The Binder
Holding aloft his longsword and shield, a stoic human chants the name of Savnok, the Instigator, and bloody plate armor swirls and forms around him as he charges into battle. An arrowhead, buried just beneath his skin, speaks of Savnok's presence.
A half-elf wearing a smug grin draws deeply upon the ancient power of the archmage Karsus, dispelling her enemy’s spell with one hand while casting forth a crackling beam of raw energy with the other.
Eyes rolling back in his head, a tiefling binds Paimon, Andromalius, and Malphas to himself, his twin daggers whirling as he dances around his enemies with his black teeth bared.
Some mortals are too strong-willed to allow their souls to pass into the afterlife. Some outsiders are too powerful to be absorbed into the planes. Some deities’ dreams still echo through the vaults of time to the current age. These souls, beings, and fragments of memory are known as vestiges. Binders dedicate their lives to seeking the power of the vestiges. They learn to trace special seals that can unbar the gate between this world and the void beyond reality in which the vestiges languish. Calling out the names of long-slain gods and legendary heroes, binders forge contracts with these strange entities, offering the vestiges possession of their bodies in return for power.
Class Features
As a Binder, you gain the following class features.
Hit Points
- Hit Dice: 1d8 per Binder level
- Hit Points at 1st Level: 8 + your Constituion modifier
- Hit Points at Higher Levels: 1d8 (or 5) + your Constituion modifier per Binder level after 1st
Proficiencies
- Armor: Light
- Weapons: Simple
- Tools: One artisan's tool of your choice
- Saving Throws: Wisdom, Charisma
- Skills: Choose two from Arcana, Deception, History, Intimidation, Investigation, Nature, Insight, Persuasion, Religion
Equipment
You start with the following equipment, in addition to the equipment granted by your background:
- (a) two simple melee weapons or (b) one simple weapon and a light crossbow and 20 bolts
- (a) an explorer's pack or (b) a scholar's pack
- Leather armor and a dagger
The Binder
| Level | Proficiency Bonus | Features | Maximum No. of Bonds | Maximum Vestige Level |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | +2 | Soul Binding | 1 | 1 |
| 2nd | +2 | Binder Cabal feature | 1 | 1 |
| 3rd | +2 | Bond Augmentation; Suppress Sign | 1 | 2 |
| 4th | +2 | Ability Score Improvement | 1 | 2 |
| 5th | +3 | -- | 2 | 3 |
| 6th | +3 | Binder Cabal feature | 2 | 3 |
| 7th | +3 | -- | 2 | 4 |
| 8th | +3 | Ability Score Improvement; Bond Augmentation | 2 | 4 |
| 9th | +4 | Soul Guardian | 2 | 5 |
| 10th | +4 | Binder Cabal feature | 2 | 5 |
| 11th | +4 | -- | 3 | 6 |
| 12th | +4 | Ability Score Improvement | 3 | 6 |
| 13th | +5 | Bond Augmentation | 3 | 7 |
| 14th | +5 | Binder Cabal feature | 3 | 7 |
| 15th | +5 | -- | 3 | 8 |
| 16th | +5 | Ability Score Improvement | 3 | 8 |
| 17th | +6 | -- | 4 | 9 |
| 18th | +6 | Bond Augmentation | 4 | 9 |
| 19th | +6 | Ability Score Improvement | 4 | 9 |
| 20th | +6 | Apotheosis | 4 | 9 |
Soul Binding
Through special methods known only to Binders, you can contact a vestige and bind it to yourself. At 1st level, you can bind one vestige at a time. At higher levels, you can bind multiple vestiges simultaneously, as shown on the Binder table. Your Binder level determines the maximum level of vestige you can bind, as well as all other functions related to binding vestiges, as shown on the Binder table.
At the end of a long rest, you may complete a ritual to change the vestiges to which you are bound, expelling some while contacting others. To contact a vestige, you must draw the vestige’s unique seal visibly on a surface (generally the ground), making the image at least 5 feet across. A vestige might also have other requirements for contact, as noted in its entry (see The Vestiges). Once the seal is drawn, you must call out to the vestige using both its name and its title. A manifestation of the vestige appears in the seal's space as soon as you finish the ritual. This manifestation is not the actual vestige; it is merely an illusion. The vestige ignores everyone but you. If you are able to bind multiple vestiges at a time, you contact each vestige separately. This ritual takes 10 minutes to complete.
Once you have bound a vestige, you gain its powers until the next time you finish a long rest. During that time, you cannot rid yourself of the vestige. The vestige's influence changes your general demeanor, and it can force you to perform or refrain from certain actions.
While under the influence of a vestige, you must adhere to its requirements to the best of your ability. If you are bound to and influenced by more than one vestige, you must act according to all their influences.
As long as you are bound to a vestige, you also manifest a specific physical sign of its presence, as given in its entry. This sign is real, not an illusory or shapechanging effect, and someone using true seeing perceives it just as it is. You can hide a sign by mundane or magical means without penalty. If you bind more than one vestige, you manifest all of their signs.
Vestiges are bound to your soul. They cannot be targeted, expelled, or dispelled by any means save effects that specifically target vestiges, nor can their presence be suppressed except by an antimagic field or similar effect.
Vestige Powers and Magic
Vestige powers are treated as magic. The effects of a vestige power can be detected with detect magic and can be dispelled with dispel magic, treating the power’s level as equal to half the binder’s level (rounded up). However, vestige powers are distinct from spells. Vestige powers that emulate spells still require verbal and somatic components, as listed in the spell description, but never require material components. Vestige powers that emulate spells scale as described in the power’s description, rather than by spell slot level. Vestige powers that produce magical effects but do not emulate spells (such as Amon’s fire breath) require neither verbal nor somatic components.
Vestige Power Ability
Charisma is your vestige power ability for all vestige powers granted by your pacts, so you use your Charisma whenever a power refers to your vestige power ability. In addition, you use your Charisma modifier when setting the saving throw DC for a vestige power and when making an attack roll with one.
Vestige power attack modifier = your proficiency bonus + your Charisma modifier
Vestiges of 7th Level and Above
More powerful vestiges retain a force of will that lesser vestiges lack. It is difficult for a binder to host more than one of these mighty presences at a time. When you reach 13th level as a binder, you may bind to 1 vestige of 7th level each time you contact your vestiges after a long rest. When you reach 15th level, you may also bind to 1 vestige of 8th level each time you contact your vestiges. When you reach 17th level, you may also bind to 1 vestige of 9th level each time you contact your vestiges.
Binder Cabal
At 2nd level, you choose a binder cabal that reflects your relationship with the vestiges you bind: the Cabal of the Golden Seal, the Cabal of the Leaden Crown, or the Cabal of the Silver Chalice, all detailed at the end of the class description. Your archetype choice grants you features at 2nd level and then again at 6th, 10th, and 14th level.
Bond Augmentation
Your experiences contacting vestiges from the edges and borderlands of the planes has given you special insight into the magic of the multiverse.
At 3rd level, you gain one Bond Augmentation of your choice. Your augmentation options are detailed at the end of the class description.
You gain an additional Bond Augmentation at 8th, 13th, and 18th levels. When you gain a level in this class, you can choose one of the augmentations you know and replace it with another augmentation that you could learn at that level.
Suppress Sign
Beginning at 3rd level, when you bind a vestige, you may choose to suppress either its physical sign or its influence, choosing one or the other for each vestige you bind. If you suppress a sign , you may choose to later reveal the sign as a free action. If you reveal the sign in this way, you may later suppress it again on a future turn by using a free action.
Ability Score Increase
When you reach 4th level, and again at 8th, 12th, 16th, and 19th level, you can increase one ability score of your choice by 2, or you can increase two ability scores of your choice by 1. As normal, you can’t increase an ability score above 20 using this feature.
Soul Guardian
At 9th level, you are immune to fear, charm, and confusion effects as long as you are bound to a vestige.
Apotheosis
At level 20, you have reached Apotheosis. The first time you die, your material body disappears along with all of your possessions. After 24 hours, you are automatically resurrected. Your new body reappears, imbued with vestigial power, in a Binding Seal representing your own soul. Your new body is immune to aging and disease.
The next time you die, however, your physical body disappears permanently, leaving behind your possessions. You become a vestige. You may not be resurrected, though a future binder who learns your legend may be able to temporarily call you from the void beyond reality.
Binder Cabals
Binders, being a much-persecuted group, often form small cabals of like-minded individuals. These cabals represent the various types of relationships between Binders and the vestiges they contact and summon.
Cabal of the Golden Seal
Binders of this cabal find both power and sympathy with the vestiges. They have a deep understanding of a vestige’s wish to re-experience the world from which it was expelled. Many vestiges also desire to be remembered, or even worshipped, in the hopes that they may regain a foothold in reality. The Cabal of the Golden Seal works with vestiges, devoting themselves to pursuing the agenda of a single vestige at a time. Those who follow the Golden Seal permit their devoted vestiges to experience fully the pleasures of the mortal world, and even to experience the pleasures of their dreams. In return, the vestiges jealously guard their devotees, so as to ensure their continued access to the reality they left behind.
Knight of the Seal
While not knights in a traditional sense, Binders of the Golden Seal are warriors dedicated to a vestige’s cause. They train to be at the vanguard in the battle for legendary fame or infamy.
When you choose this Cabal at 2nd level, you gain proficiency with Medium Armor, Shields, and one Martial Weapon of your choice.
Vestige Devotion
The Binders of the Golden Seal commit themselves to assisting a particular vestige, sometimes to right a perceived wrong, or perhaps to reintroduce the vestige back into mortal legends. This sort of devotion takes time, and it requires a dedicated focus to that vestige’s needs.
Beginning at 2nd level, you may select one vestige that you are capable of binding to be your devoted vestige. While you’re bound to your devoted vestige and either showing its sign or accepting its influence, you gain +1 maximum hit point per binder level. Each time you gain a level in this class, you may choose a new vestige that you are capable of binding to be your devoted vestige.
Extra Attack
Beginning at 6th level, you can attack twice, instead of once, whenever you take the Attack action on your turn.
Vestige Protection
Your devoted vestige knows you are their best chance at regaining some sort of foothold in the material world. Or perhaps they have developed a special affinity for you as they experience the world through your eyes. Either way, they are keenly motivated to keep you safe from harm, especially when you are at your most vulnerable.
At 10th level, your devoted vestige continues to protect you even while you sleep. As long as you are bound to your devoted vestige, you cannot be surprised and immediately wake at the first sign of danger.
Vestige Favor
As you grow in power, you are able to channel more of your memories and dreams back to your vestige, providing them with a greater wellspring of energy. As a result, their ability to affect the material realm grows, and they are able to exercise their powers more readily.
At 14th level, once per long rest, after you’ve used an ability from your devoted vestige that can only be used once per short rest, you may use that ability again without taking a short rest.
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Cabal of the Leaden Crown
Vestiges are desperate to return to the material world, and that is their greatest weakness. Members of the Cabal of the Leaden Crown understand this desperation and use that knowledge to exploit the lingering power of the vestiges for their personal gain. For these cabalists, the vestiges are a source of power, nothing more. They feel no particular empathy for their vestiges, any more than a woodcutter would feel empathy for the trees he chops to build a house or a fuel a fire. While not necessarily evil, the Cabal of the Leaden Crown believes that vestiges possess no true consciousness or awareness, and so they cannot feel pain, joy, or sadness. A vestige is merely a memory, and these memories exist to inform and empower the present.
Channel Vestige
The Cabal of the Leaden Crown has learned to harness the energies of the Far Planes, using vestiges as conduits for magical energy. When you choose this Cabal at 2nd level, you learn one cantrip from the sorcerer spell list.
Additionally, you learn to inscribe and cast magical rituals. You gain a ritual book containing two 1st-level spells that have the ritual tag from the sorcerer or wizard spell list. As long as you are bound to a vestige, you may cast these rituals. You can’t cast these spells except as rituals, unless you’ve learned them by some other means.
On your adventures, you may learn other ritual spells from the sorcerer or wizard spell list. When you find such a spell (such as from a spell scroll), you can add it to the book if the spell’s level is less than half your binder class level (rounded up), and if it has the ritual tag. For each level of the spell, the transcription process takes 2 hours and costs 50 gp.
Exploit Vestige
Vestiges exist at the fringes of reality and can connect a clever binder to the powers of entropy that make up the tattered edges of the universe. By exploiting this connection, you may draw additional power from your vestige.
Beginning at 2nd level, you may draw additional power from your vestige. When you use a vestige power or cast a spell that deals damage while bound to a vestige, you may re-roll a number of damage dice up to your Charisma modifier (minimum one). You must use the new rolls. You can only exploit each of your bound vestiges once per long rest.
Wrack Vestige
Vestiges are like fruits, ripe with power. A wise binder knows how to squeeze out every drop of sweet nectar and leave behind a withered husk. At 6th level, you gain the ability to draw additional power from your vestiges at their expense.
Choose one bound vestige to wrack with pain. As an action, you consume its essence to generate raw magical energy. You choose the form that this energy takes. It could be a 60 foot line, a 30 foot cone, or it could affect all creatures within a 15 foot radius of you. All creatures within the affected area must make a Dexterity saving throw. A target who fails the saving throw takes 2d8 force damage per level of vestige wracked (i.e., wracking a 5th level vestige would cause targets to take 10d8 force damage). A target who succeeds on the saving throw takes half as much damage.
If you choose to wrack a vestige in this way, you must expel that vestige at the end of your next long rest and cannot contact that vestige again for 24 hours. Once you wrack a vestige, you can’t wrack a vestige again until you finish a short or long rest.
Subjugate Vestige:
Even the most stubborn or powerful vestiges can be quelled by a display of your superior will.
At 10th level, as bonus action you may suppress both the sign and the influence of one of your bound vestiges for up to one hour or until you lose your concentration; additionally, the presence of that vestige cannot be detected by magical means while this effect is active.
Master’s Strength:
The senior binders of the Cabal of the Leaden Crown have learned that exerting their dominance over one vestige will force their other vestiges to work harder.
Starting at 14th level, after you use Exploit Vestige, Wrack Vestige, or Subjugate Vestige, you gain advantage on the next attack roll you make with a vestige ability or spell. Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.
Cabal of the Silver Chalice
Binders who have learned their art through the Cabal of the Silver Chalice are trained to find an accord with their vestiges. The Cabal of the Silver Chalice has spent more time than any other cabal interacting with vestiges beyond just forging contracts. They interview vestiges and record their histories; much of what we know of the nature of vestiges comes from the Silver Chalice libraries.
In addition, they prepare their bodies to be ideal hosts through rigorous mental, physical, and spiritual exercises, allowing them to bind more vestiges than members of other cabals. The binder provides a valuable service to the vestiges by allowing their bodies to serve as vessels for such beings. In return, the vestiges provide members of the cabal with both power and insight into the nature of the multiverse beyond the known planes.
Vessel of Memory
Through your scholastic training with the Silver Chalice, you have learned more than most about the nature of the planes and the history of the material plane. When you choose this cabal at 2nd level, you learn one language of your choice. You also gain proficiency in one of the following skills: Arcana, History, Nature, or Religion. Your proficiency bonus is doubled for any checks involving the chosen skill.
Eager Vessel
Binders trained by the Silver Chalice have learned how to renegotiate their bindings with vestiges, encouraging some vestiges to relinquish their hold while allowing others to come and take their place.
Starting at 2nd level, at the end of a short rest, you may unbind and release any number of vestiges and bind an equal number of new vestiges in their place. Any effects created by the unbound vestiges immediately end. You must still complete the ritual to summon and bind each of the new vestiges. Once you have used this feature, you cannot use it again until you have completed a long rest.
When you are binding vestiges, you may choose to ignore the special requirements for contacting one vestige.
Overflowing Vessel
The intense mental and physical exercises of the Silver Chalice have prepared your mind and body to temporarily contain additional vestigial energy. You have learned that through great effort and focus, you can inscribe the seal of a vestige in your mind and allow it access to the material world. This feat, however, is incredibly taxing. It is rumored that repeated, continued use of this training contributed to the eventual insanity of the ancient binder Dahlver-Nar.
Starting at 6th level, as an action you may temporarily bind an additional vestige above your normal limit. This vestige can be of any level you are able to bind. You do not need to perform the binding ritual; by holding the image of the seal in your mind you are able to summon the vestige forth. You may sustain this effect for up to 1 minute or until you lose your concentration. After this effect ends, you gain 1 level of exhaustion. Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.
Fervent Vessel
Because few people understand the nature of the contracts forged by binders, many believe that the binders’ bodies and minds have been warped by otherworldly influences. While the Cabal of the Silver Chalice knows this to be nothing more than superstition and misinformation, they have also learned to protect themselves by playing into the fears of such individuals.
At 10th level, while you are showing the sign and accepting the influence of all of your bound vestiges, you have resistance to psychic damage and advantage on Intimidation checks.
Soul Speech
The practice of binding yourself to many different spirits has taught you to extend parts of yourself to other living beings as well.
Starting at 14th level, while you are bound to at least three vestiges, you understand any spoken language you hear. In addition, when you speak, any creature that knows at least one language and can hear you understands what you say.
Bond Augmentations
If an augmentation has prerequisites, you must meet them to learn it. You can learn the augmentation at the same time that you meet its prerequisites.
Bind Living
Prerequisite: 18th level
You can use magic jar as a vestige power once without expending a spell slot. Once you use this power, you can’t use it again until you finish a long rest.
Bind to Service
Prerequisite: 18th level
You can use planar binding as a vestige power once without expending a spell slot. Treat this as though it had been cast with a 6th level spell slot. Once you use this power, you can’t use it again until you finish a long rest.
Essence Infusion
Your hit point maximum increases by 3.
Imbued Armor
You gain +1 AC while you are wearing armor you are proficient with.
Knowledge from Beyond
Prerequisite: 13th level
You can use contact other plane as a vestige power once without expending a spell slot. Once you use this power, you can’t use it again until you finish a long rest. Because of your extensive experience with such entities, you have advantage on the Intelligence saving throw versus the power's insanity effect and damage.
Memories Not Your Own
You gain proficiency in one skill of your choice. You also learn one language of your choice.
Otherworldly Sense
You have a +2 bonus to all initiative rolls.
Pact Ward:
You gain the blade ward cantrip as a vestige power.
You can also use mage armor as a vestige power once without expending a spell slot. Once you use this power, you can’t use it again until you finish a long rest.
Planar Slip:
You gain the thaumaturgy cantrip as a vestige power.
You can also use misty step as a vestige power once without expending a spell slot. Once you use this power, you can’t use it again until you finish a long rest.
Powerful Channelling
Prerequisite: 8th level, Cabal of the Leaden Crown
You may add your Charisma modifier to the damage you deal with cantrips.
Seal of Suleiman
Prerequisite 13th level
You can cast magic circle as a vestige power once without expending a spell slot. Treat this as though it had been cast with a 6th level spell slot. Once you use this power, you can’t use it again until you finish a long rest.
Unleash Vestige
Prerequisite: 8th level, Cabal of the Silver Chalice
You can use spirit guardians as a vestige power once without expending a spell slot. Treat this as though it had been cast with a 4th level spell slot. Once you use this power, you can’t use it again until you finish a long rest. When you use this power, an illusory manifestation of one of your vestiges appears and lashes out at nearby foes.
Vestige Might
Prerequisite 8th level; Cabal of the Golden Seal
When you use your action to use a vestige power, you can make one weapon attack as a bonus action.
Vestiges By Level
1st Level Vestiges
Amon, The Void Before The Altar
Although Amon once ruled as a deity of light and justice, his long existence as a vestige has twisted him into a monster consumed by wrath. He grants those who summon him his sight, his fiery breath, and his powerful horns.
Legend:
Scholars claim that Amon is what remains of the personality of a god who died of neglect millennia ago. Once worshiped by thousands, Amon eventually lost his faithful to more responsive deities. His will was strong enough, though, to resist eternal sleep on the Astral Plane. Since his demise, his half-existence as a vestige seems to have dramatically changed his appearance and personality. Once a calm and wise protector, a god of light and law, Amon is now a foul tempered and hateful spirit.
Special Requirement: Amon particularly despises other vestiges who aspired to godhood: Karsus, Eurynome, Tenebrous, and Zagan. If you have hosted one of these spirits within the last 24 hours, Amon refuses to answer your call. Similarly, these spirits will not answer your call if you are already bound to Amon.
Manifestation: Amon manifests in a burst of black smoke, howling foul curses at his summoner. He possesses a black wolf’s body with a ram’s head and a serpent for a tail. His mouth is filled with sharp teeth, and fire escapes it when he speaks.
