Cursed weapon

There was only chaos, an eternity of madness. Over time, chaos coalesced into a powerful, nonsensical emotion—a random amalgamation of consciousness, too vast to form any semblance of order. But time persisted, chiseling away at this hoard of ambitions, dreams, hopes, fears, and despairs. Slowly, it unraveled into a coherent thought.

"I crave".

You are a weapon come to life. Your consciousness emerged from nothingness due to prolonged contact with cursed energy or from a soul trapped within your metal.

Main power

As a cursed weapon, you have the ability to animate dead flesh you are in direct contact with, allowing you to control dead bodies as if they were your own.

You can also infuse a living creature you are in contact with with your power, replacing their stat block with yours. They therefore play as if they were your character: spell, feats and special actions included. They however keep their own agency and you do not control them.

You cannot control unconscious creatures, as the flesh needs to be dead for you to animate it.

HP, Skills and Ability scores

As the corpses you control are solely animated by the power of your cursed energy, you replace their stat block with that of your character (spells, feats and special actions included). Any damage received by the animated creature is applied to your character.

A corpse you control cannot recuperate health in any way while under your control. You yourself recuperate 1d4 HP when you take control of a new corpse or through short and long rests.

On the other end, when lend your power to a living creature, their have their own HP and you do not suffer the damage they take. They also benefit from healing effect as normal. Were they to die while under your control, they would reanimate immediately under the same rules as other dead bodies.

Injuries

Corpses are fragile. Every time you loses 30% of your hp while controlling a corpse, it suffers a Lingering Injuries that can never get healed.

Death

As a cursed weapon, you are yourself virtually indestructible. However, when you reach 0 hp, the damage the corpse you were controlling suffered resonates within your soul. You must yourself pass a death save check when this happens.

• On 3 successful death saves: your soul is now stable enough that you will regain consciousness after a short rest.
• On 3 failures: your soul is split into shards. It will take 1d4 years for them to gather again into your old consciousness.

Once you reach 0 HP while controlling a corpse, you lose control over it and can never animate it (or any parts of its body) again - unless the creature is resurrected and dies once more.

Communication

While controlling a body with the ability to speak, you can speak normally using the body's original voice. A corpse's voice will get rougher as time goes by.

While not controlling a body, you can only communicate by inducing visions to creatures within 30 feet. For example, you can make a nearby creature have a vision of picking you up and raising as the new emperor with you at their side. This vision is almost instant and does not hinder the person you communicate with in any way. They do not enter a trance or lose sight while perceiving the vision.

Optional rule

When controlling a corpse, even though you can use words normally, you only communicate by describing scenes. This is a consequence of you normally communicating by inducing visions.

This means you cannot describe intent or emotions, only actions and physical descriptions.

For example, instead of saying "Take a single step forward and I'll kill you", you would say "You walk forward, I slash. Your head rolls on the floor".

Senses

While controlling a body, you benefit from the senses it had while alive.
As a cursed weapon, you can sense the presence of creatures on the same plane of existence, visible or not, within 30 feet. However, you cannot precisely locate them. This power is reduced to 10 feet while you are controlling a body that relies on other senses.

Racial abilities

Your soul is bipedal by nature. When controlling the corpse creature with augmented movement abilities (flight, wall crawling) you can only do so at half your normal speed.

Growth

You can absorb the properties of a weapon that is of the same type as you, or of any piece of equipment. This gives you the equipment's stats and adds its powers to your own, damage and AC bonus included. You also abide by its encumbrance rules, proficiency requirements and other penalties (i.e, disadvantage of stealth for heavy armors).

The process requires fusing a piece of the original object within you and is done as a downtime activity of 1d4 days. The equipment required to perform the fusion is to the DM's discretion. Examples are access to a forge, or a magical retreat were you would be unbothered for enough hours.

Limitations

• You can only animate the same corpse once. Once you release control, you cannot reanimate the same body.
• You can only control the same corpse for 1d4 days.
• The sea rejects your cursed energy. Even though a corpse you control does not need to breathe, you will still suffer suffocation damage under the normal rules if under sea water. This limitation does not apply to other bodies of water.
• Even though you can animate any dead flesh you are in contact with, you can only move/be carried by creatures that are at least small.

Weakness

• Radiant damage

Immunity

• Poison damage
• Disease

Considerations to validate with your DM.

• #1: You can throw yourself at a new corpse at a distance. This is an action that requires a normal attack roll if the corpse is lying down and has advantage if it is up against a surface. Missing means you are stuck in the ground with no creature under your control.
• #2: You can move immediately after taking control of a new body. Meaning you could throw yourself at a new body, then spend half your movement speed to stand up, the other half to move, and a bonus action to attack if you have such an ability.