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Qigong 517 of the Carrion Breath

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by

Dale
in
  • Lore: In the shadowed fenlands and neglected ossuaries of Saṃsāra, certain ascetic recluses practice breathing cycles not to draw in the clean vitality of morning mist, but to harmonize with the slow, cold cadence of decay. Hand-knotted from the shroud-linen of long-abandoned barrows and strung with hollow pitch-bone beads carved from carrion birds, this breathing sash was devised by early Tier 1 initiates of the entropic arts. Rather than seeking luminous transcendence, the wearer cultivates an inverse qi—recirculating the chill vapors of the grave through the lungs, transmuting biological rot into spiritual sustenance, and venting suffocating, necrotic miasmas against those who disturb the quiet of the dead.
  • Description: An ashen-grey sash woven from coarse, frayed linen salvaged from burial wrappings, reinforced with midnight-black hemp cording. Interspersed along the hem are seven small, polished beads carved from the hollow wing-bones of carrion ravens, each stopped with a drop of black pine pitch. When worn wrapped snugly across the diaphragm, the sash remains icy to the touch, and the user’s natural exhalations take on a faint, wispy grey hue that dissipates with the faint rustle of dry leaves.
  • Detailed Stats:
    • Item Tier: Tier 1
    • Item Rarity: Common
    • Item Level: Level 1
    • Designated Slot: Waist / Sash (Torso)
    • Item Hit Points: 12 plus wearer’s maximum health points
    • Armor Check (AC): +1 (Localized kinetic cushioning from hardened woven wraps)
    • Resilience: 8
    • Weight: 1.5 pounds
    • Suggested Valuation: 9 silver (discounted among burial societies, heavily penalized by sun-cult merchants)
    • Attunement: Requires simple attunement (seated meditation beside a corpse or rotting wood for one hour, synchronizing inhalation with the cold settling of decay)
  • Passive Magic:
    • Breath of the Ossuary: The wearer’s lungs become insulated against airborne toxins, foul decay, and marsh vapors. The avatar gains an innate resistance to non-magical inhaled poisons, airborne diseases, and sewer gases, completely ignoring the nausea effects of rotting matter.
    • Entropic Reservoir: When resting in dark, damp, or decaying environments (such as tombs, bogs, or morgues), the avatar regenerates an additional 1 Hit Point per hour of short rest as their somatic breathing draws nourishment directly from natural decomposition.
    • Chill Meridian Anchor: The sash suppresses outward vital warmth. Thermal vision, heat-seeking senses, and biological pulse detection perceive the wearer as an inanimate, room-temperature corpse while they remain perfectly still.
  • Activable Magic:
    • Miasmic Exhalation:
      • Action Cost: 1 Action
      • Effect: The avatar draws a deep, sharp breath and expels a concentrated cone of freezing, putrid mist in a 15-foot arc. Living creatures caught in the cone must make a Fortitude or Constitution saving throw against the avatar’s tier difficulty. On a failure, they suffer 1d6 necrotic/cold damage and are Nauseated (disadvantage or penalty on physical rolls) until the end of their next turn. On a success, they take half damage and are not nauseated. Usable twice per day, recharging after a long rest.
    • Siphon Rot:
      • Action Cost: 1 Action
      • Effect: The avatar touches a patch of organic rot, spoilage, or an unliving corpse, inhaling through the teeth. The decaying matter instantly withers to dry dust, and the avatar absorbs the lingering entropic qi, immediately gaining 1d4 temporary hit points that last for 1 hour. Usable once per short rest.
    • Grave-Veil Shroud:
      • Action Cost: 1 Bonus Action / Minor Action
      • Effect: The avatar holds their breath and clicks two bone beads together. A swirling cloak of translucent, shadowy vapor billows around their silhouette for 1 minute. Melee and ranged attacks targeting the avatar during this time suffer a -1 penalty (or the attacker has disadvantage on their first strike each round) due to the obscuring, spectral gloom. Usable once per day.
  • Tags: Waist Slot, Torso Slot, Tier 1, Common, Qigong, Dark Magic, Necrotic, Cold, Breathwork, Decay, Miasma, Bone, Shroud, Concealment, Entropic Qi, Ossuary, Putrefaction, Mortuary, Barrow, Ashen, Necrosis, Carrion, Exhalation, Shadow, Tomb, Desiccation

Marketplace Trade and Sanctioned Acquisition of the Carrion Breath

  • Ossuary Undertakers and Barrow-Grave Cooperatives:
    • Setting: Situated beneath municipal catacombs, along cemetery perimeters, or near village cremation grounds, these subterranean workshops reek of dried myrrh, embalming lye, cold flagstones, and clean river sand. Shelves display ceremonial grave cloths, bone needles, terracotta funerary urns, and jars of dark pitch.
    • Buying: Licensed gravediggers, mortuary monks, and Tier 1 entropic ascetics can purchase the sash for its standard baseline price of 9 silver coins. Members carrying registered tokens from a recognized Barrow Keepers’ Guild or Undertakers’ League receive the standard Tier 1 faction discount of 10%, purchasing the item for 8 silver coins and 1 nickel.
    • Selling: Mortuary factors will inspect the weave of the linen and ensure the raven-bone beads are sealed. A Tier 1 avatar selling an intact sash receives the legal rate of 10% valuation per tier, earning 9 copper coins (or up to 1 silver coin if the local district is experiencing an unseasonal outbreak of marsh fever and demand for miasma-filtering vestments is high), with the sum transferred directly to the seller’s World Bank ledger account.
  • Fenland Hermitries and Witch-Stalls:
    • Setting: Located on the stilted fringes of black-water bogs, sunken cypress marshes, and drainage canals, these damp trading huts smell of peat smoke, dried marsh weed, and stagnant water. Goods are traded from hanging wicker nets and reed tables, featuring bone charms, swamp-root extracts, and preserved reeds.
    • Buying: Marsh recluses and hedge practitioners sell the sash to traveling avatars for 9 silver coins under clear weather. During stagnant summer seasons when marsh vapors grow thick and toxic, local swamp dwellers bid the price up to 10 or 11 silver coins due to the item’s poison-filtering properties. Avatars affiliated with regional marsh covens receive the standard 10% guild discount, paying 8 silver coins and 1 nickel.
    • Selling: Fenland traders examine the pitch seals and test the residual chill in the beads. They offer the standard 9 copper coins in trade goods, food provisions, or unminted swamp copper. If the buyer is an accepted local hermit, the vendor will occasionally offer 1 silver coin in raw medicinal marsh moss or distilled pitch-spirit.
  • Undercity Black Markets and Necromantic Reliquaries:
    • Setting: Hidden behind false brick partitions in city sewers, vaulted drainage crypts, or forgotten ruin cellars, these illicit counters are lit by sputtering tallow lamps and smell of tallow grease, mildewed earth, and vinegar wash. Glass display cases hold forbidden grimoire fragments, desiccation powders, and untaxed grave relics.
    • Buying: Outlawed practitioners, shadow-cultists, and rogue avatars seeking entropic tools without civic oversight must pay a heavy black-market markup. Operating outside the legal scrutiny of the World Bank, these dealers accept only hard, unrecorded physical currency, charging between 12 and 15 silver coins in hand, refusing any official guild reductions or legal exemptions.
    • Selling: An avatar looking to offload a recovered sash to an illicit fence without bureaucratic questions receives an immediate payout in untracked physical coin. Fences pay the baseline 9 coppers, though if city watch inquisitors are actively raiding underground crypts and choking-gas wards are in desperate demand among fugitives, the fence will pay up to 2 silver coins in loose physical change.

