Stew of Beyond

When the caster wishes to create the Stew of Beyond, he cooks up a pot of stew while simultaneously performing a series of incantations or prayers. The quaility of the stew created is immaterial to the effectiveness of the spell once cast. After this point, a delicious odor begins to waft forth from it. This does not enhance the nutritional value of the stew, nor does it change inedible ingrededients into edible ones. However, it does make the best darn stew in the universe.

This provides three main benefits. First, it transforms an otherwise lackluster-tasting meal into an delicious one. Second, it allows the caster/chef to disguise poisons and other indesirables as parts of a tantalizing (and seemingly well-balanced) meal. Third, and most remarkably, it allows anyone who gazes into the stew to see any event, past, present, or future, which took, is taking, or will take place within the range of the stew at the time of casting. The only other major restriction on this is that the event must have transpired during the stew's existence.

The problem with the stew is that it almost never lasts very long, even if it is made mostly out of dirt, poisonous berries, and bits of bark, because it is so incredibly delectable. Anyone attempting to gaze into the soup will be overcome with an urge to consume it (because the effect is magical, plugging one's nose does no good here). The first day the stew is created, anyone who comes near enough to look inside must make an unmodified Resisting Urges check. Cruelly, on each successive day, the stew gets more alluring. Characters suffer -1 to their resisting rolls for every additional passing day. Those who know that a stew is poisoned or unsafe to eat get +2 to their roll.

Degree Matrix

Spell Components

• Besides creating a stew, the caster ceremoneously adds ingredients while chanting in a ritualistic fashion, finishing this process with “the secret ingredient” (which might be nearly anything). Preferably the caster cackles gleefully or mutter a series of incantations.

Limitations and Notes:

• The caster must create a bowl of stew with at least some ingredients that might reasonably be found in a stew. Penalties apply to casting apply for casting the spell on something not-stewlike; trying to cast the spell on a cauldron of mere water applies a penalty of -5, and attempting it on a still body of water gains a penalty of -8.

• Unusually large stews may incur additional penalties to casting.

• If cast on a moving body of water, the stew will almost immediately start to flow downstream and be lost, although one brief glance might be possible.

Users of this Spell

• None