Down in the Dark [Geist: The Sin-Eaters]

Travis sends this:

Cling to the world of the living as much as you like. Haunt your loved ones. Claw your way back into your own corpse. Beware of ghosts bearing masks, and steer clear of the exorcists and ghost-breakers. No matter what you do, the Underworld is waiting. Waiting for your Anchors to crumble, for your kin to forget you, or for the Reapers to take you. And when it welcomes you into its cold embrace, when you feel your very essence being leeched into the damp stone, you’ll know that old saying only gets it half right: Death is patient, but it is not kind.

The Lands of the Dead

Scholarly Bound and academically-inclined necromancers have catalogued the Underworld for as long as human society has explored it. While deep cultural variations and subtle elemental distinctions exist depending on the author, most divide the Underworld into several distinct areas:

• The low places or cenotes, areas of Twilight that contain an Avernian Gate and are keenly attuned to the energies of death. On the other side of the Gates lies…
• …the Upper Reaches, or the liminal stage between the living world and the…
• Lower Mysteries, where the dead congregate in their hermitages, shantytowns, and even the great River Cities, which sit on the shores of the…
• …Rivers of the Dead, a vast series of waterways that contain small gatherings of ghosts plagued by Reapers, and that cut through the Lower Mysteries, with harbors that abut…
• …the Dead Dominions, or dry areas of the Underworld subject to peculiar Old Laws that grow more numerous the deeper you go, enforced by and subject to the rule of their Kerberoi, lords of their dead realms. Yet all Rivers lead to…
• …the Ocean of Fragments.

On the dead side, Avernian Gates shine with a dim and coruscating light, scattering rays across forgotten tunnels like beams of sunlight broken by the ocean’s surface. Brackish water seeps and flows from cracks in the Gates, even if they lead to the hottest parts of Death Valley or Gilf Kebir. This same water flows out of an opened Gate in a torrent strong enough to knock the unwary off their feet, heralding a new ghost’s arrival. The dead are not sucked into Gates, but blown through, pushed to equalize the pressure of existence. They fall to the floor of the Depths sodden, another piece of detritus amidst a vast field of dead debris.

Castoffs

The living are not the only things that die. Valued knick-knacks, treasured possessions, even real estate prized by a community: they all burn, decay, and are lost. They persist in Twilight for a time, but without Anchors, these sad castoffs are blown into any nearby Gate whenever it opens. Detritus floats ever downstream, breaking into fragments and moving through the Upper Reaches at a glacial pace. Yet they are still charged with Essence, and ghosts, deprived of Anchors themselves, cannot help but be reminded of how much they’ve lost with the first bite of a rotten teddy bear or the crunch of a soiled wedding photo on ephemeral teeth.

Chthonians

Billions of ghosts have entered the deep below, eking out an existence in the upper reaches, then the Dominions, before succumbing to accident, somehow passing on, or entering a River (or the Ocean they flow to) and being destroyed. The human species is the Underworld’s great tide of immigrants.

The Underworld has natives.

Superficially, a Chthonian resembles a ghost. It has a body formed of ephemera, and its supernatural abilities resemble those ghosts learn to develop over time. Although many ancient ghosts and Kerberoi stray in form from their human origins, they’re usually still humanoid. Chthonians look like admixtures of upsetting images of death, carrion, and decay; e.g. yards-long maggots with distorted human faces, chitinous beetle-shells covering a core of congealing blood. Their mindsets are so inscrutable as to be alien. Most Chthonians don’t respond to ghosts at all, or “talk” in waves of pain and flies buzzing. The few Chthonians whom ghosts have bargained with appeared to view the interaction to be like scratching an itch.

A Chthonian’s touch tears Essence away from a ghost, so ghosts give them a wide berth. Sin-Eaters record tales of Chthonians destroying whole Dominions — not for any sin, but simply because the domain was in their way. On the other hand, many Chthonians are coated in Plasm, which drips and congeals in pools as they pass. Some ghosts follow in their wake, collecting Plasm, worshipping them as avatars of the Chthonic Gods (the Chthonians don’t notice) or trying to follow them. Eventually, these pilgrimages come to an end at a River. Chthonians are immune to dissolution from entering the Rivers, and appear to use them as migration routes. Ghosts who journey as deep as the Ocean of Fragments tell stories of gigantic, never-alive things, to the Chthonians as the Kerberoi are to ghosts, swimming beneath the still waves.