Sign: You grow a ram’s curling horns.
Influence: Amon’s influence makes you surly and irritable. In addition, since Amon despises living deities of fire, sun, and law, he forces you to resist even beneficial spells cast by those devoted to such powers. You must make a saving throw to resist such a spell if one is allowed; failure allows you to gain the benefit.
Granted Abilities:
Amon grants you his sight and his breath, as well as the deadly use of his horns.
Darkvision: You gain darkvision out to 60 feet. If you already have darkvision, its range extends by 30 feet.
Fire Breath: You can vomit forth a line of fire as an action. Each creature in a 5 foot by 50 foot line must make a Dexterity saving throw. A creature takes 3d6 fire damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one. The fire ignites any flammable object in the area that isn’t being worn or carried. This power’s damage increases as your binder level increases, to 6d6 at 5th level, 9d6 at 11th level, and12d6 at 17th level. Once you use this power, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.
Ram Attack: You can use the ram’s horns that you gain from Amon’s sign as a natural weapon that deals 1d6 points of bludgeoning damage plus your Strength modifier. You are proficient with these horns. If you move at least 20 feet straight toward a creature before hitting it with a ram attack, the target takes an extra 1d8 bludgeoning damage. You cannot use this ability if you do not show Amon’s sign.
Aym, Queen Avarice
Once a monarch of dwarves, Aym allowed her greed to bring an end to her empire. As a vestige, she gives her host the ability to wear armor without impedance, to set objects and creatures alight with a touch, and to resist the effects of fire.
Legend:
Dwarven legends depict Aym as the greediest dwarf queen who ever lived. Modern-day dwarves still spit at the mention of her name. Not long after Moradin first forged the dwarves, Aym arose as a great leader among them. Greed brought her to power, and greed consumed her while she ruled. Dwarves mined furiously in response to Aym’s constant demand for more gems and precious metals, and her people became virtual slaves to their work. As onerous as Aym’s rule was, however, all this mining greatly expanded the dwarves’ territory, and many dwarven clans grew quite wealthy. Jealous of the dwarves’ wealth and smarting from their conquests, a great horde of orcs, giants, and goblinoids banded into an army to assault Aym’s kingdom. The dwarves fought bravely, but because their forces were stretched so thin across Aym’s empire, they could not respond quickly enough to the horde’s concentrated assault on their capital. Legend has it that when the fires of the burning city reached her, Aym stood among a hundred wagons laden with gold that her servants had loaded in preparation for her flight. But so engrossed was she in counting the coins to make certain she didn’t lose a copper that she didn’t notice the danger until the fires began to melt the coins in her grasp. Rather than repenting her greed at the point of her death, Aym cursed Moradin for not protecting her, and in return, Moradin cursed her.
Special Requirement: You must be able to speak Dwarven in order to summon Aym.
Manifestation: Aym arises from a coiled heap within the seal. She has two great worms for legs and three heads—one a lion’s, one a female dwarf’s, and one a bull’s. Her powerfully muscled torso strains beneath the finery of an empress, and her fingers glitter with more than a dozen jeweled rings. In one hand she holds a red-hot, star-shaped branding iron, and with the other, she holds shut the lion head’s mouth. Aym speaks through her dwarf head, since both animal heads are incapable of speech. She prefers to keep the lion muzzled because if she doesn’t, it roars and causes the bull’s head to low in terror, making it impossible for her to hear.
Sign: While you host Aym, you bear a star-shaped brand on the palm of your left hand or on your forehead, as you choose at the time you bind her.
Influence: Under Aym’s influence, you become stingy and greedy, begrudging every coin or item of value that you or your group must give to another. At the same time, she requires that you give a coin (copper, silver, gold, or platinum, as you choose) to every dwarf you meet within 10 rounds of learning his name.
Granted Abilities:
Aym grants you powers that reflect her dwarven heritage and the ruin she brought to her kingdom.
Dwarven Step: Your speed is not reduced by wearing heavy armor or by being encumbered.
Halo of Fire: As an action, you can shroud yourself in a wreath of flame. If a creature hits you with a melee attack while you wear your halo of fire, the creature takes 1d8 fire damage. You can also make a melee vestige attack, which deals 1d8 points of fire damage on a hit. Your own flame does not harm you, nor does it ignite objects unless you will it to do so. This vestige attack’s damage increases as your binder level increases, to 2d8 at 5th level, 3d8 at 11th level, and 4d8 at 17th level.
Dwarven Proficiency: You gain proficiency with medium armor, throwing hammers, and warhammers. If you are already proficient with medium armor, you gain advantage on saving throws and skill checks versus being pushed or pulled.
Resistance to Fire: You have resistance to fire damage.
Leraje, The Green Herald
Once a favored servant of the primary deity of the elves, Leraje allowed her pride to become her downfall. Leraje gives her summoners the ability to fire a bow with accuracy, to hide in nature, and to damage multiple foes with a single arrow.
Legend:
Tales of Leraje’s prowess with a bow exist to this day, although her feats are now ascribed to deities and other great heroes, and most elves think her legend is heresy. Pact magic treatises maintain that Corellon Larethian called upon Leraje to be his first herald among mortals. She taught the elves how to make and use bows, though none could ever come close to matching her prowess. Legend holds that she killed Thessala, goddess of hydras, by shooting a single arrow through all one thousand of her heads, thereby causing her children, the hydras, to be dull and crude throughout eternity.
One day, Leraje helped Corellon save Lolth, who had not yet fallen from grace, from an ambush set by Gruumsh. Lolth praised Leraje for her skills, claiming that not even Corellon could fire an arrow as fast or as accurately as his herald. Leraje beamed under the compliment, and a bemused Corellon challenged her to an archery duel to settle the matter. When Leraje agreed, Corellon declared their target: her heart. Corellon expected his servant to realize the error of her pride and yield the contest, but Leraje instead brought up her bow, aimed an arrow at Corellon, and pulled back the string. Surprised, he raised his own bow and fired at her. Leraje released her bowstring at that same moment, aiming not at the god but at the arrow that sped toward her heart. Leraje’s arrow met that of her deity in midair and ricocheted back, piercing her heart before Corellon’s arrowhead even touched her chest. As punishment for wasting her life for the sake of her stubborn pride, Corellon Larethian cast Leraje’s soul from heaven and earth.
Special Requirement: To summon Leraje, you must speak elven. You must also break an arrow crafted by an elf while calling out Leraje’s name and title.
Manifestation: Leraje appears before her summoner as though she had always been there, but camoufl aged so well that she could not be seen. First her dull eyes open, then her yellowed teeth come into view out of seeming nothingness, revealed in a sly smile. As Leraje moves, her body takes shape against the background, and her clothes and skin change color to reveal her as an elf archer dressed in beautifully decorated green leather armor. Although she was clearly beautiful at some point, the ravages of some toxin or disease have made her hair limp, yellowed her eyes and teeth, and made her skin pockmarked and sallow.
Sign: You look sickly and diseased, and your skin becomes sallow and pockmarked.
Influence: While influenced by Leraje, you become quiet and unassuming. Leraje still feels considerable guilt about the actions that led her to become a vestige, so she requires that you not attack any elf or creature of elven blood, including half-elves and members of the various elf subraces, such as drow.
Granted Abilities:
You gain supernatural powers related to Leraje’s skills in life, as well as the ability to fire arrows that bounce between targets.
Elven Stealth: You gain proficiency in the Stealth skill. You can attempt to hide even when you are only lightly obscured by foliage, heavy rain, mist, and other natural phenomena.
Ricochet: When you make a bow attack against a single target, you may make a second bow attack against a creature within range and within 5 feet of the initial target as a bonus action. This second attack uses the same piece of ammunition as the first.
Elven Proficiency: While bound to Leraje, you are proficient with longbows and shortbows. If you were already proficient with either of these weapons, you instead ignore half cover when making attack rolls with that weapon.
Naberius, The Grinning Hound
A cunning and mysterious vestige, Naberius can make his summoners adept at speaking, able to mock their foes, and commanding in their speech.
Legend:
Though Naberius’s origin remains mysterious, binder scholars know that his name and form have changed many times over the centuries. Ancient pact magic texts refer to a spirit matching Naberius’s powers as Naberus, Kaberon, Cerbere, and Serberius. One of these spirits appeared as a noble, bird-headed man, another as a dog with a crane’s head, another as a wolf with fifty heads and a tail of three entwined snakes, and the fourth as a heap of bodies surrounded by a cloud of flies. A few fiendish sages have suggested that Naberius might be an aspect of the three-headed, doglike creature that guards the gates to the Underworld on the third layer of Hades, but that creature is thought to be simpleminded and has never been known to speak. Naberius never admits to having had older forms or names, and questions about his origin get only a sly smile in reply.
Special Requirement: Naberius values knowledge, industry, and the willingness to deceive. He manifests only for a summoner who is proficient in Deception, History, or any artisan’s tools.
Manifestation: Naberius’s manifestation begins with a great squawking and flutter of feathers. Moments later, a black crane flies in an agitated fashion over the seal, then crashes down atop it, apparently dead. Naberius then stalks forward out of invisibility as a three-headed hound to feast upon the crane. He speaks hoarsely from whichever dog head isn’t eating at the moment. Despite his terrible appearance and raucous voice, Naberius somehow manages to seem amiable and eloquent.
Sign: Your voice deepens and acquires a gravelly, growling tone.
Influence: While you are influenced by Naberius, you love the sound of your own voice and are constantly pleased by your cleverness. Whenever you are presented with a pulpit, a stage, a talking stick, or any other place or object designed to give a speaker the floor, Naberius requires that you immediately seize the opportunity to speak. Any topic will do, but since Naberius resents others taking control of the discourse, he requires that you either shout them down or mock them. Your speech must last a number of rounds equal to your binder level to satisfy Naberius.
Granted Abilities:
Naberius grants you the power to mock your opponents and talk your way through danger.
Vicious Mockery: You can use the vicious mockery cantrip as a vestige power. The damage of this power increases as your binder level increases, to 2d4 at 5th level, 3d4 at 11th level, and 4d4 at 17th level.
Persuasive Words: You can use command as a vestige power. The number of targets this power affects increases as your binder level increases, to 3 targets at 5th level, 5 targets at 11th level, and 7 targets at 17th level. Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.
Silver Tongue: When you make a Persuasion or Deception check, you can roll a d4 and add the number rolled to the check. You can roll the die before or after making the check.
Ronove, The Iron Maiden
Ronove remained a mystery for ages, but binder scholars now believe her to have been a human ascetic who lived more than two thousand years ago. As a vestige, she grants her summoners the power to move objects at a distance, to strike with the skill of a monk, and to fall as lightly as a feather.
Legend:
Many binder scholars credit Ronove with laying the foundation for orders of monks, and indeed, her philosophies and abilities bear a strong resemblance to the training that monks now receive. In life, Ronove was a charismatic guru who taught that enlightenment comes from denial—first of the needs of the flesh, then of the perceived limits of reality, and lastly of the rules of reality. Her frequent demonstrations of power served to illustrate the validity of her ideas to others. She leapt from cliffs without harm, lifted boulders with her thoughts, and lived for months without eating or drinking. Although Ronove gathered many followers, not one of her disciples could manage her great feats. Some began to question her methods.
To prove the veracity of her teachings, Ronove secluded herself in an iron coffin, telling her students to bury her and dig her up only when they received a sign from her. Years passed, and no sign came. One by one, her followers lost faith and deserted her. At last only one remained. Disillusioned, he dug up the rusted sarcophagus, only to find it empty. He tracked down his fellow disciples to tell them of the miracle, but none believed him. Ronove and her nameless disciple would have been lost to obscurity, but her lone faithful follower inscribed his story on the walls of a cavern. The recent discovery of this inscription explains the strange powers and appearance of Ronove.
Special Requirement: Ronove’s seal must be drawn in the soil under the sky.
Manifestation: When Ronove manifests, the ground quakes, and a rusted iron sarcophagus erupts from the earth within her seal, shedding dirt and flakes of rust as it grates upward. The metal visage of a human woman is discernible on the lid. The metal bindings holding the lid closed burst in clouds of corroded metal, and the sarcophagus creaks open, releasing a tumble of human bones and noisome black liquid. Ronove does not speak to her summoner, but the visage on the lid smiles or frowns during the pact-making process.
Sign: The flesh of your face settles into a smile if you are under Ronove’s influence or a frown if you have suppressed her influence. It retains that general expression regardless of your actual feelings. This alteration to your visage does not affect your Charisma, Charisma-based skill checks, or others’ ability to make Insight checks against you.
Influence: Ronove’s influence makes you think that others doubt your abilities and competence. Despite what anyone says, you feel the constant need to prove your worth. In addition, Ronove requires that you consume neither food nor beverages (including potions) for the entire time you remain bound to her.
Granted Abilities:
Ronove gives you the power to fall any distance without harm, lift objects without touching them, and punch with iron strength.
Far Hand: You can use the mage hand cantrip as a vestige power. The weight of objects you can lift with this power increases as your binder level increases, to 50 pounds at 5th level, 100 pounds at 11th level, and 1,000 pounds at 17th level.
Telekinetic Push: You can use telekinetic force to make a shove attempt against a creature within 60 feet, using your vestige ability contested by the target’s Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check, the target chooses the ability to use. If you succeed, you may push the target up to 15 feet away from you or knock them prone. Once you have used this power, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.
Feather Fall: You automatically fall as though under the influence of a feather fall spell. You can suppress or activate this ability as a reaction when you fall.
Ronove’s Fists: You are proficient with your unarmed strikes. You can use Dexterity instead of Strength for attack and damage rolls with unarmed strikes You can roll a d4 for damage in place of the normal damage of your unarmed strikes. This damage die increases as your binder level increases, to a d6 at 5th level, a d8 at 11th level, and a d10 at 17th level. When you use the Attack action with an unarmed strike, you can make one unarmed strike as a bonus action.
2nd Level Vestiges
Dahlver-Nar, The Tortured One
Once a human binder, Dahlver-Nar now grants powers just as other vestiges do. He gives his summoners a frightening moan, protection against madness, and the ability to enhance your bonds.
Legend:
Bards tell two stories of Dahlver-Nar, both linked to the magic items that carry his name—the teeth of Dahlver-Nar. Some say that because Dahlver-Nar was antiquity’s most powerful cleric, his followers treated his teeth as holy relics after his death and they somehow gained magical powers through this veneration. Others insist that Dahlver-Nar was a cleric of little consequence who discovered some magic dragon teeth in the ruins of a red dragon’s lair. In this version of the story, the teeth were named after Dahlver-Nar because he became a terror in the region where he acquired them. Binder scholars know a different story—that Dahlver-Nar was a powerful cleric who forsook his deity to pursue the power of pact magic. The fabled teeth of Dahlver-Nar, to which all the legends attribute miraculous powers, were neither his own nor those of the dragon he battled. They were the teeth of beings that became vestiges after death, and they could grant abilities similar to those that the vestiges themselves imparted. Pact magic treatises relate that Dahlver-Nar pulled out his own teeth and replaced them with those of the vestiges, but that using them all drove him mad. What happened thereafter is a matter of debate, but the texts maintain that Dahlver-Nar eventually died, and the teeth were lost, divided up among the squabbling followers he had managed to gain and then spread across the world. Today, Dahlver-Nar exists as a vestige in his own right—perhaps brought to that state through his close association with so many others.
Manifestation: Dahlver-Nar’s frightful apparition floats in the air above his seal, with arms and legs hanging limply. Teeth and fangs of all kinds stud his entire body, replacing even his eyes. What skin is visible between the teeth appears to be the moist, pink flesh of gums. Dahlver-Nar’s mouth is a bloody ruin that clearly lacks teeth, and when he opens it to speak, only a moan issues forth. Some binders believe that his vestige form is a punishment inflicted by the other vestiges, but others insist that he appears as he does because of his everlasting obsession with the teeth that bear his name.
Sign: Several teeth grow from your scalp. Though they are small enough to be hidden by a large quantity of hair or a hat, a touch reveals them immediately.
Influence: You shift quickly from distraction to extreme focus and back again. Sometimes you stare blankly off into space, and at other times you gaze intently at the person or task at hand. Since Dahlver-Nar dislikes any task that requires more than 1 round of concentration (such as some spellcasting, concentration on an effect, or any action that requires a Concentration check), he requires that you undertake no such activities while under his influence.
Granted Abilities:
Dahlver-Nar and blends his madness with your sanity, lending you some of his icy and maddening powers.
Mad Soul: When you are bound to Dahlver-Nar, you have resistance to psychic damage and are immune to madness, insanity, and confusion effects.
Maddening Moan: You can emit a frightful moan as an action. Roll 5d10; the total is how many hit points of creatures this power can effect. Creatures in a 30-foot cone originating from you are affected in ascending order of their current hit points (ignoring unconscious creatures and creatures that are deafened or can’t hear).This amount increases as your binder level increases, to 7d10 at 5th level, 9d10 at 11th level, and 11d10 at 17th level.
Starting with the creature that has the lowest current hit points, each creature affected by this spell is visibly dazed and can’t take actions or reactions until the start of your next turn. Subtract each creature’s hit points from the total before moving on to the creature with the next lowest hit points. A creature’s hit points must be equal to or less than the remaining total for that creature to be affected. Once you use this power, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.
Heightened Binding: When you use a vestige power that forces a creature to make a saving throw to resist its effects, you can give one target of the spell disadvantage on its first saving throw made against the power. Once you use this power, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.
Biting Cold: You may use the frostbite cantrip as a vestige power
Haagenti, Mother of Minotaurs
Haagenti tricked the god of frost giants and paid a terrible price for that deed. She girds her summoners for battle and gives them the power to shapeshift.
Legend:
The tale of how minotaurs originated changes according to the culture and race of the teller, but frost giants blame Haagenti.
Thrym, their primary deity, had tried to force a goddess of the humans to marry him and failed when her brother disguised himself as Thrym’s bride and disrupted the ceremony. The angry and humiliated god consoled himself with dalliances among his giant worshipers. Haagenti, a hill giant sorceress, learned of his liaisons and used a spell to transform herself into a beautiful frost giant so that she might bear Thrym’s powerful half-god children. Her ploy succeeded, and a year later she gave birth to twin sons. Once the children of his dalliances had grown old enough, Thrym set out to visit and test them all. He fought each child to see who was the strongest and bravest, intending to invite the most fit to join him in Jotunheim. When he sought out Haagenti, he found her herding cattle in the warm lowlands and became enraged when he saw her true form. But when he raised his axe to fell her, two horribly ugly giants leapt to her defense.
Thrym realized to his disgust that they were his sons. Thrym would have destroyed them at that moment, but he suddenly realized that Haagenti had taught him a valuable lesson. His failed attempt at marriage had been fouled by a beautiful form created through trickery, and now he had fallen victim to the same ruse again. Rather than kill Haagenti and her children, Thrym cursed them to resemble the cattle with which they wallowed, turning them into minotaurs. Then he left, vowing to teach his frost giant worshipers to distrust all beauty. How Haagenti became a vestige is unclear, but binder lore holds that her guilt at ruining beauty for the frost giants was so great that she could not bear to exist in any place that held beauty of any kind. Since every place in the planes seems beautiful to some being, she could find no eternal home anywhere. Haagenti refuses to speak on the subject and becomes angry when questioned about her past.
Special Requirement: To summon Haagenti, you must be either Large or able to speak Giant.
Manifestation: When Haagenti is summoned, a huge icicle thrusts up from the ground within the confines of her seal. Haagenti’s blurry white form can be seen moving within the ice for a moment, then she spreads her arms and shatters her icy prison. Although she appears with her back to her summoner, her form is clearly that of a winged minotaur. Haagenti waves her ice shield and battle axe to disperse the cold mist around her, then turns to face her summoner, revealing her bull-like face and icicle beard. Her frost-rimed fur is pure white, and her horns appear to be made of ice. Her powerfully muscled form doesn’t appear female, but her smooth voice sounds quite feminine.
Sign: You possess the same features as you always did, but they somehow make you more ugly than before. Others easily recognize you, but small differences make you less appealing to look upon. In addition, your bulk expands until you weigh half again as much as you did before.
Influence: You feel ashamed and occasionally bashful in the presence of beautiful creatures. In addition, Haagenti requires that you give deference to any creature you perceive as more attractive or charismatic than yourself. This deference might take the form of a bow, a salute, opening a door for the creature in question, not speaking until spoken to, or any other gesture that acknowledges the creature as superior to you. In any case, you must constantly treat any such creature with respect or suffer the penalty for defying Haagenti’s influence.
