Spell: Altered Beast

Altered Beast (8)

The spell is a complex protean ritual practised by obscure and unscrupulous warrior cults. Barbaric killers gather at holy places under old trees, lead to their knees by cunning men possessing an intimate acquaintance, a personal experience, of the divine. There they wait as the priest-call goes out to the woods, from which creatures soon emerge in hunger to find large and meat-rich warriors knelt, serenely waiting.

The animals satisfy their hunger on the willing men, consuming them entirely. Once they finish with their meal the priest calls for his champions and the man-flesh asserts its dominance over the meat laden animals. Familiar faces contort those of the creatures' and they kneel once again over their own steaming corpses.

Altered beasts can transform into the animal they were eaten by (or vise versa) at the cost of 4 stamina. While in their original form they still possess some of its traits since their alien flesh cannot be as it once was.

What kind of animal did it call and what benefit does their human form gain?

1. Bear - a huge, a hulk of a man. Your arms are like trees and you hunger like there's a hole in your belly. +4 strength and you may heal from up to 8 meals a day.
2. Wolf - you can smell flesh-stink on the air with your sleek and angled nose. +2 tracking, +2 stealth
3. Deer - alert but flighty, your staccato motion betrays your nature. +4 running, +2 awareness
4. Boar - broader, hairier, angrier. +3 tracking, +2 strength, +4 stamina
5. Tiger - wise, haute, familiar with the paths between palaces. +4 second sight, +2 strength.
6. Badger - irascible, thick skinned, burrowing. +1 natural armour through sheer bloody mindedness, +1 sneaking.

All altered beasts can heal as though eating provisions if eating the flesh of their own kind. No limits to the number of times they can benefit from this. Every time they do this they must put an advancement tick in a new skill called "Bestiality". The skill does nothing, but once it reaches 6 the altered beast loses what sense they still had and becomes a raving beast roaming the forests.