Smoking Ruins: Necklace Situation

[Godweyn]

Hello hive mind !

 

Spoiler Warning

 

So this is the situation, running Smoking Ruins my players obviusly defeat Vamargic temporaly disabling his arms, and forcibly removed his necklace before attempting to escape the next wave of minions that the troll summoned to aid him.

Very good for them

But this is the thing, our good humakite, after obtaining the necklace, decided that it would hinder him throughout the battle to have it in his hands, so he had the brilliant idea of equipping you with this beautiful object (as a belt due to the difference in sizes).
So ... apart from the magic that one accesses, what effects could a highly chaotic necklace have on a human being? I would need suggestions on how to handle this situation from the great Glorantha scholars before forming a plan of action.

[jajagappa]

30 minutes ago, Godweyn said:

what effects could a highly chaotic necklace have on a human being?

First I'd note that there are conflicting points regarding whether the eye-necklace is chaotic, a specific eye is chaotic, or Vamargic acquired his Chaos features in some other way.

From p.39: "his eye necklace was a sacred ritual object in his worship of Zorak Zoran."

From p.95: "but his magic (fueled by the necklace and its relationship with Chaos)"

Overall, Vamargic seemed to use a ZZ ritual to create it, which means its primary association is with Death, Darkness, and Disorder.  The chaotic taint came from the first eye (a Thanatar worshipper) and seems to prevent the user from fully gaining access to the spirits/spells of the victims.  It also appears to have "gifted" Vamargic with two chaos features (agonizing screams and confusing appearance).  So, assuming there is a relationship between the necklace and chaos, there should be consequences to anyone carrying/wearing it.

Here are my thoughts:

• the spirits are going to hang around and plague the wearer.  (e.g. p.96: "These spirits act as an audience for Vamargic, applauding him and cheering on his efforts to acquire the last eye.")  In fact, they will likely encourage any human wearer to sacrifice their own eye to "complete" the magic.  They may whisper it, suggest it, tempt the wearer with its awesome powers, etc.  Perhaps treat it as a Spirit Combat attack using the most powerful eye's POW (i.e. the centaur's eye).  If the spirits win, the wearer tries to cut out their own (or a companion's) eye.  Or perhaps they make the wearer attune the necklace first.  Or treat it as a test against a particular Passion (e.g. Disorder - if the wearer succumbs to Disorder, they succumb to the alure/temptation to use the powers for their own - something "precious" ala the One Ring).s
• as the eyes function as magic crystals (or perhaps the necklace as a whole does), the wearer would likely need to attune either the eyes or the necklace to gain its powers.  Attuning either the tusk rider eye or the whole necklace probably inflicts the attuner with 1D3 chaotic features. 
• optionally, the chaotic taint might not manifest until/unless the wearer invokes the tusk rider's spirit/spell.

Note that a Humakti would normally consider the eye necklace to be a form of undead/undeath - something anathema to Humakt and worthy of destruction.

 

 

[Joerg]

Vamargic may have been born with a chaos taint - after all both his parents were cave trolls.