Our last Lineage to share is the Dead. This Lineage is an interesting one, because it is a concept that many people have expressed interest in, but one that I don’t think I’ve ever seen done quite this way in media. I’ve certainly seen ghost stories where the focus of the story is on the ghost, and not the living. I’ve also seen games that tackle dealing with an afterlife, an underworld, or undeath in some fashion. But the Dead are uniquely ghosts and undead at the same time.
The Dead are, for all intents and purposes, ghosts with a lot more agency. They retain all their mental faculties, but are otherwise disembodied dead people. They start out haunting their own body. But they can absolutely lose that body and need to find a new one. They can choose to haunt a non-human body if they really want to, or try to maintain their own body for as long as possible. Also, they can’t die. They’re already dead, and they can’t die again. They can’t pass on like phantasms, but they can wither away into nothingness, or lose enough of their faculties that they become phantasms.
The Dead are cursed with unwelcome urges that drive them to invoke emotions in others. They want to feel the emotion themselves, but acting to create the emotion is the true urge, and the curse they suffer.
But that’s enough from me, let’s hear from our Dead signature character, Sam.
So, you’re Dead? Me too, I’m Sam, welcome to the show. We’re not in hell, definitely not in any kind of heaven I’d imagine, and we’re not nothing. I guess that means we’re somewhere between alive and not, which is where you’ll be for a while. Me? I’ve been like this for a few years now, at least long enough to show you the ropes.
I’m going to start with the big picture, because I think that’s what works best in this case. You died and didn’t pass on. Instead, you’re stuck in your body, puppeting it around like a bloody marionette. You are, at the very core, a ghost. Not like those other incorporeal sods who don’t have a mind of their own and go on repeat for ages. No, you’ve still got all your faculties, and even your body in a weird way. You can leave your body behind if you want. I wouldn’t suggest doing that for too long, because something might happen to it, and then you’re left scrambling to find a new one. (More on that later.)
How did this happen? Well, more than likely, someone you met cursed you. I know that’s a shit answer, but it’s what happens. I’d take a stab and say it’s likely someone dear to you, maybe a family member or a coworker. These things tend to be more intimate than people think. Just know, you can also pass this shit on to someone, so if you’re one of those revenge types, you can eventually get yours.
Now that you’re Dead, if you play it right, you could be around forever. You can try to hold onto that original body of yours as long as you like. It won’t decay or age now that you’re Dead, but it also won’t heal naturally or fix itself, so be careful with it. If you really need another, I’m sure you can find one, but the ethical quandaries surrounding that get pretty dodgy. You’ll note that most Families don’t agree, and have drawn firm lines on how one goes about it.
The story goes that there was a league of utter bastards who affronted something otherworldly by trying to trick it into granting them eternal life. If you ever meet one of those fuckers, they’ll probably say they asked nicely and don’t deserve their due. I’m sure you can imagine they are great dinner guests, and have nothing but fun stories about the “good old times.” They got their eternities, in a sense. It struck them down, and bound them to their bodies like Prometheus to his bloody rock. On top of that, they were governed by their basest urges, the ones that drove them to this unutterable sin in the first place. Don’t give in, and go bats instead. So, they indulged, and that led to them cursing others, and now here we are.
What can the Dead do?
The dead are ghosts who inhabit a body and move it around. Which means they can leave that body behind whenever they want. Of course, the body will just be lying there while they’re gone, so they will want to keep it somewhere safe. They are tethered to that body as long as it’s around, so they can quickly return to it from wherever they are after they leave it. But if they are gone for too terribly long, they start to degrade. They need a body to prevent themselves from becoming a phantasm.
This means if their body is destroyed, they are untethered, and they’ll have to find a new body to inhabit. It needs to be something already spare, they can’t just go kicking someone else’s consciousness out of their body to take it over. That isn’t how possession works for them, and it certainly isn’t how finding a new body works. Possession must be consensual, and if they use magic to force their way in, it doesn’t last very long at all.
Inheritance: Dead who place more focus on their nature than their Family are more resistant to magical damage, using their undead nature to bolster their physical bodies.
The Dead Practices are:
- Emotional Manipulation is the Dead’s urges born to bear. These spells give the Dead the ability to manipulate the emotions of others: heightening or decreasing emotions as well as driving people to action or inaction.
