Pandora's Box

[Baron Von Stanton]

So, a long while ago, I started working on a series of thirteen spirits trapped in a box, essentially a miniature version of Pandora's Box.
These thirteen spirits are all immortal, and can not be permanently destroyed short of either divine intervention, or having their would-be slayers undergo specific, impossible quests to undo their hearts, i.e., the situation of Kostchtchie the Heartless, and render them mortal.
A cabal of mages created a device that would serve as an engine for their schemes of power and conquest. This device, which they named "Chongguan," literally "bug box," would entrap a spirit or spiritual being, and allow the imprisoned being's warden to utilize the prisoner's powers until the prisoner is exhausted (and thus, destroyed), or liberated.
In an attempt to ingrate themselves publicly and whitewash their machinations with an air of magnanimous legitimacy, the cabal selected 13 evil spirits plaguing the realm to capture and empower the Chongguan.
However, by the time the cabal had imprisoned the 13th spirit in the Chongguan, fully half of the cabal's members were either slain or permanently incapacitated by the ordeal.
As a result, several of the surviving cabalists were extremely hesitant to have anything to do with the Chongguan beyond keeping it and its occupants locked away forever, and as the survivors bickered amongst themselves over whether to continue their plan to use the Chongguan, the Mists enveloped both the surviving mages and the Chongguan, taking both to Ravenloft.

[Baron Von Stanton]

So far, I only have three of the 13 fleshed out, and I was wandering if anybody had any suggestions for the other ten, or would like to see one of the beasties from one of my Excerpts from The Register of Monster.

[Baron Von Stanton]

The first is "Megalovirus," an immensely powerful greater feyr created by the destruction of an entire city through a plague. Megalovirus desires to conquer what it thinks is "the world," and "rule it," though, in its case, this means finding a way to send every inhabited metropolis it is aware of into a permanent tumult of panic and frenetic misery so it can feed off of the resulting negative emotions indefinitely. It has numerous disease-causing powers, and can bud off additional feyrs to serve it and carry out its will.

[Baron Von Stanton]

The second is "Dans," a malicious, shapeshifting trickster that usually masquerades as a sword of dancing or a flametongue sabre.
It seeks to cause mischief by looking for a gullible fool to serve as its "owner," and then encourage its owner to commit murder and or acts of senseless violence until it gets bored and either slays its latest owner or abandons him to an ideally gory fate.
Other times, it will simply cause a string of increasingly dangerous and deadly "accidents" and either frame some innocent bystander, or make it look like the work of some deranged criminal.
Dans' true form is unknown, aside from having a huge, leering eye.

[Baron Von Stanton]

The third is Avuul, the ghost of a wizard who died while failing to properly perform a ritual of lichdom.
Avuul's ghost deludes himself into thinking that his soul has been fractured into numerous pieces, and if he can find all of the pieces of his missing soul, he can then achieve lichdom or godhood, or otherwise achieve his long dreamt of apotheosis.
But, the thing is, being a ghost, all that's left of him is his soul, and his deluded state, he can not understand that he's trapped in a neverending cycle of stalking random victims in order to devour their souls for a futile goal.

[Rock of the Fraternity]

*raises hand* As the description reminded me not so much of Pandora's Box as the 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo - and no, this is not meant as a slight of any kind; I liked that cartoon - maybe you could draw some inspiration from that show, or even from its far more eerier successor, Scooby Doo: Mystery Incorporated. The Nibiru alone is fairly nightmare-inducing.
Speaking of 13 Ghosts, I recall there was a movie to round out that series, in which a (non-magical) magician created the illusion of an ancient demon having shown up - an ancient demon who turned out to be the corrupted ancestor of another magician. It was suggested the actual demon might have been trying to reform and help its descendant. Would a troubled fiend, struggling to change its ways even though it is locked inside the box, give you any ideas?

[The Lesser Evil]

Is there Hope in the box, like in the original myth? Is it a positive Hope, or something of false expectations/empty promises/wishful thinking/lotus eater type enthrallment? Apparently there is some disagreement as to the meaning in the original myth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora%27s_box

For that matter, are all the spirits truly Evil in an objective sense? Might some of them simply have been labeled that way such that they would be locked away along with the rest? Might some of them not be Evil but simply viewed as evil by a skewed sense of morality of the 13 mages and/or the society they came from?

[Baron Von Stanton]

Is there Hope in the box, like in the original myth? Is it a positive Hope, or something of false expectations/empty promises/wishful thinking/lotus eater type enthrallment? Apparently there is some disagreement as to the meaning in the original myth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora%27s_box

The original intent of the Chuangguan was an inversion of the original Box, in that, all of these evils would be contained and then transformed into "Hope," whether that hope would be the peace created by the spirits' absence, or as a limitless power source. Some of the deceased and more bizarrely incapacitated cabalists pose as "the 14th Spirit" in order to assist and thwart their brethren and their brethren's minions as needed.

For that matter, are all the spirits truly Evil in an objective sense? Might some of them simply have been labeled that way such that they would be locked away along with the rest? Might some of them not be Evil but simply viewed as evil by a skewed sense of morality of the 13 mages and/or the society they came from?

