Necromancy

Necromancy Necromancy is a discipline, broken down into

paths, practiced primarily by the Giovanni and the Nagaraja. It is an
extropalation of the original discipline of the now extinct Cappadochian
House called Mortis. It is divided into paths and rituals, and, like
Thaumaturgy and Dark Thaumaturgy, is quite versatile. Rarely do
those outside the Houses of Giovanni and Nagaraja who possess
knowledge of this discipline use it in public, for it is considered to be
somewhat gruesome, even among vampires.

The Sepulchre Path (Control Over Ghosts)

BASIC
LEVEL 1 Insight
Gazing into the eyes of a corpse, you can see the image burned into
its death. A moments concentration allows you to call up the
memories of death itself. You immediately see the last minute of the
individuals existence, generally as flashes of vision and startling
sensations.

LEVEL 2 Summon Soul

By calling out the names of the dead, you can pull them to
attendance. Combined with the power over their artifacts from their
life, you can force them to answer your summons, appearing and
obeying your will.

To call a ghost, you must know its name, or at least have a clear
image of its persona from The Spirits Touch. You must also have an
object with which the ghost has some contact with while it was alive,
achieving better results if the object has particular importance to the
ghost (also known as a Fetter). Some wraiths cannot be summoned
regardless of your efforts; many ghosts are lost in the eternal storm of
the Underworld. Vampires who were diablerized or who achieved
Golconda before Final Death likewise cannot be summoned in this
fashion.

INTERMEDIATE
LEVEL 3 Compel Soul
By binding a ghost with its name and your strength of will, you can
force it to obey your commands. Once you have summoned a wraith
(Summon Soul), you may use Compel Soul to make it answer your
questions and serve your bidding. The wraith must answer your
questions truthfully and act as you direct. During this time, the ghost
remains visible and audible to you as well. This effect lasts only for
about one hour.

LEVEL 4 Haunting
Your powers of necromantic compulsion allow you to force a ghost
to remain in a particular location, or near a specific object. With a
cryptic phrase and a powerful command, you bind the wraith so it
may not leave.

ADVANCED
LEVEL 5 Torment
There is a reason that ghosts fear the most powerful necromancers of
the Giovanni. Through the use of Torment, the necromancer can
inflict actual damage on the dead, punishing them for their
indiscretions.

Though you remain in the physical world, you can lash out with
supernatural energies upon the ghost, although many Vampires
choose to direct the blow by striking physically. If your attacks inflict
lethal damage on the wraith, it is banished to the deeper levels of the
Underworld for a full month, unable to return.

The Ash Path (Communication with the Underworld)

BASIC
LEVEL 1 Shroudsight
With minimal effort, you can see the Shroud that separates the world
of the living from the lands of the dead. The Underworld appears as
a decaying and ghastly reflection of the mortal world, sometimes with
structures lost to the past or unusual spirits flying about. You can see
(though not hear or feel) anything that transpires in the Underworld
within your normal visual range, with a sort of "double sight" that
does not hinder your normal vision.

LEVEL 2 Lifeless Tongues

The babble of restless spirits is clear to you. By concentrating for a
moment, you attune your senses to the Underworld, making yourself
capable of both seeing and hearing all that transpires there around
you. Furthermore, you can understand the language of the dead, so
unless a ghost goes out of the way to use a language that you do not
know, you can comprehend the words of any wraith.
INTERMEDIATE
LEVEL 3 Dead Hand
The structures and entities of the Underworld are very real to you. In
a bizarre sort of half-life, you can stretch your physical form across
the Shroud, interacting with beings and scenery there even as your
physical body remains partially in the living world. During this time,
you do not actually pierce the Shroud, but your actions affect both
worlds. Thus, you can climb a ghostly rope, then turn and step onto a
real-world roof. You can also lash out physically and strike or grapple
with ghosts, though they can return the attacks. However, you cannot
push or pull objects from one world to the next. Effectively, you
exist in both realms simultaneously, which can be very disturbing to
those watching you climb invisible ropes or grapple unseen
opponents.

LEVEL 4 Ex Nihilo
Tearing through the Shroud between worlds, you can cross into the
land of the dead. This journey is a harrowing one, for many spirits
wait to take vengeance on necromancers, and the Underworld is full
of hazards unknown to most Vampires. Furthermore, there is no way
to gather blood or sustenance in the Underworld and you can
become lost in the storms and seas of the deadlands. Still, this
discipline allows for direct contact with shades of the restless and it
serves as an unusual means of travel. While you are in the
Underworld, you still see everything that transpires in the mortal
world, but your physical form exists in the realm of the dead.

