Pages

Monday, April 23, 2012

Spirit of Radio


Sometimes the voice on the airwaves isn’t human. Late night on an empty frequency you can sometimes hear plaintive whispers between the static: the lonely call of a radio spirit. These electromagnetic para-elementals appear to arise spontaneously from radio transmissions. They're often a nuisance--and sometimes a real danger--within the City and elsewhere.

Radio para-elementals can manifest in any radio. They typically speak in snippets of broadcasts they’ve overheard, mimicking the various voices whose words they steal. They can, however, mimic a single radio personality's voice if they choose, but seem to do it less commonly. Having matured in a sea of pitchmen and songtresses, they develop uncanny abilities to manipulate humans with their assumed voices. They can replicate the bard-like abilities of fascinate, suggestion, and mass suggestion.

They’re not limited to mimicking human voices. They can fascinate equally well with music, or lull to sleep with a magical lullaby. Also, they can create a high volume static which acts as a sonic burst--though this typically blows out the speaker of the radio they're utilizing.

If particularly enraged, a spirit can arc forth from a speaker as pure electricity. It does 1d6 points of damage (additional 1d6 to someone in metal armor). This is treated as a charging attack. This attack causes the para-elemental to dissipate with the effort.  It takes then 2d6 days to reform.

RADIO PARA-ELEMENTAL
AC: 2 [18]
Move: 18
HD: 6
Attacks/Dmg: 1 spell-like power or arc
Defenses: immune to electricity, and other elemental immunities
Special: Vulnerable to water (1d8 points per gallon of water, or double damage on water-based spells), spell like abilities as above (and perhaps other bardic abilities): fascinate, suggestion, mass suggestion, sonic burst.

4 comments:

  1. This would put a real damper on all those ghost investigators out there. And I'm not sure if that would be a bad thing. Good stuff Trey, I can see this one messing with a lot of people.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ghosts? The invisible airwaves crackle with LIFE, good sir.

    ReplyDelete
  3. This has a lot of intriguing potential to it...and some disturbing implications. Very cool.

    ReplyDelete