All of the 13 Spirits are incredibly dangerous beings, thus one of the primary considerations for the Cabal of 13 to target them. Most of the 13 Spirits are indeed Evil, comparable to demons in their malevolence (a few are tanar'ri, in fact). Some of them are more akin to dangerous animals or semi-aware unnatural natural disasters. One Spirit is a symbiote-like being that desires to "live and die like a finite, biological being," but its presence always causes its host to "evolve" into a large, predatory creature with a drastically shortened lifespan, much to both's sorrow.

[Baron Von Stanton]

*raises hand* As the description reminded me not so much of Pandora's Box as the 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo - and no, this is not meant as a slight of any kind; I liked that cartoon - maybe you could draw some inspiration from that show, or even from its far more eerier successor, Scooby Doo: Mystery Incorporated. The Nibiru alone is fairly nightmare-inducing.

the 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo was my favorite of all the Scooby Doo series; one could say this project is a love letter to it.

Speaking of 13 Ghosts, I recall there was a movie to round out that series, in which a (non-magical) magician created the illusion of an ancient demon having shown up - an ancient demon who turned out to be the corrupted ancestor of another magician. It was suggested the actual demon might have been trying to reform and help its descendant. Would a troubled fiend, struggling to change its ways even though it is locked inside the box, give you any ideas?

To be honest, the ambiguity they then gave the box in that was disappointing in my opinion. On the other hand, there might be something with the idea that one of the Spirits are trying to be more and better than its peers.

[HyperionSol]

I can totally see a bleak choice coming from possessing the artifact. If the characters have it, do they release spirits to try and capture a Darklord with it, only ensuring a new Darklord takes their place, or to they travel to recapture the spirits, but have severe temptation to capture some other evil people they come across, leaving one more spirit free and perhaps to make a new domain of their own if they are left to roam for too long.

[Baron Von Stanton]

I can totally see a bleak choice coming from possessing the artifact. If the characters have it, do they release spirits to try and capture a Darklord with it, only ensuring a new Darklord takes their place, or to they travel to recapture the spirits, but have severe temptation to capture some other evil people they come across, leaving one more spirit free and perhaps to make a new domain of their own if they are left to roam for too long.

When empty or when it has available space, the Chuangguan's primary power is to perform trap the soul on the target, with the main difference that the Bug Box is only designed to hold souls, and not bodies, so that a target that has failed his/her/their/its saving throw will leave their body, if any, behind as their soul or equivalent is pulled into the Box and contained. In other words, if the Box is successfully used on an ensouled being that has a body, it will kill the target upon entrapping the target's soul. Upon release, if the target was originally alive, or even undead without the ability to reform its body, they will return as an extremely angry bodiless undead. If the target was an em-bodied undead with the power to reform its body, i.e., a lich or a vampire, it will reform its body within five minutes of release.

Using the Chuangguan to dispose of a Darklord poses an exciting and messy situation.

[Mistmaster]

An entire campaign of going and trapping Darklords ( which I would rule can't be replaced) would be interesting;The Dark Powers would tremble as they have no power on the vase and on the vase users, created by a trickster god and inserted in Ravenloft as part of the pact which lead to its creation; If the PC manages to entrap all the Darklords (I would allow thevaseto hold any amount of souls) the Dark Powers would be imprisoned themselves and Ravenloft would be free.

[The Lesser Evil]

Some ghosts of a lawful bent to go with some of the more chaotic/neutral sounding ones above:

-A ghost knight that betrayed and killed his master out of the master's perceived impurities, now doomed to forever seek new masters only to repeat the process.

-the insidious leader of a martyrdom cult that gains eternal control over his followers' spirits after they sacrifice themselves.

-a perfectionist devil of stagnation, ever at war with messy change, with control over time- including subjecting its victims into endless Groundhog Day-esque loops.

-the ghost of a brutal prison warden that allowed everyone in his facility to perish in a calamity rather than allow the possibility of escape during evacuation and transfer. Now he holds his victims in prisons of ethereal resonance in the Border Ethereal.

[Rock of the Fraternity]

The Dark Powers wouldn't tremble; they'd be laughing while they plotted some way to make the whole situation blow up in the face of whoever started collecting Darklords - i.e., compacting Big Evil in a very small vessel.

[Baron Von Stanton]

An entire campaign of going and trapping Darklords ( which I would rule can't be replaced) would be interesting;The Dark Powers would tremble as they have no power on the vase and on the vase users, created by a trickster god and inserted in Ravenloft as part of the pact which lead to its creation; If the PC manages to entrap all the Darklords (I would allow thevaseto hold any amount of souls) the Dark Powers would be imprisoned themselves and Ravenloft would be free.

One couldn't do this with the Chuangguan, as it's a finite artifact with a very limited storage space. That, and I would think using the Bug Box to harness the power of various evil spirits would quickly attract the attention of the Dark Powers, and releasing these evil and pernicious beings in order to dispose of darklords would probably attract the Dark Powers' immediate attention very quickly.