Life After Death

Let’s not dress it up in pretty language: The Underworld eats ghosts. Daily, bit by bit, it leeches them away, draining them of Essence. Once that bulwark is gone, the Underworld absorbs the dead, literally sucking them into the walls and floors of the cavern, until nothing is left except perhaps a fold of rock that resembles a face in profile, or a stalagmite with five finger-like protrusions.

So how do the dead survive this place? Many, simply put, don’t. It’s difficult, but not impossible, to acquire Essence in the Underworld, and the clever, the lucky, and the ruthless can carve out a niche for themselves.

Hermits

You’ll find some ghosts living in hermitages on the shores of the tributary streams of the Underworld, carefully fishing the waters for castoffs. Any given tributary doesn’t see much in the way of castoffs, but one or two ghosts, committed to an ascetic lifestyle, can just about survive. Travelers beware: in the lean times, when it’s a choice between slow, agonizing dissolution and devouring a wanderer for his Essence, the unthinkable becomes very thinkable indeed.

River Citizens

Other ghosts take the opposite tack, seeking safety in numbers and mutual protection. At the confluence of the Rivers, where castoffs from hundreds or even thousands of streams come together, you’ll find the great River Cities: ramshackle strongholds of the free dead. Most are built from the detritus that slides down into the Rivers, giving them a patchwork appearance. A rare few have residents that possessed some degree of supernatural might capable of reshaping the Underworld, and are built up like favelas or banlieus. Most can be seen from the Upper Reaches — cliffs in the tunnels give glimpses of these communities, lighted by thousands of scavenged lanterns that never go out and reflect off the glittering Rivers in the never-ending night. But take care: far more River Cities are ruled by local strongmen who brook no challenge to their authority than by autonomous collectives for the benefit of all. Human nature is human nature, after all.

Dominions

If panning for torn photographs and half-melted GI Joes or living cheek-by- jowl with the hungry dead in a River City don’t appeal to you, there are always the Deep Dominions. These strange pockets of the Lower Mysteries have their own rules, and their own guardians. Within a Dominion, a ghost who abides by the Old Laws is safe from the leeching effect of the Underworld. A ghost who breaks the Old Laws… well, they have more immediate concerns. But mind yourself: Dominions don’t last forever. Oh, this one’s been around a century or so, and that one is described in the scriptures of Mourner krewes going back three millennia, but eventually, every Dominion will crack asunder and plunge into the Ocean of Fragments, leaving behind nothing but a sinkhole and a shattered gate.

Two Ways Out

Absent someone from the land of the living pulling an Orpheus, there are really only two ways out of the Underworld. The first is to drink deep from one of the Rivers, filling yourself with its poisonous power to become a geist, bound to a specific form of death rather than an Anchor. Even then, the geist has to actually find an Avernian Gate and wait for it to open from the other side — plenty of geists still roam the Underworld, looking for their way out.

The second way out is to become a Reaper. But we’ve already talked about that.

Whether total destruction — by diving into the Ocean of Fragments, the toxic touch of a Chthonian, or ectophagia — is a third way out (and different in any meaningful way from being consumed by the Underworld) is hotly debated in esoteric circles.

Wish You Were Here

Sin-Eaters have any number of reasons to go to the Underworld. First and foremost, it’s where ghosts are, and a Sin-Eater who ignores half the world’s ghosts is a poor Sin-Eater indeed. Every krewe archetype has its own reasons for taking the plunge, from the Mourners who chronicle the stories of the forgotten dead to the Necropolitans who love nothing more than jailbreaking as many shades as possible. Being that the Underworld is the source of Haunts, it’s also where you have to go when you want to learn a new one. But perhaps the biggest reason is simply this: if you want to change the Underworld, you have to understand it first.

Next Time

Ceremonies or playable ghosts?