Forbidden Knowledge

Abundance of Eyes (Ex)

Two eyes were not enough to observe the truths you sought, so you instead moved your focus to acquiring more eyes.

Numerous eyes grow throughout your body, allowing you to see in all directions at once. This grants you immunity to being flanked, assuming you can see the creatures attempting to flank you, and grants you a +2 insight bonus to sight-based Perception checks and to Sense Motive. For each point of essence invested in this piece of forbidden knowledge, the bonuses provided by this ability increase by 1.

Akashic Knowledge

You have learned further secrets of the akasha that have been tainted by the method of their acquisition.

You gain a single akashic feat that can be invested with essence which you meet the prerequisites for. When using that feat, you use your Intelligence in place of any mental ability score normally used for it, and you cannot directly invest it with essence.

Each point of essence invested in this piece of forbidden knowledge is treated as being invested in the akashic feat granted by this ability. If the selected feat requires essence being bound to it to function, you must bind essence to this piece of forbidden knowledge instead.

Special: You can select this piece of forbidden knowledge multiple times. Each time you select it, it is considered to be a separate essence receptacle, and grants you an additional akashic feat tied to that separate essence receptacle.

Dreamer of the Vast (Su)

Your studies have revealed to you the secrets of the Demiplanes of Dreams, allowing you to better control your personal dreamscape and granting you the ability to tap into the power of dreams during your waking moments.

You enter your dreams as a lucid dreamer, and may use your Intelligence in place of your Charisma when determining your initial condition when entering a dream, and when attempting impossible feats in a dreamscape. If your lucid body dies while in a dreamscape, you wake up fatigued.

For each point of essence invested in this piece of forbidden knowledge, you gain a +1 bonus to your Intelligence checks when determining your initial condition and when attempting impossible feats, and gain a +1 bonus on caster level checks to prevent a spell or spell-like ability from going awry because of the wild magic trait of the dimension of dreams.

In addition, you gain the ability to pull the power of your dreams into reality a number of times per day equal to your Intelligence modifier. This ability functions as if you were trying to perform an impossible feat in a dreamscape, save that you can only attempt to cast spells with a spell level equal to one third your class level (rounded down) or lower. These spells are affected by wild magic as if you were in the dimension of dreams, and your checks made to cast this spell benefit from the bonuses granted by this piece of forbidden knowledge. The effects produced by these dream-woven spells are particularly ephemeral, and any non-instantaneous effect they create fades away after 1 minute. This ability can not cast spells with expensive material components.

Eldritch Organs (Ex)

Having portions of your body outside of your direct control drove you to the brinks of madness. Luckily for your sanity, you found a solution.

Ancient sciences have allowed you to optimize your organs with eldritch powers, granting you increased control over their minute functions. This control allows you to optimize their functions, and physically move your organs to avoid being harmed by damage. You double the duration you can hold your breath, only need to consume half as much food and water to survive, only need to sleep 4 hours to gain the benefit of 8 hours of sleep, and gain a +1 insight bonus to Fortitude saving throws against disease and poison. Additionally, when a critical hit or sneak attack is scored against you, there is a 5% chance that the critical hit or sneak attack is negated and the damage is instead rolled normally. This stacks with other similar effects, such as the fortification magic armor property, to a maximum of 100%.

Investing essence in this piece of forbidden knowledge further improves your control over your organs, allowing you to better resist harmful bodily effects. For each point of essence invested, your bonus to Fortitude saves against disease and poison increases by 1, and your chance to negate critical hits increases by 5%.

Glimpsed the Infinite (Su)

Your hubris grew too large and you glimpsed more than any mortal was meant to.

Your research drew you towards knowledge no mortal was meant to possess, and a very glimpse of it burned out your eyes. You may have been rendered blind by your experiences, but the knowledge gained has granted you a sight beyond sight. You are blind beyond 30 feet, but within 30 feet you can see as if you had darkvision, save that you retain your ability to see color even in the dark.

Investing essence in this ability further increases your sight beyond sight. For every 2 points of essence invested, the range of your sight beyond sight increases by 5 feet. Investing essence also improves your sight beyond sight in more abstract ways, as shown below. If an ability emulates a spell that has a range larger than your sight beyond sight, its maximum range is equal to your sight beyond sight.

