Kal
Whispers
- Intent: Talismans meant to delay death or incapacitation.
- Image Source: Crimson Ring by Nicolas Camiade
- Canon Link: N/A
- Permissions: N/A
- Primary Source: Force Body and Force Rage
- Manufacturer: Ancient Rakata
- Affiliation: Greystone Mercantile
- Market Status: Closed-Market
- Open-Market for Rakata PCs.
- Model: (Rakatan) Gravewalker Talismans
- Modularity: Limited. Can be a ring, an amulet, a torc, etc.
- Production: Semi-Unique (Rakatan Berserker Charm) | Limited (Greystone Variant)
- Material: Alchemical Alloys.
- Gravewalker Talismans suppress pain, fear, and limiting factors to keep a warrior going, up to and including surviving through otherwise lethal injuries. Naturally, the user can still die - chopping off their head tends to do the trick, but any kind of extreme damage can work just fine. This is not to say that further injury is even necessarily needed - the Talisman's effects can only last so long, after all. Better see a doctor.
- Rakatan Berserker Charms give users the option of going a step further, pouring the raw power of the Dark Side through into their bodies in a manner comparable to Force Rage. Naturally, this is terrible for one's long-term well-being. Some potential side effects are listed below.
- Traditional Dark Side corruption, including sallow skin, altered eyes, emotional instability, and an addiction to power.
- Blindness, deafness, hallucinations, hearing voices that forcefully encourage the murder of loved ones or strangers.
- Skin hardening into itchy 'leather', growth of scales, or even partial mummification with or without loss of strength.
- Infertility, cancer, loss or suppression of Force Sensitivity, susceptibility to Mind Control, Force Fear, and the like.
- Metamorphosis into a Sithspawn or Rakata hybrid. Many come to resemble Flesh Raiders in mind and body.
- Rakatan Berserker Charms have a tendency to produce especially extreme side effects in non-Sensitive users.
- Indomitable: Gravewalker Talismans suppress pain, fear, and injuries alike, allowing warriors to get the job done whatever the cost.
- Furious Might: Rakatan Berserker Charms additionally imbue their users with the fearsome might of the Dark Side, greatly enhancing their strength and resilience at the expense of self-control. Such rampant abuse of the Dark Side brings with it a laundry list of horrific side effects.
- Consequences: Gravewalker Talismans delay pain and the effects of nonlethal injuries, but they do not prevent them. Every wound suffered and every painful feeling suppressed comes leaping to the forefront the instant the effect ends, see Ysalamiri, certain Force Abilities, etc.
On the battlefield, pain is an inconvenience and death even more so. As such, Greystone's archaeologists were elated to find Rakatan artefacts able to delay such frailties of the flesh until the battle is won or the combatant irreparably wounded; they were less enthusiastic once they realised the full extent of the side effects. Nasty business, truly, but there was a small but lucrative niche market for horribly dangerous Dark Side relics.
Greystone's own don't engage in such ridiculous practices, of course, for their alchemists were able to create a watered-down variant that retained a certain degree of unnatural resilience (or, more accurately, pain/injury tolerance) without having to clog one's veins with mutative corruption.