Tactical Roleplay and Environmental Applications of the Carrion Breath Sash

  • Stagnant Swamplands and Putrid Fenways:
    • Defensive Roleplay: Sinking knee-deep into fetid marsh water, the avatar does not choke on the sulfurous swamp gases that cause their companions to retch. Instead, the avatar tightens the shroud-cloth around their ribs and pulls the rank marsh air deep into their lungs, transmuting the airborne rot into steady somatic endurance. When giant leeches or marsh-vipers lunge from the reeds, the avatar snaps two pitch-sealed raven beads together to invoke the grave-veil shroud; wisps of clinging grey vapor envelop their form, causing enemy fangs to strike empty air where the avatar’s body seemed to be.
    • Offensive Roleplay: Facing bog-raiders attempting to board an overturned skiff, the avatar drops their stance low into the water. Drawing in the surrounding vapors of dead vegetation, they exhale a freezing, cone-shaped miasma across the shallows. The freezing mist coats the raiders’ weapons in grey rime and fills their lungs with the stench of open graves, sending them into coughing fits that leave them helpless against follow-up strikes. To recover from a glancing blow, the avatar reaches down to touch a waterlogged, rotting carcass, using siphon rot to turn the carcass to grey powder and channel its lingering vitality into immediate vigor.
  • Sunken Catacombs and Ancient Barrow Crypts:
    • Defensive Roleplay: Cornered in a narrow stone hallway by territorial tomb guardians or undead constructs, the avatar retreats into an alcove and holds their breath. The chill meridian anchor instantly neutralizes their biological heat signature, leaving them as cold as the surrounding sarcophagi. Tracking hounds and thermal senses pass over the avatar as though they were merely another ancient corpse stacked against the wall. When an iron blade swings through the gloom, the hardened linen wraps around their core deflect the glancing edge, blunting the impact against their ribs.
    • Offensive Roleplay: Pinned behind a stone tomb by an aggressive grave-robber, the avatar places a palm upon a skeletal arm resting on the lid. With a sharp hiss between their teeth, they siphon the lingering entropic decay from the bones, reducing them to brittle dust while gaining a layer of defensive vitality. Surging from behind the sarcophagus, the avatar expels a full miasmic exhalation into the enclosed chamber. With nowhere for the freezing fog to disperse, the cold vapor coats the robber’s face, searing their eyes with necrotic frost and leaving them dazed and retching on the flagstones.
  • Crowded Urban Slums and Open Sewer Canals:
    • Defensive Roleplay: Trapped in a subterranean drainage canal by a squad of municipal inquisitors wielding torches and tracking beasts, the avatar takes refuge near an open refuse grate. The breath of the ossuary protects their lungs from the deadly buildup of sewer methane and rot-fumes. Standing chest-deep in filth, the avatar activates the grave-veil shroud, blending their outline into the murky canal gloom. Crossbow bolts launched into the vapor clatter harmlessly off the brickwork, unable to pin down the shifting, shadowy form.
    • Offensive Roleplay: To break through a barricade of enforcers blocking an alley exit, the avatar exhales a heavy cloud of carrion mist into the narrow corridor. The putrid draft sweeps over the guards, inducing immediate vertigo and violent nausea that forces them to drop their pikes. As the enforcers scatter to clear their burning throats, the avatar sweeps through the gap, using their insulated breathing to sprint effortlessly through the suffocating cloud without breaking stride.
  • Arid Deserts and Sun-Baked Steppes:
    • Defensive Roleplay: Under the punishing glare of midday suns, the avatar uses the sash to preserve their core. While living companions suffer sunstroke and exhaustion, the avatar’s somatic rhythm draws cold preservation from the dead roots and sun-bleached bones buried in the sand. When nomadic raiders charge on horseback, the avatar clicks the bone beads together to raise a localized shroud of grey vapor. The sudden appearance of freezing, corpse-cold mist spooks the war mounts, causing them to shy away and ruin the riders’ charge.
    • Offensive Roleplay: Caught out in the open by predators or scavenging hyenas, the avatar kneels over the sun-dried remains of a fallen pack beast. Inhaling through their teeth, they siphon the residual dry rot, rejuvenating their muscles and drawing upon the animal’s final entropic echoes. Standing tall as the beasts encircle them, the avatar unleashes a rolling wave of necrotic frost from their lips, chilling the dry desert air and forcing the predators to retreat from the unnatural, freezing stench of death.
  • Aristocratic Ballrooms and High-Ceilinged Manors:
    • Defensive Roleplay: If an assassin releases a glass vial of virulent airborne poison during an opulent gala, the surrounding nobility collapse in choking fits. The avatar, however, inhales the toxic cloud without flinching, their lungs filtering the compound into harmless soot through their cultivated breathwork. Feigning a fatal collapse alongside the crowd, they mask their vital pulse and body warmth with the chill meridian anchor, remaining undetected on the marble floor until the attackers move past their “corpse.”
    • Offensive Roleplay: In an enclosed private salon where open weapons would instantly summon the house guard, the avatar maneuvers close to a corrupt official or conspirator. Feigning a cough, the avatar expels a tight, focused burst of miasmic air directly into the target’s face. The localized necrotic vapor strikes the target’s chest with an icy shock, causing them to double over in silent, breathless nausea while leaving no cut, no loud noise, and no physical evidence of an assault.