Granted Abilities:
Haagenti grants you some of Thrym’s skill with arms and armor, plus her own affinity for transformation.
Disguise Self: You may use the disguise self spell as a vestige power. Once you have used this power, you cannot use it again until you have finished a short or long rest.
Giantish Form: You may use the enlarge/reduce spell as a vestige power with a range of self only. Once you have used this power, you cannot use it again until you have finished a short or long rest.
Minotaur Proficiencies: You are proficient with the battleaxe, throwing axe, and with shields. If you are already proficient with shields, you gain +1 to your AC when you’re wielding a shield and a one-handed axe.
Direction Sense: You always know which way is north. At 11th level you become immune to the effects of the maze spell.
Malphas, The Turnfeather
Malphas allows his summoners to see without being seen, to vanish from sight, and to poison their enemies.
Legend:
Only elves who know their history well are familiar with the story of Malphas, a lesser scion of an ancient elven kingdom’s ruling family. Malphas joined a druidic order under pressure from his elders, who hoped that enforced dedication to nature would teach him greater respect for their traditions and the elven way of life. After a contentious start, the plan seemed to work. Malphas, always the black sheep of the family, soon became a model member of the elven nobility. His trademark, a white dove’s feather, could be found at sites where good deeds had been done, although no one ever saw him perform them. This impression was all part of Malphas’s act.
While studying the druidic traditions, he met another elf druid—a female who won his heart with guile and promises of power. Together they hatched a plan to make Malphas heir to the throne. While his white feathers turned up wherever good events were occurring, black feathers began to appear on the murdered corpses of royalty. Elf diviners soon discovered that Malphas was at the root of their troubles, and the traitorous elf was forced to flee. Malphas flew to his lover’s hideaway among the trees, intending to warn her and flee with her. But when she heard his story, she flew into a rage, mocking him for his stupidity and his overtures of affection. To wound him even more deeply, she revealed her true form—that of a drow. When the elf authorities found Malphas, he lay on the ground, dead not from magic or physical harm, but from the breaking of his heart and the loss of his soul.
Manifestation: Malphas begins his manifestation with a furious fluttering of white doves. The creatures explode out of thin air, then fly away from each other and fade from view, revealing a handsome male elf clad in black. Malphas has pale skin, black eyes, and black feathers for hair. His smile reveals black teeth, and when he speaks, his black tongue licks the air like a snake’s. Malphas wears a noble’s finery in funerary black, and a cloak made of raven heads and feathers hangs from his shoulders. The heads start up a raucous cry whenever he moves too much, so he remains largely still, making only small gestures with his black-gloved hands. Malphas’s hoarse voice croaks and cracks when he speaks, a quality that annoys him greatly.
Sign: Your teeth and tongue turn black.
Influence: While influenced by Malphas, you fall in love too easily. A kind word or a friendly gesture can cause you to devote yourself entirely to another person. Should that person reject your affection, your broken heart mends the moment another attractive person shows you some kindness. In addition, if you have access to poison, Malphas requires that you employ it against your foes at every opportunity.
Granted Abilities:
Malphas grants you the ability to spy without detection, to disappear, and to use poison safely.
Bird’s Eye Viewing: When you bind to Malphas, a familiar in the form of a dove or raven (your choice) appears on your shoulder. The familiar functions exactly as though it had been summoned by the find familiar spell, except that you may share senses with your familiar at any range as long as you are on the same plane and its duration ends as soon as you are no longer bound to Malphas.
Invisibility: As an action, you may use the invisibility spell as a vestige power. Once you use this power, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.
Poison Use: While you are bound to Malphas, you gain proficiency with the poisoner’s kit.
Virulent Breath: You can use the poison spray cantrip as a vestige power.
Primus, the First and the Prime
Formerly a being of godlike power, Primus sought to make logic and law rule over all the multiverse and in doing so made its own existence illogical. Primus aids binders in battling chaos and gives them the power to enforce orders they give to others.
Legend:
According to obscure planar lore, Primus was a being of law so ordered that none but its race of servants—strange creatures know as modrons—could bear to worship it. Beings of pure order, dedicated to advancing precision and structure throughout the multiverse, the modrons obey Primus as their god and master. The First and the Prime represented the race’s most absolute ideal of perfect logic, its every command trickling down through an impossibly complex chain of lieutenants, sub-chiefs, executors, and managers to reach the ears of every being in its service. Thus, the modrons worked order upon the multiverse, and the word of Primus was that order.
In the far-flung reaches of Mechanus, on the sixty-four modron-controlled cogs known as Regulus, there exists a fantastically complex clock-work fortress known as the Great Modron Cathedral. From this throne Primus dictated the path of each of its followers. To aid its reasoning, great knowledge constantly streamed into Primus’s cathedral and powerful magical creations, forged from the perfectly attuned gears of the plane,offered windows onto the whole of the multiverse. One of these magics was the Grand Orrery, an unfathomably intricate device that measured the shifting of power, planes, and planets, deducing their cosmic and multiplanar meanings. A cadre of majordomos reported the Grand Orrery’s telling directly to Primus, as well as happenings relayed to them in turn from networks of agents stretched across the multiverse. At the same time, Primus personally monitored its minions employing another powerful device known as the Infinity Web. Through this waxy confluence of cords and strands, Primus’s consciousness stretched through its subordinate modrons, witnessing events throughout infinite realities. Thus, the One and the Prime observed as much as any deity and more.
It was the information that spiraled around the modron throne, the prophecies and reports of the Grand Orrery and the Infinity Web, that led to Primus’s end. Seated as he was at the hub of the largest network of information in the multiverse there were those who envied Primus’s Knowledge. Thus, when the demon prince Orcus, as his shadow-self Tenebrous, carved his bloody path through the planes on his unholy quest for divinity, Primus became one of the first casualties. Seeking his lost rod, Tenebrous infiltrated the First and the Prime’s sanctuary and ended the incredulous being with a killing word, adopting its form to bend its intelligence network and legions of servants to his foul purposes. Countless modrons were lost obeying Tenebrous’s cruel whims and when the would-be god gleaned all he desired, he cast off his façade and left the modron hierarchy in shambles.
With the loss of their god and leader, a member of Primus’s most immediate lieutenants—the Secundus—took up the mantle of the Supreme Modron. This new Primus seeing its people crippled, its cathedral invaded, and its magic corrupted, turned its race’s attentions inward, calling all modron survivors back to Regulus and sealing the borders. Since that time few modrons have been seen throughout the multiverse and their current actions remain mysterious.Yet despite the first Primus’s apparent destruction, a being whose consciousness stretches across planes cannot so easily be destroyed. From the minds and memories of thousands of tormented modrons on contact with it at the moment of its destruction, a vestige of the old Primus arose. While logic, law, and a structured multiverse once dictated its every action, a new directive now inspires this methodical ghost of order: the destruction of Tenebrous and all similar beings of chaos.
Special Requirement: Primus refuses to appear before a binder already bound to Tenebrous. If the binder has bound to Tenebrous at any point in the past, Primus knows and requires that its sign be drawn in conditions of bright light.
Manifestation: When Primus begins to appear, its seal seems to rise up as a floating platform and become a bronze gear with dozens of smaller cogs and mechanisms within, all whirring and clicking as they turn. A yellow glow shines up from the ground and through the gears, dimming slightly just before Primus appears in a burst of rainbow light Primus stands fully 10 feet tall atop the floating gear-work, its lower body merging with the glow that rises from the floor. Humanoid in shape, Primus’s genderless body seems to be made of solid gold.Primus stands silently and impassively, saying nothing, it’s face devoid of all features. When the binder at last decides to say something, Primus suddenly speaks, its voice sounding hollow and cold, “Who summons us?” Once uttered, two holes open on Primus’s blank visage where eyes should be, and each dark void spills black fluid down Primus’s face. Where the liquid flows, the vestige’s golden body sizzles away in thin layers, as through Primus’s tears burn away its body. No matter how deep the channels this darkness creates grow, Primus never flinches.
Sign: Dozens of small patches of skin on the binder’s legs and arms become gold, silver, and bronze.These randomly placed metal plates take the shape of well-formed squares, equilateral triangles, hexagons,and other geometric shapes. These pieces of metal do not offer any bonus or inhibit the character in anyway. If removed, they revert to bloody flaps of flesh.
Influence: Primus shows its influence by making a binder ruthlessly practical. The binder evaluates all activities with an eye towards its ultimate goals, brooking no frivolity or distraction. Every action becomes a calculated move. In addition, Primus requires that the binder not knowingly break any law or disobey the direct order of any lawful authority.
Granted Abilities:
Primus grants binders the ability to combat chaos, to gain benefit from orderly behavior,and to briefly access its ability to rule logically.
Divine Structure: If you perform the same actions on consecutive rounds in the same order, you may add +2 to a single d20 roll made as part of that action. For example, if you move and make an attack, and then in the following round move and make an attack, you would add a +2 to your attack roll. But if you move and use a vestige power in the third round, you would lose the bonus.
You must declare your intention to follow through with these actions before you can use the +2 bonus. If you deviate from this orderly plan of action after using the bonus, you lose this vestige feature until you take a long rest.
Mind over Emotion: You can use the calm emotions spell as a vestige power. Once you use this power, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.
Sense Disarray: You gain proficiency in the Perception skill while you are bound to Primus.
Savnok, The Instigator
Once a servant of gods, Savnok now grants his summoners the ability to wear heavy armor which protects against all but piercing wounds, and to thunderously rebuke foes.
Legend:
Savnok lived before recorded history. His story contains about as much myth as it does fact, since the barrier between truth and fiction eroded long before the current age. According to the legend, Savnok served Hextor and Heironeous before the two half-brothers came to blows. The gods were charged with guarding their mother’s arms and armor while she met with her lovers. Both Hextor and Heironeous were awed and tempted by their mother’s implements of war, but neither son dared disobey his mother. Seeing their desires written clearly upon their faces, however, Savnok devised a means to steal the items or his masters. Relying on their trust in him, Savnok tricked Hextor and Heironeous into letting him guard their mother’s armory. But once his gaze fell on the goddess’s armor, Savnok could not resist donning it. Just touching the metal made him drunk with power. After putting it on, he knew he could never take it off, so he fled the godly realms with the divine armor. Hextor and Heironeous soon noticed that their servant and the armor were missing. When they looked for Savnok, they found him at war on the Material Plane. Since no energy or mortal weapon could pierce the goddess’s armor, Savnok had decided to set about carving out a kingdom for himself.
Shocked at his betrayal and horrified by their own failure to perform their duties, Hextor and Heironeous appeared before Savnok and ordered him to relinquish their mother’s armor. Their former servant responded by attacking, and although he could not harm them, neither could they harm him. Heironeous flew into the sky and tore thunderbolts from the clouds to hurl at Savnok, but Hextor, realizing that they needed deific weapons to defeat the armor, fled back to his mother’s armory. There, he found a bow and grabbed a handful of arrows, then returned to find Heironeous still hurling lightning with little effect. Hextor barely had the strength to draw his mother’s bow, but draw it he did. With each arrow he fired, a dozen missiles streaked down to strike Savnok.
Though the arrows had little power behind them, they did pierce the armor, and as Savnok raged at the injustice the two gods had done him, he slowly bled to death from dozens of small wounds. When at last Savnok lay dead, Hextor and Heironeous removed the armor and debated what to do next. Not only had they failed to guard their mother’s armory, but Hextor had also stolen her bow and arrows. It was Hextor who suggested that they hide Savnok and replace the items, leaving their mother none the wiser. Heironeous didn’t like the plan, but he wanted to protect his half-brother. After all, Hextor’s theft had solved a problem for which Heironeous was partly responsible and prevented Savnok from wreaking still more havoc in the mortal lands. Together, the two gods hid Savnok’s essence in a place even they could not reach. Heironeous has regretted this decision ever since.
Special Requirement: To summon Savnok, you must have stolen something and made neither reparations nor apology for that act.
Manifestation: The first sign of Savnok’s manifestation is an arrow streaking out of thin air to strike something unseen above his seal. Then a dozen more arrows whistle into the seal, each one landing with a metallic ping. Trickles of blood spout into the air where the arrows hang, and as more strike home, the blood gradually outlines a heavily armored form that seems too broad and powerfully built to be human. Savnok’s features are obscured by his plate armor and helm, as well as the rivulets of blood and the many arrows that pepper his body. When Savnok speaks, he spits out bitter words with a gravelly voice that seems heavy with resentment.
Sign: A piece of an arrow appears under your skin somewhere on your body. It looks as though your skin has healed over a broken-off arrow that had previously wounded you. The arrow deals no damage, but at times it causes you some discomfort. If removed, it disintegrates immediately, and another appears somewhere else on your body.
Influence: Savnok’s influence makes you headstrong and recalcitrant. Once you make up your mind about a particular issue, very little can change your thoughts on the matter. In addition, whenever you don armor, employ a shield, or wear any other item that improves your AC, Savnok requires that you not remove that protection for any reason.
Granted Abilities:
Savnok grants you abilities associated with his death and his stolen, godly armor.
Call Armor: At will as an action, you can summon a suit of full plate armor, which appears about your body. You can dismiss the armor with another action. The called armor grows stronger as your binder level increases: it appears as +1 full plate armor at 11th level and +2 full plate armor at 17th level.
Heavy Armor Proficiency: You are proficient with heavy armor.
Savnok’s Armor: While wearing your called armor, you can ignore some of the damage from attacks by non-piercing weapons. You gain resistance to bludgeoning and slashing damage from non-magical sources. The effect of this power increases as your binder level increases: at 11th level you have resistance to all bludgeoning and slashing damage, and at 17th level you become immune to critical hits from bludgeoning and slashing attacks.
Blade of Avarice: You may use the booming blade cantrip as a vestige power.
3rd Level Vestiges
Andromalius the Repentant Rogue
Once the favorite of the god Olidammara, Andromalius now exists as a vestige. His granted abilities help his summoners beat rogues and ne’er-do-wells at their own game.
Legend:
Once the herald of Olidammara, Andromalius foreswore theft and mischief on his deathbed, repenting all the actions he had taken on behalf of his god during his life. By this means, he hoped to steal his soul from his deity, thus accomplishing his greatest theft and prank in history, and proving himself the most worthy of his god’s favor.
At first angered by Andromalius’s betrayal, Olidammara quickly realized the irony of the moment and burst into laughter. Yet the god’s good humor was short-lived, because he realized that to accept Andromalius’s soul would be to prevent the theft and ruin the joke. Since Olidammara was loath to let such a clever servant to go to the realm of some other god, he repaid his servant’s honor a hundredfold—he stole Andromalius’s soul from the cosmos, making it a vestige. Whether Andromalius deemed this result an honor or not remains unclear. Special Requirement: You must obtain two different nonmagical items similar to those that Andromalius holds in his hands when he manifests and place them within the confines of his seal when you summon him. These items vanish as soon as Andromalius appears.
Manifestation: Andromalius appears as a middle-aged but lithe human male in the garb of a jester. Each of his arms splits at the elbow into a dozen forearms, and he holds a small object in each of his twenty-four hands. Though his costume and overall appearance change from one manifestation to another, the specific collection of objects never does—a fact that has sparked a long-standing debate among binder scholars. The items are: a belt purse, a silver key, a gold ring, a pair of dice, a copper coin, a dagger, an apple, an arm bone, a scroll, a comb, a whistle, a fish hook, a mirror, an egg, a potion, a dead spider, an oak leaf, a human skull, a lock, a closed black book, a bell, a dove, a set of lockpicks, and a mouse. When Andromalius returns whence he came, he juggles these illusory items and then tosses one to his summoner. Some scholars claim that the item thrown indicates a future event, but that the specific meaning depends on which other objects are held in the hands of that same arm.
Sign: You gain an extra digit on each limb. This appendage prevents you from wearing normal gloves or gauntlets, but magic gloves and gauntlets reshape to fit you.
Influence: When influenced by Andromalius, you become a devious mischief-maker who delights in causing small calamities—especially misunderstandings between friends and incidents of mistaken identity. However, Andromalius cannot now abide acts of theft, so he forbids you to steal from a creature, take an item from a dead body, or remove someone else’s possession from a location without permission so long as you are under the jurisdiction of an authority whose laws expressly forbid such activities. By the same logic, you cannot take possession of any object that you know to be stolen.
Granted Abilities:
The abilities that Andromalius grants help you catch thieves and return stolen goods, entertain the masses, and punish wrongdoers.
Jester’s Mirth: As an action, you may use the spell Tasha’s Hideous Laughter as a vestige power. Once you use this power, you can’t use it again until you have finished a short or long rest.
Sense Trickery: While you are bound to Andromalius, you gain advantage on Wisdom (Perception and Insight), and Intelligence (Investigation) checks made to see through mundane and magical disguises. In addition, you automatically notice when a creature picks your pocket or steals something from off of your person.
Sneak Attack: 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 amount of the extra damage increases as your binder level increases; you deal 2d6 damage at 11th level and 3d6 damage at 17th level.
Eurynome, Mother of the Material
Eurynome grants lordship over the water and the beasts of land, seas, and air. She also gives those with whom she binds some of the might of titans.
Legend:
Stories say that before recorded time, the gods and titans battled on the Outer Planes. Tired of the struggle, the titan Eurynome fled to the roiling chaos that made up the Material Plane. She divided the world into sky and sea, and then she danced alone upon the waves. Incensed by her impertinence in meddling with a world as yet unformed, the gods struck Eurynome down. Angered by her abandonment of their fight, her fellow titans refused to come to her aid. Eurynome’s body became the first island, her blood became the first river, and her soul became a vestige.
Special Requirement: Eurynome hates Amon for some unknown reason and will not answer your call if you are already bound to him.
Manifestation: If Eurynome’s myth is true, she has fallen far since battling gods and shaping the deeps and the firmament. Eurynome manifests as a horrid conglomeration of humanoid, avian, and piscine forms. Her arms are octopus tentacles, her legs are those of a hawk, and her mouth is an owl’s beak. Wings shaped like great fish fins extend from her back, and she has no eyes—only lampreylike mouths where her visual orbs should be.
Sign: Your skin becomes clammy, and you leave moist prints on any object your body touches, even if clothing blocks direct contact. These marks evaporate after about 1 minute.
Influence: Eurynome’s influence makes you paranoid and ungrateful; you see secret motives and possible betrayals behind every action. Eurynome requires that you not attack a foe unless an ally has already done so. If no allies are present, she makes no such requirement.
Granted Abilities:
Eurynome grants you the ability to befriend animals, walk on water, and wield a massive hammer.
Animal Friend: You can use animal friendship at will as a vestige power.
Eurynome’s Maul: As an action, you can summon a Large +1 two-handed warhammer (use statistics for a maul). You are proficient with this weapon. Your warhammer’s bonus increases as you increase in level, to +2 at 11th level and +3 at 17th level. The warhammer disappears (until you summon it again) if it leaves your grasp.
Water Dancing: You can move across liquids, including water and magma, as though they were firm ground.
Focalor, Prince of Tears
Focalor has power over storms and seas. He gives those who bind him the power to drown souls in sadness and sink ships in an ocean of tears.
Legend:
Accounts of Focalor’s origins vary widely. Some claim he was once a demon, and others say he was an angel— likely a planetar. The constantly crying spirit has never uttered a coherent word, so binder scholars must look elsewhere to solve the mystery of how he came to be a vestige. All agree, however, that Focalor was an immortal creature that died of grief, and his immense anguish kept him from being absorbed into his home plane. The cause of his sadness, however, is as unclear as his origin.
Special Requirement: Focalor’s seal must be drawn with a liquid medium.
Manifestation: Focalor manifests slowly, appearing first as a single tear that drops from thin air to strike the ground. Next his weeping eyes appear, and gradually his whole body becomes visible. Focalor looks like a handsome human male whose face is twisted by grief. He wears no clothes, but he cloaks his body in the griffon wings that grow from his back and shudder with each of his wracking sobs.
Sign: While you serve as host to Focalor, your eyes constantly weep, regardless of your mood or thoughts.
Influence: While influenced by Focalor, you feel some of his inestimable grief and act morose, rarely smiling or finding cause to laugh. Whenever you kill a creature, Focalor demands that as soon as you have a peaceful moment, you take a round to say a few words of sorrow and regret for the life cut short by your actions.
Granted Abilities:
Focalor gives you the ability to breathe water, blind enemies with tears, and cause creatures to be stricken with grief in your presence.
Aura of Sadness: You emit an aura of depression and anguish that overtakes even the strongest-willed creatures. Each adjacent creature is overcome with grief, which manifests as a –2 penalty on all damage rolls for as long as it remains adjacent to you. You can suppress or activate this ability as an action.
