[Runequest] Blades of Shagal for RuneQuest

[Lev Lafayette]

A draft; suggestions, alterations, or mockery requested.


Blades of Shagal for RuneQuest

Summary

A blood-sucking dagger grows in size according to the Fatigue Points it
drains, converting itself to a shortsword, broadsword, greatsword, and
beyond. Statistics are for RuneQuest (3rd edition), but can be easily
changed to another edition of the game, or game system, or even
setting.

Runes

Death (inverted), Chaos

Mythos and History

In the Godtime Humakt used a dagger on Eurmal's feet and made him tell
of a new weapon, Death, which was protected by Vivamort. This would
make Humakt even more more powerful, so they travelled the Underworld.
In that journey, Eurmal cut his feet again on the Sword Bridge, leaving
behind a trial of blood. Nevertheless, as Humakt argued with Vivamort
to give him Death, Eurmal evaded the Shadow of Vivamort and stole it,
and Humakt returned to the suface world, where Eurmal convinced
Grandfather Mortal to try out Humakt's new power of Death. This story
is well-known [1], but what is forgotten is how Vivamort tried to
fashion a weapon using the Blood of Eurmal. 

Another tale involves Shagal, an Humakti refugee in the lands of Prax
in the Third Age. Shagal was a great warrior, a Rune Lord, and known
for bringing down many with his skills at sword and dagger, despite his
youth. Many years of a warrior lay before him, and he had much blood to
spill. In a dream Shagal saw a vision of him finding Storm Bull's sword
in The Devil's Marsh, following the HeroQuest of Waha and Death [2],
except it appeared to him as a dagger. Nevermind, it was still a weapon
of the Gods. However, unbeknownst to Shagal, he had been Enthralled by
a Mostal Vampire, Zerwick The Artificier. 

In a previous life, literally, Zerwick had been a weaponsmith however
now he found great discomfort at looking at daggers, swords, and the
like, due to the association with the Death cross. With unique Ritual
magics, and a great deal of time, he fashioned a fellow smithy to
slowly make a blood-sucking, soul-sucking dagger and place it in The
Devil's Marsh. 

With the location of the the dagger placed in Shagal's mind he ventured
into The Devil's Marsh, and like many before him (and as Zerwick had
planned) he fell under the taint of Chaos. When the dagger was
discovered, Shagal's alignment changed, he inverted his sword-cross
pendant, expelled the Allied Spirit, and adopted a Chaotic spirit
instead. From then on, when Shagal fought he used the dagger which,
apart from the usual damage, also drained the target of magic points
and fatigue points. Over time the sword grew with more victims,
eventually become a shortsword, a broadsword, and finally, a
greatsword. Beyond that it even spawned a new dagger. 

Nevertheless, Shagal remained mortal in all his time and, as is so
common with Humakti, was felled in a battle with broos in the Wastes,
where his weapons have been passed around by these chaotic beings. It
is possible that adventurers will either directly encounter a tribe of
broos with these weapons, or hear the story from a victim who has
strange tales of being stabbed with a broo weapon, but also feeling
weakened in strength and spirit beyond what the damage would indicate.

Ritual of Zerwick

Zerwick, who loved creating bladed weapons before his unfortunate
transformation into a vampire, was frustrated by the unease he felt in
the presence of these symbols of Death in his new form. Already a
student of sorcery, he took the opportunity to learn the Tap spells, as
vampires often do, and study how to vary magics based on Enchantment
rituals.

What Zerwick came up with was an enchantment hat could create forge a
new weapon from the blood of sapient beings. The intial step required
the extraction of iron from "donated" blood (a variant Tap spell), in
this context "donated" usually meant those who had been Enthralled, or
those who had been brought along by those Enthralled. With a process of
trial and error, but only a few losses along the way, Zerwick
discovered that that draining the blood of the equivalent of 100 people
he could extract enough iron to make a dagger. 

Sadly, Zerwick did not considered this an optimal use of his time (even
if he was technically immortal) and concluded the experiment. It is
possible that in his abandoned forge that his notes and ritual spell
grimoire could be rediscovered.

Statistics

In most respects, Shagal's Blades do the same damage as a normal iron
weapon of their design. However, they also drain Fatigue points equal
to the damage inflicted. A clever user of a Shagal blade will
incapacitate their opponent and then let the blade slurp up the blood
to acquire maximum FAT from the victim. Note that this FAT loss is
semi-permanent, and unlike regaining normal FAT, i.e., 1D3-1 per round,
it recovers at 1D3-1 points per day of rest.

Dagger 1d4+2, ENC 0.5. Requires 10,000 FAT points to be constructed and
the Ritual of Zerwick.
Gladius, 1d6+1, ENC 1.0. Requires 20,000 FAT points.
Broadsword, 1d8+2, ENC 1.5. Requires 30,000 FAT points. 
Greatsword, 2d8. ENC 3.5. Requires 70,000 FAT points.

At 80,000 FAT points a Shagal Dagger bursts from from the Shagal
Greatsword.

Gloranthan Science 

A human contains roughly 4 grammes of iron in their blood. "At .004kg
of iron in the average man, and assuming complete iron extraction from
each corpse, forging a [1.45 kg] sword from blood-iron would have taken
358.69, or 359 dead men" [3]. With some very rough rounding and
assuming that the hilt does not have to be pure iron, 100 people are
required for a RuneQuest dagger, 200 for a gladius, 300 for a
broadsword, and 700 for a greatsword.

Death from blood loss can be represented in RuneQuest by loss of
Fatigue. Fatigue is equal to a character's CON+STR which is
approximately 22 on average. Unconsciousness (optional in the 1993
official errata) is reached at -FAT, on average 44 points of FAT. From
pure blood loss this would represent about 50% of volume [4]. Complete
extraction would then be reached at roughly twice this value, for the
sake of rounding 100 points of FAT per dead human. As Shagal's blades
do not require the victim to actually die, such generosity, the values
for transformation can be measured in FAT points alone.

Note that the values are for humans and ducks. Seafolk, elves and
trolls have no iron in their blood. The seafolk have aluminum, elves
have copper and trolls have lead. Dwarves will have twice as much and
iron Dwarves four times as such. Nobody has worked out what Dragonewts
have and they're not telling; some scholars sugges that their blood
changes composition according to their Stage, but probably includes a
mixture of warm magma and liquified obsidian.

References:

[1] Simon E. Phipp. Humakt Gains Death, 2002. http://www.soltakss.com/h
quest13.html
[2] David Scott. Waha and Death, 2016 https://basicroleplaying.org/topi
c/5550-waha-death/
[3] Anonymous/ How many men would you need to kill to forge a sword
from the iron in their blood?, June 9, 2014
https://www.reddit.com/r/theydidthemath/comments/27na8y/request_how_man
y_men_would_you_need_to_kill_to/
[4] Kimberly Holland, Stacy Sampson. How Much Blood Can You Lose
Without Severe Side Effects? May 24, 2018
https://www.healthline.com/health/how-much-blood-can-you-lose