Perception of Activation:

  • Sight:
    • User’s Perspective: The edges of your vision dim into a somber, monochrome vignette. Thin trails of pale-grey, spectral mist bleed through the weave of the linen around your waist, coiling upward across your chest before gathering at your lips as a dense, roiling plume of frost and vapor.
    • Observer’s Perspective: Observers see the frayed threads of your sash twitch as though caught in an unfelt draft, while the raven-bone beads pulse with a sickly, tallow-pale luminescence. As you exhale, a freezing, opaque cone of ash-colored mist billows from your mouth, momentarily obscuring your silhouette and coating nearby surfaces in a dusting of grey rime.
    • Positives: Provides immediate, localized concealment and visually communicates the lethal, necrotic nature of the assault, often forcing hesitant enemies to hesitate or pull back.
    • Negatives: The billowing plume of ash-grey vapor completely spoils visual stealth and marks the user as an overt channeler of forbidden, entropic magic in broad daylight or well-lit halls.
  • Hearing:
    • User’s Perspective: The ambient noises of the world drop by an octave, replaced by a hollow, interior whoosh resembling wind whistling through an empty tomb or the dry rattling of brittle twigs deep within your chest.
    • Observer’s Perspective: Bystanders hear a dry, wheezing hiss like air rushing out of an ancient bellows, followed by the faint, unsettling clatter of dry bird bones clicking together along the wearer’s waistline.
    • Positives: The hushed exhalation produces very little percussive sound compared to traditional spells or concussive weapons, muffling close-range execution.
    • Negatives: The hollow rattling noise carries an unnerving, distinctly unnatural resonance that easily alarms trained watch animals and cemetery sentries in quiet areas.
  • Touch:
    • User’s Perspective: A shocking wave of sub-zero chill surges through your lower furnace and floods up your spinal column, yet it brings no shivering pain—only the crisp, unyielding numbness of rigor mortis. Your diaphragm tightens effortlessly against the linen wrap as the breath expels.
    • Observer’s Perspective: Anyone within arm’s reach feels the ambient room temperature plummet instantaneously, as if an iron door to a deep winter crypt had been swung wide open. The moisture on their exposed skin instantly turns clammy and cold.
    • Positives: The numbing cold deadens the user’s perception of physical fatigue, minor lacerations, and bruising across the torso.
    • Negatives: The intense drop in body temperature leaves the user’s fingers and lips slightly stiff for several seconds immediately following the exhalation.
  • Smell:
    • User’s Perspective: Your nasal passages are flooded with the sterile, dry scent of ancient dust, desiccated barrow moss, and cold subterranean limestone, entirely purging whatever foul odors exist in the outside air.
    • Observer’s Perspective: Those downwind are struck with the sudden, nauseating stench of opened burial vaults, stagnant marsh mud, and rancid animal fat, inducing immediate gagging and watery eyes.
    • Positives: Clears the user’s olfactory senses of biological irritants, tear gas, or rotting environmental miasmas.
    • Negatives: Leaves a persistent, offensive stench of decomposition clinging to the surrounding area and the user’s garments, making tracking dogs bay uncontrollably.
  • Taste:
    • User’s Perspective: The mouth fills with a chalky, mineral-heavy dryness reminiscent of licking slate or limestone dust, accompanied by an icy, metallic numbness across the tongue.
    • Observer’s Perspective: Anyone caught in the perimeter of the mist gags on an astringent, sour taste resembling powdered bone, rancid marrow, and curdled bile.
    • Positives: Coats the lining of the throat and tongue, neutralizing the taste and nausea of foul marsh water, brackish bilge, or stale air.
    • Negatives: Destroys the user’s ability to taste food, wine, or notice chemical adulterants in rations for nearly an hour afterward.
  • Extra-Sensory Perceptions:
    • Entropic Resonance Sight:
      • User’s Perspective: Your third eye perceives the vitality of nearby living beings as flickering, fragile blue-green candles, while dead matter, decaying wood, and open wounds radiate a comfortable, magnetic violet glow that tugs gently toward your core.
      • Observer’s Perspective: Sensitive arcanists, mediums, and divine diviners feel an abrupt drop in regional spiritual pressure, as if a sinkhole had suddenly opened in the ambient life field around the wearer.
      • Positives: Allows the user to instinctively pinpoint weak, diseased, or severely wounded targets in complete darkness, as well as locate hidden corpses or rotting organic matter behind walls.
      • Negatives: Overwhelms the mind with macabre imagery in slaughterhouses, battlefields, or pestilence wards, causing mild psychological distress and cognitive fatigue.
    • Pulse of the Barrow Sleep:
      • User’s Perspective: An eerie inner stillness overtakes the mind; the subconscious panic of survival ceases entirely, replaced by an absolute, indifferent calm that views violence with cold detachment.
      • Observer’s Perspective: Those looking into the user’s eyes see their pupils dilate into glassy, vacant black pools, projecting an uncanny aura of an animated corpse walking among the living.
      • Positives: Renders the user completely immune to emotional panic, intimidation, and minor mundane fear effects during the activation window.
      • Negatives: Blunts interpersonal empathy and emotional awareness, imposing a severe social disconnect when attempting to comfort allies or negotiate peacefully with horrified onlookers.

