A bunch of miscellaneous stuff, vestige-related in mechanics or flavor. With help from veekie, sirpercival, Bozwevial, Drammor, and DonQuixote.
I'm currently uncertain about the vestige's level, and the feat prerequisites are basically pulled out of my ass, so those could use help.
Feats Heretical Mage Your magic feeds on the poor wretched souls you bind to your own, and they in turn grasp at your power to strengthen their hold. Prerequisites: Ability to casts spells, ability to bind vestiges
Benefit: If your caster level is higher than your effective binder level, your effective binder level is equal to your caster level for purposes of the effects of vestige special abilities, up to a maximum of your Hit Dice.
If your caster level is lower than your effective binder level, instead your caster level if equal to your effective binder level, again up to a maximum of your Hit Dice.
If your caster level and effective binder level are equal, this feat has no effect.
Special: If you possess caster levels in multiple classes, this feat applies to each individually (effectively setting all of your caster levels and your effective binder level to the highest among them).
Pact Summoning You grant the vestiges that ride you an extra shred of life by allowing parts of them to reside in the creatures you summon. Prerequisites: Ability to bind 3rd-level vestiges, Augment Summoning, Spell Focus (Conjuration)
Benefit: When you summon a creature by means of a spell or spell-like ability of the summoning subschool, you may grant the summoned creature one of the granted abilities of one vestige you are bound to. Only one creature you have summoned may benefit from a granted ability of a given vestige at any one time, though multiple summoned creatures could benefit from different vestiges. Such creatures are treated as bound to their vestige and always show their vestige's sign and suffer from its influence. Summoned creatures may never use a granted ability that would allow them to summon or create other creatures in any way.
Vestige Casting You cast a jolt of magical power into the cracks between planes, coaxing a brief surge out of the spirit you are bound to. Prerequisites: Ability to cast 4th-level spells, ability to bind 4th-level vestiges, Knowledge (The Planes) 12 ranks
Benefit: You can sacrifice a prepared spell or unused spell slot in order to activate a power of a vestige you are bound to of the same level as the spell or lower. If you activate a vestige's power in this way, you may activate it even if you would normally have to wait before activating it again.
Void Bloodline You are empty. By heritage, freak accident, or a quirk of your fundamental nature, your soul seeps through the infinitesimal gaps between the planes, etheric and fleeting, anchored to you yet not wholly there. Your magic is attuned to nothing, your home is nowhere, you are nobody; that which does not, should not, and cannot exist.
Characters with the Void Bloodline feat tend to place more value in immaterial, often fleeting things than in the material. They might be idealists, chasing after some dream or concept. They might be hedonists, savoring every feeling and hungering for the next as soon as it is past. They might be artists, admiring beauty both transient and eternal. They might well appreciate material riches, but generally as a means rather than an end, even if that end is just an easy life. Nearly always, they are ambitious, as if seeking to fill the hole that they are. Prerequisites: Ability to cast arcane spells without preparation.
Benefit: Your ancestry gives you a bonus spell known at each spell level, starting at 1st, according to the following list.
1st—Swift Invisibility
2nd—Blur
3rd—Dispel Magic
4th—Sensory Deprivation
5th—Mind Fog
6th—Antimagic Field
7th—Solipsism
8th—Mind Blank
9th—Reality Maelstrom
Special: If a character takes this feat any time after 1st level and has already learned any of the spells on this list in the class that granted her access to this feat, she gains no additional spells known at those spell levels. This restriction does not apply if she learned any of these spells as a member of another spellcasting class.
Vestige RASPUTIN, the Mad Monk Vestige Level: 5
Binding DC: 25
Legend: The so-called Mad Monk was supposedly once a high-ranking priest and healer of a strictly lawful god. The identity of this deity is now uncertain, as the Monk himself does not seem to remember and nobody remembers him in turn. Rasputin believed that the road to salvation and enlightenment under his god was a cycle of sin and atonement, of transgression against law and decency followed by redemption through punishment. In addition to practicing his deviant dogma himself, he preached this to the royal and noble classes of the kingdom he lived in.
