THE SEPULCHRE PATH
1 - INSIGHT
This power allows a necromancer to stare into the eyes of a corpse and
see reflected there the last thing the dead man witnessed. The vision
appears only in the eyes of the cadaver and is visible to no one except
the necromancer using Insight.
System:
This power requires a roll of Perception + Occult (difficulty 8 for
formerly living creatures, 10 for unliving ones such as vampires) as
the vampire stares into the target's eyes. The number of successes on
the roll determines the clarity of the vision; a botch shows the necromancer
his own Final Death, which can induce Rotschreck.
This power cannot be used on the corpses of vampires who have reached
Golconda, or those in whom advanced decomposition has already set in.
1 success | A basic sense of the subject's death |
2 successes | A clear image of the subject's death andthe seconds preceding it |
3 successes | A clear image, with sound, of the minutes preceding death |
4 successes | A clear image, with sound, of the half-hour before the subject's demise |
5 successes | Full sensory perception of the hour leading up to the target's death |
2 - SUMMON SOUL
The power of Summon Soul allows a necromancer to call a ghost back from
the Underworld, though for conversational purposes only. In order to
perform this feat, the Giovanni must meet certain conditions:
The necromancer must know the name of the wraith in question,
though an image of the wraith obtained via Psychom-etry will suffice.
An object with which the wraith had some contact in life must
be in the vicinity. If the object is something of great importance to
the ghost, the chances for success in the summoning increase dramatically
(-2 difficulty).
Note:
This bonus applies for all powers on the Sepulchre Path.
Certain types of ghosts cannot be summoned with this power. Vampires
who achieved Golconda before their Final Deaths, or who were diablerized,
are beyond the reach of this summons. Likewise, many ghosts of the dead
cannot be called they are destroyed, unable to return to the mortal
plane, or lost in the eternal storm of the Underworld.
System:
To use Summon Soul, the vampire's player must roll Perception + Occult
(difficulty 7, or the ghost's Willpower if the Storyteller knows it).
The number of successes on the roll indicates the tractability of the
summoned spirit and how long the summoned wraith remains in the vicinity
of her summoner. Summoned ghosts are visible and audible to the vampire
who summoned them, and remain so up until the time the summoning wears
off. Ghosts who wish to be summoned can voluntarily appear.
For each question the vampire asks the summoned spirit, the Storyteller
should roll one die per summoning success. At least one success is needed
on this second roll (difficulty 6) in order to keep the wraith around
long enough to answer the question.
If a vampire botches a summoning roll, she calls forth a malevolent
ghost (known as a spectre), which immediately sets about tormenting
its summoner.
3 - COMPEL SOUL
With this power, a vampire can command a ghost to do his bidding for
a while. Compel is a perilous undertaking and, when used improperly,
can endanger vampire and wraith alike.
System:
In order to compel a wraith, the vampire must first successfully summon
it. Before the wraith has left the scene of the summoning, the vampire's
player must roll Manipulation + Occult (difficulty equal to the target's
Willpower). The wraith can spend Pathos (the ghostly equivalent of blood;
assume a pool of 7 for all ghosts or consult Chapter Nine) to combat
the compulsion; each point spent removes one of the vampire's successes.
The vampire may attempt to compel a wraith multiple times during a single
summoning.
For each success achieved on the Manipulation + Occult roll, the necromancer
achieves a greater degree of control over the wraith. The breakdown
is as follows:
Failure | The compulsion of the summoning ends and the wraith is free to leave. Many wraiths take the opportunity to assault their would-be masters as they depart. |
1 success | The wraith must remain in the vicinity and refrain from attacking any creature without the necromancer's consent. |
2 successes | The wraith is bound to remain and answer any questions truthfully, though the questions had best be phrased carefully. |
3 successes | The wraith is forced to remain and answer any questions truthfully, without evasion or omission. |
4 successes | The wraith must remain, answering truthfully any questions asked of it. It must also perform any services commanded by its new master, though it is bound only by the letter of the command, not the spirit. |
5 successes | The wraith is trapped, obeying the spirit of the vampire's commands to the best of its ability. |
Compel
holds a ghost for one hour per success rolled. If the vampire wishes,
she can expend a temporary Willpower point to keep the wraith under
the compulsion for an extra night. The expenditure of a permanent point
of Willpower on the vampire's part binds the wraith for a year and a
day.
4 - HAUNTING
Haunting binds a summoned ghost to a particular location or, in extreme
cases, an object. The wraith cannot leave the area to which the necromancer
binds it without risking self-destruction. A wraith attempting to leave
the area of a haunting must make a Willpower roll (difficulty 10, two
successes necessary) or take a level of aggravated damage; if the wraith
runs out of health levels, it is hurled deep into the Underworld to
face destruction.
System:
The player rolls Manipulation + Occult (difficulty is target's Willpower
if she resists; otherwise it is 4). Each success ties the wraith to
a particular spot of the necromancer's choosing for a night; with the
expenditure of a Willpower point, that becomes a week. Expenditure of
a point of permanent Willpower extends the duration to a year.
5 - TORMENT
It is through the use of this power that elder Giovanni convince bound
ghosts to behave or else. Torment allows the vampire to strike
a wraith as if he himself were in the lands of the dead, inflicting
damage on the wraith's ectoplasmic form. The vampire remains in the
real world, however, so he cannot be struck in return by the wraith.
System:
The player rolls Stamina + Empathy (difficulty is the wraith's Willpower),
and the vampire reaches out to "touch" the wraith. Each success
inflicts a level of lethal damage on the wraith. Should the wraith lose
all health levels, it immediately vanishes into what appears to be a
doorway to some hideous nightmare realm. Ghosts "destroyed"
thus cannot reappear near the real world for a month.
THE BONE PATH
The
Bone Path is concerned primarily with corpses and the methods by which
dead souls can be restored to the living world temporarily or otherwise.
1 - TREMENS
Tremens allows a necromancer to make the flesh of a corpse shift once.
An arm might suddenly flop forward, a cadaver might sit up, or dead
eyes might abruptly open. Needless to say, this sort of thing tends
to have an impressive impact on people who aren't expecting a departed
relative to roll over in his coffin.
System:
To use Tremens, the necromancer spends a single blood point, and the
player must succeed on a Dexterity + Occult roll (difficulty 6). The
more successes achieved, the more complicated an action can be inculcated
into the corpse. One success allows for an instantaneous movement, such
as a twitch, while five allow the vampire to set up specific conditions
under which the body animates ("The next time someone enters the
room, I want the corpse to sit up and open its eyes."). Under no
circumstances can Tremens cause a dead body to attack or cause damage.
2 - APPRENTICE'S BROOMS
With
Apprentice's Brooms, the necromancer can make a dead body rise and perform
a simple function. For example, the corpse could be set to carrying
heavy objects, digging, or just shambling from place to place. The cadavers
thus animated do not attack or defend themselves if interfered with,
but instead attempt to carry out their given instructions until such
time as they've been rendered inanimate. Generally it takes dismemberment,
flame or something similar to destroy a corpse animated in this way.
System:
A roll of Wits + Occult (difficulty 7) and the expenditure of a point
of both blood and Willpower are all that is necessary to animate corpses
with Apprentice's Brooms. The number of corpses animated is equal to
the number of successes achieved. The necromancer must then state the
task to which he is setting his zombies. The cadavers turn themselves
to their work until they finish the job (at which point they collapse)
or something (including time) destroys them.
Bodies energized by this power continue to decay, albeit at a much slower
rate than normal.
3 - SHAMBLING HORDES
Shambling
Hordes creates exactly what you think it might: reanimated corpses with
the ability to attack, albeit neither very well nor very quickly. Once
primed by this power, the corpses wait for years, if necessary
to fulfill the command given them. The orders might be to protect
a certain site or simply to attack immediately, but they will be carried
out until every last one of the decomposing monsters is destroyed.
System:
The player invests a point of Willpower, then spend a point of blood
for each corpse the necromancer ani-
mates. The player then must succeed on a Wits + Occult roll (difficulty
8); each success allows the vampire to raise another corpse from the
grave. Each zombie (for lack of a better term) can follow one simple
instruction, such as "Stay here and guard this graveyard against
any intruders," or "Kill them!"
Note:
Zombies created by Shambling Hordes will wait forever if need be to
fulfill their functions. Long after the flesh has rotted off the mystically
animated bones, the zombies will wait.. .and wait.. .and wait
still able to perform their duties.
4 - SOUL STEALING
This
power affects the living, not the dead. It does, however, temporarily
turn a living soul into a sort of wraith, as it allows a necromancer
to strip a soul from a living or vampiric body. A mortal exiled
from his body by this power becomes a wraith with a single tie to the
real world: his now-empty body.
System:
The player spends a point of Willpower and then makes a contested Willpower
roll against the intended victim (difficulty 6). Successes indicate
the number of hours during which the original soul is forced out of
its housing. The body itself remains autonomically alive but catatonic.
This power can be used to create suitable hosts for Daemonic Possession.
5 - DAEMONIC POSSESSION
Daemonic Possession lets a vampire insert a soul into a freshly dead
body and inhabit it for the duration. This does not turn the reanimated
corpse into anything other than a reanimated corpse, and one that will
irrevocably decay after a week, but it does give either a wraith or
a free-floating soul (say, that of a vampire using Psychic Projection)
a temporary home in the physical world.
System:
The body in question must be no more than 30 minutes dead, and the new
tenant must agree to inhabit it a ghost or astral form cannot
be forced into a new shell. Of course, most ghosts would gladly seize
the opportunity, but that's a different matter. Should the vampire,
for whatever reason, wish to insert a soul into another vampire's corpse
(before it crumbles to ash), the necromancer must achieve five successes
on a resisted Willpower roll against the original owner of the body.
Otherwise, the interloper is denied entrance.
Note:
The soul can use whatever physical abilities (Dodge, Brawl, Potence)
his new home possesses, and whatever mental abilities (Computer, Law,
Presence) he possesses in his current existence. He cannot use the physical
abilities of his old form, or the mental abilities of his new one.