ADVANCED
LEVEL 5 Shroud Mastery
Your control over the barrier between the living and dead worlds is
nearly absolute. Instead of stepping across or watching the events of
the Underworld, you can actually manipulate the fabric of the
Shroud. By changing the strength of the web between worlds, you
can make it easier to cross, or bar wraiths from exerting their
influence on the material world.

The Bone Path (Control Over Zombies)

BASIC
LEVEL 1 Tremens
You can instill a corpse with a brief jolt of life. Though this discipline
is insufficient to actually animate or control bodies, you can make
them start or twitch spasmodically. Naturally, this sight frightens
those unaccustomed to the mobile dead.

The body then twitches or moves briefly in a fashion that you dictate,
from sitting up to blinking to flailing an arm momentarily. With a
little extra concentration, you can implant a command into the corpse
instead, causing it to move (once only) as you direct when a certain
event comes to pass. Corpses twitching in this fashion cannot actually
attack or inflict damage, but they can certainly startle the unwary.

LEVEL 2 Apprentices Brooms

Your skills in the Bone Path allow you to animate the dead, bringing
ambulatory motion and a
semblance of understanding to a cold corpse. Though they cannot
fight, these zombies follow simple instruction, performing tasks that
you set to them. Corpses animated with this discipline cannot
fightbut perform the single task as you direct until they complete
the job or until time or damage destroys them. Cadavers continue to
rot, slowly, even after beings imbued with this energy.

INTERMEDIATE
LEVEL 3 Shambling Hordes
When you raise the dead to do your bidding, they come in skeletal
hordes and withered masses that obey your every command, working
and fighting until destroyed. Any body, no matter how decomposed,
can be raised to serve your will. As long as the skeleton is reasonably
intact, the corpse rises to do your bidding. Such guardians can
perform tasks or fight for you with no regard to their own welfare.
They can be given orders to attack people or to guard an area, and
they wait tirelessly until destroyed. Decomposition will continue for
corpses in varying states of decay, although completely skeletal
guardians will be unaffected.

LEVEL 4 Soul Stealing

Your mastery of animated flesh and spirit allows you to pull the soul
from a living or undead body. With Soul Stealing, you draw out the
victims soul, turning it temporarily into a wraith while leaving the
body as an empty husk.

ADVANCED
LEVEL 5 Zombie
The vampire may create a zombie from a body that has been dead for
less than eight hours. This zombie has one more point in each of
Strength and Stamina, and a Dexterity of one. Zombies can only
move at ten feet per minute, and must be fed one blood point daily.

LEVEL 6 Soul Exchange

The vampire may switch souls between two bodies. Both victims
must be within eyesight of the subject, and within ten feet of each
other.

LEVEL 7 Daemonic Possession

Though you are not dealing with actual infernal spirits, you can cast a
willing soul into a fresh corpse or inanimate body. Thus embedded,
the soul takes control of the body, turning it into a new physical
home. Dead bodies continue to decay, and thus, they last no more
than a week, but this trick provides a perfect temporary repose for a
free-floating soul or summoned ghost.

LEVEL 8 Death Pact

By having a mortal victim sign an appropriate contract in her own
blood, the vampire may bind the mortal, effective after death... but
she must serve the mortal until then. Once the mortal has died, the
vampire may demand service from them once for each success in the
initial roll.

LEVEL 9 No Powers of this level currently known or have been

discovered.

LEVEL 10 No Powers of this level currently known or have been

discovered.

The Mortuus Path (Primary Path for Harbingers of

Skulls)

BASIC
LEVEL 1 Reapers 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.

LEVEL 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 victimshave 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 At-tributes (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.

INTERMEDIATE
LEVEL 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.

LEVEL 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.

ADVANCED
LEVEL 5 Mercy for Seth
Named after nortals--the Children of Seth--this power casues a victim
to contract a virulent plague, similar to the epidemics of the 11th
through 15th centuries (the Black Plage, the Red Death, etc). This
illness casues death within 24 hours for mortals and send vampires to
torpor within the same period of time. Mortal victims of plague
exhibit terrible plague symtopms -- 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.

The Vitreous Path (Control Over Wraiths and Oblivion)

BASIC
LEVEL 1 Eyes of the Dead
The necromancer employing Eyes of the Dead can literally see
through the eyes of any wraiths around her, allowing her to use the
wraith's 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 manipulatorof ghostly energies, the auras of surrounding
beings give off tell tale 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.

Use of this power is often disorienting to the necromancer and they

do nto always understand what they are seeing. Their perception of
things not in the Underworld while this power is in use is hindered
badly. Used properly, this power can let the caster determine whether
someone is injured, diseased or dying, and also whether the inidvidual
labors under any sort of curses or baleful magic. The effect lasts for
one scene, though can be terminated prematurely at will.
LEVEL 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 fat 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 aptterns 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. It can gauge from within
a few weeks to time of death up to revealing where when and how
the person will die, according to how well used the power is. The
effects last for one scene.