• 1 Essence Invested: You can see magical auras as the arcane sight spell as a constant effect.
• 2 Essence Invested: You gain the ability to see invisible and ethereal creatures.
• 3 Essence Invested: You determine the health of creatures you see, determining their total, remaining, and temporary hit points. You can also determine if a creature you see is suffering from any debilitating conditions, and what the condition is (such as ability drain, confused, cursed, diseased, fatigued, poisoned, etc). This does not grant you insight on the source of the condition, such as the specific type or poison or disease inflicting a creature.
• 4 Essence Invested: You can see the emotional aura of creatures, allowing you to determine their disposition to any other creature you can see, and granting you a +2 circumstance bonus on Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate, and Sense Motive checks against creatures you can see.
• 5 Essence Invested: You can see a creature’s alignment aura, learning their alignment and the strength of their aura (see the detect evil spell for information on determining the strength of alignment auras).
• 6 Essence Invested: You gain the ability to discern things as they are with your sight beyond sight, granting you the effects of true seeing as a constant effect.
• 7 Essence Invested: Your ability to see magical auras improves, and you now see magical auras as the greater arcane sight spell.
• 8 Essence Invested: You can see the aura of a creature’s impending actions. You can’t be treated as flat-footed by creatures you can see, and creatures you can see receive a -2 penalty to attack rolls, CMB, ability checks, and the saving throw DCs of actions made against you. If any ability requires no action on the creature’s part (such as an ongoing spell), the ability does not receive this penalty.
• 9 Essence Invested: Your ability to see the aura of a creature’s impending actions further improves, granting you a +2 luck bonus on ability checks, attack rolls, CMB and to the saving throw DCs of your actions made against creatures you can see. If any ability requires no action on your part to perform, the ability does not receive this bonus.
• 10 Essence Invested: Your sight beyond sight reaches its pinnacle. You can see through solid matter, viewing the world in a hazy translucency. You can still determine individual objects and creatures.

Grasping Tentacles (Ex)

Your dreams were haunted with the writhing tendrils of horrific alien creatures, and when you woke you felt those self-same tendrils churn beneath your flesh, threatening to burst forth.

You grow a prehensile, arm-length tentacle that is under your control. This tentacle sprouts from any part of your body you wish, and does not grant you any extra attack or actions per round. It can be used to hold, manipulate, or wield objects as well as one of your original arms. You can also use this tentacle to assist yourself when grappling, granting you a +1 insight bonus to your CMB and CMD with grapple checks. This tentacle is bulky and continuously squirming, twitching, or moving despite your best control, making it nearly impossible to conceal without the use of particularly bulky clothing or magic.

Investing essence in this piece of forbidden knowledge lets you sprout more tentacles from your body, allowing you to grow an additional tentacle and increasing your bonus to grapple checks by 1 per point of essence invested. Each time you invest essence in this piece of forbidden knowledge you can change the locations of all of your tentacles.

Reshaped Mind (Ex)

A mortal mind would never do… you need a mind of the beings that first uncovered these secrets to truly comprehend them.

You have utilized forbidden rituals to reshape your mind into a form better designed to understand the ancient works you study. You gain a nearly eidetic memory, allowing you to take 10 on Knowledge checks, even if you are in immediate danger or distracted. This reshaping also changes your willpower to be more focused on raw intellect, causing you to use your Intelligence in place of your Wisdom when determining your bonus on Will saving throws.

Investing essence in this piece of forbidden knowledge further improves your memory and your resistance against affects that would alter your mind. For each point of essence invested, you treat your effective roll when taking 10 on Knowledge checks as 1 higher (11 for 1 essence, 12 for 2 essence, to a maximum of 20 at 10 essence) and you gain a +1 insight bonus on your Will saving throws against mind-affecting effects. When you have 10 essence invested, you gain immunity to mind-affecting effects.

Seeds of Life (Su)

You have uncovered the secrets of extending life through cloning. Using forbidden techniques and some of your essence, you can create an inert duplicate of yourself or another creature using your essence and the creature’s flesh. Creating a clone requires special laboratory equipment worth 500 gp, and a special vessel worth 1,000 gp per clone you wish to create. These vessels usually weigh 5 lb., have a hardness of 10, 15 hit points, and are formed of specially tuned leather, bone, and gems infused with akashic energy. However, any vessel specifically designed for the purpose worth at least 1,000 gp will do.

As part of preparing your veils for the day (or by spending 1 hour), you can create a seed for a clone.

You can create multiple clone seeds during this time, and you are not restricted from preparing only a single clone seed for a given creature. These seeds require a portion of the creature’s flesh at least 1 cubic inch in size, and an investment of essence equal to 1 point per 4 Hit Dice (rounded up) per clone seed you wish to create. Once sealed inside a suitable vessel, the essence is bound to the flesh and a clone seed of the creature grows within. This essence is bound to the clone seed, and you cannot recover it unless you destroy the clone seed, or when the cloned creature is fully grown, after which you immediately regain the lost essence. The essence bound to a clone seed persists even if you are killed.