ZOMBIE
STATISTICS Corpses animated by a necromancer of the Bone Path have Strength 3, Dexterity 2, Stamina 4, Brawl 2, and always act last in a turn (unless there are mitigating circumstances). They have zero Willpower points to spend, but resist attacks as if they have Willpower ratings of 10. All Mental and Social ratings are zero for a reanimated corpse, and zombies never attempt to dodge. Zombies' dice pools are not affected by damage, except that caused by fire or the claws and teeth of supernatural creatures. Most zombies have 10 health levels, but they are incapable of healing any damage they suffer. |
THE ASH PATH
The
Ash Path allows necromancers to peek into the lands of the dead and
even to affect things there. Of the three Paths of Necromancy, the Ash
Path is the most perilous to learn, because many of the Path's uses
increase a necromancer's vulnerability to wraiths.
1 - SHROUDSIGHT
Shroudsight
allows a necromancer to see through the Shroud, the mystical barrier
that separates the living world from the Underworld. By using this power,
the vampire can spot ghostly buildings and items, the landscape of the
so-called Shadowlands, and even wraiths themselves. However, the odds
are that an observant wraith will notice when a vampire suddenly starts
staring at him, which can lead to unpleasant consequences.
System:
A simple roll of Perception + Alertness (difficulty 7) allows a necromancer
to utilize Shroudsight. The effects last for a scene.
2 - LIFELESS TONGUES
Where Shroudsight
allows a necromancer to see ghosts, Lifeless Tongues allows her to converse
with them effortlessly. Once Lifeless Tongues is employed, the vampire
can carry on a conversation with the denizens of the ghostly Underworld
without spending blood or causing the wraiths to expend any effort.
System:
To use Lifeless Tongues requires a roll of Perception + Occult (difficulty
6) and the expenditure of a Willpower point. This power also grants
the effects of Shroudsight, so the vampire can see with whom, or what,
she is conversing.
3 - DEAD HAND
Similar
to the Sepulchre Path power Torment, Dead Hand allows a necromancer
to reach across the Shroud and affect a ghostly object as if it were
in the real world. Ghosts are solid to necromancers using this power,
and can be attacked. Furthermore, the necromancer can pick up ghostly
items, scale ghostly architecture (giving real-world bystanders the
impression that he's climbing on air!) and generally exist in two worlds.
On the other hand, a necromancer using Dead Hand is quite solid to the
residents of the Underworld and to whatever weapons they might
have.
System:
The player spends a point of Willpower and makes a successful Wits +
Occult roll (difficulty 7) for the vampire to activate Dead Hand. For
each scene the vampire wishes to remain in contact with the Underworld,
he must spend a point of blood.
4 - EX NIHILO
Ex Nihilo
allows a necromancer to enter the Underworld physically. While in the
lands of the dead, the vampire is essentially an extra-solid ghost.
He maintains his normal number of health levels, but can be hurt only
by things that inflict aggravated damage on ghosts (weapons forged from
souls, certain ghostly powers, etc.). A vampire physically in the Underworld
can pass through solid objects (at the cost of one health level) and
remain "incorporeal" thus for a number of turns equal to his
Stamina rating. On the other hand, vampires present in the Underworld
are subject to all of the Underworld's perils, including ultimate destruction.
A vampire killed in the Deadlands is gone forever, beyond even the reach
of other necromancers.
System:
Using Ex Nihilo takes a tremendous toll on the necromancer. To activate
this power, the vampire must first draw a doorway with chalk or blood
on any available surface. (Note: Doors can be drawn ahead of time for
exactly this purpose.) The player must then expend two points of Willpower
and two points of blood, then make a Stamina + Occult roll (difficulty
8) as the vampire attempts to open the chalk door physically. If the
roll succeeds, the door opens and the vampire steps through into the
Underworld.
When the vampire wishes to return to the real world, he needs merely
to concentrate (and the player spends another Willpower point and rolls
Stamina + Occult, difficulty 6). At Storyteller discretion, a vampire
who is too deeply immersed in the Underworld may need to journey to
a place close to the lands of the living in order to cross over. Vampires
who wander too far into the lands of the dead may be trapped there forever.
Vampires in the Underworld cannot feed upon ghosts; their only sustenance
is the blood they bring with them.
5 - SHROUD MASTERY
A bit of
an exaggeration, Shroud Mastery is the ability to manipulate the veil
between the worlds of the living and the dead. By doing so, a necromancer
can make it easier for bound wraiths in his service to function, or
make it nearly impossible for ghosts to contact the material world.
System:
To exercise Shroud Mastery, the necromancer expends two points of Willpower,
then states whether he is attempting to raise or lower the Shroud. The
player then makes a Willpower roll (difficulty 9). Each success on the
roll raises or lowers the difficulties of all nearby wraiths' actions
by one, to a maximum of 10 or a minimum of 3. The Shroud reverts to
its normal strength at a rate of one point per hour thereafter.
Widely
believed to be practiced by only the loathsome Giovanni, Necromancy
has actually been adopted by the Harbingers of Skulls, who claim to
have learned the magic of death while trapped in the Underworld. Harbingers
seem to know little of the Bone or Sepulchre Paths, instead learning
their own Mortuus Path and the Ash Path. Harbingers of Skulls have not
been known to interact with the Giovanni, but they may have acquired
some knowledge of other paths from the Samedi, with whom they share
some inexplicable tie. Harbingers of Skulls learn the Mortuus Path as
their primary Necromancy Path; they can only learn their first level
of the Ash Path after achieving the third level of mastery in the Mortuus
Path. That aside, they learn Necromancy like other vampires.
THE MORTUUS PATH
1 - REAPER'S SHROUD
This
power allows the Cainite or the subject of her choice to take on the
semblance of death. Skin stretches tight over bones, flesh grows pale
and sallow and joints seize as the body grows rigid. This power may
be used to "play dead" and look the part, or to curse another
with the appearance of the walking dead.
System:
The vampire must touch her target for this power to take effect. If
the Necromancer assumes this form, she merely spends a blood point.
If attempting to use this power on another, the character's player spends
a blood point and makes a Stamina + Occult roll (difficulty equal to
the victim's Stamina +3). The effects of this power last until the next
dawn or dusk, when the shriveled individual slowly regains her normal
state over the course of an hour. While under the effects of the Reaper's
Shroud, characters lose two points from their Dexterity and Appearance
Traits (to a minimum of 1). Vampires may spend two blood points to reverse
the effects of Reaper's Shroud.
2 - BLIGHT
This
power allows the vampire to accelerate the aging and decrepitude processes
in his intended victim. The subject suffers the effects of old age:
brittle bones, dry and thin skin and various rheumatic pains among others.
Some victims have even acquired certain ailments normally experienced
by the elderly, including bone diseases and arthritis..
System:
The vampire must touch his intended victim. The player then rolls Manipulation
+ Medicine (difficulty equal to the victim's Willpower) and spends one
point of Willpower. If this roll is successful, the target suffers the
debilitating effects of advanced age. For the duration of this power
(until the next dusk or dawn), the target, Cainite or otherwise, must
subtract three points from all Physical Attributes (to a minimum of
1). Vampires and ghouls affected in this manner may still spend blood
points to increase their Physical Attributes.
Mortals who undertake stressful activity while affected by Blight run
the risk of heart failure. For each round the mortal continues strenuous
activity, the player must make a Stamina roll (difficulty 6). If the
roll fails, the mortal suffers a heart attack.
3 - RESUME THE COIL
This
power allows vampires to wrench themselves free from death's long slumber.
A character who possesses this level of mastery may throw off the darkness
of torpor or aid another in doing so.
System:
The player spends two Willpower points. She then makes a Willpower roll,
for which the difficulty is ten minus the target's Humanity or path
rating. Obviously, the vampire uses her own rating if attempting to
rouse herself from torpor. For example, if a vampire seeks to rise from
torpor and has a Path of Death and the Soul score of 5, his difficulty
for the Willpower roll is 5. If the vampire wishes to awaken another
Cainite in torpor, she must touch that vampire. If the vampire so raised
entered torpor because of a lack of blood, she awakens with one blood
point in her veins.
4 - TRUE DEATH
The
Necromancer may temporarily cheat the Curse of Caine, albeit briefly,
by becoming truly dead. While invoking this power, the character suffers
none of the traditional banes against vampires. He is not burned by
sunlight, holy water does not harm him, and he does not rise from the
dead each night. He has literally become a corpse.
System:
There is no cost to assume the corpse-body, but awakening from the slumber
requires two blood points. While the character is in corpse form, he
may obviously take no actions, nor may he use any Disciplines, even
"automatic" ones like Fortitude. The corpse-vampire does not
consume blood nightly he retains the same amount of blood as
he did when he entered the state of True Death (remember that it costs
two blood points to leave the corpse state), which may prove damning
should anyone cut him open in the interim. A character who has been
staked through the heart is still paralyzed when he returns to vampiric
consciousness. This power has no maximum duration, other than the time
the vampire chooses to remain dead.
5 - MERCY FOR SETH
Named
after mortalsthe Children of Seththis power causes a victim
to contract a virulent plague, similar to the epidemics of the llth
through 15th centuries (the BlackPlague, the Red Death, etc.). This
illness causes death within 24 hours for mortals and sends vampires
to torpor within the same period of time. Mortal victims of plague exhibit
terrible plague symp' toms sunken eyes, blackened limbs, bloody
sweat and excretions, swollen nodes and weeping lesions.
System:
The vampire touches her victim, and the player must spend one blood
point (which must come in contact with the victim to communicate the
plague) and one Willpower point. The player also rolls Stamina + Occult
(difficulty equal to the target's Willpower). Success indicates that
the vampire has afflicted his victim with plague,who dies or succumbs
to torpor within 24 hours.
VITREOUS
PATH
The
Vitreous Path allows a necromancer to control and influence the energies
pertaining to death,
what wraiths call Oblivion. Rare in the extreme, this path manipulates
entropy and decay, forces that even most necromancers are uncomfortable
harnessing. This path, a development of the Nagaraja bloodline (who
sometimes call the power "Nihilistics"), sees only the most
limited use even among skilled necromancers. Still, its powers make
a formidable complement to other necromantic crafts, and those obsessed
with mastery over death and souls such as the Harbingers of Skulls
would certainly risk much to uncover this path's secrets.
Like most necromancers, Nagaraja learn the Sepulchre Path before any
others. The Vitreous Path is usually their second focus of study, which
at one time reflected the amount of time they spent in the Underworld.
