Soul Harvester

Your magic stems from the Severed Hunter, a missing Archfey deity who once ruled the Boreal Veil—a liminal plane sandwiched between the Feywild and the Material World. This realm was a place of terrifying, enduring life: massive black-barked trees that bleed sap, thorns that whisper in dreams, and predators that mesmerize their prey before striking. The only way for the sons and daughters of the Severed Hunter to rely on tribal protections and altruism between one another. Cruelty against your kin was outlawed and sentenced to death. This stern belief in protecting and helping others stays in the blood line of any who carry it. However the protection of ones kind must come at a cost, you are the reaper of that cost. The Severed Hunter specialized in trickery and adaptation. Specifically he would be able to drain the Anguish of a living being, not quite blood or soul but the will within a beings soul that pushed it to adapt and evolve, this potential was powerful and the ability to reap it is your gift. Being able to drain this life-force, this sense of self allows you to protect your people and continue to strengthen yourself as a protector of the spirits of your kin or groups you align with. 

Though the Severed Hunter vanished eons ago, his "Shadow-Arcane" bloodline persists. You are a Sanguine Predator. Your magic is the magic of the deep root—stubborn, binding, and hungry. While your power is innately dark, you are not beholden to evil. Many of this lineage are Lawful Good, adhering to the "Laws of the Veil": Endure the storm, protect the pack, and let nothing go to waste.

This Anguish can take many forms. But primarily it develops as a strong red energy that has a metallic blood like scent, and voracious hungering power like the Anguish itself is a hungering beast even once extracted. It is this gathering of primal hunger that allows you to adapt your form and enhance your magic beyond normal capacities. This transformation you take as your beast form is the enhanced dark magic drained from the beings you've needed to end. It can take the forms of the things you've killed, or be a primal or magical enhancement of yourself. Either way your hands become burning magical hex bound weapons that carve the soul and flesh in one. 

Your magic takes two forms, when draining Anguish: the red, but when casting spells like bane, hold person, dominate person all for example it is a cold dark blue and black flame that strikes the target and burns their form into stagnation and petrifies them for a moment. This second magic is called Hex-Bound Based Magic.

Recommended Spell Themes:

Anguish Based Magic: Illusion, Evocation, Draining spells, Hungering Magic features, Lord of the Liminal Hunt features, Aura of the Withering Air, Darkness,
Hex-Bound Based Magic: Enchantment, Transmutation, divination, nature based, Living Bars, Aura of Entanglement
Fusion Based Magic: Thorned Claws, all other schools of magic not in the other two specifically. 

The Nature of the Bestial Power (Hex-Bound Based Magic):

​Stagnation: This magic does not flow; it binds. It rejects the release of death. It forces the soul to remain in a rotting vessel (wicker, bone, or stone) long after the flesh has failed.

​The "Blue-Black" Flame: Unlike normal fire that burns and consumes, Hex-Bound Based Magic manifests as a cold, spiritual flame (witchfire). It chills the air and saps the will to live. It is the color of a bruise—deep violets, desaturated blues, and charcoal blacks.

​Petrification: It affects the environment by draining color and life, turning vibrant forests into "The Blighted Lands"—grey, petrified forests where the leaves never fall but simply turn to ash on the branch.

​The Method (Witchcraft):

​This magic requires effigies. It cannot exist without a vessel. To cast it, one must bind a spirit to an object—a wicker construct, a rune-carved stone, or a cursed weapon.

​It is parasitic. It doesn't generate its own power; it siphons the anima from the land and the souls of the living to fuel its existence. This is why The Boreal Veil is a "Hungering Darkness."

​Aesthetic & Sensory:

​Smell: Ozone, wet ash, and rotting mulch.

​Sound: The cracking of dry wood and whispering voices that seem to come from the trees themselves.

​Visual: Jagged, thorny runes glowing with pale blue light against blackened textures.

 

​The Nature of the draining Power (Anguish-Based):

​The Friction of Existence: Anguish is generated when a mortal soul (which contains Life) is subjected to the crushing weight of Death (judgement) or the erasing pull of the Void (insanity). It is the energy released by the scream of the soul.

​Heavy Magic: Unlike the Hex-Bound Based Magic "gaseous" or "smoky" magic, Anguish is heavy. It behaves like a liquid or a crushing gravity. When channeled, it feels like the air has become lead.

​Red-Violet Shift: True Anguish (influenced by the Void) shifts into a darker spectrum—Crimson-Black or Deep Indigo. It looks like "clotted" shadow.

​The Method (Extraction):

​This magic is surgical. It requires precision. You do not simply blast a target; you find their fear, their regret, or their pride, and you pull on it until the spiritual structure collapses.

​It is resonant. It turns the victim's own memories and fears into a weapon against them.

​Aesthetic & Sensory:

​Smell: Metallic (like old blood) and sterile, cold stone.

​Sound: A low, thrumming bass that vibrates in the chest, overlaid with distant, echoing screams or shattering glass.

​Visual: Chains made of red mist, heavy liquid shadows that drip upwards, and needles of violet light that pierce the mind.

 

 

Level 3: Magic of the Veil

Level 3: Magic of the Veil

When you reach a Sorcerer level specified in the Veil Spells table, you thereafter always have the listed spells prepared. Cleric spell list count as sorcerer spells for you due to your Divine natured inheritance. However this divine inheritance is limited on the spell side of things. The Severed Hunter only used Divination, Enchantment and Necromancy spells divinely so to are you restricted by your ancient ancestors spell choice. 