- Incorporeality gives the Dead access to a greater suite of powers while in ghost form, allowing them to interact with the physical world and possess all manner of things.
- Metaphysics plays on the Dead’s nature as a ghost and gives them properties that defy natural physics. They can draw on their ghost nature while possessing a body to utilize its intangible nature, as well as their own experiences as being dead to manipulate the world around them.
I should play a Dead if I want to…
… be able to go incorporeal at will.
… have cool ghost powers I can use even in my physical form.
… be emotional support for my friends.
… leave my entire life behind. Literally.
… struggle with urges to manipulate other people’s emotions.
… face existential horrors about my existence.
… be unkillable, unaging, and unable to just end my own miserable existence.
… be someone who needs experiences to feel alive.
… struggle to connect with the living in ways that don’t feel parasitic.
Sam
Sam died young, in the early 2000s, in the back of a pawn shop in London. He died with all the pomp and circumstance of someone catching a one-way train into the city and dying of an overdose. Which is to say, none. His family reported him missing, and the cold case was never closed. The police never found a body. That’s because immediately after dying, he got back up and started walking again.
Sam’s social life was never dull before he died, and after finding himself damned to be a Dead, he wasn’t interested in letting it die with him. He was quickly picked up by the Dead who damned him, which didn’t go as she planned. He resented her and left as soon as he met others. It didn’t take him long to join the Mavens, as his desire for connection drove him to desire extreme highs wherever he could find them.
Now he runs a bar, which means he can’t stay in his old body for too long or folks will get suspicious.
Mavens
The Mavens are a group of Dead who are looking for extreme emotional highs. They desire excitement, thrill, and passion in equal measure. Anything that gets the heart racing in a good way is worthy of a Maven’s urge.
If the Dead are considered the life of the party or fun to be around, Mavens are that times 10. They act fun loving, carefree, and are often reckless. Some Mavens have no compunction about inducing their emotional highs on everyone around them. There’s no harm in making people happy, right? Of course, this doesn’t take into account anyone else’s consent or agency, and is bad news if it goes too far. Usually, Mavens seek people already looking for the experience they are going for, and grant them that in spades.
Sam joined the Mavens because he needed somewhere to land, and because they were the closest aligned with his desire to feel the heady high of intoxication just one more time. Here’s his saccharine description of his Family.
Do you remember the rush of excitement from your first kiss? Or the thrill of surviving a near death experience? The jolt of electricity that goes through you when you accidentally cut your finger? The flood of endorphins as shock sets in after a traumatic injury? I do, bitch, and I miss the shit out of it.
You only live once, right? Except, in our case, we get a second chance at life through this horrible half-alive cursed existence. You might as well make the most of it.
Even in death, it’s good to make time to enjoy yourself. Us Mavens take this to… shall we say, the extreme? Oh honey, there’s no other way to take it. Our urges lead us to inspire a thrill. Pain? Joy? It honestly doesn’t matter. We’re always searching for a high that comes from sensation.
The living have something we can never get back. They should value it. We like to remind people of that. Okay, so maybe it’s not some huge self-sacrifice to bring people joy and excitement. I never said we were doing this just for them. So what if we satisfy ourselves? They are getting something out of it too.
There’s two sides of a Family debate, and no one can agree to disagree. The way it used to work was, you’d make a contract with someone. They agreed, and you helped them experience something extreme; no take backs. Those are the sensates. The modernists put forward continuous consent as the standard, and the contract can be voided at any time. Either way, the contract is the most important aspect, and you must abide by what you agreed to. Now, no one is watching to see if you break it. But listen darling, if you do, and I find out, I’ll rip your dead head off your shoulders. And I’m not even the worst. The sensates are far more into pain than pleasure, and they will take their urges out on you as punishment.
Mavens use their magic to possess their contacts to give them their extreme experiences. They are deft at manipulating others’ emotions as well.
Inheritance: All Dead Families perfect a way to invoke their preferred emotion while incorporeal. The mavens can create the Overstimulating area effect with a Major Complication once per scene, only while incorporeal.
Play a Maven if you want to…
… Experience all the joys of existence life denied you.
… Open the eyes of others to the extremes of pleasure and pain.
… Make the sad happy, give the lonely company, and help struggling mortals live their best life.