1 - EYES OF THE DEAD
The
necromancer employing the Eyes of the Dead can literally see through
the eyes of any wraiths around her, allowing her to use the wraiths'
Deathsight. Of course, if there are no wraiths present, the power is
useless. On the upside, at least for the necromancers, a few of the
Restless may almost always be found wandering around. To an experienced
manipulator of ghostly energies, the auras of surrounding beings give
off telltale hints as to their health and may indicate their emotions
or desires; the necromancer can see the energies of death and passion
flowing through everyone, just as wraiths can.
System:
The player rolls Perception + Occult, difficulty 6, in order to see
through the eyes of the Dead around the necromancer. This effect is
often disorienting, especially in areas where many wraiths are present
and, at the Storyteller's discretion, can cause the necromancer to suffer
up to a +4 difficulty when attempting to perceive things not in the
Underworld. While employing the Eyes of the Dead, the necromancer may
not always understand what he is seeing (when in doubt, use Intelligence
+ Occult to recognize the patterns of death in auras). Properly used,
this power lets a necromancer determine whether someone is injured,
diseased or dying and, also, whether the individual labors under any
sorts of curses or baleful magic. This ability lasts for one scene,
though the necromancer may choose to prematurely draw his perceptions
back to his own body (thereby ending the power).
2 - HOUR OF DEATH
Much
like Eyes of the Dead, this power allows the necromancer to see with
the perceptions of the Restless Dead. The difference is that this power
grants the necromancer himself Deathsight instead of borrowing the perceptions
of a wraith, and this vision gives much greater details. By looking
at the entropic markings on a person's body, the necromancer can gain
rough knowledge of how far that person is from death, how soon that
person is likely to die and even what the cause of her death is likely
to be. Conversely, the patterns of auras also tell when a person is
agitated or excited and allow the death magician to gauge someone's
feelings towards another individual when the two first meet. This is
not an exact science by any means, but the power is extremely useful
to give the necromancer an edge over those she scrutinizes.
Many necromancers actually use this talent to be at the right place
and time to capture a newly departing soul.
System:
The player rolls Wits + Occult (difficulty 7). The more successes scored,
the more the character can tell about the target's fate. One success
means the character can guess how long the target has to live to within
a few weeks. Three successes means the character can estimate how long
the target has to live and what the probable source of demise will be,
as the entropic markings clearly show the wounds that will someday exist
on that person. Five successes means the character can actually see
where and when the event will occur by interpreting the black markings
on the target's soul. While this power lasts for one scene, it can be
used to read the fate of only one target at a time.
Storytellers must exercise judgment with this power, since the markings
of death are typically unavoidable. Of course, if the Storyteller rolls
the dice, the player has no way of knowing whether her insight is correct.
3 - SOUL JUDGMENT
Wraiths seem to possess a Beast, much like vampires, though their "Shadows"
are often less brutish. By using Soul Judgment, the necromancer determines
whether the wraith is currently influenced by his darker passions. That
knowledge can be very useful, as many necromancers prefer to barter
with apparitions rather than merely trying to force the wraiths into
subservience. Knowing the aspect of a wraith with which the death magician
is dealing means knowing whether or not to discuss matters of importance
with the wraith at that time. Many necromancers take this affair one
level further, dealing with the Shadow and the normal
wraith in separate matters and never letting on to either just what
the other half is doing.
System:
The player rolls Perception + Occult (difficulty 7) and spends one Willpower
point in order to discern which aspect of the wraith is currently in
control. Since the wraith's higher self usually has no idea of what
its Shadow is doing (although the converse is not true), the necromancer
can conceal his dealings by working with the wraith's dark nature. This
power also allows the necromancer to determine whether the ghost is
normally dominated by his higher self or his Shadow; wraiths routinely
dominated by their Beasts are known as Spectres and are exceedingly
dangerous.
4 - BREATH OF THANATOS
The
Breath of Thanatos allows the necromancer to draw out entropic energy
and focus it upon an area or person. Often, the death magician literally
takes a deep breath and then forcefully exhales a fog of mephitic energy.
This cloud of virulence is completely invisible to anyone without the
ability to see the passing of entropy (as with lower levels of this
power). The energy of this cloud is like a beacon for Spectres, and
they are drawn to the entropic force like moths to flame. There is no
obligation on the part of Spectres to behave themselves, and the necromancer
had best have a plan for what to do with them once they've arrived
which is why most Vitreous Path necromancers also learn other paths.
Once the energy is pulled from the necromancer's body, she can either
disperse it over a large area as a lure for Spectres or use the mist
for somewhat more sinister purposes. Channeled into an object or person,
the death-mist inflicts the subject with an unwholesome, negative aspect,
and may actually cause injury. Furthermore, the focused energies are
tainted and eerie, and though generally invisible, they tend to cause
people and animals to feel discomfort around the victim.
System:
The player spends one blood point and rolls Willpower (difficulty 8).
Only one success is needed to draw out the Breath of Thanatos. If dispersed
to summon Spectres, the energies cover roughly one-quarter of a mile
in radius, centered around the necromancer. The range increases by one-quarter
mile for every additional blood point expended. As noted previously,
Spectres summoned with this power are not beholden to the necromancer
in any way and may well go out of their way to wreak havoc on anyone
in the vicinity. This energy disperses after a scene.
If the cloud is directed toward a particular target, the necromancer
must cither touch the target or else direct the stream of entropy using
Dexterity + Occult (difficulty 7). A target laden with entropy suffers
one (and only one) level of aggravated damage; this generally manifests
as illness or decay. The target's social difficulties with those unfamiliar
with the touch of death Lupines, faeries, certain mages and most
normal humans increase by 2. Furthermore, supernatural perceptions
indicate the target as tainted with decay, which can he dangerous, as
certain enti' ties (such as the Lupines) have special senses to detect
such taint and a rather violent crusade against those thus infected.
This form of taint lasts until sunrise or sunset; a victim already plagued
by this power cannot he affected again until the previous fog of entropy
has dispersed.
A botch on the roll to control this power indicates that the vampire
has turned the energy upon himself, and suffers all the effects of the
vitriolic breath. This inflicts the usual injury and subjects the necromancer
to the possibly dangerous affection of Spectres and other creatures
from beyond the grave.
5 - SOUL FEASTING
Just as
the necromancer can draw Oblivion from within, she may also pull external
cntropic energies into herself as a source of power. Soul Feasting allows
the caster to cither draw on the ambient death energies around her or
to actively feed on a wraith, stealing the wraith's substance and mystically
transforming that energy into a rude sustenance.
System:
The player spends one Willpower to allow the vampire to feed on the
negative energies of the dead. If the character is drawing the energies
from the atmosphere, she must be in a place where death has occurred
within the hour or in a place where death is common, such as a cemetery,
a morgue or the scene of a recent murder. Generally, the necromancer
can draw anywhere from one to four points of entropy from such a location,
although the difficulty of all Necromancy (and all ghostly powers that
must cross into the living lands) increases by an equal amount for several
nights. The energies of such an area may only be drained once until
the area's entropy replenishes (again, after several nights).
In cases when the necromancer feeds on a wraith, the vampire must actually
attack the wraith as if feeding normally. Wraiths have up to 10 "blood
points" that may be taken from them, and they become less and less
"substantial" as their spirit-essence drains away. The character
is vulnerable to any attack the wraith might make, even those that do
not normally affect the physical world; while feeding, the vampire is
essentially in a half-state, existing in both the living lands and the
Underworld simultaneously. The wraith so attacked is considered immobilized
and cannot run or escape unless it can defeat the vampire in a resisted
Willpower roll. This power may also be used in conjunction with Ash
Path Necromancy, allowing the vampire to drain power (though not sustenance)
from ghosts while traveling in the lands of the dead.
This soul energy may be used to activate Disciplines, but may not be
used in place of actual blood for the purposes of feeding or for other
physical purposes such as healing or boosting Attributes.
Botching this power renders the vampire unable to feed through the wall
of death. Conversely, he remains susceptible to the assaults of ghosts
and spirits for several turns (generally, a number of turns equal to
the amount of energy that could have been drawn from the area or one
turn if attacking a ghost) as he hovers between worlds, unable to function
effectively in either.
NECROMANTIC RITUALS
The rituals
connected with Necromancy are a hodgepodge lot. Some have direct relations
to the paths; others seem to have been taught by wraiths themselves,
for whatever twisted reason. All beginning necromancers gain one Level
One ritual, but any others learned must be gained through in-game play.
Necromantic rituals are otherwise identical to Thaumaturgy rituals (pp.
182-185) and are learned in similar fashion, though the two are by no
means compatible.
System:
Casting times for necromantic rituals vary widely; see the description
for particulars. The player rolls Intelligence + Occult (difficulty
3 + the level of the ritual, maximum 9); success indicates the ritual
proceeds smoothly, failure produces no effect, and a botch often indicates
that certain "powers" notice the caster, usually to her detriment.
CALL OF THE HUNGRY DEAD (LEVEL 1 RITUAL)
Call of
the Hungry Dead takes only 10 minutes to cast and requires a hair from
the target's head. The ritual climaxes with the burning of that hair
in the flame of a black candle, after which the victim becomes able
to hear snatches of conversation from across the Shroud. If the target
is not prepared, the voices come as a confusing welter of howls and
unearthly demands; he is unable to make out anything intelligible, and
might well go briefly mad.
EYES OF THE GRAVE (LEVEL 2 RITUAL)
This ritual,
which takes two hours to cast, causes the target to experience intermittent
visions of her death over the period of a week. The visions come without
warning and can last up to a minute. The caster of the ritual has no
idea what the visions contain only the victim sees them, after
all. Each time a vision manifests, the target must roll Courage (difficulty
7) or be reduced to quivering panic. The visions, which come randomly,
can also interfere with activities such as driving, shooting and so
on.
Eyes of the Grave requires a pinch of soil from a fresh grave.
RITUAL OF THE UNEARTHED FETTER (LEVEL 3 RITUAL)
This ritual
requires that a necromancer have a fingerbone from the skeleton of the
particular wraith he's interested in. When the ritual is cast, the fingerbone
becomes attuned to something vitally important to the wraith, the possession
of which by the necromancer makes the casting of Sepulchre Path powers
much easier. Most necromancers take the attuned fingerbone and suspend
it from a thread, allowing it to act as a sort of supernatural compass
and following it to the special item in question.