Focalor’s Grief: As an action, you can inspire a fit of uncontrolled weeping in a creature within 30 feet. That creature’s eyes fill with tears and it is blinded until the beginning of your next turn unless it succeeds on a Constitution saving throw. Once you have used this power, you can’t use it again until you have finished a short or long rest.
Water Breathing: You can breathe both water and air easily and gain a swim speed of 30 feet.
Karsus, Hubris in the Blood
Karsus lived and died by magic, so he grants binders power over that force.
Legend:
Binders know Karsus as a potent mortal spellcaster who attempted to steal the powers of a deity that had jurisdiction over magic. He succeeded, but realized too late that his mortal frame and soul could not contain the power. He died, and his soul remained tied to the Material Plane for ages, never becoming a petitioner. Some claim that part of it somehow still lingers there. With no planar home and no deity who would claim him, Karsus became a vestige.
Special Requirement: Karsus refuses to answer the call of a binder who attempts to summon him within the area of an active spell. In addition, he appears only to a summoner who has proficiency with the Arcana skill. He also hates Amon for some unknown reason and will not answer your call if you are already bound to that vestige.
Manifestation: Karsus appears silently and suddenly in the form of a great red boulder. Blood burbles up from the top of the stone and flows in a rivulet down the side facing his summoner, then pools at the base. When Karsus speaks, the blood fountains upward, its height varying based on the volume of his voice.
Sign: You bleed more than normal from wounds. Even a small scratch releases a sanguine flood. This effect does not deal extra damage. Influence: You take on some of the arrogance for which Karsus was famous in his mortal life. He requires that you make Deception or Intimidate checks rather than Persuasion checks to influence others.
Granted Abilities:
In life, Karsus was obsessed with magic, and his obsession continues unabated in his current state. He grants you the ability to see magic, destroy it with a touch, and use any magic item with ease.
Karsus’s Senses: You can use detect magic at will as a vestige power.
Karsus’s Touch: Karsus’s mastery of spells allows you to unravel magical effects with a touch. You can cast dispel magic as a vestige power; this power has a range of touch. Once you have used this power, you can’t use it again until you have finished a short or long rest.
Karsus’s Will: You may attune to magic items as though you were a spellcaster (bard, cleric, druid, sorcerer, warlock, or wizard).
Sanguine Bolt: You can use the acid splash cantrip as a vestige power.
Paimon, The Dancer
Paimon whirls into reality with grace and style. He gives his summoners the ability to see combat as a dance and makes them masters of its steps and hidden meter.
Legend:
Most binders know the Dancer’s tragic story, although none can be certain of its origin. An infamous lothario, Paimon delighted in seducing noblewomen with his dancing and besting their suitors with his swordplay. He eventually crossed paths and swords with a particularly jealous and cruel fellow, sometimes identified as a human and other times as an elf. After Paimon had humiliated this nobleman in front of his peers on several occasions, the fellow enlisted some other aggrieved suitors to capture Paimon and cut off his sword hand. Paimon was not so easily defeated. When he recovered, he returned to court wearing a bejeweled golden hand that he could replace with a rapier blade. Exhibiting tremendous aplomb, Paimon again set his rivals on their heels, and he even fought and defeated the man who had wronged him. Paimon spared his adversary’s life only because he was interrupted by a request to dance by the object of both their affections. In response to this further humiliation, Paimon’s foe again had him captured, but this time the man’s thirst for revenge was insatiable. He and his cohorts cut off all of Paimon’s limbs and replaced them with sword blades, jeering at him all the while and daring him to return to court again. Then they left Paimon to die while they celebrated their victory.
At the next royal ball, Paimon’s foe and his co-conspirators smirked at every mention of their enemy’s name and winked at one another when others wondered aloud where the charming rake might be. Then a dark figure appeared among the dancers. Impossibly tall and shrouded head to foot in dark, diaphanous cloth, the wraithlike figure began to spin. Disturbed by its appearance, the other dancers moved away. When one of them spotted naked steel beneath the whirling cloth, the nobles began to flee the hall. Enraged that his party had been interrupted, Paimon’s enemy went up to the figure and tore away the cloth.
For a moment, the tortured figure of Paimon stood before them with bloody blades for legs and arms. Someone screamed at the sight, and Paimon faded to nothing. Thinking they had seen the ghost of Paimon, the men immediately went to find their foe’s body and give it a proper burial, but it was gone. Instead, they found a trail of blood and the marks of sword thrusts in the ground. Apparently Paimon was alive but gone—banished by the scream of a woman.
Manifestation: Paimon appears in a whirl, his form spinning like a top on an arm that ends in a metal blade instead of a forearm and hand. He turns counterclockwise so rapidly that his summoner can make little sense of what he sees. Paimon quickly switches the arm on which he spins with a hop, and then he switches to a leg, which also ends in a blade rather than an ankle and foot. With each switch, Paimon slows, until at last he stands on one leg before his summoner, balancing within the seal on its daggerlike point. Paimon’s almost featureless gray body has a dancer’s physique. His face is stretched to disfigurement around the right side of his head, and no ears are visible. Paimon speaks in a garbled voice from his twisted mouth while hopping from appendage to appendage, making small turns as though he is impatient to be whirling again.
Sign: One side of your mouth becomes wider than the other, as though it were being stretched or pulled. That side of your mouth has a tendency to remain slightly open, causing you to drool.
Influence: Paimon’s influence makes you lascivious and bold. In addition, Paimon requires that you dance (moving at half speed) whenever you hear music.
Granted Abilities:
Paimon gives you the ability to dance in and out of combat, and to wield blades with panache.
Dance of Death: When you use this ability, you can move up to your speed and make a single melee attack against any creature you move past. This movement does not provoke attacks of opportunity. Once you have used this power, you can’t use it again until you have finished a short or long rest.
Paimon’s Blades: You gain proficiency with the rapier and shortsword. If you were already proficient with either of these weapons, you instead gain a +1 bonus on damage rolls with them.
Paimon’s Skills: While you are bound to Paimon, you gain proficiency with the Acrobatics and Performance skills.
4th Level Vestiges
Agares, Truth Betrayed
Agares died at the hands of his allies for a wrong he did not commit. As a vestige, not only does he give binders the ability to weaken foes and knock them prone, but he also makes his summoner fearless and able to speak any tongue.
Legend:
In life, Agares ruled over vast armies on the Elemental Plane of Earth. He was the most powerful general the plane had yet seen and second in authority only to his genie emperor, a dao of great influence. Even though Agares was unalterably loyal, he nevertheless gave his emperor reason to fear betrayal. Agares became obsessed with a djinni commander who had thwarted his conquests on several occasions. His desire to meet this favored foe on the field of battle blinded him to other tactical options and deafened him to rumors that his esteem for his enemy had deepened into love. When at last Agares entrapped the djinni’s forces, he girded himself for personal combat and set out to answer a challenge to duel his adversary. The summons was a trap laid by Agares’s lieutenants, however; his allies slew him within sight of his greatest enemy.
Special Requirement:You must draw Agares’s seal upon either the earth or an expanse of unworked stone.
Manifestation: The ground trembles briefly as the head of a great brown crocodile bursts from beneath Agares’s seal. The crocodile’s maw opens upward, unleashing a hooded black hawk that spreads its wings, forcing the jaws farther apart with the mere brush of its feathers. Two large, catlike eyes gleam on the hawk’s breast. When Agares speaks, the hawk’s beak moves, but the sound comes from the crocodile’s rumbling throat.
Sign: You gain a wracking cough that spews dust and small stones from your mouth. This coughing prevents you from casting any spells that have verbal components. While bound to Agares, you can resist the urge to cough for a number of rounds equal your Constitution score. Thereafter, you cough for a round and then can try to resist the urge again.
Influence: Agares’s loyalty in life and his anger at the betrayal perpetrated by his lieutenants has become a hatred of falsehood. When influenced by Agares, you speak forthrightly and with confidence. You cannot use the Deception skill, and when asked a direct question, you must answer truthfully and directly.
Granted Abilities:
Agares gives you the power to make the earth tremble beneath your feet, and to command the earth.
Earth Mastery: You cannot be shoved or knocked prone if you and the enemy attempting to shove you or knock you prone are both touching the ground.
Earthshaking Step: As an action, you can stomp on the ground, causing every creature within 10 feet of you that is either standing or climbing on a surface connected with the ground to make a Dexterity save or be knocked prone. Once you have used this power, you can’t use it again until you have finished a short or long rest.
Elemental Companion: You can summon a Small earth elemental to accompany you and fight for you. This creature obeys your commands to the best of its ability. The elemental acts on your initiative and can move when you move. On your turn, if you take the Attack action, you can use a bonus action to command the elemental to attack. If the elemental is more than 30 feet away from you at the end of your turn, it dissolves. If you lose your elemental to dissolution or destruction, you cannot summon it again until you finish a long rest. The earth elemental has the following statistics:
Small Earth Elemental
Small elemental, neutral
- Armor Class 15 (natural armor)
- Hit Points 29 (2d10+12)
- Speed 30ft, burrow 30ft
STR DEX CON INT WIS CHA 18 (+4) 8 (-1) 18 (+4) 5 (-3) 10 (+0) 5 (-3)
- Damage Vulnerability thunder
- Damage Resistances bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from nonmagical weapons
- Damage Immunities poison
- Condition Immunities exhaustion, paralyzed, petrified, poisoned, unconscious
- Senses darkvision 60 ft, tremorsense 60 ft, passive Perception 10
- Languages Terran
- Challenge 1 (200 XP)
Earth Glide. The elemental can burrow through nonmagical, unworked earth and stone. While doing so, the elemental doesn’t disturb the material it moves through.
Siege Monster. The elemental deals double damage to objects and structures.
Actions
Slam. Melee Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, one target. Hit: 11 (2d6+4) bludgeoning damage.
Ahazu, the Seizer
Pact magic extracts power from powerful but dead being’s spirits. Although not technically dead, neither is Ahazu the Seizer technically alive as long as he remains imprisoned in the Wells of Darkness. This allows binders to use pact magic to draw power from his vestige.
Legend:
Ahazu appears as a dark-skinned naked humanoid with bat-like wings, long thin arms, and an elongated head dominated with a mouth filled with needle-sharp teeth. Ahazu has long sharp talons and his legs appears to trail away into nothingness.
The demon lord Ahazu earned his title of The Seizer for his portfolios of the night and of abduction. Ages past, Ahazu stumbled upon the Abyssal layer that would become the Wells of Darkness. This layer apparently lies in an infinite void called Shattered Night. The layer itself is surrounded by a planar 'membrane' that separates it from the void itself. Ahazu discovered that by digging shafts into the terrain of the layer itself, he can reach thin spots in the membrane which would act as windows to Shattered Night. After many years of digging (creating hundreds, if not thousands of shafts, or wells, as they eventually became), Ahazu finally found a planar tear that enable him to actually step into the void, which he did, never to return.
Ahazu's cult and followers eventually discovered that their patron can be contacted by pact magic and they built a fortress, called the Overlook, over the planar tear that Ahazu had stepped in. Ahazu demanded that his cult abduct other beings, dead or alive, and bring them to the layer in order to join him in the void of Shattered Night. His cult would place these beings near one of the windows/wells that Ahazu himself have dug, and Ahazu himself, as befits his title, would seize the creature through the well and into Shattered Night.
The cult soon made a fatal error in trying to capture and imprison Orcus, the Prince of the Undead. They launched an assault on his layer of Thanatos and were soundly defeated. In retaliation, Orcus' hordes swept the Wells of Darkness, destroyed Ahazu's surviving cult, and left the fortress of Overlook in ruins. Years later, a coven of varrangoins discovered the ruins, Ahazu, and the nature of the layer itself. These canny new arrivals pledged their service to Ahazu, but instead of abducting prospective prisoners on their own, they offered to use the Wells of Darkness to imprison the enemies and undesirables of others in exchange for wealth, power and prestige. Special Requirement: You must draw Ahazu’s seal on the surface of water in complete darkness, like those found at the bottom of the Wells of Darkness on the seventy-third layer of the Abyss.
Manifestation: Ahazu’s manifestation begins as a sphere of darkness that slowly expands in radius. In the depths of that sphere, Ahazu’s form slowly takes shape, revealing a dark skinned, naked humanoid shape with bat-like wings, and elongated head, and arms akin to that of a bodak.
His legs trail away into nothingness and his skin is smooth and devoid of obvious features. The Seizer’s mouth, which is filled with hundreds of needle-sharp fangs, yawns under a pair of sunken eyes which have partially withdrawn into his skull.
Sign: Your skin becomes cold to the touch and the inside of your mouth is cloaked in absolute darkness and periodically expels clouds of black smoke.
Influence: Ahazu’s avarice infects you, causing you to steal small, precious objects whenever the opportunity presents itself, if you feel you can do so without getting caught. The covetousness extends to the lives of your enemies as well. If possible, you must try to imprison your enemies alive in torment, rather than kill them or let them escape. If you allow an enemy to escape, you become wracked with anger and suffer disadvantage on all Charisma-based checks as long as you remain under Ahazu’s influence.
Granted Abilities:
Ahazu grants you abilities that reflect his demonic origin, his exile in the void, and his obsession with abduction.
Ahazu’s Abduction: You can speak Ahazu’s name to shunt a creature within 30 feet of you into the void between the planes. You can use the banishment spell as a vestige power. If the creature resists this abduction, you may not target him again with this power for 24 hours. Once you use this power, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.
Touch of Night: You can use the arms of hadar spell as a vestige power. Once you use this power, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.
Void Mind: You are immune to mind-reading effects such as read thoughts or zone of truth. Additionally, others have disadvantage on Insight checks to determine your true intentions.
Andras the Gray Knight
A great warrior in life, Andras is an enigma as a vestige. He gives binders prowess in combat and skill in the saddle.
Legend:
Andras was once an elf paladin famed for his prowess in battle and his implacable dedication to doing what was right and good for all. A series of misjudgments and misfortunes broke Andras’s faith in both himself and his deity, however, and he became a blackguard.
During his subsequent service to the dark gods, his infamy rapidly outgrew his fame, and his name was whispered in fear. After nearly three hundred years of almost constant battle on behalf of both good and evil, Andras grew tired of both causes. In the midst of a duel in the key battle of a great war, he simply dropped his weapon and left, never to be seen alive again. Sages speculate that after his betrayal of both causes, he was no longer welcome in any god’s realm, and thus his soul was condemned to become a vestige.
Manifestation: Andras rides up out of nothingness on the back of a great black wolf. The vestige’s head is that of an owl covered in gray feathers, and his gray-skinned body resembles that of a lanky but muscular male elf. Wearing only a loincloth, Andras slouches in his saddle, holding the reins of his mount in one hand and a greatsword, which he lazily rests on his shoulder, in the other. At first glance, Andras looks as though he might be asleep, but a closer inspection reveals a pair of huge golden eyes that glower from his bowed head. Andras speaks in deep tones laden with menace.
Sign: You sprout two useless, gray-feathered wings from your back. The wings are small enough to be hidden beneath a shirt or cloak, but doing so makes you appear hunchbacked.
Influence: Andras’s influence causes you to become listless and emotionally remote. Because Andras wearies of combat quickly, you must drop any items in hand and withdraw from melee after only 10 rounds of battle. You may not take any offensive action for 1d4 rounds thereafter.
Granted Abilities:
Andras lends you some of the skills he had in life, making you a strong combatant with or without a mount.
Knight’s Proficiencies: You are proficient with the greatsword, lance, longsword, and rapier. You are proficient in Animal Handling.
Mount: You can use find steed as a vestige power. The duration of this power ends as soon as you are no longer bound to Andras.
Burdening Smite: As a bonus action, you channel your ennui into a powerful blow. The next time you hit with a melee weapon attack, your attack deals an extra 2d6 psychic damage. Additionally, if the target is a creature, it must make a Wisdom saving throw or suffer one level of exhaustion for one minute. Once you have used this power, you cannot use it again until you have finished a short or long rest.
Astaroth, The Unjustly Fallen
Scholars know little of Astaroth before his fall, save that he favored constant interference and assistance when it came to mortals, rather than leaving them to develop on their own. Some tales claim that he was responsible for teaching humanoids such techniques as metalworking and even alchemy.
Legend:
According to ancient writings, Astaroth himself maintains that this was why he fell, cast from Heaven for the "crime" of aiding the mortal races in their development of civilization. Most theologians, however, remain convinced that the angel was exiled for greater crimes. Legends range from an attempt to usurp the position of some heavenly god, to an effort to raise an entire mortal race to celestial status, to an attempt to turn all mortals away from worship of the gods so that he might be free to influence them as he saw fit. Astaroth admitted to no such defiance, however, and swore to the day of his disappearance that his fall was unjust.
For centuries Astaroth roamed many worlds, mortal and spiritual alike. To the celestials, he was an outcast — another prideful fallen angel who could not even admit to his errors, let alone atone for them. Yet because he refused to embrace damnation, he found no allies among the fiends either. Eventually he settled among mortals. He watched over them as a guardian and mentor to start, but slowly his obsession with "protecting" the mortals grew uncontrollable. Astaroth became a dictator, restricting even the day-to-day behavior of his subjects to keep them "safe." The fallen angel was finally slain by an uprising within the populace, but none of the Outer Planes would grant his soul any respite. Eventually, with no afterlife to call his own, stripped even of his physical existence, Astaroth simply went — elsewhere.
Manifestation: Accompanied by the sound of flapping wings and cawing crows, Astaroth manifests as a hideously ugly angel. His limp wings are filthy gray, his features drawn and gaunt, and his eyes yellowed. He carries a viper in his right hand and wears a tarnished crown upon his brow. A horrific stench accompanies him, almost but not quite enough to sicken everyone nearby.
Sign: Your skin yellows, and you emit a foul, unwashed odor. While this odor is not strong enough to impede or distract an opponent, it does attract attention.
Influence: Astaroth's influence renders you incapable of taking responsibility for your own actions. You cannot admit any fault, acknowledge any mistake, or make reparations or apologies for any wrong, no matter the consequences or the evidence against you.
Granted Abilities:
Astaroth guided mortals, and he still grants abilities based in knowledge and education. As a fallen angel, and then a vestige, his magics have grown ever grimmer and more distasteful; he also grants powers based on directly controlling others.
Angelic Lore: Astaroth constantly whispers the secrets of reality in the back of your mind, allowing you to draw on his own nigh-infinite knowledge. You gain advantage on all History, Religion, and Arcana checks made while bound to Astaroth.
Honeyed Tongue: You can use the friends cantrip as a vestige power.
Master Craftsman: You gain proficiency in all artisans’ tools.
Word of Astaroth: You can use suggestion as a vestige power. The number of targets this power can affect increases as your binder level increases, to 3 targets at 11th level and 5 targets at 17th level. You must give the same suggestion to all targets of this power. Once you use this power, you can’t use it again until you complete a short or long rest.
Buer, The Grandmother Huntress
Buer grants binders superior healing as well as powers against poisons and diseases.
Legend:
Buer tells many different stories about how she came to be a vestige, so her true origins remain obscure. In various popular versions of the tales, she is a beautiful elf maiden who fell to evil satyrs, a virtuous human ranger killed by a chimera, or a green hag slain by a lammasu. It’s likely that Buer herself cannot remember who she was in life or what brought her to her current state, and the stories she tells are cobbled together from the shreds of her memory that remain. Regardless of what her true form once was, most binders believe that she possessed great skill as a hunter and healer in life.
Special Requirement: Buer requires that her seal be drawn outdoors.
Manifestation: Buer’s form is that of a five-branched star, or wheel, composed of satyr legs. She has two faces, one positioned on each side of her wheel-shaped body at the center point where the five legs meet. One face is that of a green hag, and the other is a raging, leonine visage with an unruly mane and beard. Buer constantly moves within her seal, rolling from foot to foot as she traverses its circumference. She always keeps her raging face outward, but she speaks from her green hag face in a friendly manner with a gentle voice. When her body rolls in such a way that her hag face cannot see her summoner, Buer grows frustrated and begins yelling curses at her body.
Sign: Your feet turn into satyr’s hooves, giving you a curious tip-toeing gait. These hooves prevent you from wearing normal boots or shoes, but magic footwear reshapes to fit you.
Influence: Under Buer’s influence, you are plagued by momentary memory lapses. For an instant, you might forget even a piece of information as familiar as the name of a friend or family member. Furthermore, since Buer abhors the needless death of living creatures other than animals and vermin, the first melee attack you make against such a foe must be for nonlethal damage. In addition, Buer requires that you not make any coup de grace attacks.
