Black Thorn Resurrection
With a gesture as elegant as it is blasphemous, Xandera summons forth the darkness that clings to the marrow of the world. From the center of her upturned palm, a black tendril of living shadow erupts—serpentine, oily, and glistening with necrotic malice. It lances through the air with unerring hunger, piercing the carcass of the fallen like a spear of profane rebirth. Upon impact, the flesh convulses grotesquely; bones snap into place, sinews stitch themselves anew by invisible hands, and eyes once dulled by death flicker open with a sickly, unnatural luster. Each soul she raises is not merely a puppet, but a branded chattel, bound heart and marrow to her will—loyal beyond death, loving her with an eerie, unbreakable adoration that transcends the grave.
"The grave is but a cradle to me. Rise, darling, and sing my name upon the stillborn winds."
Smog of Rot
From parted lips or an open palm, Xandera exhales her deepest curse: a gout of cloying, fetid mist, thick as congealed blood, that blossoms into the air with the slowness of a lover's sigh. This smog of rot carries the scent of damp graves and unburied flesh; upon touching living bodies, it sinks into the pores and tongues of skin, causing rapid necrosis of tissue. Armor rusts, flesh blackens, and vitality ebbs away with every second of exposure, as if the very concept of life recoils from her breath. To witness its arrival is to watch one's own decay writ into the air—a slow, dignified unmaking, like a noble house collapsing into dust.
"Breathe deep, little moths. Taste the twilight upon your tongues; rot, after all, is merely rebirth whispered backward."
Venom Bloom
With a languid, almost dismissive flick of her wrist, Xandera casts forth a small violet orb, no larger than an apple, its surface swirling with liquid malice. Upon striking the ground or its target, the orb detonates into a roiling purple mist, thick as velvet, that blankets the area in a choking embrace. Those caught within find themselves weakened by degrees—their vision blurs to watercolor, skulls throb with splitting headaches, limbs grow heavy as lead, and lungs burn for want of air. The mist seeps through the skin, ignoring armor and defenses alike, a slow invasion that unravels the body from within. Many never realize they are dying until their knees have already kissed the earth.
"A single breath, a single sigh—and the strongest lions tumble like drunken babes."
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Tendril Lash
When words fail and subtlety is cast aside, Xandera unleashes the feral hunger stitched into her bones. From both her palms, a flurry of shadowy tendrils whip forth, black and glistening with necrotic sheen. These tentacles can be shaped at her whim—some smooth and blunt to batter and bludgeon, others barbed and hooked to rip and ensnare.
They strike with the speed of striking vipers, wrapping about limbs, throats, or weapons, pinning foes like insects beneath her casual cruelty. To be caught by them is to feel one’s fate coiling tighter with every heartbeat, until escape is no longer a possibility, but a foolish, fading dream.
"Struggle, if you must. The more you writhe, the sweeter your surrender tastes upon my tongue."
Clattering Orbit
"Orbit, my cherubim of ruin—sing your hymn of bone and bloom in fire."
School: Necromantic Conjuration
Casting Time: One breath and a cruel thought
Range: Self (for orbit), 60 ft (for launch)
Duration: Sustained until depleted or dismissed
Description: With an elegant, serpentine motion of her fingers and a whisper in a tongue not spoken since gods were entombed, Xandera summons four charred skulls, each crowned with everburning violet-black fire. They spiral her form like mournful satellites—grinning familiars of her wrath, circling her hips, shoulders, or crown like a profane halo.
Each skull is an extension of her will and rage, forged from ancient marrow and hatred preserved in waxy ash. They emit a low hum, like the chanting of priests trapped in endless prayer.
Offensive Use:
With a flick of her wrist and a smirk that forewarns catastrophe, she may hurl a skull at an enemy. Upon impact, the skull detonates:
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Scorching flame wreaths the area
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Bone shrapnel scatters, lacerating those nearby
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A necrotic pulse echoes outward, blasting foes backward with a concussive wave of death-aspected energy
Each skull can be targeted independently.
Defensive Use:
As a reflexive gesture, Xandera may consume one skull—grinding its orbit into her chest or absorbing it through her palm. This act erects a barrier of fused bone and spiritual flame, capable of absorbing a single devastating blow, magical or physical.
The barrier crumbles after one use. This defensive reaction may only be used twice per encounter—the magic rejects gluttony.
Limitations:
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A maximum of four skulls may be summoned per casting
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Launching or consuming a skull removes it from orbit
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The skulls do not regenerate until the spell is cast again
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The summoned skulls are immune to dispel magic, but may be shattered by forceful holy rites or divine purification spells
“A crown should not merely rest upon the head. It should orbit, burn, and sing of your right to rule.”
Sovereign Reclamation
Xandera’s splendor is not a static thing; it is a living garden fed by death.Through her sovereign will, she can feed upon the life essence of others, siphoning not just strength, but flesh, vitality, and soul marrow itself.
By feasting upon the living—or the freshly dead—she can perform miracles no healer or priest could ever grant:
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Reattach severed limbs by stitching them seamlessly into her living tapestry.
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Restore wounds, sealing lacerations and fractures with unnatural, silken flesh.
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Maintain her eternal youth, polishing her skin to sun-warmed bronze and rekindling the golden furnace behind her eyes.
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Alter her physique subtly if she so desires—thickening muscle, refining curves, adapting the sovereign bloom of her form to her vision of perfection.
The cost is simple: Life must be paid. Flesh must be surrendered. Souls must be plucked like ripe fruit from the vine.
"What your blood surrenders, I shall make eternal. Your ruin is merely my re-blooming."
Corpse-Bloom Regression
Should catastrophe fall—should her body be shattered, her magic scattered, her strength spent—Xandera wields a final, blasphemous salvation: the Corpse-Bloom Regression.
