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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 7022829" data-attributes="member: 6787650">One thing you can do with warlocks is to take the idea of pacts and bargains and run with it. In this view, there's always a cost for warlock spells. When a fiend grants you power, he isn't granting you his personal power--he's giving you the password to his soul account, so to speak, and every time a Fiend Pact warlock casts a spell, there's a soul somewhere who screams in agony as the soul grinders squeeze a little bit more juice out of him to power the spell. When someone makes a pact with Cthulhu or the Unseeing Eye (with or without Cthulhu's knowledge), the forbidden lore they're accessing is forbidden because it chips away at the reality of the world, bringing the world's dissolution (back?) into chaos that much closer every time you use it. When someone makes a pact with Mab the Queen of Air and Darkness, their spells, like Mab's own magic, are consuming the vitality of the natural world, and Mab will insist that the power be used in such a way as to create a net profit for her, by removing threats to her power source.Raxivort doesn't have personal power to loan to his warlocks, but the artifact he stole has a credit line built in, which doesn't seem to have a limit--he keeps pulling power out, and so do his warlocks, and the debt keeps growing, and he worries sometimes about where it comes from and what it might cost someday to settle that debt, but so far no one has ever asked him to pay so he just keeps drawing upon the power because he wants treasure and a good life today...From this perspective, wizards take power from natural laws, clerics are given power by those who have it, sorcerers embody power within themselves, and warlocks (and their patrons) borrow or pay for power like nobles borrowing gold from rich merchant princes at high interest rates.</blockquote>

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