The Seeds of Madness

DESCRIPTION
The Seeds of Madness are fragments of the minds of aberrations that have an association with Madness, the Void, Insanity, Nightmares, and other such concepts. When such a creature is slain, there is a 1% chance of its corpse warping and coalescing into the shape of a seed, which is about an inch across at its longest point and about half as wide.

The seed emits an incomprehensible aura in its natural state, which grants +2 to all Intimidation attempts within 50 feet and a -2 to saves against fear. Only an aberration with a chance to drop a Seed of Madness is immune to this effect. If a detection spell is used on the Seeds, they return incomprehensible feedback, simultaneously detecting as good, evil, magic, non-magic, chaotic, and lawful. Divination spells focused on the seeds themselves return similar white noise to detection spells, but the seeds CAN be detected by divining the things and people around them, even if the seeds are mentioned in what is being searched so long as the seeds themselves are not the main focus of the divination.

But the true abilities of the Seeds are revealed once consumed by a mortal being. At that point, the seed evaporates in their mouth, disappearing without a physical trace and no longer emitting its aura. The mortal feels a lump of madness and tentacles settle in the back of their mind, allowing them access to various abilities in return for temporary Wisdom loss. The Wisdom spent this way returns only after a full night’s rest, no spells can return it ever. While the Wisdom loss is in effect, the mortal acts manic, somewhat random, and is more prone to rash decisions the more substantial the drain.

The lump of madness is very territorial and lashes out at anything that attempts to remove it, dealing 1d4 permanent Wisdom Drain (Will Save DC 18). Additionally, once per day the lump will reflect a mind-damaging effect back on the aggressor, regardless of whether the host is aware of the effect. The attacker receives the effect of the mind attack as though they were the original target and receives a -4 on any rolls to resist it.

DESTRUCTION
The Seeds of Madness dissolve into nothing if brought to a Chaos-Aligned plane, the Void, or taken from one plane to another with an opposite alignment (I.E. Good to Evil). Otherwise they can be destroyed simply with fire at the cost of half the destroyer’s Wisdom score (Will DC 20 to resist) per Seed destroyed.