Adventure (Seed) - The Smiling Dead

The Smiling Dead

Yohan Fustyvant of the Yeomanry was a hedge wizard all his life but a devotee of the duplicitous Syrul during his last few months. While most other half-amateur practioners in the mystical arts were often as dangerous as they were ineffectual, Fustyvant became a master of the dental craft. His own teeth were his pride and joy.

During his life he collected lore on herbs and potions that would fight tooth decay, alleviate pain, and leave breath minty and fresh. His extractions were truly painless and his animated wooden dentures never left splinters, bit the user's tongue or seized control of the wearer's body for nefarious purposes.

As the years passed he became renowned, sought after and exceedingly wealthy, but he could not protect himself from the wear and diminishment of time, nor could he master the greatest of dental magic and regrow teeth, not even his own. He turned, in the end, to the toothy grin of Syrul, and as with all pacts made with the eternal trickster, his own desires became his undoing.

While searching for elusive herbs along the borders of the High Crags he came upon an ancient shrine so old it seemed to predate the Suel Imperium. The deity depicted was of strong physical characteristics and had the best sculpted teeth Yohan had ever seen. Among the overgrown and half-ruined shrine he found an amulet with the grinning face of the unknown deity (Syrul) which he kept as a token and a talisman, not realizing he had peeked the interest of a malivolent and duplicitous God.

In desperation in his declining years he began to pray to the carved toothy  features on the amulet and one day he received an answer, The talisman spoke and offered him the answer to his prayers if Yohan would show his devotion. Each day he sacrificed and each day his teeth became a little fuller, a bit more white and shiny. Unfortunately they just wouldn't stop. He begged Syrul, made greater and greater sacrifices but each day now he gnawed and gnawed to wear down his teeth, took to the file and in the end extracted them with his own hands, only to find the process of regrowth begin again. In pain and torment and shame he took his own life at the lost and half-ruined shrine.

Yohan Fustyvant's teeth are now forever strong and sharp. In undeath he gnaws at the living, infecting all those he slays with his toothy curse. His ghoulish progeny can be recognized by their perfect teeth which shine with a pearly light in the dark of tomb, catacomb or grave.