Recipe: Carrion Breath Qigong Sash

  • Materials Needed:
    • One Tier 1 Magic Crystal (coin-sized and coin-weighted, harvested to serve as the entropic breath catalyst and necrotic energy battery).
    • Three yards of unwashed, ashen-grey coarse linen cloth (salvaged from long-interred burial shrouds or ossuary wrappings).
    • Two yards of twisted black hemp cord (treated with dark pine pitch).
    • Seven hollow wing-bones of a mature carrion raven (cleaned of flesh and marrow, cut to approximately one inch in length).
    • One ounce of purified black pine pitch or bituminous resin (used to seal the bone beads).
    • Half an ounce of dried grave-dust or pulverized ossuary moss (harvested from a subterranean tomb or barrow wall).
    • One sacrificial common mortuary shroud-weight or bronze funerary coin (consumed entirely during the crafting process to bind the entropic qi resonance).
  • Tools Required:
    • One bone carving awl and fine needle rasp.
    • One fluid collector fitted with a heated needle nozzle (for injecting liquid pitch).
    • One stone mortar and pestle.
    • One small clay crucible and low-heat spirit lamp.
    • One weaver’s bodkin or blunt iron lacing needle.
    • One wooden torso mandrel or padded tailoring dummy.
  • Skill Requirements:
    • Textile Weaving / Leatherworking: Skill Level 2 (for multi-fold sash braiding, reinforce stitching, and bead anchoring).
    • Bone Working / Scrimshaw: Skill Level 1 (for carving acoustic bone vents, smoothing beads, and sealing pitch plugs).
    • Entropic Qi Cultivation / Somatic Breathwork: Basic familiarity with directing the cold, inverse cadence of decay through personal respiration.
  • Crafting Steps:
    • Prepare the Raven-Bone Resonators: Using the bone carving awl and needle rasp, hollow and clean the interiors of the seven raven wing-bones. Smooth both exterior ends into rounded bead cylinders. Drill a tiny lateral vent hole through the midpoint of each bone to act as an acoustic miasma whistle. Using the fluid collector, inject warm black pine pitch into one end of each bead, plugging that side completely while leaving the central chamber and lateral vent clear.
    • Pulverize and Compound the Burial Resin: Place the half-ounce of dried grave-dust and ossuary moss into the stone mortar. Grind until reduced to an ultra-fine, ashen powder. In the small clay crucible, gently heat the remaining pine pitch over the spirit lamp until fluid. Fold the powdered grave-dust into the molten pitch, stirring until a uniform, charcoal-black conductive compound forms.
    • Sacrificial Binding of the Catalyst: Lay the sacrificial bronze funerary coin flat inside the crucible alongside the Tier 1 magic crystal. Cover them in the powdered grave-dust compound. Direct a steady, cold breath of inverse qi into the vessel while maintaining low heat. As the bronze coin corrodes and crumbles into brittle green verdigris ash, channel the liberated spirit of the grave directly into the crystal. The gemstone turns cloudy grey with an icy internal vortex, completing the entropic bonding.
    • Shroud Linen Preparation and Braiding: Cut the ashen-grey burial linen into three equal lengthwise strips. Using the blunt iron needle and twisted black hemp cord, fold and herringbone-stitch the edges together to create a durable, triple-layered compression sash approximately six inches wide. Brush a light wash of the cooled grave-dust resin along the interior seams to stiffen the weave and insulate the wearer’s core against external cold.
    • Cleaving and Mounting the Entropic Core: Using the bone awl, carefully score and cleave the attuned Tier 1 magic crystal into eight matched shards. Mount the primary, largest shard inside a stitched linen pocket centered along the lumbar band of the sash. Insert the remaining seven small shards directly into the open hollows of the seven raven-bone beads. Using the fluid collector, seal the open ends with the bituminous resin, locking the crystal slivers inside.
    • Stringing the Resonator Array: Thread the seven prepared bone beads along the twisted black hemp cord, spacing them evenly across the lower front hem of the sash where they will rest directly over the wearer’s lower dantian (navel center). Knot the cord firmly between each bead with burial hitches, ensuring the lateral vent holes face outward.
    • Cold Breath Attunement: Wrap the finished sash tightly around the wooden torso mandrel. Place your hands over the seven bone beads, close your eyes, and perform seven slow, deep cycles of inverse breathwork—inhaling the chill of the grave-dust and exhaling through your teeth. Once the seven beads give off a faint, collective rattle and a wispy curl of grey frost vents from the linen weave, the assembly is set and ready for use.

Barrow-Caretaker Who Drank Breath of Black Crow

In that ancient hour of the kingdom when the great celestial wanderer VaporSphere did roll through the lower heaven like an unpolished emerald, there was a province of stone and grey willow which the stone-carver of the fourth dynasty has inscribed as the Valley of the Ten Thousand Cisterns. In that dreary territory, the living men were few, but the dead men were very numerous, being laid away in hollow mounds of grey flint which the elders called barrows. The earth of that place did not produce sweet melons nor yellow grain, for a perpetual water of sulfur did seep from the gravel, and the air above the ditches was heavy with the thick vapor of dying moss and decaying sheep.

Now in that place dwelt a person whose name the ancient script has written with two crooked marks, which the middle-translator renders as Wu-Lin. Wu-Lin was an avatar of Tier One, possessing neither the shining bronze breastplate of the High Marshall nor the third eye of the celestial sorcerers who ride upon the copper air-barges. Wu-Lin held inside his ribs only one small measure of vital essence, such as Gaialilith gives to the low laborers who carry muck in wicker panniers. His assigned office was to sweep the damp flagstones before the barrow of the ancient princes, and to wrap the dried limbs of the deceased in bands of coarse mountain linen so that the marsh-beetles might not devour their fingernails.

Because the air of the cisterns was filled with poisonous damp, all the sweepers who had lived before Wu-Lin had perished before their hair was frosted, their throats swelling with black boils and their lungs coughing up water like a broken leather pump. The overseer of the burial-grounds, an evil man whose fingers were heavy with green copper rings, did not give sweet wine or grease-cakes to Wu-Lin, but said: “Sweep the thresholds of the kings, you dog of the ditches. If you cough up your life-breath upon the flagstones, there are ten thousand beggars upon the road who will take your broom for a bowl of barley-gruel.”

Wu-Lin sat upon a broken sarcophagus while the mist rose from the yellow reeds. His breast burned with a great fire, and his ribs ached because he had breathed the rank mist of the barrows for seven winters. While he sat weeping, seven large crows of the swamp, whose feathers were as black as chimney-soot, came down upon the stone lid beside his knees. These birds did not eat seeds, nor did they drink the clear rainfall of the mountain; they plunged their beaks into the rotten grease of dead mules and were very fat, their wings making a dry rattling sound like iron shingles in the wind.