Ritual of the Unearthed Fetter takes three hours to cast properly. It
requires both the name of the wraith targeted and the fingerbone already
mentioned, as well as a chip knocked off a gravestone or other marker
(not necessarily the marker of the bone's former owner). During the
course of the ritual the stone crumbles to dust, which is then sprinkled
over the fingerbone.
CADAVER'S TOUCH (LEVEL 4 RITUAL)
By chanting
for three hours and melting a wax doll in the shape of the target, the
necromancer turns a mortal target into a corpselike mockery of himself.
As the doll loses the last of its form, the target becomes cold and
clammy. His pulse becomes weak and thready, his flesh pale and chalky.
For all intents and purposes, he becomes a reasonable facsimile of the
walking dead. Needless to say, this can have some adverse effects in
social situations (+2 difficulty on all Social rolls). The effects of
the ritual wear off only when the wax of the doll is permitted to resolidify.
If the wax is allowed to boil off, the spell is broken.
GRASP THE GHOSTLY (LEVEL 5 RITUAL)
Requiring
a full six hours of chanting, this ritual allows a necromancer to bring
an object from the Underworld into the real world. It's not as simple
as all that, however a wraith might well obj ect to having his
possessions stolen and fight back. Furthermore, the object taken must
be replaced by a material item of roughly equal mass, otherwise the
target of the ritual snaps back to its previous, ghostly existence.
Objects taken from the Underworld tend to fade away after about a year.
Only items recently destroyed in the real world (called "relics"
by wraiths) may be recaptured in this manner. Artifacts created by wraiths
themselves were never meant to exist outside the Underworld, and vanish
on contact with the living world.
NECROMANTIC RITUALS
The
following rituals were developed by the few Sabbat practitioners of
Necromancy, but are not exclusive to the Sabbat. However, they may prove
difficult to learn (or even locate), and Storytellers may wish to grant
non-Sabbat characters versions of these rituals that operate at higher
difficulties and/or lessened effectiveness, or to deny them altogether
to such characters.
ELDRITCH BEACON (LEVEL 1 RITUAL)
Eldritch
Beacon takes 15 minutes to cast. The material component is a green candle,
the melted wax from which must be collected and molded into a half-inch
sphere. Whoever carries this sphere, whether in his hand or in a pocket,
is highlighted in the Shadowlands with a sickly-glowing green-white
aura. All wraithly powers affect this individual with greater ease and
severity (Storytellers using Wraith: The Oblivion should apply a -1
difficulty to all Arcanoi affecting the bearer of the beacon). The sphere
retains its power for one hour per success on the casting roll.
PUPPET (LEVEL 2 RITUAL)
Used
primarily to facilitate conversations with the recently departed, though
also applied as a method of psychological torture, Puppet prepares a
subject (willing or unwilling) as a suitable receptacle for ghostly
possession. Over the course of one hour, the necromancer smears grave
soil across the subject's eyes, lips, and forehead. For the remainder
of the night, any wraith attempting to take control of the subject gains
two automatic successes. The ritual's effects remain even if the soil
is washed off.
DIN OF THE DAMNED (LEVEL 3 RITUAL)
This
ritual is similar to the Level One Ritual Call of the Hungry Dead in
that it makes the sounds of the underworld audible in the physical realm.
However, Din of the Damned is an area-effect ritual used to ward a room
against eavesdropping. Over the course of half an hour, the necromancer
draws an unbroken line of ash from a crematorium along the room's walls
(this line may pass over doorframes to allow entrance and egress). For
the rest of the night, any attempt to listen in on events inside the
room, be it simple (a glass to the wall), electronic (a laser microphone),
or mystic (Heightened Senses), requires the eavesdropper to score more
successes in a Perception + Occultroll (difficulty 7) than the caster
of the ritual scored. Failure to beat this mark gives the listener an
earful of ghostly wailing and moaning and the sound of howling winds;
a botch deafens him for the rest of the night.
PEEK PAST THE SHROUD
(LEVEL 4 RITUAL)
This
hour-long ritual enchants a handful of ergot (a mold that grows on grains
prior to harvest in cold, damp weather) to act as a catalyst for second
sight. By eating a pinch of the magical mold, a subject gains the benefits
of Shroudsight (Ash Path Necromancy Level One, p. 164 of Vampire: The
Masquerade) for a number of hours equal to the necromancer's Stamina
score. Three doses of the enchanted ergot are created for every success
on the roll. Ergot is normally poisonous to some degree; this ritual
removes its toxic properties. However, a botch renders the ergot highly
and instantaneously toxic, inflicting eight dice of lethal damage on
any subject who ingests it including vampires.
CHILL OF OBLIVION (LEVEL 5 RITUAL)
Performed
over the course of 12 hours (reduced by one hour per success on the
casting roll), this ritual infuses the Necromancer or a willing subject
with the very cold of the grave. The ritual's material component is
a one-foot cube of ice, which is slowly melted on the subject's chest
(inflicting three health levels of bashing damage on mortal subjects).
The subject must lie naked on bare earth for the entire duration of
the ritual. Once the ritual is completed, its effects remain for a number
of nights equal to the caster's Occult rating.
An individual affected by the Chill of Oblivion treats aggravated damage
from fire and high temperatures as if it were lethal damage. Furthermore,
he may attempt to extinguish any fire by rolling Willpower (difficulty
9); each success reduces the fire's soak difficulty (see Vampire: The
Masquerade, p. 227) by 1, and a fire with a soak difficulty of 2 dwindles
to glowing embers. However, this ritual has several drawbacks. First
and foremost, the subject's aura is laced with writhing black veins
that resemble those left by diablerie and may well be mistaken for such
by any observer who is not familiar with this ritual. The subj ect also
radiates a palpable aura of cold that extends to about arm's length
from him; this can be extremely disconcerting to mortals, though it
causes no damage, and its game effects mirror those of the Flaws: Touch
of Frost and Eerie Presence. Finally, the mystical nimbus of the ritual
draws hostile ghosts to the subject (for Storytellers using Wraith:
The Oblivion, the difficulties of all Dark Arcanoi used against the
character are reduced by 3 while the ritual is in effect), who may plague
him with unwholesome acts.
WESTERN
NECROMANCY
Not
long after prehistoric man first made the distinction between life and
death, he taught himself magic to contact ghosts of the departed. The
ancient vampires who preyed on these early tribesmen took notice of
this development, immediately devising ways to exploit it for their
own ends. Few vampires feared or respected the petty deities of the
kine some even had the temerity to count themselves among the
ranks of the divine. They stood before the gods' blood-spattered altars,
stealing the gifts meant for their worshippers. Early Kindred magicians
reversed the boons of earth gods, stripping land, cattle and women of
fertility. They stole luck from the gods of fortune, fire from the tricksters,
strength from the deities of war. And from the gods of death, they seized
maps to the Underworld and the power to compel the obedience of ghosts.
The death gods, like the others, are now forgotten, but death magic
retains its pale allure. Over the intervening millennia, magicians refined
their death magic to exploit evolving cultural notions about gods, ghosts
and the afterlife.
The history of necromancy begins, as does so much of Western thought
and tradition, in the ancient world of Greece and Rome. Greek myths
shaped Western conceptions of the afterlife, and of possible ways in
which living magicians could draw upon its power and conjure the inhabitants
of the underworld. The Greek poet Homer described a grim afterlife in
which unhappy ghosts lingered, trapped in shadowy dreams of their past
lives. By the time of Virgil, folk beliefs in the afterlife and the
fate of dead souls had become much more elaborate. Virgil described
in detail the geography of an underworld that operated as a justice
machine. Souls were ferried to a court where three immortal judges praised
the good and passed sentence on the wicked. The former spent eternity
in the Elysian Fields, while the latter went to the fortress of Tartarus,
where they eternally repeated an array of torments tailor-made to their
specific misdeeds. For stealing the ambrosia of the gods, King Tantalus
of Lydia suffered eternal hunger and thirstfruit dangled out of
reach, even moving out of his hands, while the water that stood to his
neck always flowed away when he tried to drink. The judges of the damned
sentenced the founder of Corinth, Sisyphus, to roll a huge boulder up
a hill, which would return to the bottom when he had reached the top.
In this way he paid eternally for the restlessness that drove him to
continually engage his neighbors in destructive and pointless warfare.
Magician-scientists of the Classical era treated inquiries into the
nature of the afterlife and ways of interacting with its residents as
an entirely legitimate aspect of their ongoing effort to expand human
knowledge. The first century philosopher Apollonius of Tyana allegedly
summoned the shade of Achilles and raised the dead, in addition to a
range of other feats including clairvoyance and healing the insane.
In the second century, Lucius Apuleius, now better known as the author
of The Golden Ass, explored the control of shades, again as part of
a wider portfolio of wonders ranging from dream interpretation to transformation
into animal form. The third-century Neo-Platonists, who attempted to
synthesize a holistic religion combining mysticism, Christian ideas,
and the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, studied the mechanisms
by which ghosts operated and could be cajoled to bring about miracles.
Unfortunately, these figures attracted enemies who found it useful to
accuse them of black magic. Apollonius stood trial for supposedly sacrificing
a boy in order to use his entrails to read an augury. Authorities charged
Apuleius with using magic to win the hand of a wealthy widow, and of
plotting to poison her son. Necromancy was never considered one of their
crimes; contact with the souls of the dead was not yet viewed as inherently
evil. Magicians who restricted themselves to contact with the wraiths
of the virtuous, and who used what they gained to good ends, were no
more distrusted than other wonder workers.
This attitude changed with the conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity,
which began with Emperor Constantine I in the third century. Many magicians
used Christian mythology in a way true believers found blasphemous.
Twisting a doctrine that frowned on the practice of magic, sorcerers
began to call upon Jehovah and His angels to assist in the deliverance
of magical effects. Some professed to be devout Christians and limited
the subjects of their invocation. Vampiric sorcerers, knowing their
souls were bound for no Christian Heaven, saw no reason to bother with
the many annoying restrictions of the "pure" form of this
sorcery.
However, they took sharp interest as other mortal sorcerers blithely
added Jehovah and His angels to a hopper of deities, heroes, ghosts
and demons from the many traditions of the Mediterranean basin. Likewise,
necromancers mortal and Cainite alike mixed cosmologies
and summoned damned souls from the Christian Hell while at the same
time drawing power from the Classical underworld. Seeing the contradiction
in this didn't stop them from doing it, because, for whatever reason,
it worked.