Magic of the Veil spell list

Sorcerer Level	Spells
3	Hunter's Mark, Entangle, Hold Person, Misty Step
5	Hypnotic Pattern, Spike Growth
7	Haste, Plant Growth
9	Insect Plague (reflavored as shattered souls), Dominate Person

 

 

Level 3: Form of the Hungering Hunter

Level 3: Form of the Hungering Hunter

You have learned to channel the ancient, predatory aspect of your lineage through your Innate Sorcery. 

You can burn your arcane potential to drain the vitality of your prey, mimicking the thirsty roots of the Boreal Veil. When you hit a creature with a melee weapon attack or a spell attack, you can spend 2 Sorcery Point to siphon their life force. The target takes an additional 2d6 Necrotic damage, and you regain Hit Points equal to half the Necrotic damage dealt. Upgrading to also drain health from half the damage of necrotic spells damage when Hungering Magic is also used. 

Martial Training: You gain proficiency with Light Armor, Medium Armor, Shields, and Simple and Martial Weapons.

Predatory Innate Sorcery: When you activate your Innate Sorcery feature, you undergo a physical transformation for the duration (1 minute). Your skin hardens into the texture of iron-wood or dark bark, and your eyes glow with a mesmerizing, fey light. If all charges are spent, draining with Hungering Magic will give a new charge of Innate Sorcery. Every 15 health points healed is a new charge.

While transformed, you gain the following benefits:

• The Iron-Bark Hide: Your Armor Class equals 13 + your Dexterity modifier + your Charisma modifier.

• Thorned Claws: You manifest spectral claws or elongated thorns from your hands. These are Melee Weapons with the Finesse property, dealing 1d8 Piercing damage. You can use your Charisma modifier, instead of Strength or Dexterity, for the attack and damage rolls of these weapons.

• Hungering Magic: You may spend 2 sorcery point each time you cast a damaging spell or hit with a melee weapon attack to deal an additional 2d6 Necrotic damage and regain hit points equal to half the necrotic damage dealt.

• Druidic Shift: As a Bonus Action, you can cast Polymorph on yourself without expending a spell slot or material components. When cast this way, you can only transform into a Beast with a Challenge Rating of 1 or lower (e.g., a Dire Wolf, Brown Bear, or Giant Spider). The spell lasts until use it again, or until you choose to end it (no action required). You can do this 1 + cha modifier per day. Must take a short rest to refresh all uses. 

Level 6: Celerity of the Dream-Stalker

Level 6: Celerity of the Dream-Stalker

Your connection to the dream-logic of your ancestral home allows you to move and strike with blurring speed.

• Extra Attack: You can attack twice, instead of once, whenever you take the Attack action on your turn. Moreover, you can cast one of your Sorcerer Cantrips in place of one of those attacks.

• Dream-Step: When you cast a Sorcerer spell of 1st level or higher (including your Veil Spells), you can also cast misty step for free as part of the casting action. The Distance of teleportation limited however to 15 feet. 

• Hex Binding Reaper: Thorned Claws also apply a fear or charm effect. DC of 14, on a successful wisdom role the enemy gets out of the charm or fear effect but takes additional damage equal to double the Thorned Claw attack. On a fail they are under the effects of Fear or Charmed for 1 minute until struck or damaged. 

 

Heart of the Deep Woods

Level 6: Heart of the Deep Woods

The enduring nature of the Boreal Veil is now a part of your physiology.

• Inured to the Wild: You have resistance to Poison and Necrotic damage.

• Mind of the Old Growth: You are immune to the Charmed and Frightened conditions.

• Reactive Transformation: When you take damage from a creature within 5 feet of you, you can use your Reaction to immediately activate your Innate Sorcery (spending a usage as normal) and make one melee weapon attack against the attacker.

Level 14: Lord of the Liminal Hunt

 

Level 14: Lord of the Liminal Hunt

You have become a true avatar of the Severed Hunter, blending the physical and the arcane into a perfect killing form. While your Innate Sorcery is active, you gain the following benefits:

• Aura of Entanglement: You emit a 15-foot aura of spectral vines and twisting shadows. The area is considered Difficult Terrain for your enemies. 

• Feral Leeching: When you use your Hungering Magic feature (spending 2 Sorcery Point on a hit), the Necrotic damage increases to 4d8, and the target’s speed is reduced to 0 until the start of your next turn as spectral roots bind them in place.

• Phantom Evasion: You can move through other creatures and objects as if they were difficult terrain. You take 1d10 Force damage if you end your turn inside an object

Level 18: Avatar of the Boreal Veil

Level 18: Avatar of the Boreal Veil

The arcane shadows and primal vitality of the Severed Hunter have permanently infused your physiology. You are no longer just a caster transforming into a beast; you are a living extension of the Veil itself—a creature of thorns, hunger, and shadow.

• Living Barbs: Your body undergoes a permanent alteration. Even when you are not transformed, your skin is studded with small, obsidian quills or hardened bark-thorns. Whenever a creature within 5 feet of you hits you with a melee attack, the attacker takes Piercing damage equal to your Charisma modifier as your blood and skin lash out in defense.

• Aura of the Withering Air: While your Innate Sorcery (Form of the Severed Hunter) is active, you radiate a 30-foot aura of oppressive gloom that leeches the moisture and heat from the air.

  • At the start of each of your turns, every hostile creature within 30 feet of you takes 2d6 Necrotic damage equal to your Charisma modifier + your Proficiency Bonus.

  • You regain Hit Points equal to the total Necrotic damage dealt by this aura this turn.

  • Non-magical plants within this aura instantly wither and die, and small bodies of water (like puddles or cups) freeze or evaporate instantly.