Wu-Lin observed these birds with great sorrow in his mind and spoke words which the middle-scribe did awkwardly engrave upon the stone-plate: “O great winged scavengers of the bog, your gullets are filled with the rot of three hundred days, yet your eyes are as clear as polished jet, and you mount the sky above the mist like arrows of iron. Why do your lungs not drown in the yellow water of the ditches, while my ribs are broken with pain?”

The ancient tablet records that the largest crow, whose left eye was white from a thorn-wound, opened its black beak and spoke with the voice of gravel rolling in a bronze bowl: “The fool of the daylight draws the sweet air of the garden into his mouth and weeps when the sun Helios goes down and the rot begins. The rot is the second sister of the wind. All that lives must go into the mud, and all that rots has a cold fire inside its belly. You fight against the grave-mist, and therefore the grave-mist breaks your vessel. Open your throat and swallow the coldness of the stones!”

Wu-Lin bowed his forehead to the moss-covered flagstones. He took from the neck of a desiccated corpse within the tomb three yards of coarse, grey shroud-cloth which had lain against the dead ribs for two hundred turnings of the moon, so that it smelled of dry bones and bitter pitch. He took also the hollow wing-bones of seven dead crows which had fallen into the stagnant pool, and he scraped them clean with a shard of river-glass. He stopped the ends of the seven hollow bones with the pitch of the black marsh-pine, drilling a small eye into the middle of each bone so that they made a whistling noise when the air passed through them.

The old text states that Wu-Lin took a small bead of magic stone, no heavier than a copper mite, which an ancient gravedigger had dropped into a funeral jar. He burned the bronze coin of the dead man upon a charcoal pot until it became green ashes, and he blew the cold breath of the night into the smoke until the magic stone drank the essence of the ashes and turned as grey as a winter cloud. He placed seven pieces of this stone into the seven bird-bones, and tied them with hemp cords across the shroud-linen, binding the cloth seven times around his lower stomach where the furnace of his life-breath dwelt.

Wu-Lin sat upon the floor of the tomb and practiced the seven inversions of the breath. He did not draw the breath up into his shoulders, nor did he puff his cheeks like a trumpeter. He closed his teeth and drew the sour, yellow mist of the swamp down into his navel. When the foul gas touched the shroud-cloth around his middle, the seven hollow bird-bones gave forth a dry, piping whistle like the wind in an empty pot. The tablet notes: “The yellow sickness did not burn his throat; the yellow sickness became cold like river-ice in his blood.” A grey sweat stood upon his skin, and his heartbeat became as slow as the dripping of water from a barrow-ceiling, yet his limbs were full of a strange, quiet vigor.

Now it happened in the eighth moon of that year that a band of six iron-clad brigands came down from the mountain scrub. They were men who had slain the King’s horsemen and had fled into the fenlands to rob the barrows of their silver funeral rings and ivory cups. They carried heavy broad-swords and long axes of mountain steel, and their bellies were filled with raw rice-brandy.

They broke the cedar doors of the prince’s tomb with a heavy baulk of pine and found Wu-Lin sitting upon the dirt floor with his broom across his knees. The captain of the brigands, whose beard was matted with dried pig-blood, laughed with a loud roar and lifted his iron axe: “Look upon this grey dog of the tombs! His face is the color of curdled milk, and his rags are not worth two copper bits. Chop off his ears and cast him into the marsh-well, so that we may carry out the silver plates!”

Wu-Lin did not stand upon his feet, nor did he cry out for the King’s archers. He took the cold shroud-cloth in both his hands and drew a great breath through his nostrils. The tablet states: “His belly did shrink against his backbone, and the seven bone-beads upon his waist rattled like thirty skeletons dancing upon a roof.”

Wu-Lin opened his lips and expelled the breath which had slept beneath his navel.

From his mouth there poured forth a great rolling cloud of grey and putrid vapor, thick as the curd of bean-milk and colder than the frost that kills the mountain pears. The cloud rushed across the floor of the barrow in a wide fan, filling the low stone chamber from the flagstones to the rafters. The captain of the robbers brought down his axe, but the blow fell short, for his eyes were instantly blinded by the freezing mist, and the skin of his face turned black with frost-bite.

The ancient script records the terror of the brigands: “The thieves did draw the mist into their gullets, and immediately their bellies were seized with a violent knot, as if they had swallowed thirty scorpions.” They dropped their iron axes upon the stone; they fell upon their knees and vomited black bile and water, their limbs shaking with the bitter cold of the tomb. The captain screamed that the dead princes had risen from their lead pots to devour his marrow, and he crawled backward through the doorway upon his belly, tearing his fingernails against the rocks.

Wu-Lin rose from his seat. His eyes were clear and dark like the eye of the one-eyed raven. He stepped through the roiling grey mist without a single cough, for his lungs were like two vessels of stone. He took up the iron axe of the robber-captain and laid it across the knees of the dead prince, and the five remaining thieves fled into the swamp, where the yellow mud swallowed them because their knees were too weak to bear their armor.

When the evil overseer heard that six mountain brigands had been cast down by an old sweeper with a broom, his heart was shaken with fear. He came to the door of the barrow with a bowl of white rice and five strings of silver coins, and he fell upon his face before Wu-Lin, crying out: “O Master of the cold breath, forgive my harsh words and my bitter gruel! Take this silver and teach me how to drink the swamp-mist so that I may live three hundred years!”

Wu-Lin took neither the rice nor the strings of silver. He looked down upon the overseer with eyes that held no anger, but only the silence of the gravel-beds. He spoke words which the ancient stone-scribe has preserved: “You have spent forty winters fattening your skin with pig-grease and sweet wine, and your belly is full of warm blood that fears the spade. If you take the cold breath of the barrow into your fat ribs, your heart will freeze into a stone before the moon is full. Go back to your account-books, for the breath of the crow belongs only to him who has made his bed among the dead bones.”