Granted Abilities:
Buer grants you healing powers, the ability to ignore toxins and ailments, and skills that help you navigate the natural world.
Buer’s Knowledge: You gain proficiency in either Medicine, Nature, or Survival. You gain proficiency with the herbalist’s kit.
Buer’s Purity: You and all allies within 10 feet of you are immune to disease, have resistance to poison damage, and have advantage on saving throws against being poisoned.
Healing Gift: As an action, you can touch an ally and heal 1d8 points of damage +1 point per binder level. You can use this power a number of times equal to your Charisma modifier. You regain all uses of this power after you complete a long rest.
Cabiri, the Watching Master
One of the oldest obyriths in existence, Cabiri, the Watching Master, grants his summoners the ability to see in darkness or twilight, to observe others from afar, and to uncover potential foes.
Legend:
In ages past, when obyriths lorded the Abyss, the many-eyed tyrant known as Cabiri ruled a large swath of the layer now known as Pazunia, warring against rival lords such as Bechard, Pazuzu, and Ubother. The Watching Master kept careful eyes on his rivals but spent most of his energy scrying the relatively unknown deeper levels of the Abyss. Some record of Cabiri’s observation must have survived in the ruins of his long abandoned keep, for the Fraternity of Order began its effort to catalog the layers of the Abyss following its exploration of the Watching Master’s ruined stronghold.When the Queen of Chaos called the obyriths to war against the Wind Dukes of Aaqa, she turned to Cabiri for advice many times, drawing upon his ability to divine futures by utilizing resources in the depths of the Abyss unguessed at by most his kin.
Near the end of the war, Cabiri foresaw the Queen’s defeat, and fled the field of battle. This act may have ironically been the one that most crippled the Queen’s forces and allowed for her subsequent defeat. Cabiri fled to the depths of the Abyss and hid there for eons while he watched the obyriths suffer the humiliating defeat upon the fields ofPesh, and the subsequent eladrin incations that finished off so many of the survivors.As Cabiri explored the depths of the Abyss, it is believed that his discovered some of the truth behind thecreation of the obyrith race, a discover that compelled him to resurface and seek out the obscure fiendsknown as the Baernoloths. Whatever he confronted them with was enough for them to engineer his capture and subsequent imprisonment in the then-still-young Wells of Darkness. Yugoloths often visit Cabiri’s well, more often than any other will in the layer, which suggests that his imprisonment remains of interest to these neutral evil fiends.
Special Requirement: Cabiri requires that his seal be drawn with blood, outside at night, or during a solar eclipse.
Manifestation: One or more lights or areas of darkness in the sky above—the stars, the moon, or the solar eclipse—suddenly open, revealing a watching eye behind the lid of light. Under its baleful gaze, Cabiri’s seal begins to dissolve into a puddle of blood. The puddle suddenly blinks, transforming the pooled blood into a ring of tiny eyes surrounding a single mouth that speaks with the sonorous voice of lost and distant souls.
Sign: An additional eye appears on your forehead, equidistant from your other eyes.
Influence: Cabiri hungers to see everything, no matter how horrifying or entrancing. Your eyes never blink, and you are not able to avert or close your eyes when confronted by a creature with a gaze attack.
Granted Abilities:
Cabiri grants you his ability to observe others from afar, to perceive threats, and to see unhindered in conditions of twilight or darkness.
Arcane Eye: You can use the arcane eye spell as a vestige power. Once you use this power, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.
Far-seeing Gaze: When you use a vestige power or cast a spell that has a range of 5 feet or greater, you can double the range, or when you use a vestige power or cast a spell that has a range of touch, you can make the range 30 feet. Once you use this power, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.
Seer in Darkness: You gain darkvision to 60 feet. If you already have darkvision, add 60 feet to the range. You do not suffer disadvantage for firing ranged weapons at long range.
Diabolus, Astaroth of Baator
In the multiverse , there are at least three planar beings who have gone by the name Astaroth. Powerful beings sharing a name are not uncommon, for names held in common reduce the chances of mortal summonings. In the Abyss, Astaroth, also known as Diabolus, was powerful demon lord, now believed to be dead but still reachable by powerful binders. He has a deep and abiding hatred of devils, granting the ability to bypass their diabolic defenses, see the future, and channel Abyssal brimstone.
Legend:
This once-powerful demon lord who is said to have once rule a layer of the Abyss known as the Terminal Archives with a gift for prophecy offered to fight alongside the Queen of Chaos during her war with the Wind Dukes of Aaqa, but was rejected.
In the early days of the Blood War, Astaroth earned the name Diabolus by infiltrating the legions of Baator and rising to the rank of Treasurer of Hell. His true nature was eventually exposed by the arch-devil Gargauth, forcing Diablous to flee the Wrath of Asmodeus, but his spying caused incalculable harm to the devil’s war effort and prevented the legions of hell from winning a clear and decisive victory against the hordes of the abyss.Upon his return to the Abyss Diablous retreated to a steam-filled layer filled with floating chunks of burning stone. In preparation for the inevitable retaliation of the Lords of Nine, Diablous began cultivating mortal cults on countless worlds through the use of his prophetic powers, in hopes of transforming himself into a god. He must have succeeded in some fashion, although not enough to forestall his fate. Diablous was eventually slain by Gargauth, at the command of Asmodeus. In addition to claiming his predecessor’s name, the Tenth Lord of Nine is said to have seized the mantle of divinity from Diablous as well.
Special Requirement: Diablous requires that his seal be drawn on an area of stone that has recently been burned and then doused with cold water. Diabolous also will not tolerate the presence of devils; he will refuse the summons of a binder who is also bound to a devilish vestige.
Manifestation: Diablous’s misty form rises up from his seal like a cloud of steam, slowly condensing into the form of a handsome human with draconic and feathered wings. His serpentine tongue flicks nervously as his body is slowly consumed with hellfire.
Sign: You acquire the stench of brimstone and a cloudy film covers your eyes.
Influence: Diablous’s influence give you a vague but continuous sense of impending doom that makes you morose and fatalistic. Because Diablous desired revenge on the devils who brought him low, he required that you attack a devil in preference to all others whenever you are in combat and that you initiate combat with any devil you meet.
Granted Abilities:
Diablous grants you the power to see the future, to call upon the stench of the Abyss, and to strike down devils and their servants.
Divination: When you bind to Diablous and at the end of a short rest, roll a d10 and record the number rolled as your divination die. You can choose to expend this die to add the result to any attack roll, saving throw, or ability check made by you or one of your allies. You can do so after seeing the initial roll but before any of the roll’s effects occur. Your divination die expires when you take a short or long rest, or when you are no longer bound to Diablous.
Brimstone: You can use the stinking cloud spell as a vestige power. Once you use this power, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.
Silvered Touch: Your weapons are always considered silvered for the purposes of overcoming a creature’s damage resistance. Additionally, as an action you can touch one weapon or up to 20 pieces of ammunition and treat it as silvered for 1 minute. You can use this power at will.
Kas, the Bloody Handed
Once the lieutenant of the lich—now god—Vecna, Kas betrayed his master, instigating a battle that was thought to have resulted in both of their destructions. Somehow, even after this legendary conflict, Kas and Vecna continued their battle, but only Vecna emerged into being once again. As a vestige, Kas continues to despise Vecna and all other undead.
Legend:
That Vecna, Master of All that is Secret and Hidden, once existed as a cruel-minded lich is no mystery. Yet, few know of the figure lurking in the god’s past, the betrayer who crippled the Maimed Lord and bears responsibility for some ofthe most infamous artifacts known to the multiverse: Kas the Bloody Handed. As Vecna ascended to power on the world of Oerth, armies of dead rose under his black banner. Among these undead legions emerged the vampire Kas, a shadow of death clad in iron. A master of countless darkened battlefields, where Kas drew his blade, victory for the lich liege followed. Although not the greatest of Vecna’s warriors, Kas proved to be cunning and ruthless, and showed no fear of his lord, a quality Vecna respected. As Kas’s successes in campaign after campaign mounted, Vecna rewarded his Champion with ever greater rank and profane treasures. At last, Vecna made Kas his Second in command, gifting the vampire with a sword he had personally forged from black metal fallen from the stars.
Kas and his infamous blade lead Vecna’s armies for years, claiming innumerable souls in the lich’s name, forging a legend as bloody as his lord’s was cruel. As he waged war, Kas increased in power and grew in ambition. Finally came the day that Vecna’s armies faltered. After a significant loss on the field of battle, a weakened Vecna returned to his throne to find Kas waiting. Armed with his black blade, the betrayer Kas struck and a titanic battle ensued. None know how long the tireless, undying fiends clashed—some claiming months, even years. During the fray, despite Vecna’s dark powers, Kas sliced the lich’s left hand from his body and cut an eye from his face. Fearing his destruction, Vecna employed frantic dangerous magic that annihilated both himself and Kas—or so it seemed. Centuries passed. A cult of Vecna arose and the lich’s severed hand and eye became legends, while Kas’s name passed from memory except in relation to his black sword.
What few knew, however, what that in some misty realm that even the deities avoid Vecna and Kas somehow continued to exist, locked in another worldly battle. For unknown years the archrivals impotently raged. Eventually, through patient plotting, near-immortal genius, and primordial magic, Vecna shatter his prison and escaped, ascending to godhood and leaving has rival lost in the ether. What became of Kas none—not even the binders who deal with him now—truly know. Trapped within a maelstrom of shatter planes and godly magics, Kas was shunted into some new existence, an eternal oubliette he blames Vecna for imprisoning him in. Yet, as a vestige—or a being very much like one—his reach again stretches into the mortal world, sowing destruction and working against his rival-turned-god’s immortal aspirations.
Manifestation: Kas manifests as a sword being drawn from his sign. The hilt appears first, wrapped in red leather with flecks of gold and with unicorn horns forming its quillons. A knuckle-guard basket made of gold and shaped like a leering bearded face stretches from the quillons to the pommel, grimacing and groaning as if in pain as the blade arises from the ground. Casting sparks as it screeches up from the sign, a wavy blade as black as night with opalescent edges appears. With a jerk the whole of the sword suddenly comes free, revealing not a point but the back of a blackened and desiccated hand attached to the end of the blade.The sword then flips upright and turns around, showing a moist, cat-like eye glaring from the palm of the bony hand. When Kas speaks, his deep and angry voice comes from the basket guard, but it is the eye in the palm that regards his summoner.
Sign: When a binder makes a pact with Kas, an angry cat-like eye opens in the palm of each of his hands.These eyes don’t provide the binder with any extraordinary sight, nor do they inhibit the use of the binder’s hands. When the binder uses any power granted by Kas, the eyes weep small amounts of blood for 1 minute .
Influence: Kas’s influence makes a binder act warm and affectionate toward those with whom she speaks. Kas further requires has host to kill any follower of Vecna or undead creature encountered. In addition, Kas requires that the binder betray some friend or ally in some manner during the first hour after being summoned and bound. This betrayal might be as small as breaking a promise to meet at a specific time or as great as murder, but it must be unexpected, and the ally or friend must realize that a deliberate betrayal occurred.
Granted Abilities:
Kas grants binders the ability to draw strength from and blind enemies. In addition, Kas grants his binder martial prowess.
Vampiric Thirst: You can use the vampiric touch spell as a vestige power. Once you use this power, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.
Blinding Strike: As a bonus action, you can charge your weapons with Kas’s betrayal. Your next successful melee attack deals an additional 2d6 slashing damage and the target makes a Constitution saving throw or be struck blind for one minute. At the end of each of its turns, the target can make a Constitution saving throw. On a success the blindness ends. Once you use this power, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.
Kas’s Prowess: You are proficient with the longsword and heavy armor.
Tenebrous, The Shadow That Was
Tenebrous, once a powerful demon prince, offers dominion over darkness and death.
Legend:
The great demon lord Orcus has long sought divinity. Some years ago, for a brief period, he actually attained it. Slain and resurrected by a surge of negative energy, the corpulent demon arose as the gaunt Tenebrous, a god of darkness and undeath. For a time he traveled the planes in this form, slaying other gods in his quest to gain more power. His ultimate goal was to reincarnate himself yet again because he wished to be a god as Orcus, not Tenebrous. Some say he was thwarted by a band of mortal heroes, but whatever the cause, his grand plan failed. Orcus did indeed rise again, but as the demon prince he once was, not as a god. True divinity can never fade completely. The tatters of godly power that Orcus shed remained intact. Less than a god but still divine, this bit of essence drifted in the void between planes until it once more coalesced into a bitter sentience. Thus, Tenebrous yet exists as a pale reflection of what he once was, a shadow of a shadow.
Special Requirement: You must draw Tenebrous’s seal at night or in an area of deep shadow with little or no daylight exposure.
Manifestation: Upon completion of the rite to summon Tenebrous, the summoner’s shadow shifts to fall across the seal. Even if the rite occurs in complete darkness, the shadow is visible as a darker spot in the blackness. Once the shadow crosses into the seal, an inky humanoid form—impossibly gaunt, holding its limbs at disjointed angles—rises from it. The voice of Tenebrous is a whisper in the wind, almost impossible to hear, yet laden with unmistakable meaning.
Sign: You seem to be standing in shadow even on the brightest day. Furthermore, your own shadow never extends more than a few feet from your body, even if the ambient light suggests that it should be much longer. This effect does not grant you concealment.
Influence: While influenced by Tenebrous, you are filled with a sense of detachment and an aching feeling of loss and abandonment. Tenebrous requires that you never be the first to act in combat. If your initiative check result is the highest, you must delay until someone else takes a turn.
Granted Abilities:
Tenebrous grants you power over undead and shadows. He gives you the ability to walk through the void away from harm.
Deeper Darkness: You can use the darkness spell as a vestige power. The duration of this power is concentration, up to 1 hour. You can see through the darkness created by your deeper darkness power. Once you have used this power, you can’t use it again until you have finished a short or long rest.
Rebuke Undead: You can turn undead, as the cleric ability of the same name. Once you have used this power, you can’t use it again until you have finished a long rest.
Vessel of Emptiness: As a reaction after you take damage from an attack, you may teleport up to 20 feet away, provided you teleport into an area of darkness or shadow. You can use this power a number of times equal to your Charisma modifier. You regain all uses of this power after you complete a long rest.
5th Level Vestiges
Acererak, the Devourer
Acererak, a half-human lich, grasped at godlike power only to lose his grip on reality. As a vestige, he grants abilities that are similar to a lich’s powers.
Legend:
Only bards and a few scholars remember Acererak’s name, but many know the legend of his supposed final resting place, the Tomb of Horrors. As rumors of the wealth and magic hidden in this fabled location spread, the tomb became a burial ground for more and more explorers and tomb robbers. In truth, however, the Tomb of Horrors was not Acererak’s sepulcher at all. It was merely part of his plan to gain eternal unlife and command of all undead. Acererak left behind a diary, and the information it contains combined with the actions of a stalwart few have at last brought the full tale of Acererak to light. In his diary, Acererak wrote that he was born of a union between a human woman and a demon. Despite his hideous deformities, his mother kept him and cared for him until, when he was ten years of age, some superstitious villagers burned down their house. Acererak survived the conflagration because of his demonic heritage, but his mother did not. In his diary Acererak recalls that incident as the event that propelled him on the path toward necromancy and revenge against humanity.
Acererak became a powerful wizard. As he grew older and saw the specter of death looming, he sought out and completed the ritual for becoming a lich. After he assumed his undead form, his power continued to grow for centuries more. The diary relates, however, that Acererak eventually felt the forces animating his undead body begin to wane.
Knowing that final oblivion was near, he decided to build himself a secret tomb. “Only those of keenest luck and greatest skill will win through to me,” the diary read. “There, they shall receive a magnificent reward for their persistence.” The diary, the Tomb of Horrors, and the supposed reward were all parts of an elaborate ruse designed to bring powerful adventurers into the portion of the tomb that Acererak—by then a powerful demilich—called his Fortress of Conclusion In truth, Acererak had devised a ritual that he hoped would merge his consciousness with the Negative Energy Plane through the sacrifice of potent spirits. Had he actually accomplished this goal, he could have assumed control of any undead on any plane and gained godlike powers as well as immortality.
But the infamy of the Tomb of Horrors drew more than wealth-hungry thrill-seekers intent on gaining the reward promised in Acererak’s diary. Supplicants also came. Necromancers questing for knowledge, seekers of eternal life, and lost souls in search of purpose traveled to the tomb to learn what they could of the dark arts. In time, the supplicants became worshipers, and they stayed to dwell near the object of their devotion. Eventually, a settlement called Skull City sprang up around the entrance to Acererak’s Tomb of Horrors.
Some of the heroes Acererak lured to his tomb proved even more powerful and ingenious than he had anticipated. After fighting their way through Skull City and the Tomb of Horrors, they made their way to the demilich’s Fortress of Conclusion. At the last possible moment, they surmised Acererak’s plan and destroyed the artifact that was crucial to his apotheosis.
They struck down Acererak and shattered his phylactery. Normally, such an action would have sent Acererak’s spirit to Abyss, but the worship of the Skull City residents lent him a semblance of divinity; his desire to merge with the Negative Energy Plane proved stronger than the pull of the Abyss. Unfortunately for Acererak, souls do not travel to the Negative Energy Plane upon death. Since his spirit had no clear destination, it went nowhere, becoming a vestige divorced from all planes.
Special Requirement: You must place a gem about the size of a human tooth or eye in the center of Acererak’s seal. This gem is not used up in the summoning process, nor does it move from where you placed it, despite the manner in which Acererak manifests (see Manifestation, below).
Manifestation: The gem you placed within the seal appears to float up into the air to the height of your head. Dust swirls in from the surrounding air and up from the ground to coalesce about the gem, forming a yellowed human skull with the jewel as a tooth or an eye. A moment later, other gems wink into being, so that each eye socket and the space of every tooth is occupied by a shining diamond, ruby, emerald, or sapphire. The jewels glow briefly with an inner light, and then Acererak speaks, his dry voice filled with contempt.
Sign: A gem replaces one of your teeth. If removed, the gem reverts to a normal tooth, and a new gem appears in its place.
Influence: As a vestige, Acererak possesses the immortality he desired but none of the power that should accompany it. If you fall under his influence, you evince a strong hunger for influence and primacy. If you are presented with an opportunity to fill a void in power over a group of creatures, Acererak requires that you attempt to seize that power. You might impersonate a missing city official, take command of a leaderless unit of soldiers, or even grab the reins of runaway horses to establish your supremacy.
Granted Abilities:
While bound to Acererak, you gain powers that the great lich held in his legendary unlife.
Death’s Mask: You register as undead to other undead and to abilities that detect the presence of undead. Undead of Challenge rating 1 or lower will not attack you unless you attack them or take hostile action toward them first.
Paralyzing Touch: As an action, you can touch a living foe and paralyze it. The touched creature must succeed on a Constitution saving throw or be paralyzed for up to 1 minute or until you lose your concentration. At the end of each of its turns, the creature can make another Constitution saving throw, with success ending the paralysis immediately. Once you use this power, you can’t use it again until you complete a short or long rest.
Speak with Dead: You can use speak with dead as a vestige power. Once you use this power you can’t use it again until you complete a short or long rest.
Balam, The Bitter Angel
Once a being of extreme goodness, Balam became a wrathful vestige after taking on an impossible task that ended in failure. She grants her summoners the ability to foresee future difficulties and the intellect to interpret what they see, as well as the ability to enact vengeance on foes.
Legend:
Binder scholars claim that Balam is all that remains of the soul of a powerful solar. Exactly how she came to exist in her current state remains a mystery, but sources of planar lore state that several good gods tasked her with eliminating the practice of sacrificing sentient beings in the worship of deities. Since such sacrifices are part and parcel of evil rituals, the task amounted to wiping out the worship of evil gods altogether—a task well beyond what even the good deities could manage. Needless to say, Balam failed in her assignment, and some believe that her foes actually sacrificed her in praise of a dark god.
Special Requirement: Balam requires a sacrifice of her summoner. In the process of calling her, you must deal 1 point of slashing damage to yourself or another sentient creature (one with Int 3 or higher) and place a drop of blood from the wound within Balam’s completed seal.
Manifestation: Balam is a horror to behold. Her body is that of a great purple serpent, and her head consists of the top halves of three horned humanoid heads arranged evenly around a shared gaping maw. This mouth is a tooth-studded chute that extends deep into her body, and her six horns point forward around it. Balam speaks in a grinding moan, exhaling hot, stinking breath with each word. The fangs in her chute-mouth move in waves with the shuddering of her throat, and the eyes of her three heads glow blue when she becomes excited or angry.
