Finem Temporis Videre Volo (3.5e Epic Spell)
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| Transmutation | |
| Spellcraft DC: | 2,225 |
|---|---|
| Components: | A handful of dirt and a stone with your name on it. |
| Casting time: | 7 weeks |
| Range: | Personal |
| Target: | You |
| Duration: | Instantaneous |
| Saving Throw: | None |
| Spell Resistance: | No |
| To Develop: | 401 days, 20,025,000 gp, 801,000 xp. Seeds: Fortify (DC 17). Factors: Tie your mind and soul to the particles which make up your body {various benefits} (ad hoc +10 DC), prevent chemical bonds in your body from being broken {various benefits} (ad hoc +200 DC), grant you the ability to control the entropy of your body (ad hoc +2,114 DC), prevent the particles which make up your body from decaying or quantum tunneling {various benefits} (ad hoc +200 DC). Mitigating factors: Change from touch to personal (-2 DC), increase casting time to 49 days (-114 DC), induce massive memory loss (ad hoc -200 DC). |
I didn't quite know what it was.
It was immense and blue, with white stripes running across it, while it orbited that strange, colossal, furiously hot ball. I had seen other orbs like this one before, like the huge indigo sphere and the yellow rock I had passed earlier in my dive towards the hot ball. Yet those orbs hadn't really drawn my attention. Not like this one.
For some reason it made me sad. Something deep within me shaking loose as I drifted dully past this blue sphere. It made me think of the oldest thing I remembered. A giant orb of liquid iron which, through some fluke of chaos, would emit radio waves every now and again. That was an Iron Star. There had been other orbs since that Iron Star. In fact, there had been an uncountable numbers of orbs, or maybe they should all be called "stars". Yes, that sounds better. I had witnessed an incalculably large explosion and thousands - no, billions - of stars, since that ball of liquid iron. Yet, that one Iron Star, I held onto it, remembered it, as though it were important.
This orb of blue and white which I drifted past now, held no significance to me. In truth, I had no memory of it. This was the first time I had ever seen in. Yet the feeling of importance I felt from it made the aeons which I had clung to the memory of that Iron Star seem paltry, fleeting.
So, I altered my course and dove towards the blue orb. As I entered an outer skin of air, I spotted a streak of green running down the side of the sphere, and aimed towards it. I landed a few seconds later some distance away from the green streak, in the blue, which now proved itself to be water.
When I made it to the shore, I met the first of your people. The Altur, they called themselves. That was about a hundred thousand years before I wrote this account. I've felt strange emotions during this time, all of them linked inexorably to some things that I'd forgotten for ages. Though, now, I've done all I feel is appropriate for the Altur, and will return to my drifting among the stars. Maybe I will return one day. Or maybe I'll find that Iron Star once more.
I write this for one reason. I might be a mythical figure in your history books, but, when I first came here, I didn't even understand what that blue orb was. Maybe I once knew, but I had long ago forgotten. My heart, the core of who I was, who I am, in the meantime, still remembered.
This is my message to the Altur of the future: Follow your heart. It knows more than you do.
It is said that those who truly understand Finem Temporis Videre Volo, regard it with terror.
There is some irony in this, as Finem Temporis Videre Volo is a spell which grants complete and true immortality. However, the horror of the spell comes from it's implications and what it does in order to achieve it's result.
It's not like lichdom, nor does it rely on sacrifice in order to extend your own lifespan. No, in fact, nothing is harmed, except perhaps the caster's future.
You see, the way Finem Temporis Videre Volo works, is by first altering the caster into something similar to an Outsider, in that the caster's soul and his body become one and the same thing. If you destroy the body, you destroy the soul, and vice versa. However, this does nothing to allow immortality. That comes from the next step.
Next, the spell takes every individual particle of the caster's body, and locks it, preventing any chemical bond which exists in his body from breaking. This means that the caster is incapable of decaying or, really, changing in any way. This, essentially, grants eternal youth. However, there is an issue that arises from this. The vast majority of processes in a physical body require chemical bonds to be broken in order for them to function, which means that, while you are essentially immortal and indestructible, you can't move or think.