For eighty winters Wu-Lin swept the stone thresholds of the Ten Thousand Cisterns. Though three plagues came down from the northern cities and slew forty thousand men in the valley, the yellow fever could not enter his chest, for the cold shroud of the barrow turned every sickness into dry ash. When his appointed time was accomplished and his avatar had reached the limit of its measure, he laid himself down inside an empty limestone trough, with the seven bone-beads resting upon his navel. He blew his last breath into the stone ceiling, where it remained as a small grey cloud that never melted, and he slept with the princes of the earth in great peace.

Moral of the story: He who clings only to the warm summer and flees from the ditch is broken when the frost descends, but he who welcomes the cold decay of the world and binds it to his core can walk through the house of death without fear.

Suggested conversions to other systems:

Call of Cthulhu (7th Edition)

Cincture of the Carrion Exhalation

  • Description & Lore: A coarse, ash-grey linen wrap harvested from subterranean burial grounds, bound with pitch-treated hemp cord and seven hollow raven-bone beads. By practicing an inverse, morbid breathwork, the wearer harmonizes their lungs with the cold process of putrefaction, filtering biological contaminants and venting freezing, nauseating burial vapors against attackers.
  • Item Type: Enchanted Relic / Folk Necromancy Focus
  • Sanity Cost: None to wear; 1D3 Sanity points upon first performing the Miasmic Exhalation or using Siphon Rot to dissolve human remains into dust.
  • Game Mechanics:
    • Breath of the Ossuary (Passive): The investigator automatically succeeds on Constitution checks made to resist nausea, choking hazards, non-magical airborne toxins, and marsh gases.
    • Chill Meridian Anchor (Passive): When holding their breath and standing motionless, the investigator’s thermal signature matches that of a cold corpse. Heat-based detection, thermal optics, and biological pulse-sensing fail to distinguish them from surrounding dead matter.
    • Miasmic Exhalation (Active): The user expels a freezing, putrid mist in a 10-foot cone. Anyone caught within the cone must pass an Extreme CON roll or suffer 1D6 points of necrotic/cold damage and become Sickened (imposing a penalty die on all physical skill rolls for 1D4 rounds). Costs 3 Magic Points.
    • Siphon Rot (Active): The user touches a rotting carcass, spoiling meat, or a dead body while inhaling through the teeth. The organic matter instantly dries to ash, and the investigator restores 1D4 Hit Points (cannot exceed maximum Hit Points). Costs 2 Magic Points; usable once per day.

Blades in the Dark

The Barrow-Shroud Sash

  • Description & Lore: Coarse shroud-linen salvaged from ancient crypts, strung with seven hollow raven-bone beads sealed with black pitch. Worn across the diaphragm by Deathlands scavengers and whisper cultists, it converts the vitality of decay into physical resilience and choking concealment.
  • Item Category & Load: Arcane & Mobility Gear (1 Load)
  • Game Mechanics:
    • Ossuary Lungs (Passive): You are immune to choking hazards, toxic swamp vapors, miasmic sewer gas, and airborne sickness. You ignore level 1 or level 2 harm resulting directly from inhaled biological poisons.
    • Grave-Veil Shroud (Armor): You may mark your armor use to manifest a swirling cloak of cold, grey burial fog around you, negating a physical melee or ranged wound by causing the attack to pass through obscured space.
    • Miasmic Exhalation (Special Armor): Spend 1 Stress to exhale a freezing wave of grave-mist during an engagement. The resulting cloud inflicts the consequence “Choking / Nauseated” on all nearby living targets and grants you +1 Potency on your next violent or evasive action.
    • Siphon Rot: Once per score, when you touch a rotting carcass or fresh corpse, you may inhale its lingering decay to immediately clear 1 Stress as the flesh crumbles to grey dust.

Dungeons & Dragons (5th Edition / 2024 Revision)

Sash of the Carrion Breath

  • Wondrous Item, Common (Requires Attunement)
  • Description & Lore: An ashen-grey linen wrap strung with seven hollow raven-bone beads sealed with dark pine pitch. Tailored for practitioners of entropic breathwork, it anchors the wearer’s respiration to the cold stillness of the grave, insulating their organs against rot and venting necrotic frost.
  • Item Properties:
    • Breath of the Ossuary: You have advantage on saving throws against being poisoned or diseased, and you have resistance to poison damage caused by inhaled toxins and sewer gases.
    • Entropic Reservoir: When you complete a short rest in a tomb, crypt, or swamp, you regain an extra 1d4 Hit Points if you spend one or more Hit Point Dice.
    • Chill Meridian Anchor: While you remain motionless, you emit no detectable body heat, and divination spells or thermal senses perceive you as an inanimate, nonliving object.
    • Miasmic Exhalation: As an action, you exhale a freezing cloud of necrotic vapor in a 15-foot cone. Each creature in the area must make a DC 13 Constitution saving throw. On a failed save, a creature takes 1d6 necrotic or cold damage (your choice) and has disadvantage on attack rolls until the start of its next turn. On a successful save, the creature takes half as much damage and suffers no other effect. Once you use this property, you cannot use it again until you finish a long rest.
    • Siphon Rot: As an action, you touch a patch of organic rot or a nonliving corpse and inhale its decomposition. The material crumbles into fine, dry dust, and you gain 1d4 temporary hit points that last for 1 hour. Once used, this property cannot be used again until you finish a short or long rest.

Knave (2nd Edition)

Carrion Breath Sash

  • Description & Lore: Three yards of braided grave-shroud linen fitted with seven hollow bird-bone whistles stopped with dark pitch. It shields the wearer’s lungs from pestilence and lets them spit forth the freezing breath of the tomb.
  • Item Slots: 1 Gear Slot (Waist)
  • Item Quality: 10 / 10
  • Game Mechanics:
    • Armor Bonus: Provides +1 Armor Defense (stacks with unarmored or gambeson gear, up to standard campaign defense caps).
    • Immunity to Foul Air: The wearer makes all Constitution checks with Advantage against inhaled poisons, marsh gas, corpse stink, and choking smog, completely ignoring ordinary nausea penalties.
    • Grave-Veil: Once per day, the wearer may rattle the bone beads together to surround themselves in a shroud of freezing grey mist for 1 minute. Melee attacks targeting the wearer suffer Disadvantage.
    • Miasmic Blast: As an action, the wearer expels an icy cloud of rot in a 15-foot cone. All living creatures caught within must make a Constitution check; on a failure, they suffer 1d6 damage and cannot take actions on their next turn due to violent coughing and vomiting. If this property is used, test the sash’s Quality: on a roll of 1–3, the sash loses 1 Quality.

