Living Spells

[RobbieOC]

The thread about living spells got me thinking about them.

How are they created (in game)? Say I want to have a villain who uses them a lot, how would he go about it? How much would it cost? What would he need?

Similarly, if I were to make a prestige class based on such a thing, what kind of requirements should there be?

[I_Got_This_Name]

In Eberron (don't know about anywhere else):
There was a huge war that lasted a century and ended some years back. Toward the end of that, there was a magical cataclysm that left an entire country in ruins. For some reason (probably related to the cataclysm), living spells started to pop up in the ruins, immediately.

[RobbieOC]

So, is there no way for mages to make more?

[I_Got_This_Name]

They're uncontrolled forces of destruction unleashed by the magical equivalent of a nuclear attack (except that nobody knows who caused it). There's no known way to make more, aside from homebrew stuff, and, as they exist in Eberron, no reason anyone who wasn't seriously sick would want to make more.

I suppose, with the right Eldritch Machine (essentially, a non-portable magic item that exists as a way of doing stuff that the rest of magic doesn't cover; a manifestation of DM fiat in the gameworld, often used by villains as the threat that drives the plot), one would be able to invoke the Mourning again on a smaller scale (like, say, on a single city); that might be the way to do it.

[Inyssius Tor]

Also, Daelkyrs (the aberration-lords who created... basically all the other aberrations and a bunch of other monsters in Eberron) might be interested in that sort of thing.

[Mewtarthio]

Just give the villain a unique artifact. Or say that he's figured out how to make Living Spells, possibly from an evil Outsider.