Sign: Your voice gains a peculiar quality, becoming both hollow and guttural.
Influence: Balam’s influence causes you to distrust clerics, paladins, and other devotees of deities. Whenever you enter a temple or some other holy or unholy site, Balam requires that you spit on the floor and utter an invective about the place.
Granted Abilities:
Balam grants you the power to predict future event and gives you the ability to punish those who would spill the blood of your friends.
Balam’s Regret: You can reroll one attack, saving throw, or skill check you have just made. You must accept the result of the reroll, even if it is worse than the original. Once you use this power, you can’t use it again until you complete a short or long rest.
Blood for Blood: When you hit a creature with an attack, that creature takes an additional 1d6 + your binder level points of damage if it dealt damage to one of your allies since the end of your last turn. You can deal this extra damage only once per turn.
Prescience: You can use augury as a vestige power. Once you use this power you can’t use it again until you complete a short or long rest.
Dantalion, The Star Emperor
Dantalion, called the Star Emperor for his legend and appearance, is a composite of many souls. He grants binders the ability to teleport short distances, read thoughts, and stop foes.
Legend:
Binders know little of how Dantalion came to be. The most common legend of his origin presents him not as one spirit, but as a conglomeration of the souls of a royal line whose members were cursed not to join their deities in the afterlife. This ancient imperial line is not now connected to any living leaders. Supposedly, however, descendants of this family still live, ignorant of both their heritage and their curse. Some binders profess to be scions of Dantalion—the true heirs of the royal line—but these claims are likely just the fancies of romantic minds.
Manifestation: Dantalion appears in a flash of red light as a 10-foot-tall humanoid, resplendent in crimson and gold robes. His head is a massive conglomeration of dozens of human faces—male and female, young and old. A gold crown as big around as a barrel rests on the brow of his enormous cranium. Dantalion carries a great tome under one arm and speaks with the voices of his many faces, always in cryptic passages that he reads from his book. Sometimes just one face reads from his tome, but the speaking face changes often and usually in mid-sentence. Those who glance at the book’s pages see a dark sky filled with stars that change with each flip of a page.
Sign: One of Dantalion’s faces appears on your torso, as though it were a vestigial conjoined twin. It seems lifeless most of the time, but when you activate an ability granted by Dantalion, it opens its eyes and mouth, revealing a starry void within.
Influence: Dantalion’s influence causes you to be aloof and use stately gestures. Dantalion can’t help but be curious about the leaders of the day, so anytime you are within 100 feet of someone who clearly is (or professes to be) a leader of others, Dantalion requires that you try to read that person’s thoughts. Once you have made the attempt, regardless of success or failure, you need not try to read that person’s thoughts again.
Granted Abilities:
Pact magic grimoires attest to Dantalion’s profound wisdom and his extensive knowledge about all subjects. Because he knows all thoughts, he can grant you a portion of that power, as well as the ability to travel just by thinking. You also gain a portion of his commanding presence, which many binders ascribe to his royal origins.
Awe of Dantalion: As an action, you can cause each creature within 10 feet of you to make a Wisdom saving throw or be charmed by you until the end of your next turn. Once you use this power, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.
Read Thoughts: You can use the detect thoughts spell as a vestige power. Once you use this power, you can’t use it again until you complete a short or long rest.
Thought Travel: You can use the misty step spell as a vestige power. Once you use this power, you can’t use it again until you complete a short or long rest.
Geryon, The Deposed Lord
Once a devil of great power, Geryon now exists only as a vestige. He gives binders powers associated with his eyes, as well as the ability to fly at a moment’s notice.
Legend:
Most scholars of the dark arts know of Geryon. As one of the legendary Lords of the Nine, he ruled Stygia, the frozen fifth layer of Hell. During a great upheaval known as the Reckoning, Geryon secretly supported the greatest of the arch devils, Asmodeus, against his rivals. When the armies of the opposing lords met to decide who would take Asmodeus’s power, Geryon blew his horn. At his signal, the armies turned against their leaders, the usurpers were thrown down, and Asmodeus reestablished his right to rule all Baator. Knowing he had taught the usurpers a lesson they would not soon forget, Asmodeus returned them to power. Rather than reward Geryon, however, he inexplicably gave his lone supporter’s power and position to another. Geryon’s fate after losing his position is unclear, but some binder scholars maintain that Asmodeus held one more betrayal in store for him. The story goes that Geryon, bewildered and stunned, lost all hope for the future. He began to question the purpose of his actions and, in a moment of weakness, even the point of his own existence. It was then that Asmodeus struck. The ruler of the Nine Hells had always hungered for the souls of those who had lost their faith, and Geryon’s powerful soul made a fine meal.
Special Requirement: Geryon answers the calls of only those summoners who show an understanding of the relationship between souls and the planes. You must be proficient in Arcana or Religion and speak either Celestial, Infernal, or Abyssal.
Manifestation: Geryon arrives in a flash of sickly green light. A strange conglomeration of forms, his body resembles three ogre mages standing with their backs to each other and melded into one being. He has three legs, each with two feet, and three arms, each with two hands. Three brutish faces gaze out from equidistant points on a single head, which sits upon a neck jutting upward from three shoulders. One face has a furrowed brow and looks angry, another appears agitated, with wildly rolling eyes, and the third seems thoughtful, often staring into the distance as though thinking of something else.
Geryon speaks from only one of his three faces at any given time, and each of the three has a different personality and voice—a deep voice for the angry face, a babbling, hysterical voice for the agitated one, and a quiet voice for the thoughtful one. All three, however, are Geryon. Whenever his mood changes, Geryon turns his body so that he can speak to his summoner with the face that best represents his feelings at the time.
Sign: Two extra pairs of devilish eyes with green lids and yellow, catlike irises open on your head. Located at the level of your own eyes and equidistant from them, these bloodshot orbs grant you the ability to see all around yourself. Your own eyes take on the same appearance as the new ones.
Influence: While influenced by Geryon, you become overly trusting of and loyal to those you see as allies, even in the face of outright treachery. Because he values trust, you cannot use skills or effects that detect lies such as zone of truth or the Insight skill.
Granted Abilities:
Geryon gives you his eyes and his baleful gaze, as well as the ability to fly.
Acidic Gaze: When you take the Attack action, you may use your bonus action to gaze at a target you can see within 60 feet. The target must make a Wisdom saving throw or take 2d6 points of acid damage. You cannot use this ability if you do not show Geryon’s sign.
All-Around Vision: Your extra eyes allow you to look in any direction. You have advantage on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on sight and you cannot be surprised. You cannot use this ability if you do not show Geryon’s sign.
Swift Flight: As a bonus action, you may sprout leathery devil wings and fly up to 60 feet. If you don’t land at the end of this movement, you fall. Once you use this power, you can’t use it again until you complete a short or long rest.
Otiax, The Key to the Gate
The alien Otiax gives its summoners the power to open what is closed, to surround yourself with a cloud, and to strike foes with fog that lands like a hammer.
Legend:
Otiax is a bit of a conundrum because it seems to have originated outside the known cosmology of the planes. A few sources of pact magic lore refer to some plane or place called the Far Realm, but most offer no explanation of Otiax’s past. Some even posit that Otiax is somehow the key to reaching the Far Realm, but that supposition has more to do with Otiax’s appearance than with any real evidence of its nature. Because Otiax never speaks, it can shed no light on the issue. Binding with it is more a matter of instinct and will than of deliberation.
Manifestation: When Otiax manifests, a locked golden gate appears within its seal. Blue fog curls out in wispy tendrils from between the bars, obscuring what lies beyond. After a moment of silence, some unseen force crashes against the barrier. Then the gate shakes and rattles loudly, as though some creature is desperate to open it. Ragged breathing becomes audible, and the fog swirls around some indistinct yet terrible form. At last the raging stops, and the azure vapor passes through the gate. The sound of the tumblers turning in the lock becomes audible, then the gate creaks open.
Sign: While bound to Otiax, you are surrounded by thin wisps of light blue fog even in the strongest wind.
Influence: Otiax’s motives remain a mystery, but its influence is clear. When confronted with unopened doors or gates, you become agitated and nervous. This emotional state lasts until the door or gate is opened, or until you can no longer see it. Furthermore, Otiax cannot abide a lock remaining secured. Thus, whenever you see a key, Otiax requires that you use it to open the corresponding lock.
Granted Abilities:
Otiax opens doors for you, lets you batter opponents with wind, and cloaks you in a protective fog.
Air Blast: You can focus the air around you into a concentrated blast that batters opponents. You gain a ranged vestige power that you can use with the Attack action. The attack has a range of 30 feet. You are proficient with it, and this attack deals 2d6 + your Charisma modifier magical bludgeoning damage. You cannot use this ability if you do not show Otiax’s sign.
Concealing Mist: As an action, you can whip the mist that constantly surrounds you into a concealing screen. You and the area within 5 feet of you are considered to be lightly obscured. A strong gust of wind (either magical or natural) ends this effect. You can also end this effect as a free action. You cannot use this power if you do not show Otiax’s sign.
Unlock: You may use the knock spell as a vestige power. Once you use this power, you can’t use it again until you complete a short or long rest.
6th Level Vestiges
Chupoclops, Harbinger of Forever
A great monster believed to be a harbinger of the apocalypse, Chupoclops became a vestige when slain by mortals. Chupoclops grants its summoner a poisoned bite and unnatural senses, plus the ability to exist ethereally.
Legend:
Chupoclops once stood tall in the company of Fenris, Dendar the Night Serpent, and other supposed harbingers of the end of existence. A titanic spiderlike creature, Chupoclops stalked the Ethereal Plane, devouring ghosts and giving birth to mortals’ nightmares. Legend has it that the gods trapped the monstrous Chupoclops in the realm of ghosts to prevent it from devouring hope, but it was destined to escape and sate its hunger during the end times. Because Chupoclops was a terror to both the living and the undead, several powerful individuals eventually joined forces to fight it. Three were great heroes, and four were powerful villains. Four of these seven-one of the heroes and three of the villains— were ghosts; the rest were living. This group set out to murder Chupoclops and thus accomplish what deities could not. The furious battle lasted for seven days, and each day ended with the death of one member of the group that had come to kill the great monster. On the last day, the last hero struck down Chupoclops with her dying blow. Chupoclops, never a creature defined by the normal rules of the universe, became a vestige after its death. Binder scholars claim that adventurers still encounter its enormous corpse in the misty Ethereal Plane. Now that the monster can no longer destroy hope, some say it will exist forever, and thus, so will the world.
Special Requirement: You must draw Chupoclops’s seal with a handful of soil from a grave or tomb. Alternatively, you can place the dead body of a sentient creature (one with Int 3 or higher) over its seal before the summoning begins.
Manifestation: Chupoclops appears over its seal in the form of a Colossal phase spider. However, only the part of its body directly over its seal is visible at any given time. In most cases, Chupoclops first appears as a massive spider leg striking out of nowhere into the center of the seal. Then it shifts its body, slowly bringing its face into view and down to the level of its summoner. Glaring over its oddly tusked arachnid visage from eight all-too-human eyes, Chupoclops rumbles an ominous growl to begin the process of pact making.
Sign: Your lower jaw increases in size, and two long, sharply pointed tusks grow upward from it.
Influence: While under the influence of Chupoclops, you can’t help but be pessimistic. At best, you are quietly resigned to your own failure, and at worst, you spread your doubts to others, trying to convince them of the hopelessness of their goals. In addition, Chupoclops requires that you voluntarily fail all saving throws against fear effects.
Granted Abilities:
Chupoclops gives you the power to linger briefly on the Ethereal Plane, sense the living and undead, and poison enemies.
Ethereal Watcher: As an action, you can become ethereal (as if using the etherealness spell). You can remain on the Ethereal Plane indefinitely if you do not move and you take no actions, but you return to the Material Plane immediately after you move, take an action, or interact with an object. Once you have returned to the Material Plane, you can’t use this power again until you finish a short or long rest.
Devouring Bite: You gain a natural bite attack. You are considered proficient with this attack and it deals 1d10 piercing damage plus your Strength modifier. You can use this bite to attack both corporeal and incorporeal enemies, and the bite is considered magical for the purpose of overcoming damage resistance and immunity. You cannot use this power if you do not show Chupoclops’s sign.
Soulsense: You can perceive living, undead, and ethereal creatures within 10 feet as if you possessed the blindsight ability. You also sense whether they have more or less Hit Dice than you and whether they have above or below half their total number of Hit Points remaining. This ability is continuously active while you are bound to Chupoclops.
Haures, The Dreaming Duke
Haures grants his summoners the power to create illusions, kill dissenters, and move through objects like a ghost.
Legend
Human history associates the name Haures with a powerful lord who terrorized his people. From the time he took the throne until his death, he kept his subjects at work building his castle, adding constantly to its grandeur and might. Workers at the castle would return with strange tales of building a room and then rebuilding it the next day because no sign remained of their previous day’s work. Then those who told such stories began to vanish in the castle, never to be heard from again. Although the castle grew with the additions made to it for the first few years, the constant construction seemed to have no effect on its size in later years.
When at last Haures died, his subjects rejoiced and attacked the castle, hoping to loot and set fire to the palatial structure. The mob of peasants found the castle empty, devoid even of its furnishings. Confused and frightened, they left, and the castle and the surrounding lands soon gained a reputation for being haunted. Binder scholars believe they know the answer to the mystery of Haures’s disappearance and the strange construction of the castle. According to their legends, Haures was not a human at all, but a powerful rakshasa sorcerer in disguise. Much of the construction he demanded took place on the Ethereal Plane because Haures planned to continue his existence there as a ghost. He wanted his afterlife to be as much like his mortal life as possible, so he had his subjects build a nearly exact duplicate of his castle on the Ethereal Plane and cloaked their work sites in illusions to hide the truth.
In the last months of his life, Haures brought many living and undead servants to his foggy realm, as well as all the comforts to which he had become accustomed. For some time after his demise, Haures spent time on both the Material and Ethereal Planes. As a ghost, he would cloak the decaying castle on the Material Plane in bright illusions so that he could throw lavish parties for the travelers attracted to its warm glow. Then he would end the party suddenly, leaving his guests alone in the chilly ruins of his castle and delighting in their terror. As the years passed, fewer folk dared enter his home, and Haures began to throw illusory parties for himself to alleviate his boredom. As his sanity deteriorated, he became unable to distinguish between the Material and the Ethereal Planes, and even between his illusions and his own imagined experiences. At some point, Haures lost all sense of the difference between reality and dreams, illusion and imagination, and even life and undeath. This complete dissolution of these barriers propelled him into existence as a vestige.
Manifestation: Haures initially manifests as a ghostly tiger stalking out of thin air, but his appearance rapidly changes to that of a handsome and well-dressed middle-aged man who appears alive and healthy. A moment later, that form decays before his summoner’s eyes, rotting into a zombielike state, then fading into ghostly incorporeality and changing again, this time into a skeletal tiger wearing a shining crown and purple robe. This tiger form soon loses its crown and robe but gains ghostly flesh, becoming a ghostly tiger to begin the cycle of change all over again. Haures seems cognizant of his summoner only while he is in living human form, and he speaks only in those brief moments.
Sign: While you are bound to Haures, your palms are where the backs of your hands should be, just as they are on a rakshasa. If you flip over your hands so that the backs are up, your thumbs end up on the wrong sides of your hands. This rearrangement has no effect on your Dexterity, spellcasting, ability to wield objects, or use of skills.
Influence: When influenced by Haures, you become an eccentric, often speaking to yourself and to imaginary friends. In addition, Haures requires that if you encounter and disbelieve an illusion not of your own making, you must not voluntarily enter its area.
Granted Abilities:
Haures allows you to move like a ghost, gives you the power to fool the senses, and grants you the ability to kill others with their deepest fears.
Incorporeal Movement: When moving, you become nearly incorporeal and can ignore the effects of difficult terrain. You can even move through an enemy’s space, but not through walls or other solid barriers. Furthermore, any attacks of opportunity directed at you while you move are made at disadvantage. You can suppress or activate this ability as an action.
Major Image: You can use the major image spell as a vestige power. You can only have one major image effect active at a time. When you reach 17th level as a binder, your major image lasts until dispelled and does not require your concentration, and you can have more than one effect active at a time. Once you have used this power, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.
Phantasmal Killer: You can use the phantasmal killer spell as a vestige power. This power’s damage increases as your binder level increases, to 6d10 at 17th level. Once you use this power, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.
Ipos, Prince of Fools
Binders call Ipos the Prince of Fools because of the crown he wears and the sad legend of his transformation into a vestige. He grants his summoners the power to see creatures and objects as they are, knowledge of the planes, and a fraction of his charisma.
Legend:
As a mortal scholar of deities and the planes, Ipos discovered vestiges and the process of binding long before their rediscovery in the current age. Although binder lore gives confl icting accounts of Ipos’s race and nation of origin, the legends agree that he was a mighty spellcaster with the power to travel the planes in his pursuit of knowledge.
Although he was interested in all subjects, Ipos had a particular passion for discovering the nature of the planes, magic, and the gods. Through his study of these topics, Ipos sought to discover the planar order—the set of fundamental laws within which the multiverse operated. Ipos did a magnificent job with his research, and his discoveries have been passed down through the generations.
Yet he left such an incomplete vision of reality that later scholars and explorers had to expand upon his body of work. In the midst of his investigations, Ipos stumbled across vestiges and drowned in the depth of this knowledge. He could not conceive of beings that did not exist in some place, or that could not be reached via the planes or by deities. He became obsessed with finding the plane upon which the vestiges resided. He dropped the study of all other topics and threw himself into the task of finding a way to the realm of the vestiges.
No one knows what happened after he made this mission his focus, but the fact that he now exists as a vestige lends credence to the idea that he discovered what he sought.
Special Requirement: Ipos refuses to answer the call of any summoner who, in his judgment, has not taken a serious enough interest in occult studies. Anyone wishing to bind Ipos must have proficiency in both Arcana and Religion.
Manifestation: Ipos steps forward onto his seal as though reappearing from invisibility. Some pact magic texts say that he has the head of a vulture or a goose, but those writers must have been unfamiliar with the bald ibis. Ipos clearly has that bird’s long, downward-curving beak and mottled, featherless head. Atop his warty scalp, he wears a crown of black iron, and a many-layered gray cloak hides most of his form. Ipos’s overly long arms end in gray-furred and clawed members that are more like the paws of a lion than the hands of a man. In one paw, he holds a gnarled iron cane that he uses more often to strike the ground in emphasis than as an aid in walking. He keeps his other paw hidden in one of the long sleeves of his robes, but from time to time, an observer can see him extending its long, black claws. Despite his rusting crown and tattered cloak, Ipos presents an imposing figure, and his hissing voice and baleful glare add considerably to his menace
Sign: You grow long, black, clawlike nails.
Influence: You think highly of your intellect and show contempt toward those who question your assumptions or conclusions. If you encounter a creature that shows interest in a topic about which you have knowledge, Ipos requires that you truthfully edify that individual.
Granted Powers:
Ipos grants you his discerning sight and commanding presence, as well as deep knowledge of the planes.
Flash of Insight: You can use the true seeing spell as a vestige power, except that the power only lasts until the start of your next turn. Once you use this power, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.
Ipos’s Influence: Your affiliation with Ipos allows you to draw more power from the vestiges to which you are bound. The saving throw DC (if any) of each power granted by your vestiges increases by 1, and your vestige attack modifier also increases by 1.
Planar Attenuation: You gain protection from the natural effects of a specific plane. These effects include extremes in temperature, lack of air, poisonous fumes, emanations of energy, or other attributes of the plane itself. You can change the plane to which you are attuned as a standard action.
Shax, Sea Sister
Another giant among the vestiges, Shax gives her summoners the ability to swim like fish, to laugh off lightning, to wriggle free of any bonds, and to strike foes like a thunderbolt.
Legend:
Shax once ruled over storm giants as a goddess of the sea. She was born to Annam, the greatest of all giant gods, without his knowledge. Because he was prone to blind spots in his omniscience, Annam could not hear the giants’ prayers when they mentioned Shax, nor could he see her many cruelties to them. He realized that some problem might exist only when the storm giants started battling the other giant kinds, claiming their caves, clouds, hills, frosty mountains, and volcanic peaks as storm giant territory. When Annam asked them why they had attacked their fellow giants, the storm giants pointed to the sea. Annam’s blind spot still prevented him from perceiving Shax, so he sent his son Thrym to take care of the problem. Thrym, god of the frost giants, was eager to stop storm giant incursions into his followers’ lands, so he picked up his axe and leapt into the sea. There he met his sister Shax for the first time. Thrym found her both beautiful and terrible. He offered to wed her if she would call the storm giants to return to the sea. Shax would have none of it, though, so the two fought. In the end Thrym won, beheading Shax with a clean blow of his axe, but not before she had scratched off some pieces of his flesh with her nails. The strength of Shax’s spirit gave her the power to resist the pull of the Astral Plane, that graveyard of the gods, so she became a vestige. As for Thrym, he yet lives, but the pieces of his cold body that his sister removed have become icebergs that float in the sea as constant reminders of the storm giants’ debt to him.
