Sign of the Maintainer

The Maintainer is one of a quintumvirate of deities worshiped in the Slakiv heartlands: the Shaper, the Destroyer, the Corrupter, the Renewer, and the Maintainer. The Five are believed to be personifications of the natural processes after which they are named, and while they receive little organized or abstract worship, they are routinely invoked for everyday activities.

This Sign is a charm common across Vestan, for it is thought to protect possessions from the ravages of time. In its simplest form, it may be scratched into the underside of a table or etched into a bronze statue. The Sign may be found drawn on the first page of a book and beautifully illuminated, or cut into the bottom of Folon’s famous glazed pottery. It may be found on mosaics and tapestries, silver and glass, tools and artwork, old things and new. In any case, the sign must be worked into the object it protects, and invested with some of the maker’s power. The duration of its effectiveness can range from a few months to decades, depending on medium, craftsmanship, environment, and other factors.

Working this Sign into an item is a ritual of base difficulty d4, but incorporating it increases the difficulty of the item’s crafting by a step as well. During its creation, the artisan takes some amount of both strain and fatigue, and thereafter the Sign increases the object’s hit points by an equal amount, and adds a single point each of absorption and deflection to its defenses and saves.

(Note: the mechanical aspect of this spell may be changed later as YAOSC is developed, if I replace or supplement “item hit points” with a “quality/condition” system, which is something I’ve considered.)