Magicians saw themselves as practical men repeating whichever experiments
they found successful. If God truly disapproved, He wouldn't let the
magic work, would He? Although such rationalizations might have suited
the magicians, they scandalized the emerging ecclesiastical class. Christianity
forbade all sorcery, frowning especially on contact with the dead. As
Christianity's sway grew, wise magicians hid their activities. Church
fathers took the story of Simon Magus of Samaria, mentioned in the New
Testament as a sincere but misguided magician who seeks to purchase
the wonder-working secrets of apostles Peter and John, and held him
up as the first heretic. Anyone who followed his path could expect eternal
hellfire and earthly persecution. Many magicians themselves became Christians,
seeking to invoke the power of saints and angels; they forswore necromancy
as not only dangerous but evil. Magicians interested in necromancy therefore
became double rebels, spitting in the face not only of religious orthodoxy
but of their fellow sorcerers.
In their rebellion, necromancers found power. These clandestine researchers,
whose names are now lost to history, used a variation on Platonic logic
to posit that the rules a society chose to live by sustained an inherent
mystical force. Those who best lived by those rules could draw on them
to gain power. However, great energy could also be gained by deliberately
breaking those rules. The Church's condemnation of necromancy merely
increased its potential for those few daring souls willing to flout
Christian morality. Thus the principle of Taboo became central to necromantic
practice. The greater and holier the rule, the more energy it contained.
Ergo, the most powerful effects could be conjured by ceremonies that
broke the most potent laws of society. One of the greatest taboos concerned
the manipulation of human remains. Contact with corpses and body parts
thus became a central focus of necromantic ritual during the early Christian
era, which it had not been during the more open and inquisitive Classical
times. Present-night practitioners, who watch as once-unassailable taboos
of Western society fall left and right, are grateful that contact with
bodily remains has stayed as abhorrent as ever. This revulsion makes
their magic work or so the theory goes. This belief explains
why the details of necromantic paths and rituals tower above all others
in sheer, visceral perversity.
The other principle of necromantic magic, Authority, also arose during
the third century, and grew in influence in the course of Europe's conversion
from paganism to Christianity. The anti-Christian magician and philosopher
lamblichus proposed the doctrine of theurgy, which drew its powers from
symbols and the law of correspondence. lamblichus developed a detailed
hierarchy that placed gods, heroes, ghosts, angels and demons into a
single system, which the magician could call upon to escape from the
bounds of necessity. lamblichus did not design his system so that it
could be exploited by necromancers, but exploit it they did. If these
entities could be defined and placed on a grid in descending order of
importance, the necromancers thought, it stood to reason that necromancers
could approach the lesser-powered entities not as supplicants but as
masters.
Biblical ideology, ironically enough, supplied the rest of the philosophical
equation. Ever since the story of Adam and Eve, Christian myth repeatedly
stressed that the world of nature was a gift from God to humanity, who
could dispose of it as they wished. Man was meant to dominate nature.
Necromancers extended this European way of thinking to the world beyond:
Magicians should dominate the souls of the dead, because they can. Tonight's
necromancers look upon the ghosts of the dead as little more than a
resource to be exploited. They care no more for the welfare and desires
of the shades they call upon than they would for a barrel of crude oil
or a cart brimming with iron ore.
Although fullest expression of the Western credo of domination over
nature occurred at the time of the Renaissance, during the era of exploration
and coloni-zation, necromantic theory had by that point already been
fixed into its present form, with the ascension of the Giovanni clan.
As cutthroat arms merchants who made their fortunes during the Crusades,
the principle of domination proved second nature to them. They were
already accomplished necromancers when Augustus Giovanni tricked a decrepit
Antediluvian into Embracing him, and then slew the vampire and his descendants
in order to become the head of his own new clan. Much of the magic of
Necromancy as practiced tonight was refined in the few short but monstrously
productive years between the clan's first dabblings into the art and
its Embrace. To their dismay, the Giovanni found that their talent for
innovation had died with
them. For the last five centuries or so, despite their continual efforts,
they've advanced the state of the art of Necromancy only by increments.
Although contemporary necromancers do not often believe in the literal
existence of the Greek gods and heroes, many of their rites continue
to draw on the names and imagery of the Classical mythology, especially
as it related to the world beyond death. Even as mortals, the eldest
members of the Giovanni family felt a greater sympathy for the grand
pagan ethos of the Classical era than they ever did for Christian parables
and iconography. Ever anxious to display their erudition, Giovanni necromancers
delight in tormenting their foes with obscure classical references.
Thus the ritual called Chair of Hades refers to the Chair of Forgetfulness
Hades used to trap Theseus and Pirithoiis. Instead of a mere magic circle,
Giovanni magicians protect themselves from malign ghosts with a Circle
of Cerberus, an allusion to the gigantic, dragon-tailed, three-headed
dog that guards the gates of the underworld and prevents the dead from
escaping back into the land of the living.
PRACTICAL NECROMANCY
As
his first lesson, any new student of Necromancy learns the importance
of separating magical sendings based on Taboo from sendings based on
Authority. Taboo-breaking sendings require the magician to wallow in
the filth of the grave. Authority sendings demand physical purity and
cleanliness. (Spiritual purity is, conveniently, not required.) To realize
both principles in the course of one working is to risk failure at best
and destruction at worst. Any rite that allows the necromancer to interact
with otherworldly beings takes great pains to protect her from possible
harm or influence.
The Greek originators of these rites considered purity and cleanliness
a necessary component of this protection; wraiths, they discovered,
could seize on impurities and imperfections and use them to circumvent
the worker's protections, gaining freedom of action in the mortal world.
Thus, in order to prepare for dealings with shades, the necromancer
must purify herself through fasting, chastity and bathing. Long preparation
times decrease the chances of an entity overcoming the necromancer's
safeguards. Mortal necromancers are often urged to meditate as well,
to divest themselves of emotional preoccupations. Vampires learn that
their chronic inability to experience strong emotion works in their
favor in this situation. A summoned wraith capable of turning on his
would-be dominator searches the magician's aura for his strongest passions,
which can be used as a mystical lever to compel obedience. A wraith
summoned by a vampire searches in vain, sensing only a grayed-out aura
of muted values.
When the necromancer has concluded her prepa-ration, she dons a set
of robes, which must be spotlessly clean and perfectly maintained. The
merest stain or dangling thread end may provide the wraith the lever-age
it needs to reverse the power relationship of the rite and command the
necromancer. The robes must fit perfectly; an overlong sleeve or hem
also counts as a dangerous imperfection.
The necromancer then draws a magic circle to act as a barrier between
her and the wraith she intends to summon. It also keeps out unexpected
interlopers; some opportunistic ghosts wait along the boundary between
world and underworld, hoping to cross over on a rift between the two
temporarily brought into being by a necromantic ceremony.
Having prepared herself in the formulaic manner, the necromancer then
commences the specific gestures, incantations and prop manipulations
of the particular sending she wishes to accomplish. The physical items
used in the procedure must always include objects symbolizing the following
concepts: one, the necromancer's mastery over the shade; two, the shade's
imprisonment in the underworld; and three, the individual identity of
the wraith. The necromancer needn't bother with the last item if he
doesn't care which ghost he summons up.
Classic symbols of mastery include crowns, tiaras, scepters, ermine
collars, thrones, jeweled rings and medallions of office or rank. Modern
variants might include Rolex or Cartier watches, money clips distended
with high-denomination bills, mahogany office furniture or expensive
designer clothing. The latter are frequently substituted for old-style
robes, provided that they're perfectly maintained and constructed; beware
of the substandard tailoring of many top-name designer brands! Clever
necromancers match their symbols of authority to the understanding of
the wraiths they intend to summon. A parody papal miter works well against
the ghost of a devout Roman Catholic (so long as it is superbly fashioned),
whereas a general's uniform of the appropriate period and nationality
establishes authority over a soldier's shade.
Symbols of imprisonment include chains, metal rods sawn from jail-cell
bars, handcuffs, shackles, prison uniforms, gurneys with restraint straps,
straightjackets and rubber gloves. Medievalist necromancers may prefer
torture implements such as red-hot pokers, racks, iron maidens or face-cages.
Modernists might select electroshock machines, electronic ankle bracelets,
tasers or trays of sedatives. Although it helps if the wraith was
imprisoned during his life and faces the object that he most strongly
identifies with that confinement, this is a bonus, not a necessity.
The best symbol of a wraith's identity is his Fetter, an object with
which he has a pre-existing emotional relationship. One of the hallmark
necromantic abilities allows the necromancer to acquire the Fetter of
a wraith he plans to command on a regular basis. The Fetter isn't necessary,
though; the necromancer need merely prove to the wraith that she knows
enough about him to make him dance to her will. The symbol may be professional,
as in the case of a doctor's stethoscope, a judge's gavel or a lion-tamer's
whip. It may be personal a treasured photograph, a high-school
yearbook or a wedding ring. Or it might reflect a favorite interest
or hobby a camera to capture a photographer, a model bike to
drive a motocross enthusiast, a hook to catch a fisherman.
It would be incongruous for the Taboo-breaking rites to follow a formulaic
arrangement like that above. Each working is unique. However, certain
common elements unite them all.
The most obvious common point is that all employ the remains of the
dead (usually human remains) or other powerful symbols of death that
arouse disgust and anxiety in the living. Grave dust, chunks of tombstone,
maggots (especially those recently engaged in devouring dead flesh),
coffin nails, embalming equipment and autopsy tools all fit the latter
category. Necromantic doctrine states that the symbols of death must
be relevant to the society in which the practitioner operates. For example,
traditional Chinese avoid the ancient funerary bronzes of their nation's
archaeological past, because of their association with death; at the
same time, Western collectors of Chinese art covet them as attractive
antiquities and art objects. A funerary urn would be no good to a necromancer
of Western origin in a Western country, but might be useful if the necromancer
is either breaking a tradition of his own upbringing, or is working
his magic in China.