Special Requirement: You must draw Shax’s seal within sight of a pond, stream, or larger body of water.
Manifestation: Shax first appears as a semitransparent female storm giant standing 20 feet tall. Her drenched, violet-skinned body is clad in a gold breastplate and black tunic, both of which drip seawater on the ground. After she manifests, Shax smiles, and her head inclines as though acknowledging her summoner, but it continues to dip until it tumbles off her neck.
The body vanishes even as the falling head becomes more solid. It strikes the ground upside down with a wet thump, its face turned away from her summoner. For a moment the head just sits there, but then the wet black hair coalesces into thick cords that press against the earth, lifting it up. Walking on her hair tentacles in a spiderlike manner, Shax turns around to face her summoner, glaring balefully with her yellow eyes. In a shrill voice, Shax demands to know who has summoned her.
Sign: A scar appears around the circumference of your neck, as though your head had been lopped off and then returned to your body to heal.
Influence: While under Shax’s influence, you become possessive and stingy, particularly about territory—be it actual land or simply a room in an inn. In addition, her influence requires you to demand compensation for any service rendered and to tax any use of your territory. However, you can accept nearly any item of value—be it material goods or a service—as payment.
Granted Abilities:
Shax grants you the swimming skill of a fish and the ability to strike foes with electricity. She also gives you immunity to electricity and thunder and allows you to move freely despite restraints.
Freedom of Movement: You can use the freedom of movement spell as vestige power, except that its casting time is one bonus action and its effect lasts until the end of your next turn. Once you use this power, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.
Storm Resistance: You gain resistance to lightning and thunder damage.
Storm Strike: As an action, you can call down a bolt of lightning that strikes a target within 60 feet of you that you can see. The target must make a Dexterity saving throw and takes lightning damage equal to 3d6 + your binder level on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one. This ability functions outdoors, indoors, underground, and even underwater. You can use this power a number of times equal to your Charisma modifier (minimum once). You regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.
Swim Speed: You gain a swim speed equal to your movement speed. You can take the Dash action as a bonus action on each of your turns while you are swimming.
Zagan, The Duke of Disappointment
On the cusp of deification, Zagan lost all he had worked for. As a vestige, he offers his summoners a snake’s language, the power to cause an enemy flee his presence, and the ability to become a serpent.
Legend:
When dwarves had yet to tunnel into their mountains and elves first walked beneath the boughs of trees, Zagan ruled over thousands. A lord in a great yuan-ti empire, he had power over hundreds of his own kind, who in turn controlled the lives of thousands of humanoid slaves. Zagan built himself up as a god to these slaves, using the yuan-ti as his emissaries to communicate with the uneducated masses over which he held sway.
Over time, Zagan’s power became so great that he actually aspired to become a god. He sought and fi nally discovered the means to his goal: a grand ceremony wherein he and his yuan-ti would gather together all his worshipers and slay them. At the appointed hour on the appointed night, Zagan collected all his people for a celebration of his glory. He could feel their worship empowering him, and with each passing minute he gained strength and felt his awareness widening. Then Zagan rang the gong that signaled the attack, and he and his yuan-ti servants fell upon the slaves, slaying them with wild abandon. At first Zagan thought it glorious, but then he felt his new powers begin to wane. With each life he crushed, he felt a bit more mortal.
Zagan attempted to call off the ceremony, but in the chaos of the slaughter, the other yuan-ti could not hear him. Suddenly, a sword pierced Zagan’s chest from behind. As he looked down at the bloody blade, a sibilant voice whispered in his ear, “The World Serpent wishes you well.” A cleric among his own people had tricked Zagan into ruining his chances at godhood on the very eve of his apotheosis. At a point somewhere between godhood and mortality, Zagan passed on into the void.
Special Requirement: You must kowtow before Zagan’s seal, prostrating yourself and addressing him as a deity.
Manifestation: When Zagan begins to manifest, several snakes appear in a heap in his seal. The snakes then slither apart and rise upright along the lines of the seal. Then the crown of a head appears, with baleful eyes glowering. An ogrelike head slowly reveals itself, and after another moment, shoulders and arms appear, to which the snakes are attached. Zagan then uses his powerful arms to pull the rest of his body from the ground, revealing a long, serpentine form instead of legs. He reaches toward his summoner hungrily, his mouth gaping open in a feral grin, but the snakes on his body turn toward him and hiss, causing him to flinch backward. The brooding Zagan then addresses his summoner while calming the snakes. Binder scholars say that the snakes on his body are his most loyal lieutenants, who were killed on the night of Zagan’s murder and dragged with his soul into a vestige’s existence.
Sign: You gain a lisp and can’t help but speak in a sibilant manner.
Influence: While influenced by Zagan, you become domineering and aggressive. Zagan requires that you slay any snake or snakelike being you meet, and deface any representations of snakes or snakelike beings other than Zagan that you find.
Granted Abilities:
Zagan grants you the ability to change into a snake, speak with snakes, and cause your foes to avoid your mere presence.
Aversion: As an action, you can instill a fear of serpents in creatures around you. All creatures within 30 feet must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or become frightened. The creature remains frightened while it can see you, see a snake, or see a yuan-ti. If an affected creature can no longer see you, snakes, or yuan-ti, it can make another Wisdom saving throw to end the effect. Otherwise, the effect lasts for 1 hour or until you lose your concentration. Once you use this power, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.
Speak with Snakes: You can speak with snakes, as though permanently under the effects of a speak with animals spell.
Snake Shape: You gain the power to shapechange, as per the druid wild shape ability. You can only shapechange into a poisonous snake, a giant poisonous snake, a constrictor snake, or a giant constrictor snake. Add your proficiency bonus to your attack rolls while in these forms. Once you use this power, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.
7th Level Vestiges
Desharis, The First Shelter
According to ancient myths, the earliest true community was a human village called Desh, or "shelter" in the old tongue. Here the people dwelt together for protection against predators, and they first constructed structures rather than use existing shelters for protection against the elements.
Legend:
The legend of Desh is neither uncommon nor unknown today. What few realize, however, is how swiftly the natural and magical worlds adapt to changes within. Desh was not merely the first community, but it also birthed the first urban fey, a distant ancestor of what would become the mighty zeitgeist.
Desharis knew nothing of his own origins. He knew only that of his two conflicting urges — one to protect the sanctity of the natural world, the other to defend Desh and the people therein — the latter was by far the stronger. Invisibly, he worked to stave off attacks from predators; to keep the village free of plague; and to aid its inhabitants when other humanoids attempted to raid Desh for its supplies. While the people of Desh thanked the gods and spirits for their fortune, however, they never knew of Desharis himself. The other fey of the world, horrified at the notion of a spreading society that might supplant the natural order, counted Desharis a traitor. They worked to thwart his efforts and even destroy him. Though he was, in effect, the very embodiment of community, Desharis was ever alone.
Desharis grew bitter at the disdain of the other fey, and some suggest that he inspired the spread of civilization as vengeance against them. Whatever the case, Desharis spread as the notion of community did, growing ever more diffuse, ever larger. Though he gained in size and influence, he gained nothing in the way of power; smaller villages added nothing to his abilities, and larger communities frequently birthed their own urban fey. Eventually, the spirit of community was too diffuse and spread out to exist as a being at all — and yet, as the embodiment of civilization, now a permanent part of the world, he could not entirely fade away.
Special Requirement: If you have gone more than a day without binding Desharis, you may only draw his seal in a village or larger city. Attempts to do so elsewhere fail outright. You can, however, "carry" Desharis into the wild; this is why you may continue to summon him, even outside the urban environment, if you have not allowed more than a day to lapse since you last did so.
Manifestation: Desharis appears with the sound of a hundred distant voices talking and shouting, though specific words remain completely unintelligible. A veritable mob of individuals appears as from a great distance, as though the air above his seal had become a window to some other place. As the mob approaches, these bare silhouettes meld together even as they take on greater details, eventually combining to form a single humanoid shape standing 10 feet in height. Though the silhouettes look human, Desharis himself appears made of equal amounts of stone, wood, metal, and glass.
Sign: While hosting Desharis, your eyes turn to glass. Anyone meeting your gaze sees the movement of multiple silhouettes behind them, as though looking through a window at a busy street.
Influence: Under Desharis's influence, you cannot stand to be alone, and the more people you have around you, the better. You never voluntarily accept any task that requires you to be alone, and you argue vigorously against options that would split the party. If you have the opportunity to socialize with large groups of people (such as entering a boisterous tavern), you must take it unless doing so is overtly harmful, or you have reason to suspect the individuals are hostile to you.
Granted Abilities:
Desharis grants abilities that reflect his mastery over the civilizations of the world, plus provides a few that show his anger at the fey and other creatures of nature.
City-Dweller: While bound to Desharis, you always know the shortest path from one location within a city to another. You have advantage on Investigation checks made to gather information while in a city.
Infinite Doors: As an action, you can pass through an exterior doorway (one that leads from inside a building to outside), and appear through another exterior doorway within 3,000 yards. The two doors must both be set in buildings made of similar materials; for instance, you could pass from a wooden building to another wooden building, or a stone building to another stone building. You can either select a specific door with which you are familiar as the destination, or simply declare that you are appearing through the closest appropriate door to a given distance. (If no appropriate portal exists within range or in the direction you wish to travel, the effect does not function.) This is a teleportation effect. Once you use this power, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.
Turn Natural Soul: You may use turn undead, as the cleric ability of the same name, but targeting beast, elemental, fey, or plant creatures rather than undead. Once you use this power, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.
Spirits of the City: You can use the animate objects spell as a vestige power. Once you use this power, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.
Vanus, The Reviled One
Hated out of proportion for his sins, the smiling Vanus remains an enigma to binders. Vanus provides binders with the ability to frighten and punish weaker foes, hear evil afoot with uncanny perception, and free allies from constraints.
Legend:
Legend remembers Vanus by many epithets: the Betrayer, the Craven One, the Foul Prince, the Maggot, the Fearmonger, and even the Hellbringer. Binders simply call him the Reviled One. The hatred traditionally heaped upon Vanus seems out of proportion to his faults, a mystery that binders have yet to unravel.
The story of Vanus begins in a grand kingdom, a peaceful empire that existed long before the current age. Human legend ascribes the kingdom to dwarves, while the dwarven story of Vanus claims elves to be that realm’s rulers. Elven mythology lays no claim to Vanus, relating instead that the kingdom belonged to a still more ancient race now largely gone from the world, similar to titans. Despite this difference and other variations, the basics of the tale remain the same.
The ancient kingdom prospered in peace for years because of the evil it kept trapped at it heart. Before the kingdom existed, the founders of that great nation fought a terrible battle against a powerful fiend (such as a balor or pit fiend). Although they could not kill their enemy, they did manage to trap it beneath the earth. To be certain they could keep their foe in check, they built a castle upon that unholy ground. That castle became the capitol of their kingdom.
While goodness flowed from that fortress, evil lingered there, ever watchful, always waiting. The leaders of the country posted a continual guard on the dungeon the fiend remained trapped within, wary of any attempt to escape. For centuries it remained thus, until the fateful night Vanus took over as guardian.
Vanus was a vain prince of the realm, selfish and obsessed with frivolity. To punish the prince for an embarrassment his petulance caused, the king commanded Vanus to serve with the guards of the dungeon during the party to celebrate the monarch’s birthday. Deep in the dark and clammy halls, Vanus determined to ignore the chatter of the guards and strained to hear the noise of the celebration above. He could hear little, just the distant tones of music punctuated by laughter. As he listened, the sound of one voice became clearer. A deep and commanding speaker was saying something Vanus could not quite discern. As Vanus neared the door to the fiend’s prison, the voice became even clearer, and Vanus thus moved past the guards and closed the distance to the ancient portal.
When Vanus put his ear to the door, he heard a voice unlike any other, and what it told him terrified him. Vanus ran from the dungeon screaming that the fiend was escaping. The guards, knowing they were not like the heroes of old, and seeing the prince of the realm in panic, also fled. The prince ran through the party, ranting about their coming doom, and soon the whole castle was being evacuated.
Panic spread across the countryside, and the people fought with one another in their haste to escape. Battles erupted between families and towns, and the citizen of that ancient kingdom left their lands a war-torn ruin. In the conflicts that followed, the people forgot their original cause for leaving and focused on their new enmity. The kingdom dissolved, the castle fell into ruin, and the fiend laughed in its prison.
Some legends say that the fiend then freed itself, and the gods cursed Vanus for his gullibility and cowardice. Others say that Vanus returned and freed the fiend, and the gods cursed him for this evil. Still other legends claim that Vanus became the fomenter of wars and breeder of terror, assuming the fiend’s place in the cosmos, becoming imprisoned by his fears even as the fiend’s evil spread beyond the walls of the dungeon.
Special Requirement: Vanus will not appear before a binder if his seal is drawn within sight of a doorway or window of any kind. If such apertures can be hidden from view, Vanus submits to being summoned, but the moment Vanus sees a door or window, he shrieks and vanishes in a gout of blue flame. Should the binding attempt be aborted in this manner, Vanus will not appear before the binder for three days.
Manifestation: Vanus appears in his seal as though stepping down from a carriage not visible to the binder. He always takes the form of a handsome male member of the binder’s race, dressed in fine clothing as a person of wealth and privilege. Vanus smiles and bows low to his summoner, but when he rises, his visage will have changed. Vanus then appears demonic, with six black horns growing from his face, and his skin covered in dark boils that swim with maggots. Blood wells up in his eyes like tears and pours down his smiling face to where he licks his lips. In this form, Vanus again bows. When he rises once more, he retains his demonic body and awaits his summoner’s pleasure.
Sign: When a binder makes a pact with the Reviled One, a boil appears on his body. Within the ruddy fluid in this boil swims a maggot. Should the boil be broken, the maggot slides swiftly across the binder’s body, eluding any attempt to catch it, and digs again beneath the skin. Before the original boil can scab over, another grows and the maggot appears within. Only by ending the pact with Vanus can the binder be rid of the foul insect and the disgusting homes it makes for itself.
Influence: Under the influence of Vanus, you take every opportunity to revel. Even small victories seem like cause for grand celebrations, and if you’re happy, you want everyone around to share your joy. If you see others in the act of celebration, you must join in. If you achieve victory in combat, you must immediately spend a full-round action crowing about your triumph.
Granted Abilities:
Vanus grants you tremendous hearing, the ability to foment fear by your presence alone, skill at fighting foes weaker than yourself, and the power to free allies from imprisonment.
Fear Aura: As an action, you cause all creatures within 10 feet of you to make a Charisma saving throw. Creatures who fail the saving throw are frightened of you for 1 minute. An affected target may attempt the saving throw again at the end of each of its turns. Creatures who succeed on the saving throw are unaffected by this ability. Once you use this power, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.
Free Ally: As an action, you may target an ally within 60 feet who is affected by a restrained condition. The restrained condition immediately ends and the target may use their reaction to move up to their speed. You cannot use this ability on yourself. Once you use this power, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.
Noble Disdain: When you hit a creature with an attack, that creature takes 1d6 extra points of damage if it is below its hit point maximum.
Vanus’s Ears: While bound to Vanus you gain proficiency in the Perception skill and have advantage on Perception checks that require acute hearing.
Zceryll, The Star Spawn
Zceryll was a mortal sorceress who communed with alien powers from the far realm. She became obsessed with immortality, seeking out the alien beings in the hopes of learning their eternal secrets. When she died, she became a hideously twisted vestige, forever seeking to re-enter the Realms via numerous artifacts she dispersed across the world. Zceryll grants you the ability to speak telepathically, resistance to effects related to insanity, and the ability to summon pseudonatural creatures, and the power to unleash bolts of pure madness.
Legend:
Thousands of years ago, an alienist sorceress known as Zceryll learned bizarre powers in a fight to defend herself against oppression. She was promised untold power by strange, alien beings known as star-spawn from beyond the world. All she had to do was to create portals to summon them.
Zceryll created the portals and summoned the star spawn to her aid. She fought back against her oppressors, finding a newfound purpose in her life. She traveled the world, creating many portals for her masters and items of her own devising.
Zceryll was unaware of the slow corruptive effect the star spawn had on her. By the time she realized something was wrong, it was too late to change. Eventually, her body became so suffused with alien power that she became one of them. When her life came to an end, she was a twisted and bitter old hag. She felt she had accomplished nothing and became obsessed with youth. When her time was up, her soul vanished into the far realms, and she became a vestige.
As a vestige, Zceryll, now a phantom twisted alien entity, seeks to exert as much influence over the Realms as possible. She has whispered clues to those who bind her in an effort to guide them to the location of artifacts and items she created, such as the bone scepter of Zceryll (in the Well of Dragons), the star-spawn scepter, the aberrant spheres, the black blood kaleidoscope, and the rod of Taupanga.
Manifestation: The area in and around the seal fills with thousands of tiny circular mirrors. A beautiful human woman is reflected in all of the mirrors, yet something is off about her features. After a few seconds, a scream is carried on the air and the image of the woman changes into a hideous mass of writhing tentacles. The mirrors then shatter, covering the floor with beautiful but alien patterns of glass that hurt the mind and cause the nose, mouth, eyes, and orifices to bleed black blood.
Sign: Your eyes appear as circular mirrors. In your peripheral vision, all other living creatures appear twisted, covered in tentacles, extra eyes, and vestigial organs.
Influence: Never admit that you need help or that you are weaker than anyone else. Treat those that are weaker than you with scorn and contempt, especially young women and spontaneous spellcasters.
Granted Abilities:
While bound to Zceryll, your body and mind become alien, allowing you to channel the power of the star spawn in a variety of ways.
Alien Mind: Your mind is alien and does not work like that of a normal mortal. You are immune to psychic damage and to confusion, insanity, and madness effects.
Bolts of Madness: As an action, make a ranged vestige attack at a creature you can see within 100 feet. On a hit, the target takes 3d12 psychic damage and is stunned until the start of your next turn. Once you use this power, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.
Summon Alien: As an action, you can summon an otyugh (MM pg. 248). The otyugh disappears when it drops to 0 hit points or after 1 hour. The otyugh is friendly to you and your companions as long as you maintain concentration on this effect; while you maintain concentration, you can dismiss the otyugh as a bonus action. It acts on your initiative and obeys any verbal commands you issue to it (no action required by you). If you don’t issue any commands to the otyugh, it defends itself from hostile creatures but takes no other actions. If your concentration is broken, the otyugh becomes hostile to you and your companions, acts on its own separate initiative, and attacks you. A hostile otyugh cannot be dismissed by you and disappears when it drops to 0 hit points or after 1 hour. Once you use this power, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.
Telepathy: You can communicate telepathically with any creature you can see within 100 feet of you. You don’t need to share a language with the creature for it to understand your telepathic utterances or respond telepathically to you, but the creature must be able to understand and communicate in at least one language.
8th Level Vestiges
Ansitif, the Befouler
Ansitif the Befouler loathes all evidence of religious faith, granting resistance to divine magic the power to call on the demon lords of the Abyss, to blasphemy, and to resist the cleansing power of fire.
Legend:
Ansitif the Befouler is an ancient tanar’ri lord who rose to power in the wake of the obyriths’ fall and quickly seized control of the 21st layer of the Abyss, now known as the Sixth Pyre.Although most demon lords hunger for the power of true gods,Ansitif was enraged by the very existence of divine beings. Unable to challenge most deities directly, the Befouler vented his fury through the corruption of religious sites and relics dedicated to true gods. At the height of his power Ansitif’s demesne was littered with the shattered relics of countless faiths and the ruins of desecrated temples drawn into the Abyss.Up until his imprisonment, Ansitif delighted in the company of succubi, and he was of Malcanthet’s first lovers. It is said that the first succubi to become lilitus were born of their couplings, as the newly enthroned Queen of Succubi secretly drew on the Befouler’s corruptive nature to unlock the ritual needed to transform her servitors.Centuries ago, Ansitif joined with six tanar’ri allies—Cyndshyra of the Seven Torments, Felex’ja the Tiger King, Ixinix the Lord of Blackwater, Qij-na the Shattered, Rhindor’zt the Black Prince, and Wejindhastala the Tempest—to hunt down and destroy a powerful obyrith called the Malgoth, scattering his essence across the Abyss. Instead of triumph, the alliance’s victory brought disaster. The affair took Ansitif and his allies away from their centers of power, and opportunistic demon lords assassinated or imprisoned each member of the alliance in turn. In the case of the Befouler, his most powerful general, a balor named Kardum, betrayed Ansitif and had him imprisoned in the Wells of Darkness on the 73rd layer of the Abyss. Kardum then want on to claim the title of Lord of the Balors, which he holds to this day.