This is where the scary part comes in. Finem Temporis Videre Volo was designed knowing that this would be an issue, and so, the spell splits the mind of the caster into two distinct parts. One which still exists in the caster's brain, experiencing emotions and desires, and one which exists as something of a puppeteer, with power over one thing: the entropy of the body it came from. First, this allows the caster to move and think, as the puppeteer influences the particles of the body to move in tandem, spontaneously tensing muscles and sparking neurons to fire, without a single chemical bond being broken. This entropy control actually grants the caster further indestructibility, as, even after being stabbed, the puppeteer can just direct the body to fit itself back together, or even just tell the blood of the body to simply flow as though there were no cut in any artery or vein.
Of course, the brain does not function unless the puppeteer directs it to function, so, while the puppeteer might be a facet of the original caster, the spell has been argued to just turn the caster into an indestructible shell, a toy, perhaps
This fear is further heightened by the fact those few who have actually cast the spell, experienced immediate personality change, and, over time, immense memory loss, as their puppeteers consolidated brain space for other memories deemed more important.
Very few have actually cast the spell, of course, as you have to be remarkably skilled and wealthy to even research it. First, it requires equipment of a total price of twenty million, twenty-five thousand gold pieces, which adds up to just over 200 English tons of gold. Even after acquiring such a wealth of research equipment, the caster must spend four hundred and one consecutive days spending every waking moment researching this spell, which will drain him by eight hundred and one thousand experience points, which requires they at least be level 40 and halfway to level 41. As if this were not enough, the caster must also prove themselves skilled enough to handle the spell by succeeding on a DC 2,225 Spellcraft check.
After the spell is completed, the steps explained above are enacted and, seemingly as a result of the existential change of the caster, one final step takes place, which grants the particles which make up his body two immunities all their own. First is an immunity to quantum tunneling, a phenomenon where one particle can move through objects they wouldn't usually move through. This even means that, on occasion, a single particle in an object with spontaneously move. This doesn't happen with the caster. The second immunity is an immunity to particle decay, which is an event where one element might decay into another, or, hypothetically, a proton or neutron might decay into quarks and muons. This also doesn't happen with the caster.
Altogether, the changes enacted by this spell result in a plethora of effects.
First, the caster becomes immune to any spell or effect which damages, captures, or otherwise affects the soul, as his physical body becomes the soul. Second, he becomes immune to natural or artificial aging, fire, acid, radiation, ability score damage or drain, negative energy, disease, and poison, as chemical bonds in his body become indivisible, and he loses any sense of biology, further, he no longer needs to breathe, eat, sleep, or do anything else to survive. In fact, the caster doesn't even need to have a pulse in order to be alive, but is not undead. Third, the caster becomes immune to cold damage, electrical damage, sonic damage, energy drain, negative levels, level loss, mind-affecting effects, death effects, paralysis, immense pressure, vacuums, G-forces, tidal forces, and gains regeneration equal to his maximum hit points which cannot be bypassed, even in the case of a wish or miracle spell (or epic equivalent) being employed to make him temporarily vulnerable. Further, as he can control the entropy of his body, he can choose to be immune to gravity, and gains a flight speed of C, perfect (C is the speed of light). Lastly, due to the quantum tunneling and particle decay immunities, things which would normally bypass immunities, such as nuclear fire or a deities acts, don't bypass the immunities granted by Finem Temporis Videre Volo.
Essentially, the caster becomes a fact.
However, this power is not without it's drawbacks. While the caster might become indestructible and immortal, they also lose a great portion of themselves. After they've lived their maximum age twenty times, they begin experiencing memory loss, as their brain is not large enough to contain that many memories. At first, it's manageable, and perhaps even socially acceptable, but after another five maximum ages, big things begin dropping out, such as the names, faces, or very existence of important figures from the caster's past. Eventually the caster can actually forget who their parents or children were. In fact, if the caster lives past their race and their planet, which they will, they will eventually forget their entire race, their planet, even perhaps what life is.
Material Component: A handful of dirt and a stone with your name on it.
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