If the creature who donated the flesh for the clone seed is killed, or if they were already dead when the seed was created, their soul, if it is willing, immediately enters the vessel (or a vessel of their choice, if multiple are available) and a clone of the creature begins to grow over the next 24 hours, consuming the vessel and clone seed in the process. During this time the growing clone is helpless, and if it suffers any damage it is destroyed. After this period, the creature wakes up in their new body with 1 temporary negative level per 4 Hit Dice they possess (rounded up). If the subject has only 1 Hit Die, they take 2 points of Constitution drain instead. For every week that passes, the cloned creature loses one of these negative levels (or their Constitution drain).

The created clone has the original creature’s body and mind, but none of its equipment. The clone is normally the physical age of the creature the day you first grew their clone seed, but you may choose for the clone to be younger or older as part of the creation of their clone seed instead. If a creature of middle age or older is reborn in a younger body, they lose their ability score modifiers from age, and vice versa from a young creature reborn in a middle age or older body.

Unbound Soul (Su)

An ancient ritual gone wrong, or perhaps simply misunderstood, has weakened your soul’s attachment to your mortal body.

To those who can see ethereal beings, your soul is visibly detached from your body, lagging slightly behind any action you take. This slight delay between the actions of your body and your soul has no meaningful effect on you, but with concentrated effort you can sever your soul’s connection to your body, allowing your consciousness to explore free of mortal constraints. Severing your soul from your body takes 1 minute of meditation, after which your body enters a state of suspended animation and your soul forms in an adjacent square in the ethereal plane. Your soul is an ethereal creature that cannot interact with the physical plane, shares all your statistics and abilities, and has an ethereal copy of all of your equipment. As a soul, you are invisible and insubstantial, and can move through creatures and objects on the material plane. You can use your normal modes of movement, or you can float in any direction at half your normal base movement speed. You can see and hear into the material plane to a range of 60 feet, but everything appears gray and ephemeral. In this state you cannot affect material creatures or objects, and you treat ethereal creatures and objects as if they were material. Force effects and abjurations affect your soul normally.

Any damage or effects your soul suffers are also inflicted on your material body, and vice versa for damage or effects inflicted on your material body. You otherwise cannot feel any sensations from your material body until it is rejoined with your soul. If you use any consumable or charge-based ethereal copies of your items, those same items or charges are consumed from the material version of those items. When your soul rejoins your body, all of your ethereal items fade away into nothingness. If an item is removed from your body while your soul is disconnected, the corresponding ethereal item immediately fades away into nothingness.

Rejoining your soul to your body requires both your soul and body to occupy the same space, and then for you to spend a free action on your turn. This process is quite disorienting however, and leaves you dazed for 1 minute.

This state leaves your body incredibly vulnerable, and it begins to rapidly decline in health the longer your soul is separated from it. For each minute spent with your soul separated from your body, you gain 1 temporary negative level. After your soul rejoins your body, these temporary levels are lost at a rate of 1 negative level per 10 minutes. These negative levels ignore any immunities to negative levels you might possess.

Investing essence in this piece of forbidden knowledge better connects your soul to your body, allowing you to survive for longer periods with your soul separated from it. For each point of essence invested in this veil, the time it takes to accrue a negative level is increased by 1 minute. If you reduce the essence invested in this veil while your soul is separated, any essence reduction is counted against time already accrued. For example: If you had 6 points of essence invested and have already spent 4 minutes with your soul detached, removing 3 points of essence would reduce the time it takes to accrue a negative level to 4 minutes, causing you to immediately gain one.

While your soul is separated from your physical body, you can use your soul to attempt to invade the bodies of creatures and objects within 60 feet of you as a Standard action, allowing you to try and possess them. You cannot possess objects that are attached to solid structures, such as doors, locks, or gates. Creatures and attended objects receive a Will saving throw to fight off this possession, and are immune to further possession attempts for the next 24 hours on a successful save. Objects being attended by a creature use that creature’s Will saving throw. On a failed save, your soul enters the creature or object and takes over. If a creature or object you are possessing is killed or destroyed, your soul is immediately shunted out and you take damage equal to half of your current maximum hit points. This damage cannot be reduced or negated in any way. While possessing an object or creature your body continues to accrue negative levels. When possessing an object or creature, you cannot use or benefit from your shaped veils.

While possessing an object, you treat it as an animated object, except that your soul controls the object as if it were your own body. You do not get to customize the construction points for objects animated in this way. At your GMs discretion, some possessed objects may grant a bonus normally granted by construction points, such as a possessed brazier granting the Burn ability. The maximum size of the object you can animate is based on the essence invested in this piece of forbidden knowledge:

0 essence: Tiny. 1 essence: Small. 2 essence: Medium. 3 essence: Large. 4 essence: Large. 5 essence: Huge. 6 essence: Gargantuan. 7 essence: Colossal.

