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Soul Splice is a powerful demonic/daemonic/devilish ritual, in which dead souls of powerful spell casters are spliced onto a living being, resulting in "Magical power beyond your wildest imaginings*!" "*Based on the typical wild imaginings of previous customers matching your demographic profile. Additional terms and restrictions may apply." The souls remain spliced for as long as the subject has the willpower to hold them. Since this is a demonic/daemonic/devilish ritual, there is a spiritual price to be paid; each of the fiends will own the subject's soul in the afterlife for as long as the soul they contributed remains spliced to the subject. (It is implied that the fiends could ask for more in exchange if they wished to, but the one time this ritual is seen, they decline.)[1]

The Soul Splice's effects include:

  1. The subject cannot duplicate any divine magic, even with a wish or limited wish. This is due to a separate agreement with the evil gods that the fiends will not offer such services.
  2. Any spell with an ongoing duration cast during the Soul Splice will end when the Splice ends. Any spell effects that do not rely on maintaining the spell, such as an outright killing, will remain afterwards.
  3. The subject will have an extremely high effective character level, most likely resulting in not earning any XP for the duration of the Splice.
  4. The Soul Splice can trigger feelings of pure omnipotence and slight dizzyness from the rush of Arcane power.[2]
  5. The Soul Splice has no direct effects on alignment. Thanks to simple psychology, however, a claim to the contrary can cause the subject to act as though the spell has changed their alignment.[3][4]
  6. The subject is fully healed and rejuvenated by the process, and if they have any spell slots of their own, these spell slots are refilled.[2]

The Soul Splice was offered to Vaarsuvius by the Inter-Fiend Cooperation Commission so they could save their mate and children from a Black dragon who wanted revenge for the death of her son by Vaarsuvius's Disintegrate spell.[5] Vaarsuvius accepted and they touched the Blue Orb to accept it (an idea stolen by the Inter-Fiend Cooperation Commission from the Matrix) as the only other way of saving their family would involve accepting that their magic was not strong enough to save their family.[2] V was spliced to Ganonron, Terror of a Thousand Planes, Haerta Bloodsoak, Destroyer of Hope, and Jephton the Unholy, Spawn of Hatred.[1] V killed the Black Dragon;[6] then, with Familicide, every being with any blood relation to it.[7] Unbeknownst to V, this included the entire Draketooth family, and by association all of their scattered relatives all through the Western Continent.[8][9] A brief emotional shock while confronting Inkyrius then cost Vaarsuvius the control over Haerta, who escaped from the Soul Splice and was presumably recaptured by the IFCC shortly after (although this has not been confirmed).[10]

Carrying on with the two remaining souls spliced to their own, V then attempted to find Durkon and Elan, teleporting the entire Azure City Fleet to an abandoned elven fortress along the way rather than listening to them complain about their poor tactical situation.[11] Vaarsuvius later decided to fight Xykon because they didn't want to wait ten minutes for Durkon to Ressurect Roy.[12] However, V was defeated and lost the willpower to hold Ganonron and Jephton any longer.[13]

As noted above, one of the consequences of the Soul Splice was Vaarsuvius granting the individual IFCC members three periods of a few minutes of time at their disposal. Because Haerta left the splice early, one of those periods is far shorter than the others.

One of those periods has since been spent when the IFCC chose to restrain Vaarsuvius (and Blackwing) at the moment when he tried to warn Roy not to destroy Girard's Gate.[14][15] That same intervention by the IFCC also denied Vaarsuvius participation in the confrontations against Xykon, Redcloak and the Silicon Elemental that happened immediately after, then in the fight against the fiends summoned by the High Priest of Hel and Zz'dtri on Nale's behalf, as well as in the face-off with Tarquin and his Vector Legion that led to Nale's death and put the Order of the Stick in mortal danger. V was released just in time to save the Order from Tarquin's forces.[16][17] It was at that time that V finally decided to reveal their bad decisions to Roy,[18] although it would take some time until the specific details could be shared.[19]

Vaarsuvius estimates the remaining periods of time to measure about three minutes and twenty minutes.[19]

References[]

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