Fate (Fate Condensed)

Sash of the Carrion Breath

  • Aspect: Ashen Barrow-Linen Breathing Sash
  • Description & Lore: Woven from fraying grave wrappings and threaded with seven hollow raven-bone beads sealed with pitch, this sash focuses somatic respiration around the cold, stillness-laden cadence of rot. It shields the practitioner from noxious gases, hides their living warmth, and lets them exhale numbing tomb-frost.
  • Stunts:
    • Breath of the Ossuary: You gain a +2 bonus to Physique when defending against or overcoming environmental hazards related to inhaled toxins, choking gases, marsh mists, or nauseating smells.
    • Chill Meridian Anchor: When you stand entirely motionless, you may use Stealth to create an advantage representing corpse-like stillness (such as Cold as the Grave). Opponents cannot detect your pulse, breathing, or body warmth while this aspect remains active.
    • Miasmic Exhalation: Once per conflict, when you make an attack against an opponent in your zone using Shoot or Physique, you may exhale a freezing cloud of necrotic vapor. If you succeed, you deal physical stress as normal and immediately inflict the situation aspect Choking on Grave-Frost with one free invoke.

Numenera & Cypher System

Entropic Respiration Cincture

  • Item Level: 2
  • Form: Frayed, triple-woven carbon-fiber sash resembling funeral linen, strung with seven polished tubular bird-bone vents plugged with hardened bituminous resin.
  • Kind: Cypher or Artifact (Artifact, Depletion: 1 in 1d10)
  • Description & Lore: Engineered by ancient biomechanical reclamation cults to filter volatile atmospheric contaminants and harvest ambient entropic breakdown. The cincture synchronizes with the user’s pulmonary system, converting the molecular rot of decomposing tissue into bio-synthetic energy and localized cryo-necrotic discharge.
  • Game Mechanics:
    • Breath of the Ossuary (Passive): The wearer gains an asset on all Might defense rolls against airborne poisons, toxic vapors, spore clouds, and debilitating odors.
    • Chill Meridian Anchor (Passive): While the wearer remains completely still, their core body temperature drops to match ambient room levels; thermal sensors and biological life-scanners treat them as an inanimate, nonliving object.
    • Siphon Rot (Active): As an action, the wearer may touch a patch of biological decay or an organic corpse, reducing it to dry mineral dust. The wearer restores 2 points to their Might Pool. This ability can be used once per day.
    • Miasmic Exhalation (Active): As an action, the wearer expels an icy spray of necrotic vapor targeting all immediate creatures in a short cone. On a successful Speed attack roll, affected targets take 3 points of ambient damage and have their physical actions hindered until the end of their next turn.
    • Depletion Check: A depletion roll is made only when using the Miasmic Exhalation ability.

Pathfinder (Second Edition / Remaster)

Carrion Breath Sash

  • Item 1
  • Traits: Invested, Magical, Necromancy
  • Price: 9 gp
  • Usage: Worn belt; Bulk: L
  • Description & Lore: This coarse sash is braided from ancient burial wrappings and strung with seven pitch-sealed raven wing-bones. Devised by ascetics who meditate within catacombs, the garment draws on inverse somatic energy, immunizing the wearer to noxious airborne filth and allowing them to exhale freezing barrow-fog.
  • Item Properties & Mechanics:
    • Breath of the Ossuary (Passive): You gain a +1 item bonus to saving throws against inhaled poisons, airborne diseases, and environmental stench effects.
    • Entropic Reservoir (Passive): When you take a 10-minute rest to Treat Wounds or Refocus in a crypt, swamp, or area with abundant decaying organic matter, you gain an extra 1d4 temporary Hit Points that last for 1 hour.
    • Chill Meridian Anchor (Passive): While you remain motionless, your body temperature plummets to match the ambient environment. Creatures relying on heat-sensing abilities or lifesense must succeed at a DC 15 Perception check to detect you as a living creature.
    • Miasmic Exhalation [two-actions]:
      • Frequency: Once per day
      • Area: 15-foot cone
      • Saving Throw: Basic DC 15 Fortitude
      • Effect: You exhale a dense cone of necrotic frost and tomb-gas. Creatures in the area take 1d6 cold damage. On a critical failure, the target is also sickened 1.

Savage Worlds (Adventure Edition)

Sash of the Carrion Breath

  • Description & Lore: Three yards of coarse, ash-grey barrow linen knotted over twisted hemp cord, strung with seven hollow raven-bone beads sealed with dark pitch. Practicing an inverse breathing technique, the wearer filters airborne filth through their core and expels icy, suffocating tomb-frost.
  • Item Type: Personal Gear / Minor Enchanted Relic
  • Weight: 1.5 lbs
  • Cost: $90
  • Game Mechanics:
    • Breath of the Ossuary (Passive): The wearer gains a +2 bonus to Vigor rolls made to resist inhaled toxins, swamp gases, suffocation, and nauseating odors.
    • Chill Meridian Anchor (Passive): When holding their breath and remaining unmoving, the wearer’s thermal outline vanishes, matching the ambient temperature. Opponents using infrared or thermal vision suffer a -4 penalty on Notice rolls to detect the wearer.
    • Siphon Rot (Active): Once per day, the character can spend an action touching an organic corpse or patch of rot to desiccate it into ash, healing one level of non-lethal fatigue or gaining a +1 bonus to their next Vigor roll made within 1 hour.
    • Miasmic Exhalation (Active): Once per encounter, the wearer can spend an action to exhale an icy, putrid mist using the Cone Template. Targets within the template must make an immediate Vigor roll at -1. Failure causes the target to be Distracted until the end of their next turn, and on a Critical Failure the target is also Shaken from the intense cold and nauseating stench.