While possessing a creature, you imprison its soul within its own body, but can use its own senses (though it can’t assert any influence or use even purely mental abilities). You can communicate telepathically with the host as if you shared a common language, but only with your consent. You keep your Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma, level, class, base attack bonus, base save bonuses, alignment, and mental abilities. The body retains its Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, hit points, natural abilities, and automatic abilities. A body with extra limbs doesn’t allow you to make more attacks (or more advantageous two-weapon attacks) than normal. You can’t activate the body’s extraordinary or supernatural abilities, nor can you cast any of its spells or spell-like abilities.

As a standard action, you can allow your soul to exit the possessed creature or object, appearing in their space in the ethereal realm.

If your body is killed by negative levels gained through this piece of forbidden knowledge, your soul is left to wander the ethereal plane until your body is raised from the dead, or you find some other way to overcome this setback, such as having an clone seed available from the Seeds of Life forbidden knowledge (or through other method at your GMs discretion). You may still use any equipment left on your dead body, but any item that is removed from the body is lost to you, as normal. Functioning without a mortal body is difficult, but not impossible, though over time it leads to madness. While in this state you can still possess creatures and objects, however the maximum time you can possess creatures and objects in any given 24 period is a number of hours equal to your promethean level.

Warper of Flesh

Flesh is malleable, easily changed and twisted. Why not exploit that fact for your own ends?

You gain Fleshwarper as a bonus feat, even if you don’t meet the prerequisites. You do not need to be of evil alignment to gain or use this piece of forbidden knowledge, but experimenting on and creating fleshwarped creatures is still an evil act. Creating fleshcrafts and fleshcraft elixirs is not an evil act by itself.

When using the Fleshwarper feat, you don’t need to meet the Craft (alchemy) requirements when meeting the prerequisites for fleshcrafts and fleshcraft elixirs you craft. When you craft a fleshcraft elixir, you can increase its base price and cost by 50% to allow the creature who consumes it to not need to make a saving throw to benefit from it.

In addition, you gain a number of ranks of Heal skill equal to your current promethean level, and then an additional rank at each additional promethean level. If you already have ranks in either skill, you may gain an equal number of ranks in other skills of your choice. In addition, you may use your Intelligence in place of your Wisdom with the Heal skill.

This piece of forbidden knowledge has an essence capacity, but cannot be directly invested with essence. Each day, as part of shaping your veils (or by taking an hour if you do not shape veils), you may craft a number of free fleshcraft elixirs equal to the essence capacity of this piece of forbidden knowledge. You can only craft fleshcraft elixirs that could be crafted by you taking 10 on your Heal check, and you don’t require a lab, special tools, or materials to do so. Rather, these fleshcraft elixirs are created entirely by your essence and the maddening powers of your thoughts, requiring you to bind 1 essence to each fleshcraft elixir as part of their creation. This essence remains bound to the fleshcraft elixir until you choose to destroy the elixir, or it is consumed. Once consumed, you regain the point of essence after the temporary duration of the fleshcraft has expired. Fleshcraft elixirs created using this ability otherwise do not require a creature to make a saving throw to gain its effects. A single creature can only benefit from one of these elixirs at a time. Attempting to consume a second provides no benefits, acting as if they had failed their saving throw by 5 or more. In such a case, you do not regain the point of essence until the penalties expire.

Whispers of Providence (Su)

Voices whisper in your mind, their words boding ill or good omens of actions to come. Your mind is filled with whispering voices attempting to guide your actions. As a standard action, you can focus your perceptions and listen to the voices to gain prophetic insights of the outcomes of a particular course of action. The base chance to receive a useful answer is 80% + 5% per point of essence invested in this ability, to a maximum of 100%; this roll is made secretly by your GM. The course of action you propose to the voices must be straightforward enough that they could provide an answer, if it is too vague there is no chance of success. You do not need to speak to the whispers to ask them a question, merely concentrating on the actions you wish to take is enough.

If this roll is a success, the whispers reveal you to insights, giving you one of four results:

• The whispers agree with your course of action if they believe it will have good results.
• The whispers disagree with your course of action if they believe it will have bad results.
• The whispers babble conflicting, incoherent responses if it will have both good and bad results.
• The whispers are quiet if it will have neither particularly good or bad results.

If the check fails, the whispers are misleading and provide you a randomly determined result. The insights of the whispers can only determine the near future, roughly only about half an hour, so anything that might happen after this point has no effect on their predictions. If you ask the voices multiple times about the same course of action, they give the same result.

The voices are not infallible, and the more they are relied on in a short period the more fallible they become. Each time you ask the whispers about a course of action after the first each day, the chance of a successful answer decreases by 10%.