The workings of Hell are insidious. Often the damage Hell's minions do
comes from crafty words spoken into the right ears, rather than direct
attacks. Demons have learned to use words to carry their vile
attunements, Songs and resonances.
It was only natural for Heaven to look for some simple way to shield their
agents from the effects.
Holy Earplugs of Ignorance
The holy earplugs are small, normal looking earplugs. When inserted in
the ears, they are nearly unobservable. Like normal earplugs, they
muffle sound. Unlike normal earplugs, they also protect the user from
attunements, songs, and resonances carried by sound.
For each lovel of the artifact, the earplugs grant an additional point of
resistance to certain effects. These effects include the Balseraph
resonance, Songs like the Song of Thunder, and Attunements such as Divine
Logic. The level is added to whatever trait is used to resist such
attacks - the earplugs add to the user's Will for resisting Balseraphs,
and add to the user's Intelligence for resisting Divine Logic, for
example.
Unfortunately, the earplugs also shield out noises which the user might
want to hear. Each level of the artifact penalizes the user's Perception
for sound-based information. This includes detecting distrubances, normal
sounds, and attunement-based information, like from the Malakim of War
attunement (though in that case the angel's Corporeal Forces and not
Perception is penalized). Whatever trait is used to determine how much
a user hears suffers the penalty. A high-level set of Holy Earplugs can
render the user completely deaf to all sound.
Of course, Hell eventually decided the things had some use for them too,
so they began to make their own versions. Unholy Earplugs tend to be
larger and more noticable, and also painful to wear for long periods.
Back to the INC Mainpage.
Back to the Artifacts page.
Send mail to the Curator