Taboo-breaking rites seek to combine the remains and relics of death
with actions society at large sees as wholly separate from death. Youth
is seen as the opposite of death, so necromancers involve children or
symbols of childhood in their ceremonies. Fertility is the opposite
of death, so necromancers commit plea-sureless, sterile sexual or quasi-sexual
acts to in the course of their sendings. Necrophilia represents the
ultimate expression of this concept. Already experienced necrophiliacs
before introducing sorcery into the equation, the debased members of
Clan Giovanni have explored countless exotic variations of this abhorrent
act in an effort to keep their magic potent. A currently fashionable
technique involves the surgical, postmortem creation of new penises
and vaginas from the flesh and bones of the dead. Giovanni surgeons
install this new genital equipment on the corpse's back, belly, neck
and thighs, so that as many as a dozen practitioners can simultaneously
conjoin with the same dead sex partner, regardless of its original sex.
This practice should retain its power for a few more decades; after
that, the Giovanni will have to come up with something really perverse.
NECROMANTIC RITUALS
The
following rituals enhance the necromancer's powers and offer her protection
from the dead.
System:
The player rolls Intelligence + Occult against a difficulty of three
plus the level of the ritual (maximum 9).
Certain ceremonial practices give necromancers bonuses when working
their ritual magic. The difficulty of any effect targeted against a
wraith decreases by one if the symbols of imprisonment (see page 104)
used in the working happen to be those the individual wraith most strongly
identifies with captivity or torture. For example, the wraith of a kidnapping
victim remembers being gagged with duct tape; a necromancer wishing
to work magic on her may subtract one from his difficulty by adding
a roll of duct tape to his ritual gear.
CIRCLE OF CERBERUS (LEVEL 1 RITUAL)
The necromancer bathes, fasts and abstains from all physical comforts
and pleasures, most especially sensual ones, for a night. Then she dons
well-maintained, high-quality robes or other clothing. She draws a circle
on the floor in a place of safety. She may then proceed to use other
necromantic powers, confident that her protection against ghosts and
spirits has been enhanced.
Each success subtracts two from the difficulty of all rolls the player
must make to resist any attempted harm or influence on the part of a
ghost, Spectre or spirit, so long as the necromancer remains inside
the circle. Treat any botches scored while attempting to use necromantic
paths as failures instead.
RAPE OF PERSEPHONE (LEVEL 1 RITUAL)
A
team of surgeons trained in the unpleasant ways of Necromancy performs
an elaborate operation on a freshly dead or well-preserved corpse. From
the cadaver's dead tissues, they create up to seven new penises, vaginas
or other sexual apparatuses.
The necromancer engages in intercourse with the corpse's new genitalia.
He may then subtract two from the difficulty of all necromantic magic
except those targeting ghosts, Spectres or spiritsfor the
remainder of the night.
If a number of necromancers perform the ritual together, they may freely
trade Willpower points between one another for the rest of the night.
During this time, one participant may experience the tactile sensations
of another by concentrating for a few seconds and spending a point of
Willpower, regardless of the distance separating them. No more than
seven necromancers can perform the ritual together.
JUDGMENT OF RHADAMANTHUS
(LEVEL 2 RITUAL)
The
necromancer chooses a wraith she will later summon, using the Summon
Soul power of the Sepulchre Path. In a cleansed bronze brazier, she
burns several pages of a law book and a religious text matching the
faith the wraith held in life. She mixes the ashes of the books with
silver powder and uses the mixture to make her Circle of Cerberus (see
above). When the wraith appears, the necromancer tells him that she
has the power to send him to the real afterlife, the one he believed
in when he was alive. If the ritual works, the wraith believes her.
If the wraith fears judgment and hellfire, she can induce him to do
what she wants by threatening to use her power. If he yearns for Heaven
and escape from the bizarre existence of the underworld, she can secure
his cooperation by promising to use it. Since she can't make good on
this promise, Judgment of Rhadamanthus won't work twice on the same
Heaven-seeking wraith.
Wraiths who were atheists while alive, or didn't believe in life after
death, automatically resist this ritual.
DRINK OF STYX'S WATERS
(LEVEL 3 RITUAL)
The
necromancer robs a grave and steals the corpse's skull. He saws off
the top of the skull; the sawn-off piece, flipped over, forms a cup-shaped
piece of bone. He covers this piece with clay, making a bowl, which
he proceeds to fire in a kiln. If any blood descendant of the corpse
eats from the bowl during a meal with the necromancer, any promises
the subject makes to the necromancer gains otherworldly enforcement.
If the subject fails to live up to them, he is visited by a Spectre,
which torments him relentlessly until he makes good on them or offers
the necromancer acceptable compensation.
In addition to the time it takes to rob the grave, the modeling and
firing of the bowl takes at least four hours, depending on how fancy
the necromancer wants it to look. It may be reused until destroyed.
DRINK OF LETHE'S WATERS
(LEVEL 4 RITUAL)
The necromancer acquires an object once owned by, or symbolic of, a
particular wraith. The object must be able to be damaged by water; the
necromancer destroys it by leaving it to soak in water. During the soaking,
he periodically spits into the water. After the object has been destroyed,
the necromancer conjures the wraith or otherwise arranges to be in her
presence. The wraith loses all memory of her identity, becoming highly
susceptible to suggestion on the part of the necromancer. Obviously,
this ritual is of no use if the necromancer wants the summoned ghost
to answer questions.
The wraith's memory loss continues for one night per success scored.
It may not use Pathos points to counter any action on the necromancer's
part. Its Willpower drops by the number of successes scored; it may
not replenish its Willpower pool while the effect lingers.
CHAIR OF HADES (LEVEL 5 RITUAL)
The necromancer acquires a corpse's femur and tibia bones decreasing
the difficulty of the casting by one if he does so by personally robbing
a grave. He wraps the bones in coarse cloth and then encases them in
wood or metal so that their lengths match and they become capable of
bearing weight. He then builds a chair; each encased bone forms one
of its legs. If a blood descendant of the corpse sits in the chair,
she loses all desire to do anything but sit in the chair. She leaves
the chair only to quickly fulfill basic bodily needs.
Whenever a qualified victim sits in the chair, the necromancer's player
rolls Intelligence + Occult against her Willpower. If successful, the
effect lasts until the chair is destroyed. Otherwise, even if the victim
is forcibly moved from the chair, she does everything she can to sit
in it once more. In addition to the time it takes to obtain the bones,
the construction of the chair takes at least eight hours. The necromancer
may spend additional time on the chair to make it look fancy or to mimic
an existing piece of furniture.
VOUDOUN NECROMANCY
Followers
of voudoun, the religio-magical tradition of the people of Haiti, greatly
fear the effects of Quangos, black magic intended to aggressively harm
people. Bokkor, practitioners of ouangas, accept no categorical limitations
on their bad magic. In addition to their powers over the dead, they
claim to be able to curse people, control the weather, blight crops
and generally perform the sorts of harmful acts blamed on sorcerers
by folk traditions the world over. Despite the range of powers attributed
to malign sorcerers, common people fear no form of black magic as they
do the spells and rituals involving death and the souls of the dead.
Voudoun worshippers dread the attentions of human voudoun priests (houngans)
gone bad, but in doing so they misdirect their anxieties. Jealous and
fearful worshippers periodically subject even the most virtuous houngans
to baseless rumors of involvement in sorcery and death magic. Some of
the most vociferous accusers, when not beating the bushes for witches,
hypocritically pressure their houngans to perform ouangas rites to curse
their own enemies. The few houngans willing to admit to being sorcerers
generally rely more on trickery and suggestion than on actual supernatural
powers. For example, a human houngan makes people fear him by dressing
outrageously and spreading rumors about his willingness to lay curses
on others for the least provocation. He performs sleight-of-hand magic
tricks and passes them off as magical sendings. He takes credit for
sicknesses, natural disasters and eruptions of madness. A few vulnerable
people come to fear him so much that they begin to exhibit psychosomatic
health problems further enhancing his dread reputation.
Genuine outbreaks of voudoun death magic flow not from living houngans,
but from Kindred who exploit a magically potent belief system to grant
themselves useful powers. The Kindred didn't invent voudoun, ouangas
or even the tradition's death magic; an adventurous few of them simply
moved in when rumors of zombies and a cooperative god of death began
to filter out of Haiti.
The voudoun religion began to take shape not long after 1512, when Haiti's
Spanish overlords brought the first African slave laborers to the island
to work its mines. Voudoun flourished as a new amalgam of different
beliefs from the enslaved laborers' various tribes of origin. One or
two Kindred made their havens in Haiti at this time, attracted by the
opportunities for unre-stricted feeding offered by the slave trade.
They numbered among the many European pirates lured to the region by
Spanish vessels laden with gold and ripe for plunder. When they arrived
at Haiti, a few pirates settled down and established plantations, again
run with African slave labor. Early Kindred colonists paid no more attention
to their slaves' religious develop' ment than the mortal pirates with
whom they mingled. If they had, perhaps current Kindred practitioners
of voudoun necromancy would understand even more of the metaphysics
underlying the magic they now use.
In 1698, France signed a treaty with Spain, taking possession of the
colony and bringing with it a few French Kindred. French became the
language of Haiti, and Catholicism its state religion. The slave culture
in turn adopted and adapted elements of Catholic iconography into its
pantheon of gods and spirits. One of the island's Cainites, a Lasombra
with Giovanni connections named Gisele Hemmet, took notice of Quangos
and the new possibilities it offered to the moribund traditions of Western
necromancy. Inculcating herself into a cell of roving ouangas practitioners,
she secretly underwent initiation as a houngan, and, as she had fervently
hoped, was "mounted" by the loa (god-spirit) called Baron
Samedi.
Samedi is the Lord of the Cemetery, the incarnation of the threshold
between life and death. Although he can be a dreadful and frightening
figure, believers do not identify him as apetro loa, or malign spirit.
Ordinary worshippers propitiate him in hopes that he will guide their
deceased family members to their proper final rest as loa-racines, or
ancestral spirits. He does so when pleased by graveside sacrifices of
food, crosses and the ritually obligatory three centimes (pennies).
Simultaneously imperious and impish, Baron Samedi mocks humankind for
its lusts and passions. Images of his grinning, skull-like face gaze
out from murals on the houmfor walls, reminding all who behold them
of the folly of mortal concerns in the face of the eternity of death.
(The houmfor is the central hut in a modest temple complex, where ceremonies
are performed.)
Gisele Hemmet expected Baron Samedi to be pleased by the chance to make
a Cainite his horse, and he was but not in the way she'd hoped.