Shadowrun (Sixth World)

Carrion Breath Qi Sash

  • Item Type: Clothing / Minor Qi Focus (Force 1)
  • Subtype: Somatic Breath Focus / Awakened Necromancy Relic
  • Availability: 3 (Forbidden)
  • Cost: 1,800 nuyen
  • Description & Lore: Woven from weathered burial shroud fibers and knotted with black pitch-sealed bird bone resonators, this sash is favored by toxic shamans, street-level hermits, and gutter adepts who dwell in the deepest runoff catacombs and barrens. Channeling entropic chi through disciplined respiratory cycles, the sash filters airborne industrial poisons, suppresses bio-thermal emission, and vents choking necrotic frost against pursuers.
  • Game Mechanics:
    • Breath of the Ossuary (Passive): The adept gains a +2 dice pool modifier on Toxin Resistance tests against inhaled chemical agents, pollution mists, airborne spores, and nausea-inducing smells.
    • Chill Meridian Anchor (Passive): When holding their breath and remaining unmoving, the adept’s body temperature equilibrates to match ambient levels. Thermal imaging sensors, thermographic vision, and bio-sensors suffer a -2 dice pool penalty to spot or lock onto the wearer.
    • Siphon Rot (Active / Minor Action): Once per run, the wearer touches decaying organic biomass or an untended corpse while drawing an inverse breath. The target tissue withers to brittle dust, and the adept clears 1 box of Stun damage.
    • Miasmic Exhalation (Active / Major Action): The adept releases a sharp exhalation of freezing, necrotic rot in a Close-range cone. All living targets caught within the blast take 3P (Cold) damage and must pass an immediate Body + Willpower (Threshold 2) test or suffer the Nauseated status for 1 combat turn. Usable once per day.

Starfinder (Second Edition)

Carrion Breath Breathing Wrap

  • Item 1
  • Traits: Invested, Magical, Necromancy, Wearable
  • Usage: Worn belt; Bulk: L
  • Price: 85 credits
  • Description & Lore: Fashioned from desiccated shroud textiles salvage-woven with synthetic pitch cords and drilled avian bone chambers. Used by corpse-fleet scrap-divers, necrovitus cultists, and Eoxian boundary scavengers, this wrap anchors the wearer’s pulmonary cycle to the entropic decay of dead systems, insulating their organs against toxic atmospheres and releasing bursts of chilling void-mist.
  • Item Properties & Mechanics:
    • Breath of the Ossuary (Passive): You gain a +1 item bonus to Fortitude saving throws against inhaled toxins, biological spore hazards, and airborne environmental sickness.
    • Chill Meridian Anchor (Passive): While you remain motionless, your biological thermal output diminishes to room temperature. Creatures and sensors relying on thermal vision, lifesense, or heartbeat detection must succeed at a DC 15 Perception check to recognize you as a living target.
    • Siphon Rot (Single Action): Frequency: Once per 10 minutes. You touch a patch of organic rot or an unliving biological corpse and inhale. The biomass crumbles into grey soot, and you gain 1d4 temporary Hit Points that last for 1 hour.
    • Miasmic Exhalation (Two Actions):
      • Frequency: Once per day
      • Area: 15-foot cone
      • Saving Throw: Basic DC 14 Fortitude save
      • Effect: You expel an icy, putrid plume of tomb-mist. Creatures in the area suffer 1d6 cold damage. On a critical failure, the target also becomes sickened 1.

Traveller (Mongoose Traveller 2nd Edition)

Entropic Respiratory Cincture

  • Tech Level (TL): 8
  • Mass: 0.5 kg
  • Cost: Cr 450
  • Description & Lore: Salvaged from derelict crypt-hulls and stagnant swamp-settlements, this woven fiber sash incorporates hollow bone whistles sealed with bituminous mastic. By training in meditative breathing cycles, sophont wearers can scrub particulate matter from unbreathable atmospheres and vent localized clouds of freezing biological gas to deter aggressors in cramped ship corridors.
  • Game Mechanics:
    • Breath of the Ossuary (Passive): Grants DM+2 on all END checks to resist tainted atmospheres, inhaled biological agents, swamp gases, and smoke inhalation.
    • Thermal Dissipation (Passive): While the wearer is stationary and holding their breath, their heat signature blends with the environment, imposing a -2 DM on all thermal imaging and IR detection sensors attempting to locate them.
    • Siphon Rot: Once per day, the user may touch decaying bio-matter or unpreserved organic rations to desiccate it completely, recovering 1 point of lost physical END characteristic damage from fatigue.
    • Miasmic Exhalation: Once per encounter as a combat action, the user exhales an icy cone of freezing bio-mist into an adjacent Close range space (up to 2 meters). Target living creatures must make an immediate END check (target 8+); failure results in disorientation and a -1 DM to all actions for the next combat round due to violent coughing and thermal shock.

Warhammer (Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4th Edition)

Sash of the Barrow Breath

  • Price: 1 GC 2/–
  • Encumbrance: 0
  • Availability: Rare
  • Qualities: Subtle, Ward (9+)
  • Description & Lore: Woven from moldering burial linens dragged from Morr’s Gardens or ancient fen-barrows, bound with tarred hemp and seven hollow corvid bone whistles. Practiced by hedge-necromancers, charnel-house keepers, and recluses of the marshes, this sash disciplines the lungs to digest the chill stench of death, repelling airborne plagues and releasing freezing, putrid crypt-mist.
  • Game Mechanics:
    • Morr’s Lungs: The wearer gains a +20 bonus on Toughness tests to resist inhaled poisons, swamp fogs, sewer gas, and biological sickness (including the Black Plague and tomb-rot vapors).
    • Cold as the Grave: While standing utterly still, the wearer’s pulse and body warmth vanish. Creatures using witch-sight, acute senses, or instinctual tracking treat the wearer as an inanimate, nonliving corpse.
    • Siphon Putrescence: Once per day, the wearer may lay a hand upon a rotting corpse, causing the remains to crumble into dry dust. The character heals 1d4 lost Wounds (up to their maximum Wounds).
    • Miasmic Exhalation: Once per day, the wearer spends an Action to expel an icy cloud of barrow-mist in a 3-yard cone. Anyone caught within must make a Challenging (+0) Toughness test. Those who fail suffer 1d10 + 3 Cold/Necrotic damage (ignoring non-magical armor) and gain 1 Stunned Condition as they choke on the freezing stench of the tomb.