Baleful Utterance

A single forbidden word that yearns to unmake whatever your voice can reach.

Category: Minor

Hidden from the sun, in a ring of runes, a word floats in the air, squiggling and wriggling, yearning to be free and whispering promises of power. But the runes surrounding it fill you with dread, and for good reason: this is one of the dread words of the Things Below, a syllable of pure unmaking that destroys whatever object your voice names. Speaking it costs the speaker dearly and risks corrupting the very ground beneath them.

To unlock it

master your fear, forcing yourself to grasp it and take it inside of you.
hold tight as it wracks your body and soul, attempting to unmake you (2d6 damage, messy, ignores armor).
spend weeks in isolation, wrapping your mind around the dread word that now lives in your head.
risk corrupting your locale and destroying your possessions or anything else nearby as you practice speaking the dread word

Unlocked power

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Stonetop is by Jeremy Strandberg, published by Lampblack & Brimstone, with art by Lucie Arnoux. If this reference helps your table, please support the books and official creator resources.

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Attribution

Stonetop: The Wider World and Other Wonders (Lampblack & Brimstone)

This work includes material from Stonetop by Jeremy Strandberg, published by Lampblack & Brimstone, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. The licence is available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode. Some moves and procedures derive from Dungeon World by Sage LaTorra and Adam Koebel, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License, available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/. Lucie Arnoux's artwork is not CC BY-SA licensed and is not included. Our adaptation of this material is likewise licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

This work includes material from Stonetop by Jeremy Strandberg, published by Lampblack & Brimstone, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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