige
Martyr’s Path
While bound to Nezare, your hit point maximum increases by an amount equal to your binder level plus your Charisma modifier.
Blood Sacrifice
Once on each of your turns, when you hit a creature with a melee weapon attack, you can spill your own boiling blood to deal additional damage to the target. When you do so, choose a number of d8s up to your Charisma modifier of extra radiant damage to add to the damage roll. You lose 3 hit points for each additional die added to the roll.
Mercy
You can use your bonus action to regain hit points 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: Thorny Flesh
While bound to Nezare, your flesh toughens and sprouts long, sharp thorns. Whenever a creature within 5 feet of you hits you with a melee weapon attack, it takes piercing damage equal to your Charisma modifier (a minimum of 1.)
Tyche, the Luck Thief
The kindly and bold Tyche stole Luck itself, and offers it in turn to her binders.
Legend. When K’Sir scattered the words of creation, a lone commoner named Tyche uncovered the word of Luck and stole it for herself. The gods and heroes of that age scoured the world for every Word of Creation, for the Words’ power could alter the very laws of the multiverse. Many who found one became tyrants or demigods, abusing their Word until they met a grisly end, either through their misused magic or the envious daggers of others.
The gods, however, never uncovered the word for Luck. Even as the Words were compiled into Magic by Lexicon, Luck remained elusive. The commoner Tyche lived a good life, an unnaturally long and happy one, content to only use her gift to help those around her.
When the avatar of Death arrived to claim Tyche and her Luck, she greeted its cold visage cheerfully. She asked of the reaper only that she could spread Luck among those who deserved it, rather than pass it along to the gods. That way, the patient, the bold, the tenacious, and the needy might have their day. Clever as always, Death agreed, stealing a sliver of Luck for itself, such that it might win any game it plays against mortals. Tyche doesn’t seem to mind, as her vestige rolls dice with Death often, and has never lost.
Flaw. While bound to this vestige, you gain the following flaw: “I compulsively gamble, no matter the odds.”
Tyche, The Luck Thief
4th-level vestige
Bonus Proficiencies
While bound to Tyche, you gain proficiency with all gaming sets. Additionally, you can reroll any ability check you make to play nonmagical games of skill.
Lucky Hit
Once on each of your turns, when you deal damage, you can reroll a damage die, and you must use the new roll.
Stolen Luck
When you bind Tyche, roll a d20 and record the number rolled. This is your stolen luck roll. Once per turn, you can trade your stolen luck roll with any attack roll, ability check, or saving throw made by you or a creature that you can see. Your stolen luck roll becomes the number rolled for the attack roll, ability check, or saving throw, and your new stolen luck roll becomes the number that was been rolled on the d20. You can use this feature three times, and you regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.
Trait: Third Chances
While bound to Tyche, three small sigils (associated with a game of chance you are familiar with) float in front of your forehead. You can extinguish one of these sigils (no action required) to add 1d8 to an attack roll, ability check, or saving throw you make. However, once all three are extinguished, you take a −2 penalty to all subsequent attack rolls, ability checks, and saving throws you make until you finish a long rest or are no longer bound to Tyche.
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