The priest's reception was mixed. Rasputin being a grand womanizer with a silver tongue, the noble ladies took the teachings for the excuse for debauchery and masochism they most likely were. The husbands of such ladies were, in the general case, unamused, even if they themselves participated. It hardly helped that the Mad Monk had a habit of unabashedly flaunting his escapades, including and especially in the faces of horned husbands. Yet, Rasputin was an important political figure, an accomplished miracleworker, and trusted by the king himself, so he could not just be jailed, banished, or otherwise punished.
The answer, of course, was assassination.
Dozens of killers were set on Rasputin's throat, one after the other. Poisons of all manner were slipped in his food, rituals were conducted, curses placed. Every time, the murderer made sure Rasputin could not possibly have survived. Every time, Rasputin survived.
Through witchery, sheer luck, or divine protection, the monk came away from every attempt on his life, even when by all rights, the attempt had worked and he ought to have been dead. His enemies grew ever more enraged, then ever more fearful. What sorcery was this that made the man apparently deathless? How could he be killed? In their panic, the nobles knew only to redouble their efforts. Rasputin was stabbed, shot, poisoned, beat, and more, all in the same night. His unconscious form was chained and thrown in a freezing river. Even then, in the morn he was recovered, having washed up on the river's shore, freezing and bleeding but alive. Only when dawn broke did he finally succumb to the cold and apparently breathe his last.
So terrified was the nobility of Rasputin that even this was not enough assurance. The body was ordered burnt, the soul sought out and destroyed so that no shred could be left of the Mad Monk. Supposedly, even on the pyre he yet stirred, prompting crossbowmen to empty a volley into the corpse in sudden panic.
Even so, a last vestige of Rasputin yet remains. In that unknown place beyond places, clinging to one last shred of nonexistence, the Mad Monk lives on.
Special Requirement: You must pour at least one ounce of some mind-altering substance (an alcoholic beverage suffices) on the seal.
Manifestation: A blazing pyreflame appears within the binding seal, with a man's corpse laid out within it, obscured by the fire. Then, without warning, the corpse jerks to a sitting position, and the fire goes out, revealing an old man covered in scars, naked but untouched by the flames. He speaks with a thick, almost unintelligible accent, and cannot resist innuendo and sordid insinuations.
Sign: Your body is covered in a multitude of horrific scars, each one implying a wound that should by all rights have been fatal.
Influence: Your thoughts become thoroughly dirty, and you can't resist skirt-chasing or annoying those you are uninterested in. Whenever you interact with someone who would fit your sexual preferences, you must attempt to ingratiate yourself to them, whatever else your actual goal is. Conversely, when you interact with someone who does not fit your preferences, you must actively attempt to aggravate them. People you consider friends or family are exempt from this behavior.
Granted Abilities: Rasputin grants you a taste of his legendary resilience, the healing abilities he was famous for in the first place, and his uncanny knack for getting into beds and onto kill-lists.
Regeneration (Ex): You gain regeneration 1. This regeneration increases by 1 for every three effective binder levels beyond 10 (to 2 at 13, and so on). Cold deals normal damage to you. If you lose a limb, the severed part regrows in 3d6 minutes. You can reattach the severed member instantly by holding it to the stump.
Dead Men Live Longer (Ex): You gain immunity to critical hits, death effects, diseases (including supernatural ones), and poison.
Empathic Healing (Su): As a full-round action, you may heal a willing creature touched of 1d6 points of damage per effective binder level. You take an amount of damage equal to half the damage healed. You may not target yourself. This damage bypasses any damage reduction or hardness you have, but it is converted and healed normally by regeneration. Once you have used this ability, you may not use it again for 5 rounds.
I Love Your Wife (Ex): You gain the benefits of the
Strategic Provocation feat, regardless of whether you meet the prerequisites. You gain a number of additional attacks of opportunity per round equal to half your Charisma bonus, but you may only use these to activate the options granted by Strategic Provocation, not for actual attacks of opportunity or any other abilities that could be activated with them.
Love to be Hated (Ex): You gain a morale bonus equal to half your effective binder level to Diplomacy checks against creatures whose sexual preferences you fit. Against creatures whose preferences you do not fit, you instead gain an equivalent bonus to Intimidate checks.
