Overview

This ritual is performed on a corpse, causing it to explode in a very gory way. It does not damage anything (well, except the corpse), being more of a toy ritual, most similar to the burial rituals. It is, obviously, intended for worshippers of Sek.

Specifications

Working Name: Defile Corpse
Given to: worshippers of Sek
Skills: 110 levels of fa.ri.of.ta
Items: holy symbol (Sek)
GP Cost: 75 gp

The Details

The ritual must be performed on a corpse in the same room. Each corpse can only be exploded once, and it must not be missing any parts. The ritual can not be performed while underwater, etc.

The ritual is PK checked - it can only be performed on player corpses if both parties are PK. If the corpse is a player's, all items remain undamaged on the torso. If making the ritual work un-abusably on player corpses proves a significant challenge, the ritual could be made to work on NPC corpses only.

The effects of this ritual are:

• Gory messages of corpse exploding.
• Corpse is torn to pieces - head and limbs removed from torso, and if possible, stomach explodes. Maybe a few organs can go flying too?
• All people in the room get covered in blood. And maybe smacked in the face by a flying limb.
• Possibly the room could have something about large amounts of sprayed blood added to the end of the description.
• A shift in alignment (towards evil) for the priest.

The 'covered in blood' effect is similar to many other effects we have in game, such as being wet (Squelch.) or covered in excrement from sewer trawling. It would consist of a line after their description when looked at, and the occasional chat. To remove the effect, they would need to wash themselves in a bath somewhere.

For added coolness, the blood could dry after 15 minutes or so. This would end any further spam, and change the message on the player to reflect a coating of dried blood. A bath would still be required to remove the blood.

The message in the room about blood sprayed all over would have an add_item of 'blood' attached (so you can look at the blood). Adding a few blood related room chats would also be great, if possible. The chats should be relatively frequent, as the blood would immediately become a focal point of the room, and the effect is temporary.

The message would disappear in a few minutes (5 or 10?), half the time if it's raining.

Skill Details

110 levels of fa.ri.of.target are required to learn the ritual, taught by the religious instructor like most other rituals.

I've written the idea to use two skills, however it could work just as well with a single skill if that is preferred.

fa.ri.of.target is used to actually make the corpse explode, while fa.ri.mi.area is used to persuade the explosion to be a room-soaking part-strewing glory of Sek. The 'area effects' reliant on fa.ri.mi.area are parts coming off the corpse and people being covered in blood, etc. If using one skill only (fa.ri.of.target), either the corpse explodes in all its room-soaking glory or it doesn't.

The first skill check (fa.ri.of.target) would determine if the corpse explodes or not. Failing this check leaves the corpse intact and ends the ritual. If the fa.ri.of.target check is passed, a fa.ri.mi.area determines the 'area effects' - passing this check resulting in things like blood spray and disemberment.

As for a number to check skills against... If allowing for defiling of non-human corpses, taking size into account for the fa.ri.of.ta check would be good - exploding a mouse corpse would be much easier than an elephant corpse. I don't know the code well enough to suggest actual numbers though sorry.

Possible Issues

Bodypart litter: Burying corpses is good - it keeps the streets tidy and reduces the amount of things that must be kept in A'tuin's memory. I feel that this ritual wouldn't mess with that for a few reasons. The simple one is that you miss out on half your XP if you don't bury. The way bodies work, I'm pretty sure that regardless of how many bits come off, there will still be a 'corpse of blah blah' on the ground, which the game recognises as needing to be buried to give bury XP. Seeing as it takes the same effort to type 'bury all' than 'bury corpse', this is about as big a problem as warriors not burying their beheaded heads. Also, body parts deteriorate fairly quickly unless pickled.

Non-human corpses: The main issue I see here is the wording of the messages. Perhaps another set of more general messages (e.g. "limbs" go flying as opposed to "arms and legs") could be written to cover all animals. The general set could also cover humans, but imo it would be nice to have human specific messages seeing as 99% of times the ritual will be performed on a human corpse. In the odd event that someone does something gittish like defiling a snake corpse, that's their problem. There's plenty of other example of things like this (messages not matching situations) in the game.

Multiple message sets: Having a bunch of different gory corpse explosions would be the icing on the cake. Getting a random cool corpse explosion every time you cast the ritual would make it similar to warriors with behead, and let me tell you - we love that command. Chest explosion, swarm of flies erupting, limbs and head popping off and hissing blood...

Messages

This is of course the all important part - the ritual is there to look awesome, so it needs to be well written. The use of colour (red) in some of the messages could be in order, but should never be overused. I've tried to write them, but please, feel free to come up with some more messages!

Performing the ritual...

>perform defile corpse on corpse
You brace yourself and close your eyes, clenching your holy symbol to your heart as you call upon Sek.
You extend your arm dramatically, directing the palm of your open hand towards the corpse of a sad man.

Trying to explode a corpse with parts missing...

You would not dare to offer anything but a pristine corpse to the mighty Sek.

Failing...

Nothing happens.  You have failed to invoke Sek's wrath on the corpse.

Exploding...

The corpse's skin begins to bubble and bloat, as if under great pressure.
The corpse's stomach swells immensely, before exploding with a sickeningly meaty "splorch" noise!

Area effects...

The head and limbs of the corpse are torn from the torso as it erupts, flying in gory arcs and
drenching the area in blood.
A severed limb hits you square in the face before falling to the ground.  Eww! //random chance
You have been drenched in blood!

Room description modification

//added to end of room desc
An immense quantity of blood has been sprayed all over the place.

>look blood
Runny red blood has been splashed all over in violent-looking arcs.  It's times like these that
you're glad you're not a werewolf.

//room chats
The stench of blood here is overwhelming.
The sight of so much blood makes you slightly dizzy.
A puddle of blood glistens morbidly.
This has Sek written all over it.

Living description modification...

He/She is covered in a dripping layer of fresh blood.

//effect chats
Drip. Drip. Drip. //Blood drips from Bob.
The sickly smell of blood emanates from you. //The sickly smell of blood emanates from Bob.
Blood trickles down your body. //Blood trickles down Bob's body.

He/She is covered in a caked layer of dry blood. //after 15 minutes or so

Messages may need to be tweaked and compressed to ensure the ritual doesn't get too spammy.