She'd entered into the initiation ceremony assuming that this primitive
death spirit would be so shocked and delighted to learn of the existence
of Cainites that he'd welcome his new houngan not just as a special
servant of death, but as a child he'd never known. The naive, rustic
deity would doubtless shower her with new mystic abilities she could
use for her own purposes. Instead, as the Baron's presence entered her
body and mind, she found herself overwhelmed by an ancient consciousness
vastly more forceful than her own. Gisele shook as the amused disdain
the Baron felt for her and her kind reverberated through her. The Baron
did offer her power, which she greedily accepted, only half-understanding
that the price she would pay would be her sense of confidence and entitlement.
She had foolishly submitted to something much greater than herself.
Something, as she would soon discover, which would never leave her side,
no matter how much she might want it to.
The Baron came to her many times in the next years, always unbidden.
Sometimes he offered her more magic, like a barman placing a free glass
of rum under a drunkard's nose. More often he came only to turn her
certainties into doubts, her assurance into dread. Vampires, he whispered
in her ear, were even more ridiculous than mortals. (He insisted on
using the vulgar term vampire, especially when he saw Hemmet bridle
to hear it.) Their plans were doomed. Their sense of immortality was
false. They were trapped on the threshold between life and death, neither
here nor there, yet had deluded themselves into thinking that they were
masters of the world. He would give Hemmet power all right; he would
give it to any of her kind who submitted to be ridden. Not because the
powers would help them; quite the contrary, his help would only cement
their folly. He would give his gifts because it amused him. Vampires
were the rudest joke he'd heard in centuries.
Several Cainites flocked to Hemmet seeking the occult knowledge she'd
gained. She brought others to the houmfor to be mounted. Still seeking
Samedi's approval, she promised to bring him a legion of Cainite devotees
who would become his houngans. At this news he laughed until acrid tears
flowed down his cheeks. Sometimes she warned her eager recruits they
were making a mistake. Few heeded her words of caution. Those who were
as foolish as she was, Hemmet ruefully decided, deserved to share her
discomfiture. A small coterie of Cainites, claiming various clan allegiances,
came to see what she'd been warning them about; those most intrigued
became the Baron's houngans.
In 1791, the island's slaves revolted against their masters and overthrew
them; Haiti became the hemisphere's second republic. Hemmet wouldn't
have dreamed of contributing to such a shocking upending of the social
order, but helped the revolt along in a few subtle but important ways
once it got going. She did so hoping to prove her worth to the Baron
and escape his campaign of mockery. She told him she'd done it to help
his people; he threw back his head and laughed as he always did. The
slaves' new success was just another
illusion; in the face of death, there was no freedom. Haiti would always
belong to him; even he lacked the freedom to change this.
THE
BARON AND HIS HOUNGANS
The
mere intervention of 200 years has done little to change the humiliating
relationship between the houngan and the mocking loa who gives them
the magic they wish for, in hopes that they will use it to destroy themselves.
To become ahoungan of the Baron, a cultist attends a ritual led by priests
already initiated to his service. The houngans offer food and drink
to the Baron to gain his attention. Accompanied by drums, officiates
and aspiring initiate join together in an ecstatic dance, employing
fast, exhausting moves that induce an altered state of consciousness
(the robust vampiric physiology demands that neophyte worshippers spend
much more time dancing to attain the trance state than humans require).
The ceremonies can require many nights of ritual activity before Baron
Samedi deigns to mount his new charge. (Experienced houngans, like their
human counterparts, learn over time to slip easily into the trance state.)
When mounting comes, the loa takes over the initiate's body, speaking
in a different voice sometimes a different tongueand adopting
a body language all its own. It declares that it is Baron Samedi, and
engages other participants in conversation. If mounting comes too soon,
attending houngans suspiciously interrogate the loa to ensure that it
is Baron Samedi who has come and not some lesser petro loa mischievously
hijacking the ceremony for its own amusement. If it is not the Baron,
the houngan employ a rite to drive out the interloping loa and then
continue the ceremony until the Baron does appear.
When the Baron arrives, he declares that the initiate has finally submitted
to the cosmic realities of death, even though it may take centuries
for her to fully admit that she has done so. He asks the houngan which
of his boons the initiate seeks. He announces that he has granted this
boon, in hopes that it will lead this errant child to see the truth
of her position. He then departs, leaving an exhausted supplicant to
collapse on the dirt floor of the houmfor like a plaything suddenly
dropped by its owner. When she recovers, she finds that she now possesses
the powers she sought.
She also learns that she's forged a binding personal contract with the
Baron that cannot be severed, even if she renounces the use of the boons
he has granted her. The Baron can come at any time; he refuses to limit
his surprise visits to moments when his houngans happen to have submitted
to the trance state. A selection from Gisele Hemmet's journal, much-circulated
in Kindred circles, describes one such incident in detail. At the time,
Hemmet was preparing herself for a meeting at which she expected to
be attacked by an Assamite contract killer. The Baron first appeared
to her in the shower, materializing from nowhere, startling her so badly
that she fell backward and opened her scalp on the shower head. As she
tended to her minor but embarrass' ing wound, he perched on her sink,
swinging his legs and making pointedly pointless small talk about what
various famous people might say just before they die. The Baron interspersed
his annoying banter with a series of sly gibes and insults, pausing
at one point to lick up a few stray spatters of blood that had fallen
into the sink from Gisele's head wound. He then made a face and performed
a supposedly comical spit-take that didn't amuse Gisele one bit. She
ordered him to leave; he responded with a cryptic statement about the
disturbing numerological significance of this year's climactic statistics,
hinting that it meant disaster for Gisele and her plans. Unable to restrain
herself, she launched for the hundredth time into a plea for more respect
and tolerance for his humble servants. In the journal, Gisele recreates
an ensuing hour of philosophical discussion, in which the insufferably
smug Baron invited her to ask questions about his origins and motives,
to which he provided inconsistent and evasive answers. He proceeded
from there to poke holes in her plan to protect herself from the assassin,
planting fresh doubts about allies she'd until then trusted completely.
Before departing, he informed her that she was doomed, that her plans
if completed would bring her more misery than sorrow itself, and that
he would possess her completely one night even though he had
no particular desire to do so.
If an annoyed victim of a visitation tries to attack the Baron, he vanishes,
leaving behind echoing gales of victorious laughter. If he thinks his
target hasn't been unsettled enough yet, he immediately rematerializes,
laughing, elsewhere in the room.
When appearing uninvited, Baron Samedi does not possess the houngan.
It's too hard to hold a conversation that way. He manifests himself
as an apparition, altering his appearance at whim. He always appears
as an impressive-looking black man. He usually chooses to look about
six feet tall, but may on occasion show up as a dwarf. The Baron may
be bald or elaborately coiffed; his face may be shaven, bearded or decorated
with a gigantic handlebar moustache. He always appears in
grand clothing. He may deck himself out as a 16th-century pirate, sporting
a black velvet topcoat, frilly cuffs, an array of looted medals and
other military decorations, and a wide-brimmed hat with a 10-inch crown;
an insinuatingly friendly, painted skull and crossbones appears on the
front of the crown. As whim strikes him, he may adopt the face paint
and loincloth of an African shaman or the dark suit of a 19th-century
undertaker. After the voodoo-themed James Bond movie Live and Let Die
came out in 1973, he often appeared in the form of actor Geoffery Holder,
who memorably played him in the movie. He dropped this joke in the mid-'SOs,
when Holder appeared in a series of commercials for the soft drink 7-Up.
These days, he most often materializes in a stylish outfit, each piece
of which is an animal product of some kind: long leather jacket with
ermine collar, white silk shirt with ivory buttons, sharkskin pants
and snakeskin boots. When a houngan comes too close to the Baron, the
snakes' heads on the boot toes widen their baleful eyes, open fanged
mouths and hiss. In any of these guises, he may wander through the ranks
of ritualists as they perform one of his ceremonies, pinching or kicking
some, licking and kissing others.
When the Baron is not present, houngans may suffer other unwanted visitations.
Whenever they find themselves in the presence of petro loas or free-roaming
souls of the dead, they hear the voices of these entities in their heads.
These beings lurk everywhere in Haiti. Their constant murmuring, gossiping
and pointless chatter poses less of a threat to the listener's sense
of well-being, however, than the Baron's impertinent interjections.
Nonetheless, they can be annoying or where concentration is of
the utmost lethally distracting. Loas and similar spirits dwell
in abundance wherever animistic beliefs hold sway. In Brazil, where
followers of the spirit religions candomble and macumba practice rites
similar in broad structure, if not in detail, to voudoun, spirits chatter
in Portuguese patois instead of French. Local spirits prove just as
bothersome in Africa, where the roots of voudoun lie, or in the totem-haunted
depths of the Pacific Northwest forests, or on the howling expanses
of the Arctic tundra. As practitioners of spirit magic urbanize, bothersome
loas and their kin extend their range. Whether they were summoned by
practitioners of mojo in New Orleans or Santeria priestesses in immigrant
New York, they wait to annoy the houngan. Don't think you can avoid
us, they whisper. The whole millenium thing is going our way. We're
globalizing. The people are tired of the big gods who ignore them. The
world belongs to us again.
THE SAMEDI
Not
long after the slave revolt, Hemmet's under' lings brought an unpleasant
surprise to her attention. They'd captured a gaunt, strange-looking
Cainite lurk-ing on the grounds of her estate. The creature, who appeared
more like a walking rotting corpse than a proper Cainite, identified
himself only as Macoute. Under torture, the creature claimed to be a
member of a bloodline called the Samedi. Hemmet accused it of having
stolen the favors of the Baron, assuming that he was creating a new
group of Cainites to mock her and to compete with her. Although terribly
injured, Macoute just laughed at this suggestion. His rueful, half-mad
manner reminded her utterly of the Baron's manner, convincing her that
her theory was right. She engaged in a brief campaign against Macoute's
fellow Samedi, stopping only when the shambling vampires diablerized
several of her own comrades. Macoute has passed himself off as the Baron
many times, and has even gone so far as to name one of his childer Brigitte,
after the Baron's wife.
Tonight the Samedi and Hemmet's houngans steer clear of one another.
The solitary, fringe-dwelling Samedi keep to themselves, or act as independent
contractors in Cainite power struggles. The houngans treat the existence
of the Samedi as another of the Baron's elaborate jokes at their expense.