Special Requirement: Ansitif requires that his seal be drawn using the broken remains of a true deity’s holy symbol.
Manifestation: The symbol before you erupts in flames, and a swarm of sparks leaps outward to scorch the relics, holy symbols, and other signs of worship in the immediate vicinity. Gradually, the flames coalesce around the altar and begin to give forth a dark cloying smoke. In the center of the smoke, flying sparks form a disembodied mouth that begins to speak.
Sign: Your hair and skin become blackened and scorched, as if briefly touched by fire.
Influence: Under Ansitif’s influence, you become enraged by the presence of relics dedicated to true gods.The Befouler requires that you attempt to destroy or steal any relic dedicated to a true god that you discover.
Granted Abilities:
Ansitif grants you the power to Blaspheme against the true gods and to temporarily spurn your deity and pledge yourself to a demon lord of the Abyss. Harkening back to Ansitif’s period of rule over the Sixth Pyre, the Befouler grants you immunity to fire.
Blasphemy: You can use the cleric’s turn undead feature as a vestige power, except that it affects non-evil creatures within 30 feet. Additionally, good aligned creatures who fail their saving throws may be destroyed if their challenge rating is at or below a certain threshold, as shown below: Binder Level Destroys good creatures of CR... 15 3 or lower 17 4 or lower 20 5 or lower Once you use this power, you can’t use it again until you finish a long rest.
Fire Immunity: As an action, you may become immune to fire damage for 1 minute. Once you use this power, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.
Inconoclasm: You can use the shatter spell as a vestige power. Once you use this power, you can't use it again until you finish a short or long rest.
Thrall to Demon: Your alignment is considered evil while you are bound to Ansitif. Characters who serve Good or Neutral deities may be required to perform an act of atonement for daring to bind to Ansitif.
Eligor, Dragon's Slayer
A champion both against and for evil dragons, Eligor grants martial prowess both in and out of the saddle, as well as a dragon's command of the elements.
Legend:
Supposedly, Eligor was a great half-elf dragonslayer before he was condemned to a vestige’s existence by the actions of Tiamat. Believers of this legend claim that after Eligor’s death, Tiamat sent her draconic minions against the followers of both the human and the elven deities, demanding that they release his soul to her. Despite Eligor’s great service to both races, the deities gave up his soul to stave off the dragon attacks against their living followers. Only one deity argued against this profound injustice. The race and gender of this lone voice of reason differ with the teller, and not even binder scholars agree on whether the deity was human or elf, or even male or female. Whoever it was, this god set off alone to face Tiamat and wrest Eligor’s soul from her grasp. Upon arrival, however, the deity found Eligor in the service of Tiamat rather than in bondage. Unbeknownst to the other gods, Tiamat had raised him from death to be her champion and enforcer, using his abandonment by the other gods to win his loyalty. Eligor and the nameless deity fought, and Eligor lost his life yet again. This time, no deity laid claim to his soul, since doing so had already caused enough trouble.
Manifestation: Eligor clatters out of nothingness on a winged, half-horse/half-dragon monstrosity. Both rider and mount are heavily armored, and in fact Eligor’s form is entirely obscured by ornate, shining plate armor and a grand helm. He carries a lance in one hand and holds a banner in the other. With each manifestation, Eligor’s banner and mount change color, cycling through the five different colors of chromatic dragons. Although Eligor rides what might well be an evil creature, he always greets his summoner warmly and treats him with respect.
Sign: One of your hands becomes thickly scaled. The color of the scales matches the color of Eligor’s mount at the time of his summoning.
Influence: You feel pity for all outcasts, particularly half-elves and half-orcs, and you make every effort to befriend any such beings you meet. Because Eligor desires revenge on the deities who abandoned him, he requires that you attack a human, elf, or dragon foe in preference to all others whenever you enter combat.
Granted Abilities:
In his first life, Eligor was a skilled horseman, and in his second, he served the primary deity of Chromatic dragons. Thus, the powers he grants tend to reflect those associations.
Chromatic Strike: You deal an extra 1d6 damage whenever you hit with an attack. You can choose whether this bonus damage is acid, cold, fire, lightning, or poison damage.
Summon Dragon Mount: As an action, you summon a black, blue, green, red, or white dragon wyrmling, which appears in an unoccupied space you can see. The wyrmling’s size changes so that it is large enough for you to ride (Large for a Medium binder, Medium for a Small binder). The wyrmling disappears when it drops to 0 hit points or after 1 hour. The wyrmling is friendly to you and your companions as long as you maintain concentration on this effect; while you maintain concentration, you can dismiss the wyrmling as a bonus action. It is treated as a trained mount, acts on your initiative, and obeys any verbal commands you issue to it (no action required by you). If you don’t issue any commands to the wyrmling, it defends itself from hostile creatures but takes no other actions. If your concentration is broken, the wyrmling becomes hostile to you and your companions, acts on its own separate initiative, and attacks you. A hostile wyrmling cannot be dismissed by you and disappears when it drops to 0 hit points or after 1 hour. Once you use this power, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.
Heavy Armor Proficiency: You are proficient with heavy armor.
Marchosias, King of Killers
A legendary assassin in life, Marchosias now grants his summoners the ability to kill or paralyze with one startling attack, to damage attackers, and to disappear in a puff of smoke.
Legend:
Marchosias seems to have appeared as a vestige quite recently—in fact, only a short time before Dahlver-Nar did. In life, Marchosias was a human who brought death to others. His favorite targets were other assassins and murderers, but this choice of foes had nothing to do with morals.
Despicably evil, Marchosias was obsessed with improving his skill as a killer, and ending the lives of other professional slayers seemed the best challenge he could undertake. When at last Marchosias met his death, his soul traveled to the Nine Hells. The devils gleefully accepted his powerful spirit, but others there took note of his arrival and were not pleased.
The spirits of hundreds of thugs, slaughterers, executioners, and assassins banded together and rebelled against their devilish captors— intending not to escape or take control, but to attack Marchosias. Although the devils were loath to allow such lawlessness, they let the souls of the damned fight it out, thinking to step in and punish all the spirits when the battle was over. Marchosias fought well, but he could not prevail against so many foes at once, and he fell under the onslaught. When the devils pulled back the attackers, nothing was left—Marchosias’s soul had been torn to pieces.
Special Requirement: To summon Marchosias, you must at some point in your life have committed an evil act for which you have not apologized, atoned, or made reparations. Lying or breaking a confidence doesn’t count, but other small acts of evil—such as theft, infidelity, or vandalism— do fulfill the requirement.
Manifestation: Marchosias appears with a bloodcurdling scream in an explosion of fire and black smoke. Though much of the smoke curls away, some remains and slowly coalesces to form a human figure. Marchosias appears as a king with body and raiment composed of swirling smoke and cinders. He wears a crown of fire, beneath which gleam two glowing, hot coals where his eyes should be. Marchosias wields a scepter of flames, and a sword of hot ash is belted to his hip. For a moment, he seems exhausted by the rigors of his arrival, standing with his shoulders slumped and his head bowed. After a moment, he raises his gaze to his summoner and stands straight and tall, adopting an imperious posture.
Sign: While you are bound to Marchosias, the pupils of your eyes glow with a red-orange light. Anyone looking at your face can make a DC 12 Perception check each round to notice this effect. This light is not strong enough to illuminate the area, and it does not make you any easier to see in the dark, but it can be disturbing to look upon.
Influence: Marchosias’s influence makes you debonair and sly, as though you have some trick up your sleeve and the knowledge of it makes you confident. In addition, Marchosias requires that you use the death attack he grants you against any foe you catch unawares.
Granted Abilities:
Marchosias gives you an assassin’s skill at killing, plus the ability to assume gaseous form.
Death Attack: When you hit a creature with a melee attack, you may strike to kill. The creature must succeed on a Constitution saving throw or be stunned. At the end of their next turn, if they succeed on a Constitution saving throw, they are no longer stunned; if they fail this saving throw, they fall unconscious. At the end of their next turn after falling unconscious, if they succeed on a Constitution saving throw, they are no longer unconscious; if they fail this saving throw, they drop to 0 hit points. Once you use this power, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.
Fiery Retribution: As a reaction, you deal 3d6 points of fire damage to an opponent who hits you with an attack while they are hidden or when you are surprised. This extra damage applies to ranged attacks only if the opponent is within 30 feet.
Smoke Form: You can assume the form of a smoke cloud as an action. This ability functions like the gaseous form spell, except that you can remain gaseous for as long as you wish as long as you maintain concentration. Although you lose your supernatural abilities while gaseous, you do not lose the ability to remain in gaseous form. Vestiges you have bound remain so for the normal duration. You can return to your normal form as an action. Once you return to your normal form, you can’t use smoke form again until you finish a short or long rest.
Silent and Sure: You gain proficiency in the Stealth skill. Double your proficiency bonus when making Stealth checks.
9th Level Vestiges
Ashardalon, Pyre of the Unborn
A seeker of pure power and wealth, the fiendish red dragon Ashardalon was among the toughest creatures of his era. Having escaped death more than once, he grants binders some of his powers as a dragon and fiend, as well as a portion of his great resilience.
Legend:
Ashardalon was a red dragon of unusual greed and power. He sought to control a vast stretch of land, and ravaged itin cruel hunts for food, sport, and power. So great was Ashardalon’s power that many cults grew to revere him as a deity and followed him into what they believed were holy wars. In time,however, an alliance of rangers and elves managed to defeat Ashardalon’s armies. Shortly thereafter, the dragon faced a powerful druid who had risen to defend the land, and was nearly slain.As a near god, however, Ashardalon was a force to be reckoned with, even in defeat. He hid on the Outer Planes for millennia and, through complex machinations, managed to replace his heart with that of a Balor,becoming a creature of even greater supernatural evil. Renewed, the dragon made an assault on the Bastion of Souls in an effort to destroy all living creatures. There, Ashardalon faced a distant descendant of a druid who had vanquished him once before and was truly killed.Still, his death at the birthplace of all souls (Combined with his nearly deific status) allowed him to resist a permanent resting place. His essence lacked the power to become a true immortal, leaving him only the nebulous existence of a vestige.
Special Requirement: Above all, Ashardalon is drawn to the power of the Far Planes. Ashardalon will only form a contract with a binder who is also bound to a demon or devil vestige: Ahazu, Ansitif, Diabolus, Cabiri, Geryon, or Tenebrous.
Manifestation: Ashardalon tears open the ground with his long black talons and hauls his massive body up from a flaming pit. The red dragon is wreathed in flames and has a burning hole where his heart should be.He bellows in anger before turning to the binder and demanding to know why he has been disturbed.
Sign: A patch of skin over your heart is marked by a deep-hued crimson sigil of a curled red dragon.
Influence: Your greatly hunger for vengeance against those who harm or slight you. Ashardalon requires you to slight you to accept any opportunity to strike a foe who damages or insults you in preference over any other target.
Granted Abilities:
Ashardalon grants you some of the vast power he collected during his life as a dragon and a fiendish creature.
Hellfire Breath: As an action you exhale fire in a 90-foot cone. Each creature in the area must make a Dexterity saving throw, taking 20d6 fire damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one. Once you use this power, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.
Ashardalon’s Presence: Each creature of your choice within 120 feet of you and aware of you must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or be frightened for 1 minute. A creature can repeat the saving throw at the end of each of its turns, ending the effect on itself on a success. If a creature’s saving throw is successful, the creature is immune to this power for the next 24 hours. Once you use this power, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.
Ashardalon’s Vigor: Ashardalon grants you some of the vast resilience he enjoyed in life. When you bind this vestige, you gain temporary hit points equal to twice your binder level. These temporary hit points last for up to 24 hours or until you are no longer bound to Ashardalon.
Ashardalon’s Heart: You can summon the burning soul of the baalor bound to Ashardalon’s heart. As an action, you surround yourself with a fiery aura for 1 minute or until you lose your concentration. At the start of each of your turns, each creature within 5 feet of you takes 3d6 fire damage. Additionally, a creature that touches you or hits you with a melee attack while within 5 feet of you takes 3d6 fire damage.
Once you have used this ability, Ashardalon’s sign automatically shows through any armor or clothing you wear for 1 round, burning like a fiery brand (though it doesn’t actually deal damage or start a fire), even if the suppress sign feature has been used. Once you use this power, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.
Halphax, The Angel in the Angle
Gnomes rarely earn a reputation for their military might, but Halphax is one of the few exceptions to that rule. He grants his summoners the ability to raise a fortress and imprison foes, as well as the hardness of stone.
Legend:
An engineer of inestimable excellence, Halphax made great advances in architecture of all kinds. His influence can be seen in the solid architecture of the dwarves, the beauty of elven buildings, the comfort of gnome dwellings, and the practicality of halfling homes. His greatest passion, however, was the architecture of military fortifications and the art of defense.
Halphax’s walls still encircle towns, and most of the castles he designed are still standing today, even though more than a thousand years have passed since he last sketched a floor plan. Unfortunately for him, the great architect’s professionalism became his downfall. In Halphax’s time, gnomes were as populous as humans. They lived in grand cities that rivaled those of the elves, and they welcomed all civilized races into these metropolises to live and trade. The hobgoblins were the first of the goblinoids to rise out of tribalism and find welcome in the gnome city-states.
They quickly took to gnome society, learning as much as they could and using their strong backs and hale bodies to earn places for themselves in the military and manual labor trades. Then, in an act known to gnomes as the Great Betrayal, the hobgoblins turned against their benefactors in a series of well-coordinated attacks. The victorious goblinoids turned each gnome city into a prison, using the fortifications meant to keep enemies out to trap the gnomes within. To ensure that they overlooked no means of escape, they captured and enslaved the gnomes who had designed them. Through a combination of threats and rewards, they forced the gnomes to make these prisons even more effective. Many gnome architects chose to die rather than help the hobgoblins, and others secretly used their positions to help their kinfolk escape the city. But when the hobgoblins threatened the life of Halphax’s wife, the great architect put all his effort into creating the most impregnable prison possible. Legend holds that no gnome ever escaped Halphax’s city, and it was the last goblinoid holding to fall in the war that followed the Great Betrayal.
When at last the goblinoids were defeated, the prison city that Halphax had built was found empty of all gnomes but him. The hobgoblins had killed them all except Halphax and his wife. She could not bear to be the cause of so much tragedy, however, and took her own life. When the gnomes attempted to apprehend Halphax and hold him responsible for his deeds, the architect vanished into his city. The allied armies tore the city down to its foundations in their attempts to find him, but he was never seen again.
Special Requirement: Halphax’s sign must be drawn inside a building, in a corner of the structure.
Manifestation: When Halphax manifests, the corner in which he was summoned appears to warp, growing deeper and extending to what appears to be an infinite distance beyond the limits of the structure. In that distance, a figure appears, and suddenly the distance closes, bringing Halphax into his seal. Halphax always takes the form of a gnome wearing leather breeches and a vest, both of which are covered in pockets and loops for holding tools and items. The tools of an engineer hang from his belt, and he usually appears in a posture of boredom, hands in his pockets. Halphax’s most striking feature is that he seems to have no fl esh and bone beneath his clothes—only broken bits of stone and masonry. The shattered features of bas-reliefs and gargoyles make up his face.
Sign: Your body takes on the appearance of cracked stone.
Influence: In his time as a vestige, Halphax seems to have lost all memory of his life as well as any feeling of guilt or shame for his actions. Thus, when you are under his influence, you lose any normal sense of shame or embarrassment. However, if someone threatens a hostage you care about—be it a creature or an item—Halphax requires that you accede to the hostage taker’s demands.
Granted Powers:
Halphax grants you great knowledge of mechanical arts as well as the power to imprison foes, build towers, and gird your body with the hardness of stone.
Damage Reduction: You gain resistance to nonmagical bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage. You cannot use this power if you do not show Halphax’s sign.
Halphax’s Knowledge: You gain advantage on Intelligence checks to know about or understand architecture, siege tactics, or siege engineering, and you are proficient in the use of all siege equipment.
Imprison: You can imprison a foe deep in the earth with only a touch. As an action, you can touch a creature. That creature must succeed on a Constitution saving throw or sink halfway into the earth, becoming restrained. The creature may attempt a new saving throw at the end of each of its turns to escape the imprisonment. Once you use this power, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.
Architect’s Wall: You can use the wall of stone spell as a vestige power. Once you use this power, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest. Secure Shelter: As an action, you can bring a sturdy stone building into being in any unoccupied space on the ground within 60 feet of you that you can see, as long as the space can accommodate its dimensions. This ability summons a tower with a 10 foot radius, 30 feet high. You cannot summon this tower if you already have one standing. The interior contains three floors connected by staircases and a flat roof with a crenellated bulwark. You can dismiss the tower as an action. Once you have dismissed the tower, you can’t use this power again until you finish a short or long rest.
Orthos, Sovereign of the Howling Dark
Ancient and unknowable, Orthos gives its summoners the power to sense what they cannot see, to fool the sight of others, and to turn their breath into wind that can speak or scour flesh from bones.
Legend:
Orthos might well be the original vestige—the first being to break the boundaries and see past the window of reality to the nothingness beyond. Pact magic texts always mention this entity, and persistent explorers can find its seal represented in art or architecture on most planes, as well as in the ruins of many ancient civilizations. Binder scholars have a thousand theories about Orthos’s origins, but none is more than mere supposition.
All agree that Orthos is inestimably old, and it has long since shed whatever form and persona it might once have had, becoming an alien and distant being. In deference to its great age and the hallmark of its appearance, binder scholars have dubbed Orthos the Sovereign of the Howling Dark.
Special Requirement: You must summon Orthos within an area of bright illumination.
Manifestation: When Orthos begins to manifest, a breeze seems to pass over the summoner, but it ruffles nothing except the summoner’s hair and clothes. The breeze intensifies, becoming a cold wind, and a low whistle emanates from the vicinity of Orthos’s seal. Directly over it appears a black speck—a mote of shadow like a blind spot in the observer’s vision. The whistle becomes a moan that slowly rises in pitch and volume, eventually transforming into a howl as the darkness spirals outward, opening like the pupil of some great cat’s eye with an explosive rush of wind. The howling grows so loud that it pains the ear while the seemingly nonexistent wind buffets the summoner. Then it stops. In the sudden silence, an unseen, unheard, yet palpable presence slides out of the black aperture and hovers heavily over the seal. Though not detectable by any sense, Orthos is eerily extant, and its presence can be felt by even the dumbest of beasts. The vestige says nothing; its summoner can only plead her case and hope that Orthos does not impose its influence.
Sign: You always seem to be buffeted by a breeze that no one else can feel, even when you’re indoors. The eerie wind makes no noise, but it tousles your hair and belongings, frequently changing direction.
Influence: While influenced by Orthos, you are averse to darkened areas and loud noises. Although you can endure such conditions, they give you a sense of panic and make you short of breath. Orthos requires that you always carry an active light source with a brightness at least equal to that of a candle, and that you not cover it or allow it to be darkened for more than 1 round. Additionally, Orthos requires that you speak only in a whisper.
Granted Abilities:
Orthos gives you truesight, displacement, and a breath weapon that you can use either as a weapon or to deliver messages.
Truesight: You gain truesight out to 15 feet.
Displacement: At will, you can surround yourself with a light-bending glamer that makes it difficult for others to surmise your true location. Any attack directed at you has disadvantage unless the attacker can locate you by some means other than sight. This power lasts for 10 minute or until you lose your concentration. Once this power ends, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.
Whirlwind Breath: As an action, you can exhale a scouring blast of wind in a 60-foot cone. All creatures in the area must make a Dexterity save. Your whirlwind breath deals 9d6 points of bludgeoning damage and 9d6 points of thunder damage to creatures on a failed save, or half as much on a successful one. Creatures who fail their saving throw are also knocked prone and pushed to the edge of the cone. Once you use this power, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.
Whispering Wind: You can use the message cantrip as a vestige power, except that its range is 120 miles.