Eat Your Words

 

“Eat Your Words” is a powerful spell invented by The Faith of the First Mother to root out liars and punish those who would seek to cause grievous injury with their cruel observations, unkind utterances, and devilish declarations. However, despite the creators’ intent that the incantation only ever be used as a curse, “Eat Your Words” has found a second life in soup kitchens throughout Eden as both a charm and a blessing.

 

Action

The caster pinches the fingers of one hand together near their lips. Then, as they pull the fingers away from the lips and apart from one another, they speak the phrase “Eat your words” in the native tongue of the target and in the target’s direction. Once the phrase is uttered, the caster brings the fingers of their hand back together and back toward their lips.

Effect

The target of the spell is bound by invisible tethers to a chair at the nearest dining table. A bowl of alphabet soup appears before them. Each time the target dips their spoon into the bowl, a word they’ve spoken in the past appears near the center. If the target chooses to ignore that word and look elsewhere in the bowl, another word will appear. The selection of words is determined by the spellcaster, who may choose to fill the bowl with all of the hateful words the target has ever spoken, or all of the untrue words, et cetera. Whatever parameters the spellcaster uses, one thing remains true: the target may not leave the table until they have eaten every word in the bowl.

Side/Secondary Effects

The taste of the soup is determined by the tone of the words. Words spoken in anger will taste bitter and words spoken from a place of envy or resentment will taste sour, whereas kind words may taste sweet or savory.

 

Some targets of the spell also report recalling vivid memories while eating, both of the moments when the words were originally spoken and of the people the words were spoken about or to.

Related Organizations
Effect Casting Time
3–10 seconds

Comments

Author's Notes

Special thanks to Dazzlikat for pitching the initial idea for the spell on my Twitch stream on May 16, 2022.


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Dec 25, 2022 02:11 by Emily Armstrong

This is such a neat idea!! I looove this idea so much, this would be *so* fun to pull on a villain ahahahah. Orrr horribly dramatic when pulled on a PC!

Check out my worlds of Beckettville and Culinarypunk!
Dec 25, 2022 02:49 by E. Christopher Clark

Right? I can't wait to throw this into a story, and I can imagine it'd be great fun in a TTRPG game.

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Jan 9, 2023 13:29 by Marc Zipper

This is a really interesting spell. I think I see both DM and players using it in interesting ways. I really love how it started with good intentions that will slowly become a form of torture. excellent spell.

Let's have fun creating the impossible, building new worlds, and all types of possibilities. Valcin
Jan 10, 2023 16:48 by E. Christopher Clark

Thank you so much! I hope if anyone ever uses it in a campaign, they'll let me know. I've got plans for it in my next novel series.

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Jan 20, 2023 03:15 by Jaime Buckley

HAH! Love this, Chris. Wanted to read it just from the name =) I wanted to use a few of your articles this year for the reading challenge, but decided to be kind to others and just choose this. I'll make sure to provide an unfair advantage next time (wink).   Love your writing, as always.   Been meaning to ask you (but something in my gut says I already have and I cannot remember when) -- but how do you create this kind of artwork? I really like it.

JAIME BUCKLEY
Storyteller, Cartoonist,..pretty awesome friend =)
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Jan 20, 2023 12:11 by E. Christopher Clark

Hey, thanks for reading and for the kind comments! Regarding the art, I use a program called Daz Studio to shape, pose, clothe, and light the characters, and then I do some Photoshop wizardry.   I do caution folks who are interested in it though that it can become an expensive hobby. BUT, for someone with artistic skills such as yourself, you could use the basic (free!) tools to create and pose characters that you could then draw on top of. Anyway, I just always like to caution folks because I've gotten myself deep into debt buying assets for Daz and I still haven't figured out how to earn my money back.

Enroll in Yesterland Academy today!
Jan 20, 2023 13:48 by Jaime Buckley

Maye you should be dazzling us with animated versions of headers, eh? Or start a TY channel, showing artists to do what you're doing with Daz and get a million followers...(double thumbs up).

JAIME BUCKLEY
Storyteller, Cartoonist,..pretty awesome friend =)
Subscribe to Life of Fiction to see the live results of all this worldbuilding.
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