The Samedi consider Hemmet and company to be nai've fools leading wretched
unlives in a prison of their own making. They share the Baron's fatalistic
worldview. He rarely needs to visit them to show them the futility of
their existence; they feel it in their rotten bones. He appears to them
only when they forget their impermanence and try to build things or
carry out complex plans.
Certain Samedi believe that their terrifying master is an Antediluvian
Cainite who has merely taken on the identity of the Haitian death spirit.
Although their association with Haiti and its magic are comparatively
recent, they claim that their bloodline is very old.
Like any bloodline, the Samedi add new members by Embracing mortals.
To learn the magic of the Baron, they must undergo the same initiation
rites as the houngans.
SERPENTS OF THE LIGHT
The
luckless island of Haiti veritably crawls with vampires. A small group
of Setites called the Serpents of the Light make their havens here,
too. They've adapted Set's mythology to voudoun belief; the serpent
god of life, Damballah, replaces Osiris as the hate object
in their practices. Several Serpents of the Light can use Baron Samedi's
magic, though their connection to Set seems to immunize them from his
visitations. While pretending to be occupied with other matters, they're
arming themselves for a battle to drive Hemmet's group of poseurs from
the island. Exactly what resolution can come of Haiti's three-sided
undead conflict remains to be seen.
THE AFTERLIFE
Voudoun
worshippers believe that the souls of the freshly dead go to a watery
waystation. There they spend an amount of time that varies with social
status; prominent individuals may leave early, while the less socially
well-off endure longer stays. If the families of the dead perform the
proper rites when the interval ends, their souls find their way back
to the shores of Haiti, whereupon they occupy special jars provided
by the ritualists. The worshippers take the jars home, confident that
their ancestors are now loa-racine who can provide them with luck and
guidance. If the ceremony of return is disrupted or neglected, the spirits
turn sour and return to haunt people and wreak havoc. The magic of the
houngan revolves in part around the diversion of these souls for nefarious
ends.
Common people fear two forms of death magic most of all. They worry
that the soulless bodies of their dead kinfolk might be turned into
walking dead the zombies of voodoo pop culture fame. Even more
than that, they fear that they will be turned into zombies while still
living, and forced to work the cane fields in a form of slavery that
deprives them even of the ability to think. Adherents of local folk
beliefs also dread a female vampire they call the lou-garou. (Despite
the name, this is not a reference to the lycanthropes of Werewolf: The
Apocalypse.) Evidently, Gisele Hemmet was a bit careless about maintaining
the Masquerade during her early nights on the island....
RITUAL ITEMS
In
accordance with his lessons on the impermanence of all things but death,
the Baron scorns the idea that ancient, historically resonant objects
are more powerful than ordinary ones. In Baron Samedi's magic, objects
gain mystic resonance through their connection to their user, not their
provenance. A houngans ritual blade is more likely to be an old, rusted
utility knife with a handle wrapped in dirty masking tape than a dagger
of gleaming gold retrieved from some Roman ruins. The idea that holding
a relic of the ancient past confers even a momentary sense of connection
to anything that might be called immortality is sheer nonsense to Baron
Samedi.
Neither does Baron Samedi show any respect for riches or any other indicator
of success in the material world. People frantically accumulate jewels
and gold and houses and works of art to try to proclaim their power
in the face of death, but they're fooling themselves in the eyes of
the Baron. He offers his followers no special favors if they use especially
valuable items in their rites. The poorest laborer enjoys just as great
a chance of reaching him as the richest landowner up on the hill. They'll
be united in death anyway. That's why the Baron's favorite monetary
gift is just a few tarnished pennies that's all anyone is really
worth in the end.
As he will no doubt tell you the next time he pops in for a visit.
VOUDOUN IN DISCIPLINES
The
Baron's initiates use the same paths as Western necromancers, but perceive
the underlying cosmology differently. The houngan doesn't meet spirits
from the underworld of Western tradition. He finds loas in the temporary
underwater resting place of the freshly dead, the mortal world, where
restless spirits lurk or from the funereal jars where dwell the benign
ancestral spirits called loa-racines. The spirits themselves believe
they are in a storm or sea, sometimes calling their watery limbo a tempest.
In some instances, houngans face different limitations or risks when
using the paths. If a power goes unmentioned here, the houngan use it
without significant modification.
SEPULCHRE PATH
SUMMON SOUL
Voudoun
believers whose souls go to the underworld, or are destroyed or lost,
cannot be summoned. Loa-racines more easily resist summoning; add two
to the difficulty of attempts against them.
HAUNTING
Again,
increase the difficulty of using this power when a loa-radne is its
subject.
BONE PATH
SOUL STEALING
Houngans
sometimes call this "Make Living Zombie."
DAEMONIC POSSESSION
Howngans
refer to this effect as "Make Zombie."
ASH PATH
EX NIHILO
Known
by the houngans as "Visit the Dead," this power allows the
necromancer to travel to the underwater holding area where the freshly
dead wait to be called back to land as loa-racines. To reach this place,
the practitioner must physically travel across a body of water and slip
beneath the surface. The journey takes about six hours. Conveniently,
vampires needn't worry about breathing.
VOUDOUN RITUALS
Baron
Samedi's houngans use the following rituals to interact with dead spirits
and the realm where they exist.
System:
As with other necromantic rituals, the player rolls Intelligence + Occult
against a difficulty of three + the level of the ritual (maximum 9).
KNOWING STONE (LEVEL ONE RITUAL)
By use of his own blood and the proper rituals, a houngan can mark a
person's spirit, allowing the vampire to see where his subject is at
any time, even after he has died. In this fashion many of the spirit-haunted
vampires keep tabs on their close kin and their enemies.
The houngan bleeds herself, then uses the vitae to paint the name of
the target on a consecrated stone. If the ritual is successful, she
can afterward learn the target's current whereabouts by dancing around
the stone in trance state until the Baron or one of hispetro loas whispers
the desired information into her ear. The stone loses its powers on
the night of All Saints Day unless the houngan spends a blood point.
TWO CENTIMES (LEVEL TWO RITUAL)
The
houngan ceremonially "kills" a mortal, laying him out on a
pallet in the middle of her houmfor and putting pennies on his eyes.
The mortal's soul journeys to the underworld, which he perceives, initially
at least, as the way-station where voudoun believers congregate after
death. The mortal can interact with the souls of the dead and travel
elsewhere in the underworld, while also retaining the power to speak
to the houngan and describe what he's experiencing. While in the underworld,
however, the subject's soul cannot affect the environment. Although
he may talk to other spirits, he may not physically interact with them
or their surroundings he is a "ghost among ghosts,"
as it were.
Minions may voluntarily undergo the ritual to assist houngans. Houngans
may use Two Centimes to terrify unwilling victims.
NIGHTMARE DRUMS
(LEVEL THREE RITUAL)
The
houngan using this ritual sends the dead to haunt the dreams of an enemy,
using the wraiths to drive an opponent slowly insane. Once the ritual
is cast, the houngan has no control over this power, save to stop it
from continuing. The shape of the nightmares and the images that assault
the target are not under the control of the houngan; they are under
the control of the wraiths who actually do the haunting.
The houngan uses his own blood and a personal possession of the target's
in this ritual. Once the item has been coated with blood, the houngan
must burn the item, sending a ghostly icon of it to the Shadowlands
both as an identifying badge and as a reward to the spirits who agree
to haunt the target. While the item burns, the houngan (and assistants,
if available) pound out a relentless beat on gigantic drums, headed
in human skin. The drums are inaudible in this realm but thunderous
in the underwater home of the dead. To silence the deafening drums,
the wraiths resignedly agree to negotiate with the houngan They promise
to send nightmares to the victim for as long as the houngan demands,
in return for a favor. Their request normally runs along the lines of
passing a message to a living relative or exacting revenge against someone
who slighted them.
BLOOD DANCE (LEVEL THREE RITUAL)
The
Blood Dance allows a spirit to communicate with a living relative. They
perform this ritual for people in exchange for money or favors.
The houngan must dance and chant for two hours, calling forth the right
spirit and entreating all other ghosts to leave the area. (As usual,
the power of this ritual means nothing to Baron Samedi should he choose
to manifest himself.) While dancing, the vampire pours colored sands
and ocean salt on the ground in a precise pattern and then makes the
link between the living person and the deceased associate. If successful,
the wraith "appears" within the houngan's sand-sigil and the
living person can communicate with her for one hour. Failure means the
spirit could not be contacted.
BALEFUL DOLL (LEVEL FOUR RITUAL)
A
baleful doll is a powerful figure that is linked directly to the spirit
of the target. This doll must be handcrafted, and is only finished when
it has been painted with the vitae of the houngan and dressed in some
article of clothing from the victim which should be unwashed
for a better connection. Once the doll has been cursed, the houngan
can use it to cause physical damage to the target. If the doll is destroyed,
the target suffers six dice of lethal damage. If the doll is injured
(often with pins or other items), the victim takes six dice of bashing
damage.
The houngan must craft the doll, using ritual chants throughout the
process. This normally takes four to five hours. The player rolls Stamina
+ Crafts (difficulty 8) to succeed in this part of the ritual
a doll that does not resemble its victim is useless for the purposes
of this ritual, though some houngans sell them as "authentic voodoo
dolls" to tourists.
DEAD MAN'S HAND (LEVEL FIVE RITUAL)
The
houngan takes a rag stained in the blood, sweat or tears of the intended
victim. She takes a freshly severed human hand (which can come either
from a corpse or a living "donor") and closes it around the
rag. As the hand decomposes, so does the victim. His flesh bloats, turns
gray and then green, then starts to slough off. The victim's brain remains
fresh until the very end, so he can see the maggots writhe in the putrescent
rack of meat that once was his healthy body.
The houngan makes the standard roll and spends two blood points for
each point of Stamina possessed by the victim. The victim loses health
levels according to the timetable below. Only the removal of the rag
from the hand can stop the process. If this happens, health levels return,
also according to the chart below.
Health Level | Time Until Next Loss |
Bruised | 12 hours |
Hurt | 12 hours |
Injured | Six hours |
Wounded | Three hours |
Mauled | One hour |
Crippled | 30 minutes |
Incapacitated | 12 hours |
Mortal characters who suffer more than 12 hours of incapacitation die, while Kindred who remain Incapacitated for more than 12 hours succumb to torpor.