INTERMEDIATE
LEVEL 3 Soul Judgement
Wraiths seem to possess a Beast, much like vampires, though their
"Shadows" are often less brutish. By using Soul Judgement, 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.

LEVEL 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 path). The energy of this cloud is like a beacon for
Spectres, and they are drawn to the entropic force like moths to a
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.

This power requires the spending of one blood point, or trait. If

dispersed, the area covered is roughly a quarter mile in radius,
centered around the necromancer. It lasts for one scene.

ADVANCED
LEVEL 5 Soul Feasting
Just as the necromancer can draw Oblivion from within, she may also
pull external entropic energies into herself as a source of power. Soul
Feasting allows the caster to either 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.

Drawing on energies around her, death must have occurred within

one hour or be in a place where death is common, such as a
cemetary, a morgue, or the scene of a recent murder. This energy
may onkly be draiend once, until the area's energy replenishes. When
feeding from a wraith, the vampire must actually attack the wraith as
if feeding normally. While feeding, she is vulenrable from attacks
both in the physical world and from the Underworld, and exists in
sort of a half state, both in the land of the living and in the
Underworld. The wraith so attacked is immoblilized and cannot run
or escape, unless it can defeat the vampire via high willpower.

Necromancy 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 begin with one Level One ritual, but any others
learned must be gained through in-game play. Necromantic rituals are
otherwise identical to Thamaturgy rituals (pp. 182~185) and are
lurned 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 preceeds smoothly, failure preceeds with no effect, and a
botch often indicates that certian "powers" notice the caster, usually
to her detriment

LEVEL 1
Call of the Hungry Dead
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 any
thing intelligible, and might well go briefly mad.

Eldritch Beacon
Eldritch Beacon takes 15 minutes to cast. The material component
will be 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 wraithy powers affect this
individual with greater ease and severity(Storytellers using Wraith the
Oblivion should apply -1 dificulty to all Arconoi affecting the bearer
of the beacon). The sphere retains its power for one hour per success
on the casting roll.

LEVEL 2
Eyes of the Grave
This ritual, which takes 2 hours to cast, causes the target to
experiance 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 has not idea what the visions contain -- only the victim
sees them after all. Each time the visions manifest, the target must
roll Courage (difficulty 7) or be redused to a 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

Puppet
Used primarilly to facilitate conversation with the recently departed,
though also applied as a method of psychological torture. Puppet
prepares a subject (willing or unwilling) as a suitable receptical for
ghostly possession. Over the course of an hour the necromancer
smears grave soil over the subjects 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.
LEVEL 3
Ritual of the Unearthed Fetters
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 sort of a 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 formal
owner). During the course of the ritual the stone crumbles to dust,
which is then sprinkled over the fingerbone.

Din of the Damned

This ritual is similar to the Level One Ritual Call of the Hungry Dead
(See Vampire the Masqureade p 165) 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
evesdropping. Over the course of a half-hour, the necromancer
draws an unbroken line of ash from a crematorium along the walls
(this line may pass over doorframes to allow enterance and egree).
For the rest of the night, any attempting to listen in on events inside
the room, be it simple (a glass to the Wall), electronic (a lazer
microphone), or mystic (Heightened Senses), requires the
evesdropper to score more successes in a Preception + Occult roll
(difficulty 7) than the caster of the ritual scored. Failure to beat this
mark gives the listener and earful of ghostly wailing and moaning and
the sound of howling winds; a botch deafens him for the rest of the
night.

LEVEL 4
Cadavar's Touch
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.
Peek Past the Shroud
This hour long ritual enchants a handful of ergot (a mold that grows
on grain 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 Vampire the Masqurade) for a number of hours equal to the
necromancers Stamina score. Three doses of the enchanted ergots
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 instantaniously toxic, inflicting
eight dice of lethal damage on any subject who ingests it -- including
vampires

LEVEL 5
Grasp of the Ghostly
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 that, however -- a wraith might well object
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.

Chill of Oblivion
Preformed over the course of 12 hours (Reduced by one hour per
success on the casting roll), this ritual infuses the Necromancer, or
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 the 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 Ocullt rating.

An individual affected by Chill of Oblivion, treats aggravated damage

from fire and high tempertures as if they were lethal damage.
Furthermore, he may attempt to extinguish any fire by rolling
Willpower (difficulty 9); each success reduces the fire soak difficulty
(see Vampire the Masqurade, p227) by 1 and a fire and a fire with a
soak difficulty of 2 dwindles to glowing embers. However, this ritual
has several drawbacks. First and foremost, the subjects arua is laced
with writhing black veins the resemble those that are left by diablorie
and may well be mistaken for such by any observer who is not
familiar with this ritual. The subject 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, 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..