In this dire state, she willingly dissolves herself into a blackened, rotting mass—a grotesque flower of death and oil, sprawling across the ground like a hungry infection. This foul bloom, though hideous, is indestructible by mortal means.
She becomes a writhing tangle of necrotic tendrils and weeping petals, sinking into the soil, seeping through cracks, slithering through the arteries of the world unseen.
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Absorbing biomass—flesh, bone, blood, and spirit from the living or the freshly dead.
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Drinking deeply of the marrow of life until her sovereign body can be reconstructed, rebloomed into the world like a nightmare garden.
"You may crush the flower, but its roots stretch deeper than your coward’s sight. I will bloom again—from your corpse, from your children, from the very soil you dared think safe."
This resurrection is not instantaneous. It is a slow, predatory regathering—A feast of agony and decay, after which the lich rises once more, perhaps subtly changed, yet ever more sovereign, ever more beautiful in her defiance. Can be killed in this state with a fire/lightning/light spell.
Carrion Crown
"The dead remember who abandoned them. And I grant them the means to express it."
By casting this rite upon a fallen foe, Xandera conjures a thorned diadem of bone and venomous ivy around the corpse's cranium. The body twitches back to unlife, not as a thrall, but as a beacon of rot and vengeance.
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Emits a toxic aura that poisons nearby living creatures.
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Causes hallucinations in those with weak wills—visions of betrayal, guilt, and Xandera herself as divine judge.
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If slain again while the crown is intact, the corpse explodes into a blossom of bone shrapnel and spore clouds.
“Kneel to your guilt. It wears your face now.”
Blossom of Detonation: Thralls to Cinders
“You were mine in life. You shall now serve in your scattering.”
Xandera channels her will into one or more of her reanimated undead, filling them with a volatile mist of blood-gas and soul-pressure. Upon her command—or upon their destruction—they erupt in a viridescent necrotic explosion, laced with bone shards and caustic bile. The resulting blast can shred flesh and unnerve even the most stalwart foes, as the screams of the dead echo in its wake.
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Effect: Designated undead thralls become necrotic bombs. When detonated, they deal radius-based damage, spread decay, and leave lingering mists that erode armor and resolve.
Xochikualuul: Tendrils of Blooming Hunger
“From the cracks of a corpse's ribs grow my gifts…”
From beneath her feet—or the ribcages of slain foes—Xandera summons sinuous, thorned tendrils tipped with venom-dripping blossoms. These animated roots seek out warm blood, wrapping around ankles, wrists, or throats to constrict, pierce, or drain. Flesh caught in their grasp becomes numb, blistered, and necrotically petaled in her honor.
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Effect: Constricting tendrils erupt in a radial bloom, grappling targets and sapping strength. Each turn, they either crush tighter or spread poisonous rot along the skin.
Yana'Teotl: The Hollow Beam
“There is no truth purer than what burns from the hand of godhood.”
Gathering a torrent of abyssal magic through her open palm or from her grimoire's maw, Xandera channels a focused beam of searing soul-light—the color of rotting lilies and dusk-bound suns. The blast is silent, precise, and unholy, slicing through unarmored tissue and leaving cauterized scars filled with sorrow.
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Effect: A straight-line beam that carves through flesh and spirit. Metallic armor delays it; enchanted armor resists it. Anything else? Reduced to raw nerve and regret.
Itzpapal's Embrace: Maw of the Hanging Moon
“Reach for me, and find your limbs taken.”
From a portal of mesoamerican glyphs shaped like a crescent jaw, Xandera unleashes two massive shadow-tendrils bristling with obsidian hooks and serrated bone plates. They lash out in wide arcs or direct pierces, their passage marked by whispers and the stink of boiling marrow. Flesh they touch clings to them unwillingly, as though even the victim's soul mourns being left behind.
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Effect: Two long-range tendrils strike enemies with crushing force and siphon life, pulling enemies closer or flinging them away in arcs of bone-laced gore.
Crown of the Blooming Maw
“Behold—the womb of ruin blossoms!”
Type: Ultimate Spell
Casting Time: Prolonged Invocation (typically used as a finisher or battlefield-altering incantation)
Visual and Magical Description:
At the climax of her incantation, Xandera whispers in a forgotten dialect — a death-rattle language stolen from the marrow of the dead gods. Her outstretched arms fracture the air like bone snapping in slow motion. From the ruined ground or temple stones surrounding her, giant, crimson-black tentacles erupt like hellish stalks—necrotic roots made flesh.
These serpentine appendages undulate and coil, some ending in razored bone, others blooming open like corpse flowers revealing diseased, glowing hearts. Red mist—suffused with volatile lifebane spores and spiritual bile—seeps between them, tinting the entire battlefield in a sickly, infernal dusk.
Effects:
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Crimson Miasma: The mist causes coughing, hallucinations, and internal bleeding over time. Mortals caught within the fog grow weak by the second. On the fourth breath, their blood boils like overripe fruit unless treated or evacuated.
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Tentacular Grasp: The tentacles do not blindly thrash. They think, snare, and cradle. Each one is guided by a soul she has previously consumed. They pull enemies apart, ensnare spellcasters, or wrap lovingly around her favored undead to empower them.
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Desecration Field: Healing magic fails. Life-essence evaporates. All natural flora within the radius blackens and blossoms into toxic orchids shaped like screaming mouths.
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The Bloom's Chorus: Echoes of the dead — those who previously resisted her reign — scream and laugh within the mist, unnerving even the bravest foes.
"They called me parasite. They called me heretic. But it is they who fed this bloom, watered it with their defiance. Now drink from the cup you helped fill, and choke on my love."